Officially Lucky

This is a collection of patterns which we have found occuring commonly with Django. All of these either make collaboration easier, coding simpler or code more maintainable. None of them are design patterns in the sense of GoF design patterns. We call them design patterns as none other seem closer or more convinient. These are guidelines, which need to be overriden (very commonly, in some cases). Use your judgement when using them. As PEP8 says, “Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”

A really neat technique for providing embedded, video to almost every browser (including MobileSafari) using HTML5 when appropriate. No browser sniffing, no JavaScript required. The only issue I see is that the amount of code to provide all of this is bordering on unwieldy and definitely is ugly. Otherwise, its a brilliant solution to what is quickly becoming a huge headache:

Video for Everybody is very simply a chunk of HTML code that embeds a video into a website using the HTML5 <video> element which offers native playback in Firefox 3.5 and Safari 3 & 4. Native OGG video playback in Firefox 3.5 (you get MPEG4 / H.264 playback in Safari).

No plugins to install. The video is played by the browser itself. It loads quickly and doesn’t threaten to crash your browser. In other browsers that do not support <video>, it falls back to Adobe Flash. You can host locally or embed any Flash file, such as a YouTube video.

Hat tip to John Siracusa for pointing it out to me.

a 13 year old kid uses a 30-year old Walkman for a few days. Out comes some pretty funny stuff ;)

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down ‘rewind’ and releasing it randomly Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.

taylorcarrigan:

Birdfeed has quickly taken the place of all its competitors on the home screen of my iPhone. Birdfeed presents a beautiful, functional representation of Twitter across all aspects of its interface. Where other clients — even the venerable Tweetie — came more quickly to the shelves of the App Store, the time put into polishing Birdfeed really shows.

I would be remiss if I didn’t note that Buzz also—as of the last time I saw him—has an excellent beard!