Curiosita Labs

Thoughts on programming, web development and design.

Circuit Board

3 Background patterns taken with a cellphone

As a developer and photographer, an android phone makes it easy to capture photos wherever you are. You don’t need to remember to take your camera with you because it is always with you. When you find inspiration, you can take a photo. Great photos can happen with a cellphone. You can master cellphone photography.

Bright Light

Most photography tips tell you to get the lighting right. Bright light can make your photo look washed out. You can still get good photos at noon. I got this green leaf when walking at lunch. In this case, the shade of the building helped to minimize bright light of the sun.

Green Leaf with Stripes

Color Variations

The shade of a tree helped to create the variations in color for this metal grate. When the sun breaks through the leaves in the tree, it creates a bright pattern of its own on the grate. You can also see the effect of our weather on metal.

Grate in Waukesha

Texture

This tree has bark that grows in an interesting pattern. Unlike the other trees in the park, this tree’s bark grows in thin strips and seems to separate. Even though the picture was taken at noon, the shade of the tree helps to minimize the sun’s glare and show the unique pattern of the bark.

Bark

Any photo that you take with your cell phone can be a potential background pattern for a web project or shared on the web for others to enjoy. As cellphones become handy replacements for camera, more people can publish their photos on flickr and other photo sharing sites. If you want to do more, you can look for contests or exhibits that focus on cellphone photography.

5 Development Tips for You

Computer CodingAs a developer, I look for tips that can help with problem-solving to picking a language for my next project. Here are 5 development tips to help you be a better developer:

  1. The “Just look at it” hack to problem solving When you have difficult problems, sometime you want to just sleep on it. Dave Lee suggests that you “Just look at it”. Don’t try to solve it. Stare at it for a while and see what ideas you come up with. He lists the steps that you can use to try this type of problem-solving.
  2. Productive Procrastination When you just can’t focus and need a break, you can either force yourself to finish a demanding task or take a break. Productive Procrastination shows you how to switch to less demanding tasks like checking out what people are saying about your company on Twitter or reading a blog related to your industry.
  3. 10 things web developers must know to become truly amazing To be a great developer, you need to know more than code. Here’s Dan Frost’s list of things you need to know.
  4. How to pick the right programming language A programming language is like a tool. Not every tool is suited to complete the project or problem that you want to solve. Mashable lists which languages are better suited to a particular industry.
  5. Don’t be afraid of imperfection Perfection can be stifling. It can cause you to procrastinate or never complete a project. When you create an app, users don’t care if the code is perfect. They just want it to work. Amber shares why you shouldn’t be afraid of weird looking code in your next project.

Creating a web button using vintage design

For Burlington Footwear’s website, the client wanted an old-fashioned or vintage look. I applied this design style to a button that opens the shoe club page. Vintage Design uses dark or muted colors, descriptive or cursive fonts, textures and graphics specific to your selected time period. BFW Shoe Club

To create this look, I made the following choices:

  1. I created a background with a vintage paper look. It combines the colors yellow and green to make it look aged. Then, I added a paper texture to complete the look. I used this Fireworks tutorial to create a vintage (old) paper look.
  2. Vintage Design uses descriptive or cursive fonts. Burlington Footwear already uses a script or cursive font in its header. For consistency, I chose to reuse the font.
  3. Burlington Footwear’s website uses red and green. I choose a dark green and red because Vintage Design uses dark, muted colors. These darker colors were applied to the font and outline of the button.
  4. Vintage Design also includes using images specific to a selected time. I used the old-fashioned shoe from the logo. Since the shoe image is specific to an older time, it made sense to add it to the button. I just blended it into the background and repeated the shoe for balance.

By combining these elements together, they help to achieve the vintage look that the client was looking for.

4 jQuery techniques to add to your toolbox

Computer CodingNeed to add a lightbox, slideshow, Google Maps or Twitter to your website? Use the following 4 jQuery techniques to add these features to your next web project.

  • Simple and Quick Lightbox with CSS and jQuery A super simple lightbox feature that is easy and quick to add to your website.
  • jQuery and Google Maps This tutorial walks you through adding and modifying Google Maps with jQuery to your website.
  • SlideShow with jQuery Slideshows let you display a series of images without using Flash. This tutorial helps you to add a simple slideshow to your site.
  • jQuery and a Responsive Footer How to combine responsive design with jQuery. This tutorial shows how to create a responsive footer and use jQuery to add additional functionality to your footer.

Milwaukee WordCamp 2012

On June 2nd and 3rd, the first Milwaukee WordCamp 2012 was held at Bucketworks.org, a co-working space, located in downtown Milwaukee. Milwaukee WordCamp offered two different tracks: User and Developer. As a developer, I focused on the developer sessions. My favorite sessions were WordPress Plugins, How to Contribute to Open Source and How Not to Design like a Developer.
WordCamp Milwaukee 2012
Each presentation had something new to learn about WordPress and development.

  • Writing Your First Plug-In: Brad Parbs demonstrated how easy it is to create your first plug-in. He showed us that you can create your first one in five minutes.
  • WordPress Development Practices: Dan Pastori explained how to write a plug-in, plug-in best practices and how to test them. He even suggested having your mom test your plug-in. If she can’t figure out how to use it, then no one can.
  • Contribute to Open Source: Joel Clermont explained that open source communities needs your help to keep making it better. You can contribute to open source for “selfish reasons”: make your life easier, gain valuable experience and further your career. You can get involved in WordPress by writing documentation, fixing bugs or even testing.
  • How to Not Design Like A Developer: Tracy Apps spoke on how to design attractive looking sites. She emphasized the use of Contrast, Color, Balance and Alignment. The purpose of design is about problem-solving not just making things look pretty.

If you missed a presentation, WordCamp Milwaukee has published the presentation slides.

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