proteanme

So I spend a big chunk of my day writing code, specifically CSS and XHTML.  And I amuse myself immensely via the power of nomenclature — giving names to ids and classes in my CSS. Such as calling some generic classes for floats “rightwing” and “leftwing” or calling an image container “pictureThis”.  It’s similar to the same fun you can have when you’re naming vars and functions in Javascript or PHP.  What else are you gonna do? You might as well have fun with this shit. PLus you’re mkaing it intuitive at the same time.  Last week I had to wrap a div around a bunch of other divs just to accomplish some superfulous designy element.  I almost called it dumbAssDesignContainer.

Some of the things I really love to use, I love because of what they let me do, like my guitars, my computers, my bike and my chef’s knife. In most instances they are means to and end, an often enjoyable means for sure. And in that vein, when I think of what I do all day, this article really resonated with me: Are we making someone’s job easier? Letting them have more fun? Helping them learn? Helping them keep in touch with friends and family?

Today I was in the middle of a javascript library smackdown, between prototype and scriptaculous (for you non-geeks this means I was between a rock and a hard place), and after only 1 hour and some help from my friend Toby and Google, I implemented a fix. It is so fucking satisfying to figure out out how to fix code bugs.

Another list. This one is aimed at folks building web sites and is comprised of some of my favorite software, services and code, plus some URLs for learning and inspiration.

• Subversion – version tracking software
• del.icio.us – social bookmarking
• Tada Lists – hosted to do lists
• Homesite – code editor
• Firebug – firefox extension (I wish I could build something this insanely useful)
• MeasureIt – firefox extension
• ColorZilla – firefox extension
• PIE’s Clearfix hack
• Carl Camera’s CSS linked photoshuffler
• Eric Meyer’s CSS Reset
• CollyLogic’s solution to dynamically change layout based on window size
• Stylegala
• Most Inspired
• del.icio.us popular links