Author Archives: Kai

The Design of Everyday Things – Donald A. Norman [Book review]

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This review is long overdue. I read the book a while ago and gave it some time to let the information sink in – and it was a lot of information.

It seemed like an odd choice for me to read because I am not a designer. I am a programmer and I wouldn’t be able to produce something beautiful if my life depended on it. Before reading this book, thats what I thought design is all about, beauty. Now I know that there are more aspects to design and the book also helped me to think more abstractly and (try to) derive interaction patterns from hardware devices and translate them to well designed user interfaces.

If you are interested in design – be it industrial, software or any other kind of design – you probably already read it. If not, you should probably read it.

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UIButtons with pseudorealistic perspective

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For a little side-project I wanted buttons to look like they’re being pushed ‘inside’ the interface when active. To match the overall look of the project the first step was to create two embossed images in Photoshop. One with emboss direction ‘up’ and one with emboss direction ‘down’. Then assign these images to the relevant control states of the button. Simple enough – and already looking the way I want it to. (Hover over the image to see what I mean.)

Embossed Button Continue reading →

The WINGStand

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A while age I saw a ridiculously cool project on Kickstarter (the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects) but totally forgot about it until recently. Yesterday it was delivered – the WINGStand. It’s basically a docking-station for you iPad so you can type effortlessly on your Apple Wireless Keyboard.

It consists of just two plastic elements which slide onto the Keyboard. On top of those two elements you can rest your iPad or iPhone and type away. Their website advertises that it also fits with the Samsung GalaxyTab, Blackberry Playbook, HP Touchpad, Acer Iconia, HTC Flyer and Droids. But honestly… who cares?.

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Downloading whole websites

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Ever needed to download an entire website for offline viewing? I didn’t really need to download it for myself. A client needed an offline version of his website. wget to the rescue, I thought!

Showstopper

wget is not included on OS X… bummer! You can, however, install it from source (or from Mac Ports). Just download the newest package from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wget/ (at the time of writing this post wget-1.13.tar.gz). Continue reading →

Mega Man X for iOS

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A week ago I learned that there is a Mega Man X port for iOS and being a Mega Man veteran it was simply a must-buy. Another reason was that I have recently watched @Egorator’s excellent “Sequelitis – Mega Man Classic vs. Mega Man X“. You should definitely watch it! It’s really good. In that video he explains why Mega Man X is a prime example for good game design. Another perfect excuse for me to spend a few bucks.

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Welcome to 2012

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Happy new year everyone – Let’s make 2012 the best year of our lives! I will try to outline how I will try to accomplish that goal (at least for myself).

New Year’s Resolutions

I really dislike New Year’s Resolutions. Let me try to explain… Why would you pin something that is clearly of some importance to you on an arbitrary date such as the beginning of a new year? If it were really important to you… well, then you could have started working on it as soon as you realized its importance. Continue reading →

Better get it right the first time

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I am doing a complete revamp of my second app – SweetTooth – a Match-three game. I know lots of people hate Bejeweled clones but it was fun to develop and a good learning experience. There are even some people who like it!

As I said, this was my second app. In other words, it was my second-worst app. I did not follow the MVC pattern to the letter. In part because I thought I could take shortcuts without any ramifications and in part I guess because I did not understand the concept fully. I did follow it where necessary, but I did stray from the right path more than I should have. I knew that I could have done better, but I was lazy and cocky. I also knew that it could come back to bite me in the ass if I ever had to update it or create another version of it. Continue reading →

Fun with words and Hyphenation

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tl;dr – I wrote a Hyphenation-based word generator.

In contrast to the title of this post, the idea to write it was born while I was not having a lot of fun with words. I am certainly not the most creative person when it comes to words, so I struggled for several days when I had to come up with a name for my business and domain.

Isn’t there an app for that?

It would have been really cool to find a word generator which takes a set of words as input, juggles them around a bit and outputs words or word combinations. I thought to myself: “There must be an app for that!” but after a brief unsuccessful search I gave up and came up with “Vigorous Coding” the old-fashioned way: Pen and Paper (and Sweat).

But the idea for a Hyphenation-based word generator stuck with me for a while so I started to work on a solution.

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Wall and Piece

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After being a Banksy fan for quite some time and recently hanging up a few prints of his on our living-room walls, I just bought the Banksy book “Wall and Piece“. If you don’t know him or his work, just google around a bit or take a look at the images in this post. [I should note that some of his works may disturb or offend you, but if you like (street) art you may come to love his art.]

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JavaScript Brainf*ck Interpreter

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Today I found this nifty little JavaScript Brainf*ck interpreter and started playing with it. That site is actually quite a nice place for anyone interested in JavaScript Tips&Tricks.

Up until now I never really got around to taking a look at Brainf*ck so today was the day to do that. Brainf*ck was invented with the intention to write a really small compiler. I could write some more, but I would just be copying stuff off of Wikipedia, so here is the link to the article: Brainf*ck on Wikipedia :)

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