It fits within Flickr’s 90 second limit!

Dearest Mr. Panic and Mr. MacroMates,

Let me get the formalities out of the way first—I love you both. You bring utility-based love to my computer every day. Even on the weekends, I tinker with your wares. I’m writing this post in your digital orgasm of a program Mr. MacroMates. Ctrl+Shift+W and Command+Enter are as much a part of my consciousness as my first name.

But Mr. Panic, while I dream about being able to converse with you daily, Coda is my Ferrari without wheels, my toast without jam, my web development app without Ctrl+Shift+W. You have so much going for you; you upload my files after every compulsive save, automatically. You organize my mess of websites into a visual metaphor that works impeccably well. You even house all the documentation I could ever need—right in that one gorgeous app. You’re even from my hometown of Portland, Oregon! I live right down the street from you, in fact. And yet, there’s a fundamental flaw that keeps me from purchasing and using Coda. I need Ctrl+Shift+W, Mr Panic. I want to love you, but I need your help.

So this is my open letter to the both of you, my plea that you’ll come to an agreement and make web development on the Mac perfect. Sit down over a cup of coffee, tea, booze, or whatever is necessary, hash out the terms and details for the unison of your apps, and implement—I will love you forever. I mean it guys. Love you forever.

With Warmest Regards and Highest Hopes,
Kyle J. Meyer

This was my first time attending Ignite Portland, the third of which happened last night at the Baghdad Theatre. There were two waves of speakers who each had 5 minutes, 20 slides, and 15 seconds per slide to give a talk on anything they wanted (that was approved beforehand through a selection process). Talks ranged from the history of Cup Noodles, to how to build a nuclear reactor to boil water. The place was packed, the crowd rowdy, and there was free food!

I arrived at 6:15, which was already enough time past 5:30 to be forced into the balcony. Next time, next time…

Nerds watched in unison today at 10 am, pretended to work, took the day off, or kept an auto-refreshing feed of the keynote speech on their second monitor. The keynote lasted over an hour without a single “boom” uttered and without any surprises. The Apple rumor mill has perfected the art of conjecture and piecing together of small leaks and bobbles into product-forecasting science, with the vast majority of details of today’s announcements made known within the last two weeks. For the uneducated, the new iPhone is as follows:

iPhone 3G

• The back casing is now glossy plastic:
  • 8GB model: Available in black
  • 16GB model: Available in black and white
• The prices have dropped severely:
  • 8GB model: $199
  • 16GB model: $299
• 3G (HSPDA) internet is 250% faster
• Now includes A-GPS:
  • The camera app now geotags photos
  • Google Maps utilizes the GPS in addition to Wifi and cellular positioning dynamically.

The only significant, earth-shattering change in the device is the price. The rest of the changes are far more evolutionary than revolutionary, and nothing in that list screams at current iPhone users to upgrade from the first iPhone model, except for perhaps one very non-obvious change: white casing. What the white casing represents is a shift in product aesthetics, in acute differentiation of the product from the first model, of conspicuous consumption. Certainly, when a friend sees me holding up a shiny white device to my face with an apple symbol front-and-center, they’ll know it’s new. This is not necessarily true for the black one. I’m certainly not above the ploy despite being quite aware of the reason behind the white casing; I want a white iPhone for the reasons listed above: because it’s different and because it’s obvious.

There are, of course, other reasons for a white iPhone. The United States and the six other countries that have the first generation iPhones are not the only market anymore. The iPhone 3G is being rolled out to 60 countries this year. Having choice is good. Women, for one, surely would prefer a white phone above a dark, serious, black iPhone.

Despite this, it will be interesting to see how many first generation iPhone users pick up the white one when they upgrade. I’ll be among them.

Found: running a mile-long stretch of beach in Fort Lauderdale

I’d never seen a Bentley before, let alone three in one night. Or, for that matter, the sheer number of Hummers and SUVs in a place famous for their lack of hills. I’ve never been on an extended stay in a place where air conditioning is not a luxury but a life-support system. Another first: mountains of garbage.

Spend a single day in urban south-beach Florida and you’ll see why global warming is a reality. There are vast expanses of pavement moving thousands of Suburbans, V10 Ferraris and Bentleys, an air conditioner in every building, and mountains of trash on the horizon. Coffee shops chill their establishments to near-arctic conditions in order to provide Floridians an excuse for a warm cup of coffee, and tanning salons are abundant despite the punishing sun. Everything tangible is a pinnacle of excess and unnecessary living.

Living in Portland, growing up in the Northwest, and never really getting out much to see the rest of the country, it was shocking to see Florida and what a departure it is. If this is how the majority of the United States lives their lives, it’s no wonder global warming is a reality.

Photo credit: Andrew Ooms

I got bored. Again.

I’ve been experimenting with different styles of type-only layouts for this blog and in my other work for a while now. I finally got fed up with the low signal-to-noise of the previous design (see above), and went back to the basics. This most recent design uses only Helvetica and Palatino, and no images for anything but content.

Our total time was 2 hours, 40 minutes.

This error is largely undocumented and gave me a few good hours of headache trying to debug. I’ve used the Google Maps API plenty in previous projects, but in my latest project, I rewrote all of the basic map loading script and arrived at the page spewing “a has no properties” with every map interaction.

The fix is to call map.setCenter(GLatLng(#,#)) directly after instantiating the GMap2 object. For whatever reason, this fixes all ills, and relieves my headache.

Website design and development is still a mystery to the majority of the internet-using public. Sure, they've meddled with Frontpage or maybe even Dreamweaver; they've made a page about Led Zeppelin in the 90's with “Under Construction” .gifs, and have used some sort of service to bling-out their space; they consider themselves internet power users. Why then, when someone hears I make websites, is the knee–jerk reaction to request services from me for free or for a nominal fee or trade? The only other parallel I can draw is a doctor: people do ask doctors to look at things for them, or ask their advice. That's fine, and in many cases, I'm sure they're glad to help. In many cases, I'm glad to be of assistance with my friends' or family's website needs. At the same time, can I or that doctor really say no? Can we deny a friend's request for help, guidance, or assistance? Not unless you want to seem like a megajerk.

I don't ask you to scratch my back or remodel my house, work on my range-of-motion post-injury, paint me free art for my wall, balance my checkbook, do my taxes, refinance my home, scratch my back, give me a pedicure, teach me to salsa, give me discounts on electronics, give me your couch, be my personal shopper, publish my book, give me your bike, let me sleep with your sister, or teach me calculus. Why should you?

It’s a land fill.