The trick to good design is to keep chipping away everything that doesn’t resemble. I learned that from a Norwegian sculptor.
All posts by Robert Dall
A designer forgot to tell me she was moving to Germany from Vancouver in early December. We have been working together for a month before noticing a difference.
She mentioned having to go to dinner at 10:30 in the morning. Which gave her location away.
One of our long-standing family traditions from our Scottish side. Is the coal at New Year’s Eve. Commonly known as the First-foot.
In our family home we run outside on to the porch with a bunch of noise makers and the enter the house via the other porch door in the new year.
Over the years we have all done it. One year we made the family dog Toby do it tying the coal to a bag to his collar and the calling him from the other door.
We haven’t done the tradition in years but my nephews were up this year and my youngest nephew Oxford wanted to do it with me.
It was kinda a fun to rekindle an old tradition I haven’t done in over a decade.
Backslash no More
A WordPress aficionado and CBC radio listener Kathryn Presner (aka. zoonini on twitter ) posted a great article on the miss use of Backslash by CBC Radio. Although I doubt they are the only culprit.
Giving the Gift of Kiva
I was introduced to Kiva by Christine Rondeau. She tweeted out a link to Kiva micro loans some years ago and peaked my interest.
Since I visited Colombia some years back and I really like Colombian Coffee I decided to help Elkin a Colombia Coffee.
It was all payed back months before it was due. I was happy to help and went on to re-invest in a phone accessories store and a smaller grocery store.
Other friends Flynn O’Connor and Jeremy Felt got into the game and donated to Ibrahim and his beer and stout business. Two craft beer affectionados helping out another worlds away.
On Mothers Day I though of giving the gift of Kiva but getting my parents involved was a little harder then I originally though.
They are generous people who regularly donate to charities and such. But the concept of micro-finance, crowd funding and field parters was all quite new and they didn’t understand if it was a donation or a loan.
So we put it off for a couple months and while we were out for dinner one night I explain what micro finance was and how this was empowering people who couldn’t even the smallest of loans for there business. How they weren’t taking on the entire loan but a portion and how they were payed back and then they could loan it out again.
Lastly I tried to explain field partners to them. This was actually quite difficult because my folks though we were actually donating to Kiva.
They were still somewhat unclear how the whole processed worked mainly the loan part and they repayment terms… But one thing my stubborn mother taught me well was be determined and don’t give up… Well I didn’t…
On Christmas Eve of 2013 I saw my dad on a charity website asking him to donate. I asked why he didn’t try a kiva loan.
We sat down and I showed him my profile and then I showed him how you could pick someone, anyone. He suggested we find someone in the Philippines. We decided on Antonieta and her little store.
My father also made a second loan to Victor a chicken farmer from Peru.
I was so happy that they finally understood the process and decided to give it a try.
My mother who was the most skeptical of the enter process said.
“I wish them the best of luck in there business venture, but if we don’t get the money back will consider it a donation” I was glad to see such a turn around from her as well.
I also decided to give my brothers wife Michelle a Kiva Gift Card and she though it that was one of the most thoughtful gifts and can’t wait to pick who she can help out.
Post Script: I have asked Kiva about the interest rate that there field parents apply to the loans as I hear they can be quite high. Will keep you posted on my correspondence.
Andy Clark shoots The Patricia Theatre
Photographer friend Andy Clark of Reuters News Pictures visited the Patricia Theatre after I told him about my recent visit and he shot this amazing photo story.
He also wrote about his time in Powell River on the Reuters Photographers Blog.
Truly amazing what happens when you scratch the surface and look at the history of a community. I was just happy to help get this little gem of a theatre some much deserved recognition and hope it has many more years of opening nights and afternoon matinees.
Cheers Andy!
After having a late lunch I was happily surprised to see R2D2 mentioned on WP Tavern.
I was pretty excited to get a mention but really R2D2 is nothing without the work of Joen Asmussen, Lance Willett and Konstantin Obenland work on Twenty Thirteen.
It’s not all about the commit
You can learn so much just by trying to submit a patch. It’s is nice to get the commit but it isn’t a requirement to learn something about the issue.
The back story
You can’t put rgba inside of a placeholder property, for example:
::-webkit-input-placeholder {
color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.30);
}
but you can do this:
::-webkit-input-placeholder {
color:#e8e8e8;
}
Also Takashi Irie (author of Twenty Fourteen) after some research found out that Firefox 19 lowers the opacity of the placeholder to 0.54 by default. To get the correct color you need to reset it.
So to properly use the color and the opacity you want you would have to do this:
::-webkit-input-placeholder {
color:#e8e8e8;
opacity: 1;
}
What I though would be an easy open source hat trick.
- Trac Ticket
- Patch Submission
- Core Contribution
Turned into a learning something new and you know it’s not all about the commit…
Final Approach
Andrew Nacin sent out a tweet today about how he never getting tired of the approach into Washington DC. The statement is so true… It’s a beautiful city. I hope to visit it one day.
I accidentally and for the first time in years missed the bus to the ferry for a meetup in Vancouver and luckily enough Harbour Air had a seat empty to Vancouver.
It was a beautiful flight and it gave me a chance to think about the view coming into Vancouver via float plane and I never get tired of it, the view never gets old. So on this day of Remembrance I think about a lot how lucky to live in such an awesome area of the world we live in.
WordPress 3.7 is out. Matt named this release “Basie” After Count Basie. On the WordPress IRC dev channel I said:
3.7 also known as “The Count”
So go ahead and read up on WordPress 3.7 and all of it’s awesomeness…