The last time I redesigned my portfolio was in June of 2007. A little over four years ago…that’s a long time. A couple months ago, the thought of updating it crossed my mind and although I designed a few mockups in Photoshop, I never got around to sitting down and developing it. One of the earlier ideas I toyed around with was this one: Please excuse the silly copy. It was a late night when I made this one. Eventually I fell out of love with it and designed the following one which is the design that made it into the final product. It's simple The final design was very much influenced by two key frameworks/libraries which drive the site. For the layout and CSS, I used the 1140px Grid and for content management, I used Stacey. The 1140px Grid is a fantastic CSS framework for creating a website that can adapt itself for different devices (as long as you keep this in mind during the design). If you visit the site and resize the window to a shorter width you can see the framework in action as the site adapts for the shorter width. This allows for a more friendlier layout when viewing it on a mobile device. The CSS framework also allows for the use of higher resolution images for devices which have a high density display. (eg. the iPhone 4) Screenshot of portfolio viewed on an iPhone 4 In regards to Stacey, the CMS I used, it’s really great for portfolio situations. As is described on its site, it’s also very lean since it does not require a database. However, it still supports RSS feeds and editing content is a pleasure as each project ended up being contained in its own folder with all the content contained in one text file. With no database involved, I’m able to make updates to my portfolio locally and when ready, push up all my changes with git with ease (using this method). I went a bit experimental with some of the aesthetic implementations, like choosing to use CSS3 stylings for the About and Contact buttons. They look great in Firefox and Chrome but not as intended in IE 8, and definitely not IE 7. In IE 6 the site blows up. I made the decision not to support IE 6 like with most of the other recent sites I developed as the marketshare is no longer significant. Plus it’s 2011, if you’re still using IE 6, you’re three versions behind. Even Microsoft doesn’t want you using it anymore.

If you keep up with the tech rumor mill, you might have heard some rumors that BBM could make it’s way in some form or another on iPhone or Android. I became a bit hopeful that this closed messaging protocol would finally become cross-platform, but now that I’ve done some more research, it’s not very likely that RIM will open this up. The Rumors When I first heard that RIM was going to release an SDK for their BBM platform, I got kind of excited. Within my group of friends, about half of them use Blackberries and they’re always “BBMing” each other. Apple fanblogs and alike also seemed to share the same sentiments, hopeful that the release of an SDK could at least mean that third-party developers could create cross-platform apps for BBM. The SDK

For many months now, I’ve been working with the guys at Mediumrare on an iPhone app to help look up upcoming bus and train times. It’s been a long journey and we left Calgarians a little taste of what’s to come on our company blog, as well as a little demo at DemoCamp. However, last week we finally wrapped things up and submitted version 1.0 to Apple. While the app is waiting to be reviewed for approval, I thought I could give a peek into what it was like to develop my first iPhone app. A Functional Prototype Goes A Long Way

This summer, I decided to try my hand at iPhone app development. An opportunity arose when we were playing around with the idea to make a more friendlier website to look up bus times. Although creating a website could have been translated into a mobile version, I thought it would be fun to experiment and see if I could come up with a native iPhone app. I spent a couple many hours delving into Objective-C. I had some basic experience working with C++ in a 1st year computer science course at the U of C, but coming from that and mostly working with Java in other courses, I have to say that the syntax initially comes off as quirky. Eventually though, it was just another language that you get used to (although it helps if you have a background in working with C++). After a little over a month, I had a functioning prototype. Although it had some rough spots, the prototype did what it was supposed to do by essentially doing the equivalent of filling out the Next Bus/CTrain form on the front page of the Calgary Transit website, grabbing the responding web page’s HTML, parsing it to grab the needed data and displaying it to you.

After getting in touch with the right people, I was able to demo the prototype to some employees of Calgary Transit and the City of Calgary. At the time, a public feed of Calgary Transit’s bus times data was not available and the methods in which I got the data for the prototype went against the terms of service on Calgary Transit’s website. Thankfully after meeting with them and waiting it out, Calgary Transit finally exported their data in the Google Transit Feed Specification which we were able to use legitimately in an iPhone application. A Re-do Although we could have easily just changed the methods in the application on how it grabbed the data to the new stuff, Leigh and Bryan proposed some fantastic redesigns which made the app look much more polished. I too decided to re-do things by rewriting the entire application. The prototype was mostly mashed up pieces of sample code I found from Apple’s developer resources and other various iPhone tutorial sites. I started with a new direction, leveraging the Three20 framework — the same framework which powers Facebook’s iPhone app. By basing the app on the Three20 framework, I was able to utilize some neat features such as:

An inline browser (so that clicking on a link in the twitter feed wouldn’t kick you out of the app) URL based navigation (this feature made transitioning between controllers feel more like a webapp — even allowing you to pass parameters in the URL) A global stylesheet (you’re able to define styles such as colours and fonts in one file, much like the way CSS works) A JSON library (parsing JSON for the twitter feed and bus times was made easier because of this)

Current Status As of this post, the app has already been submitted and is going through Apple’s app review process. In the version which we submitted, you will be able to:

Look up upcoming bus/train times using the 4-digit stop number See the last 5 recent tweets from Calgary Transit’s twitter account (makes it easy to see delays, especially in the recent snowy weather we’ve gotten these past two days) Add a stop to your favourites Rename a favourited stop Reorder your list of favourite stops

Based on other developer’s experiences, our app should be hitting the app store in about a week now. If you’d like to be notified via email as soon as it shows up, sign up on our mailing list at http://calgarytransitschedule.com. Related PostiPhone has a Huge Market Share in CanadaiPhone Specific FaviconJailbreaking & Unlocking 1st Gen iPhone on 2.0.2Rogers Is FINALLY Bringing the iPhone to CanadaiPhone Web Concept Kit

It’s definitely been a long time since I’ve updated the blog but when I decided to go about updating it, I also wanted to change up the theme because frankly, it was no longer to my liking. Besides the new theme, I’ve been working a new job at Mediumrare as a web developer. Mediumrare is a new startup in Calgary that provides web design and development services as well as some print work on the side. It was partially started up by some of my friends I met through Critical Mass and when I was out looking for some full time work over the summer, I was glad to join a company with old friends. Since joining, I have taken on a lot more responsibilities than just a web developer. It wasn’t too hard to adjust working with such a small team since I had my roots in freelancing. Besides filling a web developer role, I’ve done quite a few tasks in regards to server administration which was a welcome challenge.

This morning I woke up and found that the router in the house was busted. Any attempts to connect through it would result in it rebooting itself. No problem, I tethered my laptop to my N95 and was back going about my daily internet activities. While I was surfing, I found a link to Left Right Left Right Left, a free live album Coldplay released, and went ahead to download it. I forgot that I was tethered to my phone until my connection unexpectedly hung up (I guess Rogers doesn’t want me downloading large files like that over their 3G network). Regardless, during the download, I was sitting there for a good 5 minutes watching it, averaging about 80kb/s. Then it occurred to me, it’s quite amazing that a phone is able to connect to the internet over cellular towers and achieve speeds that are 16x faster than the good old days of dial-up. One fond memory I had when I was using dial-up many years ago was when I tried to download the brand new demo of Mortal Kombat II. It was 30mb and Netscape calculated that it would take about 2 hours to download. I was real hyped to try it out for some reason so I sat there waiting. I even intervened when I saw that my mom was going to pick up the phone with the worry that it might ruin the connection. Alas, the download died 45 minutes in. I still wanted to try out that demo so I proceeded to download it again and was successful the second time after letting it download overnight. What memories do you have of using dial-up?

You might have noticed a new widget at the bottom of the sidebar on this blog. I added it as a way for readers to make requests of topics they’d like to see me write.

The widget is from Skribit, a startup co-founded by Paul Stamatiou and it seems like the perfect cure for the long gaps between my writing. I have no problem sharing my knowledge so if you have any web development/design questions or topics you can suggest (heck, suggest anything you think I can write about), please do so! Topics will rise in popularity based on votes too so if you also see an existing topic you’d want to see written, vote on it.

A few weeks back I updated the Wii Friend Number Facebook App with some significant features. It didn’t get much fanfare as I released it somewhat quietly so here’s a recap of the changes made: Public Directory On the application’s discussion boards, there were threads upon threads of people sharing their friend codes for different games. These threads extended to multiple pages and it was clear that some sort of area on the site should host your numbers publicly beyond your friends on Facebook. I also paired this up with Facebook’s messaging system to make it easier to share numbers. I recorded a screencast which outlines how the Public Directory works and it’s the best way to grasp how it works:

Searching the Public Directory Shortly after releasing the Public Directory, the listings became crowded and I made it possible to search up random people based on a game they own.

What’s Next? The Public Directory is gaining more and more entries and I’m thinking of setting up a top 10 list of sorts to show what games are popular and find people based on that game. Just a few days ago I also emailed Nintendo asking if there were any APIs I could use for my application such as online statuses, etc. but it turns out they do not endorse these sort of “sharing sites” and did not wish to help me.
Anyways, if you’d like to keep up with the progress and updates for the app, subscribe to the blog I set up just for it: http://wiifacebookapp.wordpress.com/ Related PostWhat I’ve Been Up To: Wii Friend Number Facebook App 2Wii Friend Number Facebook App ReleasedMy First Facebook App - Wii Friend NumberCreating a Facebook Application: Getting StartedFacebook Gives Grants To App Startups

I came across Kevin Rose’s blog the other day while looking into the Squarespace platform. He posted a few voicemail messages he made using AT&T’s Text-to-Speech demo. The beauty of utilizing this text-to-speech functionality from AT&T is that it sounds a lot like the synthesized voice you hear when you phone a number and get some canned message read out by a computer — like voicemail messages for instance. Taking a page out of Kevin Rose’s samples, I made my own and have gotten some funny results just messing around with it: Listen to the multiple ways you can leave me a message (.wav).

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on a music video for Coldplay’s Lost contest. After days of planning, storyboarding, filming and post-production, I’ve finally come up with something I’m satisfied with and have uploaded it to YouTube:

I hope you enjoy watching it, feel free to leave comments either on YouTube or the blog
Related PostAmie St.10 Free iTunes SongsIntroducing Logitech Wireless DJ Music System, Is it Worth it?This Binary Universe

Over the past few weeks, I came into the possession of a Scion tC and like a true geek, I’m embarking on a project which would make my car even more adaptive to current technologies. I’m planning on building a “carputer“. The interior of the Scion tC makes this easy as the head unit is a double din which will probably hopefully allow a 7″ touchscreen LCD along with computer parts behind it to fit:

Over the weekend I did some research into what building such a thing would require and I’ve already got most of it laid down. I want it to be running Linux rather than Windows as I’ve seen in some people’s setups as Windows is a little too bloaty for me. I’ve actually already settled on a “distro” if you will and that is LinuxICE (Linux In Car Entertainment). Although it’s still in its very early stages, I feel I can contribute to this project and hopefully inject some more life into it. The other distro I came across was Moblin, and although it’s backed by Intel, I didn’t see it as something I could easily jump into like LinuxICE. Project Goals My immediate goals for my carputer is that it should hopefully be able to perform the following:

Play music from hard drive, CD, and possibly iPod via proprietary iPod cable or aux cable Play video from hard drive, possibly DVD Share music folder on home network so songs could be transferred while car is in garage via wi-fi

I also have some other goals which are pretty ambitious and difficult — but if I were able to pull these off, I might as well paint my car black and get a vanity plate that says KITT.

Connect to my cellphone when in range via bluetooth and intercept calls so that I could enjoy handsfree calling while in the car GPS Car monitoring via Carman Backup camera which will activate when transmission changes to reverse Be able to utilize steering wheel controls for music selection

Progress I’ve already jumped into skinning LinuxICE to better fit my car. Personally I wasn’t a big fan of the default skin:

So I tried borrowing design elements from the official Scion website and incorporate it into my skin:

Obviously I’m still early on in this project and I have plenty of elements left to skin and custom scripts/programs to develop. If you have done any similar projects or can input on stuff that’s already been developed to help my cause, please let me know by commenting