Scott Boms

Our December 2007 Back Catalogue

Looking Back at 2007

Although I’ve not really done a lot of “looking back” over the last couple of years, 2007 has been notable enough that it seems foolish not to turn the mirror around to see how I got where I am now.

While 2007 has generally been a good year, it’s also been one of the toughest I can remember. The specifics of this will be explained in due time but not necessarily here and now.

Looking back, I can see how the previous few years led me here and how I’ve learned and used many valuable lessons that continue to drive me forward both in my work, at home, and in the rest of my personal life. I can see where I made mistakes or the wrong choices too. Now, currently about three weeks into my month-long sabbatical, I’m starting to revisit those lessons - take stock of what’s working, what’s not, and getting things in order to start 2008 off on the right foot.

So what happened in 2007?

Around the World

While my travel exploits don’t compare to [certain][dkr] [others][haney], and although it’s still tough to be away from my family, I definitely did more travelling than I think I ever have before in a single year.

A few of the places I visited in 2007:

  • Austin, Texas (3 times)
  • London, England
  • Chicago, Illinois
  • Portland, Oregon
  • Reston, Virginia

As much as I might not enjoy living out of a suitcase, I got to put faces to names and feel like I made some great new friends, many of whom I expect to see again in January at WDN08 or in March for SXSWi and hopefully later in the year as well. I’ve also got a handful of new people who I’m looking forward to meeting in person in 2008. Social networking sites like Facebook, Virb, and Twitter are one thing, but cannot complete with actually connecting face to face with people.

Unfortunately I’ve not done the same kind of networking in the local Toronto web and technology communities; something which is high on my list of things to remedy in 2008. I’ve already got a good start and have a few opportunities already lined up to help move this along.

Business is Good

This year was one of growth and change for Wishingline. As a business entity, the company changed from a sole proprietorship to a full-fledged corporation with all the extra paperwork, meeting minutes and common shares that involves.

The employee roster also grew (officially) to two with the addition of Shawn Frair, who came on board at the beginning of December to take over the books, because, frankly, I’m not an accountant. Emily did a great job in helping get me through until now, but we’re both relieved to have this in Shawn’s hands now.

Aside from being a great friend, music lover, occasional blogger, and expert balloon animal maker, Shawn is filling an important need and taking charge of a core piece of the business that I really shouldn’t be too actively involved in. It’s a great relief to have the books in such capable hands, especially since it frees me to focus on both the creative and technical sides of the business along with simply growing the company.

Bringing one new person into the mix also meant that I started to put more serious thought into growth - beefing up the client roster, adding new talent, and moving the office. Although running the office out of the house has never been an issue with clients, it feels like the right time to start the search for proper office space especially if I plan on increasing the number of people actually doing the work beyond myself.

In the short term, the office has been reconfigured to add a second desk in preparation for adding employee number three. So, yes, that means officially I’m in hiring mode. This is the first of several self-induced kicks in the pants. More on this soon.

In terms of actual work - this year was a doozy. A couple of weeks ago, prior to starting my sabbatical I took a look back and assembled a near complete list of projects from the last year. It was so long that I nearly fell out of my seat. I had no idea how much I really accomplished; and as much as it kind of frightened me, it was also impressive.

Although my focus has been primarily web projects, I’ve had opportunities to work on print projects, ads, identity design and just about everything in between. Unfortunately, due to being so busy with client work meant that a few more personal projects fell by the wayside and got little, if any attention. Again, something that will be remedied in 2008 based on the planning I’ve been doing during my time off.

Musical Side Projects

In my musical world, 2007 also brought some changes. The Darns unfortunately disolved, but not without a new group rising out of the ashes. We moved out of our permanent rehearsal room in the west-end of the city and still haven’t bothered to come up with a name, but we’ve made great progress in writing new songs and are starting to put together a plan to do some recording in early 2008 with the possibility for an EP release. Might need to get that name thing worked out before that though…

At Home

The biggest adjustment in 2007 continued to be adapting to having a new baby in the house. Thankfully Gillian couldn’t be a better baby. She sleeps well, eats well and is incredibly good natured virtually all the time. We really couldn’t ask for more.

It’s been so much fun to watch her grow (she turned one in October), babble, crawl, laugh, splash around in the tub, chase the cats - it reminds me that even if I have a lousy day at the office, there’ll always be a smiling face waiting at the end of the day. To top her first year off right, we’re really looking forward to Gillian’s debut modelling appearance in the February 2008 issue of Style at Home magazine (page 24 I’m told).

Aside from all the changes revolving around Gillian, this year brought an opportunity to finally come to terms with many other life changes such as moving (twice), two summers of major home renovations and the psychological changes involved with going from being an employee to the boss. It was a nice break this summer not to have to also play the role of construction site foreman at the same time as attempting to work through it.

On Deck for 08

I’ve got what I think are notable goals and changes lined up for 2008 and we’ll see how I end up doing by the end of the year but I’m optimistic that the time off I’ve given myself has allowed me the chance to slow down, reflect and really think about the last year and what I want and need to accomplish in 2008. I think it’s only by looking back at our successes, and perhaps more importantly, our mistakes, that we truly learn.

So, cheers to 2007 and hello 2008.

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Sending everyone good cheer and best wishes over the holidays.

Rails and Lighttpd Icons for Leopard

Way back in February 2006 I put together a pair of Mac folder icons for Rails developers consisting of one to use for Rails projects and another for the Lighttpd server folder. Due to the recent release of Leopard which completely changed the standard folder design used throughout the system (for better or worse depending on your point of view on the obvious accessibility problems this introduced), I’ve revised the icons so they’ll blend in more naturally with their new surroundings.

Ruby on Rails and Lighttpd folder icons for Leopard preview
512px size Ruby and Rails and Lighttpd folder icons for Leopard

The new icon set includes the whole range of sizes from 16px all the way up to the giant 512px icon size. As is the case with any downloads I make available here, please do not redistribute the icons or attempt to pass them off as your own.

Download the icons (1.3 MB Zip)

iPhone Wallpapers (Set 1)

As an early Christmas present to whomever would like them, I’m offering up a set of free (as in beer) wallpaper photos produced specifically for the iPhone. These are taken from some of my favourite photos from my Flickr photostream over the last few years.

I’m calling this “Set 1” assuming that I’ll eventually do more.

Wishingline iPhone desktop wallpapers
A preview of a first set of iPhone lock screen wallpaper images

My only request is that they are not re-distributed (please link back to this entry instead) and any contained/embedded attributions remain intact.

Download the iPhone Wallpapers — Set 1 (544KB Zip File)

Hidden Screen Sharing Features

Leopard, despite having 300 new features being promoted has still managed to tuck away a few more interesting and useful tricks which are now slowly being uncovered. A couple such useful features revolve around what might be one of my favourite new features - screen sharing.

Basically Apple included a full VNC client right into the core of Leopard; something previously only available either via third-party apps or Apple’s own Remote Desktop. If you haven’t tried it, find a friend running Leopard, connect via iChat and share your screen or connect to theirs. Cool, no?

Screen Sharing toolbar in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Screen Sharing toolbar in Mac OS X 10.5

But there are a few more hidden features tucked away in the System/Library/CoreServices folder on your drive. The first is a browser view to see any active systems via Bonjour. You can access this by running a simple defaults command in the Terminal and then opening the Screen Sharing application which you can find in that CoreServices folder.


defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing ShowBonjourBrowser_Debug 1

The browser may be a bit buggy which would explain why it’s disabled by default, but it’s handy nonetheless. On top of this, you can also access a number of other useful features via the toolbar in the screen sharing app window which bring it a few steps closer to Remote Desktop such as Full-screen mode, Control the other screen, Share Control of the other screen, Capture (take a screenshot), Curtain and adjust Quality. Adding these is simply a matter of editing the application plist file which you can find in your Preferences folder.

Open the com.apple.ScreenSharing.plist file using the Property List editor (installed with the Xcode developer tools included with Leopard) and expand the list items to show the following.


Root
  NSToolbar Configuration ControlToolbar
    TB Item Identifiers

Next, add the followin: FullScreen, Capture, Curtain, Quality, Control, and Share, each with a String class.

Screen Sharing property list file contents
Hidden preferences in the Screen Sharing property list file

Once you’re done, save and start up a new screen sharing session to enjoy the even more useful VNC service built into Leopard.

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Enjoying the first day of my winter sabbatical from the biz

A Clean Sweep

For quite some time I’ve wanted to do something with the notebook since it’s felt like I’ve been seriously neglecting it. For one reason or another that isn’t far from the truth. I haven’t been posting much throughout the last year for various reasons and much of the content was quickly becoming outdated and irrelevant, even to me. So it was time for a clean sweep and a fresh start.

I had a few goals in mind before I started to do anything though.

  1. Get rid of most (or all) of the cruft. This quickly became about focusing more on the actual content than all the other stuff like what I’m listening to, the links feed, etc. The Flickr photos stayed because I think it’s the only way my family knows how to find them ;-) Hi mom! I have to credit Garrett Dimon for being the inspiration for de-cluttering.
  2. Upgrade the notebook to run Movable Type 4.
  3. Finally, finally, finally do away with the popup window comment crap which was a throwback to Movable Type 2.x which was what powered things back when I first started blogging.
  4. Start to get back to my typographic roots which had fallen by the wayside. This manifested itself in sticking to a suitable vertical rhythm for the content and having a bit more fun using type within the entries. The perhaps slightly unusual entry titles being one such example. I also looked at specifying some of those lovely new Office for Windows/Vista fonts throughout as the primary font-family selections but unfortunately discovered that the sans-serif fonts have a really small x-height in comparison to some of the more traditional choices (Lucida Grande, Verdana, etc). But if you do happen to have those fonts installed, you should at least see Constantia being used for the entry titles. This is definitely something I’ll be tinkering more with in the future.
  5. Integrate more Microformats. The notebook is built around hCard, rel-tag and hAtom to name a few.
  6. Be unobtrusive. Aside from a couple bits of Javascript coming from Movable Type itself, any Javascript code used throughout is completely unobtrusive and should degrade properly if Javascript is turned off. For example, turn off JS and click on the “Elsewhere” link in the left sidebar.
  7. Do not break existing feed subscriptions but also reduce the number of feeds being produced. This means being more opinionated and picking one. RSS won in case you were wondering.
  8. Allow room to do things with the notebook “just because”. A perfect example of this might be using the new Script.aculo.us Sound method to add a click sound to the “Elsewhere” overlay window. Totally unnecessary, but was fun to do as an experiment.
  9. Somehow integrate Twitter into the entries. I was able to do this by hacking one of the Twitter plugins for Movable Type so that it would do what I wanted instead of the default behaviour. The plugin which I renamed TwitterSync will now create a new entry with the tweet content but also update my status on Twitter with that same content. I haven’t decided entirely what I’ll use this for yet, but I’m sure that will get sorted out shortly.

I was definitely not shooting for a revolutionary take on weblog design by any stretch with the layout itself. Instead, I wanted simplicity in keeping with my overall dump the cruft and try to focus on the content plan. In some respects, this design is intended as a placeholder for a larger update that’ll be coming for the wishingline.com site sometime in 2008. Nearly three years on the same design is more than long enough.

One thing I know for sure about the notebook redesign - permalinks to entries from the old site are busted and will probably remain so. I just can’t be bothered to write all those htaccess rules right now and hopefully the improved, clean urls will be enough of any apology for breaking them.

If you happen to be exploring and find something that doesn’t work or seems buggy, please leave a note in the comments or contact me directly so I can look into it. Unless something creeped in at the last minute, everything should be hunky dory in Safari, Firefox and IE 6 and 7.

The Tips of my Ears

The idea of mixed tapes seem to be all the rage again among a number of my interweb friends, so in the spirit of the season and because I remember how much fun I used to have making them years ago, I’m tossing my hat into the mix tape ring too.

The Tips of My Ears cover artwork
The Tips of My Ears mix tape cover artwork

Although this one doesn’t really have an obvious theme throughout aside from being songs and artists that I enjoy, I do have a second one lined up (if there’s sufficient interest) which does have a stronger musical thread throughout. But enough yammering… here’s what’s on the (virtual) tape.

Download ‘The Tips of my Ears’ (61MB/m4a bookmarked format)

  1. You Remind me of Home - Ben Gibbard. A simple, catchy acoustic tune from a split album he did with Andrew Kenny of the American Analog Set. I love the guitar lick throughout the last bit of the song.
  2. Please Read the Letter - Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. A track from the unexpected and surprisingly well matched duo. One of my favourite albums from this past year.
  3. Virtute the cat Explains her Departure - The Weakerthans. Quite possibly the best and most poetic Canadian band to come out of Winnipeg. This song is both funny and yet incredibly sad. To fully appreciate it you also need to hear “Plea from a cat name Virtute” from their previous album called “Reconstruction Site”.
  4. Midnight Coward - Stars. Gotta make sure Montreal is representing! One of my fave tracks from their latest and possibly best album.
  5. White Lightning - Danny Michel. Probably not known outside of Canada, but Danny’s a phenomenal songwriter, inventive guitar player and captivating to watch perform. And he did an entire album of David Bowie covers which is really cool.
  6. Debaser - Rogue Wave. Go indie rock! This is a great take on one of the more well known Pixies tracks and has a great groove and really cool drum parts and multiple harmonies happening throughout.
  7. Rise Up - Glen Phillips. Performed live with his Mutual Admiration Society partners otherwise known as Nickel Creek. You likely know Glen not from his great solo work, but from his past work as the lead singer in Toad the Wet Sprocket.
  8. Johnny Rouke - Elliott Brood. Yet another Canuck export. Guitarist Casey used to work with a few friends of mine and even helped out as guitar tech at a few [Darns][thedarns] shows. A great live act if you ever get a chance to see them. It’s not often you see a drummer who uses an old suitcase for a bass drum.
  9. Second Chance - Liam Finn. Son of Neil (of Crowded House). He looks and sounds remarkably like his father and clearly has many of the same songwriting sensibilities so he’ll definitely be someone to watch over the next few years.
  10. Drunk Teenagers - Joel Plaskett. Ok, one more Canadian. This song has rawk written all over it.
  11. Shadow Falls - Hello, Blue Roses. Otherwise known as a Dan Bejar (he, of Destroyer and The New Pornographers) collaboration, but something a little different. Based on this, I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of the album when it’s released.
  12. The Thief - Jeremy Larson. I don’t really know anything about this guy other than I came across this track ages ago and really loved the production.
  13. If I Live or If I Die - Cuff The Duke. I don’t really know where these guys would fall categorically (maybe a little country, some rock, a bit bluesy), but it doesn’t matter because they’re just plain good. Great counterpoint melodies happening in this particular track.

Oh, and I even included some artwork to go along with it. Nothing fancy, but better than nothing!

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…And this thing is officially live and (I think) fully functional…

Sabbatical

2007, now coming to a close has been a really good year. It’s also been a tough one on a number of levels and the culmination of many changes that have slowly been creeping up and wearing me down. The European vacation Emily, Gillian and I took back in September was a good start at getting away, taking care of myself, ignoring the business for a brief period and simply regaining the sense of being grounded, despite it since proving not to have been enough.

So, because I need to, and because I can, I’m taking a brief sabbatical through the remainder of December to the second week of January 2008. This means the office is closed. I will not be doing anything resembling client work, probably not answering e-mails (not promptly at least) and instead just doing whatever tickles my fancy at that particular moment.

Thanks to friends, family, clients for your support. Happy holidays to all of you and see you in ‘08!

Conference Fever… Catch It!

Though nearly two months from kickoff, 2008 conference fever is already ramping up with two big ones currently marked on the calendar, tickets purchased and hotels arranged with more surely to be added as the year goes on.

First, one of too few relevant and topical Canadian-based web/design-related conferences — Web Directions North. Unfortunately due to other commitments I missed the inaugural event last year, but after speaking with both Derek Featherstone and Dave Shea during SXSW, which only shortly followed WDN, I realized I couldn’t afford to miss it a second time.

Web Directions North

Given the great lineup of speakers, can you afford to miss it? I’m excited — new faces, old friends, and no dobut spectacularly organized! Plus I haven’t been to Vancouver in over 10 years which is a treat in itself.

SXSW Interactive

And then there’s old reliable — South By Southwest down in lovely Austin, Texas. Last year, oddly my first year attending, was a blast and I’m looking forward to catching up with friends, hopefully generally more interesting talks and panels than last year and just an all-around good time. I’ll be at the Hampton and staying a couple extra days at the end of the Interactive portion of the conference to visit with clients and hopefully putter around Austin a bit with anyone staying for the week of music mayhem that starts when Interactive ends.

Hope to see you there at one or both conferences. Do say “hello” — I promise I don’t bite.

Markdown Comment Formatting for MT4

In starting (somewhat) fresh with this new version of the notebook, one critical thing on the list of must do items was to finally do away with the old popup window style comments. These were a throwback and perhaps unfortunate decision made when this site was first built on Movable Type 2.x and I chose to use monthly archives as the primary archive type instead of individual entries. Hindsight is 20/20 I’ve heard…

Upgrading to Movable Type 4 and cleaning out the attic presented an opportunity to rectify this problem. The primary archive type used throughout, now individual entries, allows inline commenting without requiring popup windows. Changing the commenting behaviour provided a second opportunity — to allow the use of John Gruber’s Markdown syntax instead of vanilla HTML in the comments, something I’ve wanted to do for some time now.

Essentially this means dropping in plain old links in the comments will be converted but will definitely receive the rel="nofollow" treatment.

Why Markdown for Comments?

Why Markdown? More importantly, why not Textile?

My reasoning is simple. One — I use it myself. Every post in the notebook has been written using Markdown. Two — it’s easy to learn, use, and has the right amount of syntax flexibility in terms of what I’m willing to allow.

Movable Type 4 blog comment settings
Movable Type 4 blog comment settings

While setting up commenting to allow Markdown formatted comments I discovered a problem: certain parts of Markdown’s formatting syntax were being ignored and converted into plain text. My first thought was that this was a bug in either Markdown or in Movable Type itself, but after a bit of digging using Google and in the documentation for Movable Type itself, I recognized the problem.

Out of the box, Movable Type’s comment feature will only allow certain HTML tags to be included. Anything else will be automatically stripped out — for example: code, blockquote, h4, h5, h6. To change this behaviour, it’s simply a matter of specifying your own subset of HTML elements which will be acceptable in comments and setting the appropriate text filter in the Movable Type blog comment settings. The specific details on how to do this are:

  1. In your blog’s comment settings, choose Markdown for text formatting.
  2. Click the “Allow HTML” checkbox to enable comments to accept plain old vanilla HTML.
  3. Under the “Limit HTML Tags” options, use your own settings to specify the tags you want to allow in comments.
  4. Uncheck the “Allow HTML” checkbox one you are finished entering tags in step 3. Save your settings and rebuild you entries.

Although I haven’t tested this, I suspect the same procedure will also work if you choose to use Textile formatting for comments.

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