Just finished coding my newly designed portfolio. Pretty happy with it now.

Let me know what you think!

"SparkleMasters recreates any image entirely out of sequins—creating dazzling graphics that move, glisten, and 'come to life' in a completely new way."

I took the client's design and vision and developed a website that compliments the uniqueness of the client and their product.

Built with: jQuery, sammy.js, lesscss, expressionengine

I just used ColorPix for the millionth time and I figured that meant I should share it. I've been using it for years now and it's been a consistently awesome resource while designing and building on the web. You should use it!

Apache released a new version of the HTTP Server yesterday. A ton of new features have been added, and a ton of enhancements have been made.

I ran a test last night against Apache 2.2.20 and Nginx 1.0.12 for work to see which one we want to use... Now I have to wait for this version to make it's way into the Debian repositories and rerun the test so we can decide. :(

Anyways, the feature I'm most excited about is the addition of RewriteMap on mod_rewrite. Being able to define custom tokens is going to simplify so many of our vHost rewrite rules!

Today, I discovered an exciting app. Topi is a group messaging application that also allows chatting with people in vicinity, having common interests or affiliations. With the recent wave of similar social applications that leverage geographical proximity (Sonar, Banjo, Localhero, Hear I Am...), it feels like today's mobile phones, and their users, are ready to give a second chance to PAN Dating practices that started at the beginning of this millenium. In this post, we will quickly sketch the evolution of Mobile Social Software (MoSoSo) of the last 10 years, introduce a few recent apps (including Topi), and discuss why we should all be excited about their possibilities.

Another perspective on mobile:

Smartphones are emotive devices. They are extensions of ourselves. Your online services need to play nicely with them or you will offend me.

Yet another reason to consider mobile-first with progressive enhancement.

It has arrived.

Laravel 3.0 is the next generation of the popular, elegant Laravel PHP framework. This release brings a ton of great stuff, including long requested features such as database migrations, unit testing integration, and more.

If you're not familiar with Laravel, here's a sample of what it's like to use it:

Routing

Route::get('/', function()
{
    return View::make('home.index');
});

Redirecting & Flashing Session Data

return Redirect::to('profile')->with('message', 'Welcome Back!');

I just want to give a brief overview of the new features to wet your appetite. Of course, Laravel is known for awesome documentation, and 3.0 is no different. All documentation is fully up-to-date and thorough.

Bundles

Bundles are an amazing way to package and share Laravel code. They can have their own routes, views, models, migrations, controllers, and anything else you can think of. Installing them is a breeze thanks to the new Artisan command-line and the bundle directory. Create your own and share it with the community. Maybe it will even be a featured on the Laravel website!

Learn more about bundles!

Bundle directory

Migrations

Migrations are like version control for your database, and once you've used them, you never go back. Laravel now includes an amazing, fluent database migration system. You don't need to worry about vendor specific SQL, just use the beautiful, elegant syntax provided by the Laravel schema builder.

Here's what schema generation looks like in Laravel:

Schema::create('users', function($table)
{
    $table->increments('id');
    $table->string('email')->unique();
    $table->string('password');
});

Dig into migrations!

Artisan CLI

The wonderful new "Artisan" CLI is packed with awesome commands to help you get the most out of Laravel. It's painless to install bundles, run migrations, run tests, and more.

Here are some samples:

php artisan test

php artisan migrate

php artisan migrate:rollback

Get started with the CLI!

Unit Test Integration

Laravel 3 provides amazing integration with PHPUnit, a popular PHP unit testing library. You can easily test your application, bundles, and even the Laravel framework itself. It couldn't be easier.

Start testing!

Events

A simple event system has been integrated into Laravel, making it easier for you to easily build flexible, de-coupled applications.

Read about events!

SQL Server Support

Microsoft fans rejoice! SQL Server is now supported by the fluent query builder and database migration system.

I hope you enjoy Laravel 3.0!

Entypo is a set of 100+ carefully crafted pictograms available as an OpenType font, vector EPS and web font.

Creative Commons License.

Every button creating software I've seen is bloated, over-complicated and annoyingly ugly or obtrusive. So I decided to make a dead simple nice and beautiful button creator with developers in mind.

If you have any requests that are reasonable, nothing that will slow creation of buttons please let me know.

Things planned:
State handling, swapping states to develop quicker (Hover, Active)

Show-off Did you make a cool button? Show us!
puu.sh/… - Nijikokun (Mine)

Just a note, this site was made in under an hour and utilizes: jQuery, Templator.js, Moustache, Tiny Grid

I'm recently testing out a new design for my personal blog, but I've run into a problem with some of my media queries.

If you visit the site and resize the page, you'll see what I mean. Some articles on the homepage are not where they are supposed to be and I can't seem to figure out the offending code.

Any help appreciated. :)

Update: In the screenshot you should be able to see what I'm talking about.