Joshua Davey Design

Even though I’ve been playing Mario Kart Wii for several weeks now, my friends and I will always have a special place in our heart for Mario Kart Double Dash. I know, I know, this game was a major departure from the franchise, but we still love the multi-player battle mode. So much, in fact, that in February I built a stats-keeping mini-app for us.

The premise was simple: We loved battling, and did it almost weekly, but were always disappointed that there was no way outside of a lame spreadsheet for us to keep track of our stats. At the same time, I was just starting to learn Ruby on Rails, and I needed a real project to help me learn. I finished up a beta of the project, which was just good enough for our personal use.

Basically, while battling it out Mario-Kart-style, we would fill out a form after each match, with the winner and stage, as well as how many balloons the winner had left. From this, the stats engine I built would calculate a series of statistics that we came up with. Of our stats, my personal favorite is “Balloon Error Ratio,” because it is a statistic that reflects not only wins, but also the amount of balloons you lose in battles. As you can see from the screenshot, I hold my own against my friends. Of course, the same wouldn’t necessarily be true against the video game overlords out there.

This app is based on Rails 1.2.6, and still has some bugs. If you’re interested in the source, hit me up in the comments.

Jumping on board with the rest of the designer/developer world, I decided to take up learning Ruby on Rails. Easy enough, right? Sure, if you used to object-oriented programming. From what I’m told, Ruby is actually a great entry-level programming language because of its simple syntax, built-in methods and easy-to-read format.

However, I have never taken a programming class. All the XHTML, CSS, and PHP I know has been self-taught and has generally been a gradual learning process, looking up stuff when I need an answer or run into a problem. For better or worse, my web design method has usually been front-end-centric, ignoring or taking for granted what happens in the background. I have been become relatively well-versed in theming Wordpress and Textpattern, but have never really understood just how these applications connect, talk to, and edit database entries.

But after viewing the RoR “Creating a weblog in 15 minutes” screencast, I gave into my temptations and decided that it was high time I dive head-first into the foreign world of web development. I went ought and bought the highly-recommended Agile Web Development with Rails, and have been struggling through it for about a week.

My learning curve has been admittedly steep, as I am not only learning Rails, but also Ruby, and programming in general. I’ve found myself having to google lots of terms I probably should already know, such as “method” and “class”, two programming concepts that I’ve had a particularly hard time shoving into my skull.

That said, I have also been rather impressed with the authors of the book, because it seems well-aimed for both newbies and experienced professionals used to other programming languages. I’ve gone through the example project in the book, and I think I’m ready to start my first Rails project from scratch. The CMS modules based on RoR that I’ve seen in the wild–Radiant and Typo–have been very indicative of what Rails is capable of with a minimal amount of coding, not to mention the very-cool RoR apps from 37signals.

Where to go from here? Who knows? I guess the proverbial sky is the limit. All I know is that I’m excited about finally understanding some of what goes into a web application, and even more excited that custom web applications can be possible to build from the ground up, even by a wee designer like me!

As suggested by 43 folders, I changed my hosting over to A2 Hosting today. I ran into a few snags at first, but the support at A2 was awesome, and they helped me a ton. Thanks, everyone at A2!

If you’re reading this, I have successfully transported my feeds over to FeedBurner, using the handy Wordpress plugin that they now host called FeedSmith. Thanks.

Hot off the press, and right on the heels of the first version, we’ve released a new design for pauseculture.com, which overhauls the basic look and feel of the site, and fixes several issues with Textpattern and navigation.

The title of this post alludes to the new design finally being done. However, there are some other changes that have taken place around here that I have neglected to mention previously:

1. The name has changed. Formerly JayDee Design, this company shall henceforth be known as Joshua Davey Design. I confess the change was mostly for vain reasons: I like my name.
2. The blog has changed from “Soapbox” to “Words”. This is primarily because I want my design work to more closely related to and associated with my musings. The addresses have therefore changed as well, from /soapbox/ to /words/.
3. I have added a portfolio.

These small changes aside, the design itself is what I spent the most time on, and I must say that I’m rather proud of it. Not that its aesthetically anything to write home about, but because this site is the first time that I built a Wordpress theme from scratch. It was certainly a learning experience. Inductive learning always proves fruitful!

This poem is by W. H. Auden
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My wife, who never ceases to amaze me, recently had a thought that I thought was excellent. We were discussing time, and how life seems to go by so quickly, and how it never seems like you can escape the timeline of life. She offered that if time were not a line, but a circle, it would be easier to swallow. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently learned about portable applications, which are stand-alone programs that can run solely from a USB key. This means that you can have your favorite programs on the go, in case you use lab computers, or can’t install programs at work.

So now I have Firefox on my USB drive so that labs that are still living in the Microsoft-monopoly Age can be useful. I’ve got a bunch of other programs and a launcher on there too.

I’m a nerd.

Over the weekend, Bethany and I went on a date. It was awesome, because she planned it! All I had to do was show up!

Anyway, we had a lot of fun together, as we always do on those all-day dates. We went to a dog show, an art museum, and the Jazz Kitchen. Saweet!

This post isn’t about the date, though. Read the rest of this entry »