Friday Futon - Here Comes the Night

Sometimes when I’m out for a casual jog, I tend to sing songs. Out loud. Of course, I can’t sing, but with the help of my new software invention I call 80’s HarmoniZer, even I can sound freakin amazing. If I can do it, then you can do it! It’s easy as 123! By following these 5 simple steps, you too could be on your way to glory! 

Step 1: Get a boom box.
Step 2: Strap it to your chest. (Duct tape works great)
Step 3: Get a microphone.
Step 4: Install 80’s HarmoniZer.
Step 5: Go for a jog.
Step 6: Fight off the ladies. 

I threw Step 6 in there just you know, because we’re bros. Oh, wait. I forgot to tell you what happens between Step 5 and Step 6. You’re obviously going to want others to hear your performance, so it’s best to find a group of joggers to entertain as you simultaneously jog and HarmoniZe. A group of lady joggers usually works best. Once you’ve found your lady joggers, drop in behind at a safe distance, say 5 to 10 yards. Turn on your boom box, crank it to 11. Grab the mic, and start singing these very words:

“Here it comes <air_guitar>chug chug chug chug</airguitar>, here comes the night. Here it comes <air_drums>tom tom tom</air_drums>, here comes the niiiiiiiiight.”

As the ladies speed up out of the overwhelming fear of your awesomeness, you speed up. Trust me, THEY. ARE. LOVING. IT. Don’t worry about how you sound, the 80’s HarmoniZer will make your voice sound like a five piece hair band whose testicles are all caught up in their tight leather chaps - in other words, radical.

Radiohead - Live in Prague

DVD quality video with audio masters provided by the band. By the fans, for the fans. Watch on YouTube, or download a torrent of the entire show. (Via @philcoffman)

Mike Kus's Updated Site

Hello awesomeness.

CodeIgniter 2 vs. Kohana 3

Interesting little write up by an (obviously cool) and nerdy mom. In the end, she finds CI to come out on top:

In the end it comes down to framework stability for me. And in this case, CI wins, hands down.

If you’re into either CodeIgniter or Kohana, be sure to read the rest of her post.

Audrye Sessions - An Otherwise Perfect Day EP

Love this band. Sad to see this being their final release, but arguably one of their best. A lot of Radiohead influence in this one, Ryan’s voice at it’s best.

//Link opens iTunes.

Friday Futon - Pain In The Butt

Who comes up with this stuff? Pain in the butt. There is no pain in my butt. I would think I would know if there was pain in my butt. Just because someone jacks me does not make them a pain in my butt. It makes them a jacker. A jacker that jacked me. A jackhole, if you will. A pain in the butt is a 6 foot tube with a camera and some scissors attached to the end, sliding through your colon looking for things that would really be a pain in your butt. That’s like a double pain in the butt. Using deductive reasoning then, a pain in the butt is like saying this jackhole here is sliding up my colon with his Canon7D and a dull steak knife. And if that is really the case, then yes, I would agree, that is a pain in the butt.

NoPattern iPhone Wallpapers

Chuck Anderson, friend and future FF loser, has been posting some of his work as iPhone Wallpapers. Be sure to check them out. If you like them all small on your phone, you’ll probably really like them all big on your walls. Buy them at his shop, npandco.com

CSS: Where’s My Vertical Margin?

Let’s chat today about a CSS bugger that has probably thrown us all off once or twice. I’m talking about vertical margin (top or bottom) on inline elements. If you haven’t discovered this yet, they don’t work. But before we get into the details of this, let’s get a refresher on Block elements vs. Inline elements.

Block elements, by nature, are items like, <div>, <p>, <ul>, all the <h*> tags, etc. These will stack on top of each other when placed one after the other in the flow of your HTML. You can think of them as having a built in <br> tag. All of these block elements have margin and padding that apply on all edges.

Inline elements, by nature, are items like <span>, <a>, <em>, <strong>, etc. These items will line up next to each other when placed one after the other in the flow of your HTML. They will wrap when they reach the edge of their containing <div>. These have a margin and padding that apply only on the left and right. So, now that we have that little bit of knowledge let’s talk about why, when we try to add a vertical margin or padding to our inline elements, it doesn’t take.

The reason is: the height property does not affect inline elements. If top or bottom margins are set, they will have no visual effect, as margins do not affect the line-height calculations. Ah, that’s why!

So when you’re dealing with a chunk of code like so:

<span class=”giddy”>This is a span tag, it is an inline element.</span>
<span class=”up”>This is another span tag, yet another inline element.</span>

and you want to vertically space these two elements vertically. You could do this:

<span class=”giddy”>This is a span tag, it is an inline element.</span>
<br />
<br />
<span class=”up”>This is another span tag, yet another inline element.</span>

But that’s ugly and wasteful. Instead you should modify your CSS changing these <span> elements from inline, into block. Now, the block elements listed above essentially have a display: block; automatically assigned to them as interpreted by the browser, even if it’s not explicitly stated in your CSS, it is there. (Technically, you could simply change out the <span> tag for a <div> tag and you’d be done.) Same goes for inline elements, however instead of display: block;, it’s display: inline;. So in order to give our little <span> tags some vertical spacing, we need to override the display: inline; with a display: block; in our CSS. That would look something like this:

span.giddy, span.up {
display: block;
margin: 4px 0;
} 

Now we have changed our <span> into a block element, and the top and bottom margin of 4px that we have applied should take effect.

There are many other uses for converting inline elements to block elements that really show the flexibility and power of CSS. Try experimenting with reducing your markup by getting more creative with the properties you’re applying to your elements.

Friday Futon - Eternal Flame

Sometimes I dream about what it would be like to live on an island somewhere. It probably wouldn’t be all Tom Hanks and that volleyball, but more like Jack and Kate minus the smoke monster. I’d probably have a pretty nice pad too. You know, all wired up with some 100MB connection via that under-ocean cable/internet thing. People would visit, and they’d ask me, hey, what’s your favorite part of the island? And I would say, I have so many favorite parts, it’s hard to say. And then I’d turn it on them, so, what’s your favorite part of Modesto? The downtown part? And right as they started feeling all lame for living in Modesto, I’d tell them all about my new web app: Twitter meets Facebook for bi-curious seniors.

After I gave them a tour of all the awesome parts that I didn’t previously mention, I’d invite them to an evening of Karaoke, hosted by Jack Bauer. They would probably want to sing some Katy Perry song, but not Katy Perry’s parts, just Snoop Dogg’s. The locals would hang their heads in shame, I just know it. That is, until I got up to the mic. Mic check. Mic check. Boom, what’s that? The Bengals. Eternal Flame. The locals go wild. It would be all Desert Storm for the tourists - shock and awe. Especially when I hit that high note:

An eternal flaaaaaaaaaame!

As everyone looked to Jack Bauer to see his reaction to me NAILING the falsetto, they’d catch him mouthing the words to me, “You make me a better man.” At which point I would kinda fling my hair out of my face as if to say, yeah, that just happened.

“Everyone is just making it up as they go along.”

— Frank Chimero answering the question: What advice would you give a graphic design student.