Get Updates in your Feed ReaderLearn ExpressionEngine with the EE 2 Screencasts
August 19, 2010
Earlier this week I unveiled a new series of training videos for ExpressionEngine 2. And at the same time pulled back the curtain on a new project: Mijingo.
What is it? Other than a silly name, it’s my attempt at creating and selling awesome tutorials for web designers and developers.
Right now we’re launching with just my first series of screencasts. Later comes some “ebooklets"—short, focused ebooks— on ExpressionEngine-related development. Coming soon are ebooklets on Securing ExpressionEngine 2 and Learning MojoMotor (the new lightweight CMS from EllisLab). Later, however, we’ll cover topics beyond just ExpressionEngine and related products.
A tip of the hat to Joey Pfeifer for working hard on the design, markup and CSS for the site. He sacrificed many evenings and a few weekends getting the site ready on a short deadline. As you can see, he’s damn talented.
With my ExpressionEngine book, the new screencasts and the tutorials and information at EE Insider, I’m hopeful that a new wave of EE users will get inspired to build amazing websites with ExpressionEngine.
- CNET: Is Google far too much in love with engineering? - “Google does many interesting and clever things. But, at this stage of its development, its office does seem to be full of too many people with the emotional maturity of Dwight Schrute.” (-)
Fade in and Fade out with iMovie for iPhone
July 01, 2010
The other day I was editing together a short video on iMovie for iPhone. Everything was a going well (it’s a fun app to use) until I wanted to do a nice fade in from black at the beginning of the video and a fade to black at the end. While iMovie for iPhone includes transitions between video clips, it does not currently allow you to have transitions at the beginning or ending of your video (the audio doesn’t fade out during editing but it seems to be processed to do so during export from iMovie).
So I faked it. Here’s how:
Sit your iPhone 4, main lens down, on a dark surface— I used a Moleskine notebook—and shoot about 5 seconds of video. This creates a black video clip. Drop this clip in the front of the video and trim it to 0.5 second and drop it in again at the end of your video and trim it as you wish. Finally, make sure you have a cross-dissolve set up between the black clip and the first and last video clips.
That’s it. You now have a nice fade in and fade out for your iPhone iMovie.
See it in action:
First Ever iPhone 4 Movie Featuring Driving a Volkswagen Passat with a Bruce Springsteen Song as the Soundtrack from Ryan Irelan on Vimeo.
- GOOD: Walmart Test Drives Plastic Bag Ban - I can get a week’s worth of groceries in 4 large reusable bags. At a store like Wal-Mart this would probably mean using at least 10 disposable bags. Granted, we buy goods that typically have less packaging (mostly fresh food) but my point is that bringing a few bags with you to the store isn’t a big deal and it ends up meaning less bags to carry from your car to the kitchen. (-)
Cheap and Easy
May 27, 2010
I would also add that saying “I was lucky” is a cheap and easy way to come off as humble amidst accomplishment. There are plenty of better and more fruitful ways to be humble that don’t require empty words.
(via SvN)
Do Stuff
May 27, 2010
From This is not content at the 37signals blog:
What people want is opinions, analysis, techniques, experiences, and insights. The best of all these come as a bi-product from actually doing stuff. The closer you are to the topics, the more natural you’ll be able to extract the goodies.
Do stuff, break stuff, learn stuff and then you have something to say.
Homemade Organic Pizza
May 20, 2010
Last month while making one of my homemade pizzas, I decided to photograph each step with my iPhone. I added some basic instructions to go along with it and put the photos up on Flickr as a photo set: Homemade Organic Pizza
The pizza dough recipe is straight off the internet but the other techniques I learned during college in an illustrious career of pizza slinging.
- How underdogs can win - A wonderful article by Malcolm Gladwell on how underdogs can exploit the weakness of their competition to win. One of the examples in the article is that of a National Junior Basketball team who presses on every possession instead of conceding 2/3 of the court every time. As a recreational basketball player I know that while this sounds great, it does require a high level of fitness; full-court presses are hard work. (-)
Laid
May 20, 2010
This song came out in 1993 (on their album of the same title) and it was later used in the film American Pie. Fun song.
Nothing to Do
April 28, 2010
Garrett Murray in Where do you get your ideas?
The worst possible feeling for me is sitting around with nothing to do and no ideas.
Yup.
- Zeldman on Numbers - “You don’t want a million people reading your HTML5 blog. You want members of the HTML5 working groups and key influencers from Google, Apple, and Microsoft reading your HTML5 blog.” (-)
Manton Reece on iPad Software Development
April 19, 2010
Manton Reece: New iPad hackers:
Manton compares the barrier (cost) of entry into programming when he was young with iPhone and iPad development.
I started programming for the Mac with THINK Pascal, a beautiful little development environment. Then I moved to C with Dave Mark’s book, which came with a C compiler on a floppy inside the back cover. Eventually I saved up and bought Symantec C++. Even at an educational discount these were expensive compared to the free Xcode of today.
- “Aim for smaller victories to avoid bigger defeats.” - John August on anxiety, writing and taking on too much at once. (-)
- Puke T-shirt - I need one of these for each day of the week. (-)
- The Problem with Keynote on the iPad - I was hopeful about the iWork apps on the iPad but the well-documented problems are turning this promising suite into a steaming turd. (-)
Getting the other guy in the car.
March 31, 2010
Sports Illustrated writer Joe Posnanski has a series of stories about West Virginia basketball coach Bob Huggins.
As a kid Bob Huggins quit his dad’s highschool basketball team after being berated by his father even after a great, great game. After confronting his dad and telling him he’s quitting, his dad convinces him to get in the car and go to practice.
See, this gets at the heart of Huggins’ philosophy. Sure, you need talent. Sure, you need discipline. Sure, you need leadership. Sure, you need heart. But the difference in Bob Huggins’ world is something more subtle, a secret he has been keeping ever since he quit his high school basketball team. It doesn’t matter the sport — in 1994, the Cincinnati Bengals lost their first eight games and went 3-13, but Huggins was really convinced that, given the chance, he could turn them around. Why? Because to him winning in football, like winning in basketball, like winning in life is all about the same thing.
You make the other guy get into the car.
- The Wire writer David Mills dies - He collapsed on the set of Treme. 48 years old. (-)
- SymbolicLinker - This might replace my Automator action to create symlinks quickly and easily (triggered from LaunchBar). (-)
Qualityviews
March 28, 2010
One day, not long from now, people will look back and this is what they’ll say:
“Can you believe how stupid we were back then? All we cared about was “pageviews, pageviews, pageviews;” full stop. And all the while, we never really gave much of a damn about the quality of those views— or of the person doing the viewing. I don’t know how we could have been so stupid. And for so long.”
As someone who sells advertising I can relate and definitely agree. I haven’t really had to fight against the urge of my advertisers to count only pageviews, but I definitely work to dispel the myth that it’s only about the count, not the quality.
EE Insider has, fortunately, become a regular read for a lot of people working with ExpressionEngine. The value to advertisers has never been the number of pageviews; it’s always been about the quality of those views. If you are selling something directly related to ExpressionEngine, EE Insider readers are your audience and the pageviews may not be in the millions but they’re high quality.
This allows me to give my advertisers access to exactly their audience while giving the readers only advertisements that relate to their work with ExpressionEngine. No telecom ads, generic Google ads or anything of the sort. I would cease advertising before offering those.
(All of this is why I generally dislike the idea ad networks that carry a roster of sites from varying fields and topics.)
Let’s face it. Readers would prefer no advertising at all. I know I would. But the current model requires costs be covered, so it’s an unfortunate necessity. The very least publishers can do is only take ads that are high quality to both the advertiser and the reader.