matt dillon

Italian Caper #1 - Hong Kong

Sun, 06 May 2012 09:38:00 +1200

I’m on holiday for the next few weeks. This holiday has been in planning for quite some time and finally, we’re off.

First stop: Hong Kong

Relatively humid (shorts and shirts only). First up was William Cheng & Son for some new shirts. Very fine tailors and very well priced. Approx. NZ$35 for a made to fit shirt - excellent value.

Night Markets. Warm, rain. Great food as usual.

Tin Cheung Camera for a new tripod. A beautiful camera shop, excellent service (no pushiness whatsoever - a rare thing on the streets of HK) and the best prices.

Ocean Park. Pandas (tick). Sea show. Water raft.

Sai Kung. Excellent (somewhat expensive) lunch.

SSH on Ubuntu

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 23:26:54 +1200

A good (it works!) walkthrough on how to secure your linux server:

http://www.farinspace.com/secure-login-linux-server/

SSI on OSX Apache - finally

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 22:36:00 +1200

This one has long bugged me on and off for years.

I have to admit, I’m pretty crap at remembering all this stuff. My brain can only retain so much junk. And this one falls perfectly in to the “I don’t do it often enough for it to stick” category.

I’ll write it down - that might help.

This is for using .html files as SSI on OSX 10.7

In: /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf
Make sure you’ve got: Options Includes (or All)

In: /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
Make sure you’ve got:
Options Includes
AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .html <- it’s this last bit that always gets me

Ahhhhh - peace at last.

Trademarks and Shutterstock

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:31:49 +1300

That was a close one… and I’m glad the lawyer looked over it before we submitted a Shutterstock image as a trademark. Fortunately, there’s not too much involved in drawing another pig.

stackoverflow goodness

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:40:00 +1300

stackoverflow has to be one of the best resources on the interwebs. I’ve used it for years (more-so since I’ve been headfirst in to rails) but I’m a recent contributor - finally, giving back to the community.

Big ups to the team behind Stack Exchange - love the way you approach your development too!

Dieter Rams

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:09:00 +1300

Dieter Rams - ten principle for good design.

I love the idea that design is not art; it’s not pop; it’s not fashion. Good design enhances our lives. Our lives a incredibly time-poor and asset rich - here, good design demonstrates its value.

Get rid of the noise; work out what you really need.

Link

Mobile Email

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:40:00 +1300

Good guides over at Campaign Monitor. And MRPATTO has a nice collection of resources.

More resources:
Litmus Blog

Yahoo! Mail gotya (use attribute selectors to get around it). See here…

Charles Hawthorne Art Quotes

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:19:00 +1300

Charles Hawthorne - American artist. I absolutely love his writings on art, for example:

The value of a canvas depends almost entirely on your mental attitude, not on your moral attitude; depends on what kind of a man you are, the way you observe.

Dreaming Ruby Code

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:54:15 +1300

Friday morning about 5am, after a late night of coding, I woke up dreaming ruby. Well, that’s a first. The good news is that my dream actually helped me fix my code (that’s another first).

So, what was the issue? A multi-step form which is saved immediately after the first step.

What was the solution? Initially, I tried out ryanb’s multi-step form (no saving after the first step), but that wasn’t what I was after. I turns out there’s a nice little gem - gem “stepper”. It adds a current_step field to the table you’re working with, but I can live with that.

All good!

simple_nested_form_for - awesome

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:34:00 +1300

I love simple_form. Big ups to the plataformatec guys (get it here). It makes writing forms in rails a breeze. Great control and really easy to style up.

I also love ryanb’s nested_form. Again, it makes complex forms so much easier to create.

Today I had the need to use both simple_form and nested_form. And how awesome is this: simple_nested_form.

It’s shit like this that makes my day.

http://prespective.tumblr.com/post/scorekeeper

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:21:00 +1300

http://prespective.tumblr.com/post/scorekeeper:

Prespectives – Sean Whipps – Scorekeeper

“Absolutely brilliant. This is a perfect example of creating a parallel of great interaction and imaginative design - between the icons-as-function and menu, the whole app feels so natural and focused.”

Rock climbing & jquery.multi-select.js

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:06:00 +1300

After years of being intrigued by Ferg’s Rock and Kayak, I’ve finally climbed the wall. Again, big ups to Adventure Wellington for organising (meetups is a wonderful thing). 10 minutes to show us the ropes (pun intended) and then we we’re let loose! As a first timer, I’m pretty chuffed at getting up and over a couple of overhanging walls. Choice.

Earlier in the day, I found the nicest looking multi-select jquery plugin. jquery.multi-select.js by (frenchman?) Louis Cuny was easy to add to a Rails 3.1 project I’m in the middle of, and, best of all, it looks really nice. I like.

Good job Lou (fork him on Github).

Adventure Wellington - Wellington Zoo

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:17:00 +1300

We’ve recently joined this fantastic meetup group. A good bunch of people from all over the place: kiwis, brits, canadians, yanks, serbians, australians… Mostly, we’ve been going to the walking meetups but last Friday night was a sleepover at the zoo. 60 adults partaking in kids activities at the zoo. Awesome.

Without a doubt, the hilight of the event was getting up close to the lions.

Other hilights were the new meerkat enclosure (and catching a good look at a new baby meerkat just a few days old) and the blue-tounged lizard.

Good on you Adventure Wellington. Good times!

Matiu/Somes Island - Boxing Day 2011

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:58:00 +1300

Matiu/Somes Island - Boxing Day 2011

A sketch of Oliver our departed and loved moggie.

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 16:05:00 +1300

A sketch of Oliver our departed and loved moggie.