The Sweet Spot
On software development, engineering leadership, machine learning and all things shiny.
2011
August
Introducing Boink, a photobooth for the rest of us.

My friends were complaining that wedding photobooths were too expensive to rent. Could we make one for them?

July
Chat App - Frontend Prototype

June
BRUTE LABS UX project: StudentsConnect

I’m on a team with BRUTE LABS, a volunteer-led design agency working on StudentsConnect, a prototype project making chatroulette-style interactions connecting students from the global North and South. Here’s a UX flow we worked on:

Code For Oakland Barcamp

[caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”500” caption=”Is that Jon Chan I see? Yes it is. Photo credit Oakland Local.”][/caption]

March
UN Declaration of Human Rights (Visualization)

Slavery Today (Infographic)

February
Save our souls - a Twitter art installation

Here’s how the installation looked on the day of the art show.

Arduino and python-firmata

I just spent five hours trying to figure out why  none of the Firmata libraries for Python were working over my serial connection. I was wondering why the previous program remained on the board and none of the signals sent were hot.

Currently: frustrated

So I got the poster printed, and the LEDs currently show through the board pretty well. This is good:

Update

A quick update on the art project:

The making of SOS: Intro

January
Using 37signals shorthand for UX flows

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1926-a-shorthand-for-designing-ui-flows

AppStoreConnect UX

2010
December
Aristo, the shiniest jQuery UI theme of them all.

Let’s face it: jQuery UI skins suck. They’re flat, they’re boring, they don’t pop.

August
On selling my soul and switching to Mac

A month ago I bought an ‘07 MacBook on Craigslist. No, it’s not one of those sexy aluminum hot rods, but it sure is pretty.

June
post-review, git-svn and Review Board

Here’s how to set up the excellent VMware-developed open-source Review Board and its [post-review](http://www.reviewboard.org/docs/releasenotes/dev/rbtools/0.2/) command line review creation utility to work with git and git-svn on your computer.

April
YUI 3 Widget lazy instantiation

At work, we make good use of YUI 3. It’s a really well-thought-out framework, from sandboxing and deep namespaces to CSS3 selector support and lazy-loading modules through the Yahoo! CDN. One of YUI 3’s biggest features is the Widget framework, which specifies an object on the page that the user can tweak to his or her whims.

It's official: "Web site" becomes "website"

I Love/Hate Marmite

I had my first taste of Marmite last year while in Botswana. My South African roommate loved it, and encouraged me to try it and spread it on my toast. One bite and I gagged. It was like somebody mixed soy sauce and peanut butter and cranked it to 11.

March
Upgrading Wejoinin to unicorn

(Reposted from the Wejoinin Blog)