Josh On Design

So I been thinking. Design comes in waves. First it was page curls and drop shadows. Then came glossy buttons and wet floors, followed by shiny badges and rough textures. Today 'flat' is the leading trend in UI design. It certainly defines the look of Web ’13. Even Apple has jumped on the bandwagon. But what comes next? Where do we go from here? Whither 2014?

Lately I've been experimenting with Functional Reactive Programming, or FRP. There are several good libraries to use FRP with Javascript. I chose Bacon.js. I'm finding FRP to be very useful but hard to understand.

By what standard should we measure if code is "beautiful"? I argue it should be not lines or speed, but rather conciseness and clarity. Can someone who is not familiar with the language still understand what the algorithm does? Can someone not familiar with the task still get a feel for how it works? This metric favors shorter code over longer, but not at the expense of readability. Beautiful code should be as close to expressing the underlying algorithm as possible. How close is the actual code to the most straight forward pseudo code?

I've always wanted a magic wordprocessor. Something that helps me organize my thoughts and build ideas organically, rather than spend all of my time worrying about formatting. Something for the internet / cloud age. Given that Microsoft Word hasn't fundamentally changed in over a decade (or possibly two), we aren't likely to get such software from them. Instead, I decided to play around with some ideas using my new favorite programming tool: OMeta.

Animation is just moving something over time. The rate at which the something moves is defined by a function called an easing equation or interpolation function. It is these equations which make something move slowly at the start and speed up, or slow down near the end. These equations give animation a more life like feel. The most common set of easing equations come from Robert Penner's book and webpage.

Software Libraries are good. They allow abstraction and encapsulation; which encourages reuse. They also allow the library to be written by one person and used by another. This is reuse at the programmer level, not just the system level. A library can be written by a person who has domain expertise but used by someone else who has less or no expertise in that domain. For example: an XML parser. The implementer knows the XML spec inside and out, but the user of the lib needs only a basic understanding of XML in order to use the lib.

In my hunt for what's next I've been reading a lot of books lately. A lot of books. As part of my search I decided to hunt down some of the classics in the computer science field that I'd missed over the years. First articles, then research papers, and some Alan Kay work. That led me to a book I'd always meant to read but never found the time: Mindstorms, by Seymour Papert.

The idea of computer vision has always fascinated me. The ability to get from a plain image to an understanding of it's contents seems magical. Though I understand a bit of the underlying math, to build my own computer vision system would take years of study. Fortunately, this book and an open source library come to the rescue.

Below are my three main session proposals for OSCON, plus a few random ideas near the bottom that aren't fleshed out. Please give me some feedback on what you like and don't like. My goal is to have four really solid submissions. Thanks!

Progress comes not from inventing new answers, but from discovering new questions. -- some guy

The call for proposals for OSCON 2013 just went out. OSCON is the one conference I try to speak at every year because the topics are so diverse and interesting. And being just up the road in Portland doesn't hurt either. However, I'm having trouble deciding what to submit. Too many things interest me. So I thought I'd consult the wisdom of the crowd. What do you want to see?

Much like a painter or musician, sometimes I an idea forms in my head and will not let me rest until it comes out. Usually such an idea is an algorithm or graphics demo, but this time it came in the form of a game; a game which will not quiet until born.

Most book publishers don't really have a 'brand'. You buy a book because of the title or the author. No one cares who Stephen King's publisher is. However, every now and then a publisher comes along who simply makes cool books. A publisher who's books I will buy regardless of the title or author. No Starch Press is one such publisher.

Last night I declared Internet Bankruptcy.

I'm happy to say the Retro Game Crunch Kickstarter project succeeded! It was close for a while, but in the last 24 hours you pushed it over the line to 111%.

Today I am talking with Matt Grimm, the final member of the Retro Game Crunch trio. You can also read the previous interviews Shaun Inman and Rusty Moyher. There's still a few days left to help push the Retro Game Crunch to the finish line. Pledge now!

Today we are talking with Rusty Moyher, another member for the Retro Game Crunch team. You can read the previous interview with Shaun Inman here. There's still a few days left to help push the Retro Game Crunch to the finish line. Pledge now!

The Last Rocket

I know it's been quite a while since I've posted. I have no defense other than to say I have an 18 month old baby. Toddler on the move 24/7 makes for a very tired daddy.

This entry is my first Innovator Interview, Terence Tam, creator of the amazing Open Beam aluminum system launched on KickStarter. I first discovered Open Beam while doing research for my CNC machine. After being so happy with the product I contacted Terence for an interview. He graciously took time out of his busy schedule to speak with me about OpenBeam, how an engineer cooks a turkey, and lessons learned from running a KickStarter project. I think you will enjoy reading is as much as I enjoyed talking with him.