Nevertheless, just the other day I found my problem with Regular Expressions. My process is wrong. Similar to eating vegetables, I try and skip the chewing, and simply eat them whole. With vegetables, this is a little bit easier. But with regular expressions, it prolongs the pain. Let’s take for example some of my most favorite foods I enjoy like dessert wine, and Filet Mignon. Each having tastes to savor and slowly enjoy, putting a cheery happy smile on my face. Talk to anyone who is good at regular expressions, and you’ll notice they often enjoy them just a little more than your average person.

Carefully note the differences between enjoying your food slowly versus trying to swallow it whole. The same goes for regular expressions. Cut them up into pieces, and take small bites. Match smaller portions, the rest isn’t going to leave your plate any time soon.

Why do I say all this?

I mean, aren’t all Google employees required to how to crack a CIA database? Kidding aside, even to this day I have continued to avoid using regular expressions when I know how useful they could be. So therefore I am now saying all this today to announce my early 2009 programmers resolution to eat more regular expressions. Upon this declaration I will be reading the highly recommended Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey Friedl.

Also, where have I been?

Good question. I’ve been working on Gmail since last February building high fidelity prototypes to test new ideas. I’ve also been taking several photos and getting much heavier into photography than ever before. There is still rarely a day that goes by where my camera isn’t by my side. Feel free to have a gander at my featured photos. Other than that, Happy Upcoming Turkey Day. Cheers!

JS native querySelector

var $$ = function(q, b) {
  if (b) {
    return document.querySelector(q);
  } else {
    return document.querySelectorAll(q);
  }
};

This allows you to pass in a second optional boolean parameter that denotes the function to only return the first matched result as a single node. Otherwise a standard nodeList is returned. Nevertheless a problem still remains is that you still get returned something that is “array-like” but not a real array. So we’re still stuck with classic array conversion hacks:

Converting to an array

[].slice.call($$('ul > li:not(".selected"):hover'), 0).forEach(function(el) {
  el.style.color = 'red';
});

Border images

Border images can be fun if you need them. Although, the rounded corner craze seems to be dying down a bit. This would have been useful five years ago.

A better URL bar

Yes! A better, smarter URL bar, that enables you to make it behave like the old one. Check out these preferences in about:config.

Notice how you can finally turn off title matching (albeit others think this is cool to leave it as the default setting).

Tabs!?!

I’m not sure whether tabs got better, or worse. First of all the introduced a tab switching overlay pane that behaves similar to app switching in OS’s. Now when you hit ctrl + tab you get this overlay. I personally find it annoying when just trying to switch tabs… others… might like it. The only problem is, it breaks the tab switching model. ctrl + tab moves right; ctrl + shft + tab moves left. NOT SO in this case. Now when you move one over with ctrl + tab, then hit it again, it takes you back to the last one you were on rather than continuing to move to the right. (I took a small screencast to illustrate what I’m saying) This is bad. But, whatever. As long as there is a way to eventually turn this off.

And of course, Better support for “Web Standards”

I’m not really sure what this means. I didn’t scour the release notes to see if this meant anything actually useful. Since they rewrote a large core of their layout engine, they are going through regressions, so this could just mean they fixed things that were already working, but broke with the latest public release of Firefox 3.

Overall

Things are looking good and I’m glad Mozilla has overcame leaps and bounds throughout the years from a once dominated by IE6 world. My current site statistics show Firefox at 63% over a 28% IE. Indeed, times are good.

The problem is simple

First, you have an array. It looks like this:

The array

var arr = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'c', 'd','e', 'e',
'e', 'e', 'e', 'f', 'e', 'f', 'e',
'f', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'f', 'f', 'f'];

Be sure to use the array above in your example. You can iterate through an array easily with a batch function like forEach.

using forEach

arr.forEach(funciton(item, index, ar) {
  // do stuff here
});

In the end, we’d like to have an output that looks like the following:

The final output

a b c c d e e <span>e e e</span> f e f e f a a <span>a</span> f f <span>f</span>

You can use basic string concatenation while looping through the items to build your final output. Be sure to test and compare your output results with the actual results. And last but not least, the rule.

So the rule is this

In English: Group together all duplicate items that occur anytime beyond twice by wrapping them with a tag, naturally “bookending” them.
Simple, right? No, really. Tease your brain for a few minutes, you can fix that bug after lunch.

Needless to say

I’ve caved in on trying to maintain this website and using Social Web Services to keep my 7,000+ subscribers seems like a good idea.

On another note

Google has been keeping me busy these last few months on Gmail where we’ve been diving into some exciting stuff. I recently moved to San Francisco so I now have ample time to add content to my Reader stream while shuttling to work in Mountain View. Wifi on a bus is super rad! And on that note, my stop is coming up which concludes this post. Cheers

Scoping anonymous funcitons

var o = 'hello world';

(function() {
  alert(this);
}).call(o);

It seems ridiculous (in a good way), but it works!

So what’s this mean?

It’s actually a big deal. Think about how many times you’ve lost your desired scope due to being inside the scope of another function. Confused? How many times have you done the following:

Pitfalls anonymous functions

// timeout functions
function Constructor() {
  this.foo = 'bar';
  var that = this;
  this.timerId = window.setTimeout(function() {
    alert(that.foo);
  }, 10000);
}

// local functions
Constructor.prototype.getFoo = function() {
  var that = this;
  var getInternalFoo = function() {
    return DED.isString(that.foo) ? that.foo : 'new foo';
  }();
};

Ok, still not a huge deal, but we can clean up the code a bit, and I would sway from using this on non-anonymous functions where scope should be explicitly defined by the author. Here’s how we can rewrite the code above without using the silly old this = that convention.

Rewritten with proper scope

// local functions
Constructor.prototype.getFoo = function() {
  var getInternalFoo = function() {
    return (DED.isString(this.foo) ? this.foo : 'new foo';
  }.call(this);
};

Ok, what about function callbacks that need scope inducing

(Hehe. Scope inducing, that sounds funny… (anyway)) As you noticed above in the first example with the setTimeout, the first argument takes in a function callback which is different than simply immediately invoking a function. Funny enough, the work around for this is to…. (yeah you guessed it), add another closure! Note the two following snippets of code. The first immediately executes and alerts “hello world”, the second waits for five seconds, and does likewise:

Scoping it up

var o = 'hello world';

// first snippet
(function() {
  alert(this);
}).call(o);

// second snippet
window.setTimeout(function() {
  (function() {
    alert(this);
  }).call(o);
}, 5000);

Pretty fun, huh? Yeah, I thought so too. Cheers.

Fixing it

Actually, there is no real fix (unless Apple builds it into the OS), but I’ve come up with a hack (work around) for my browser. First thing to do is to create a text file and call it “maximize.html” (you can call it what ever you want, it’s only temporary). Then populate it with the following contents.

Maximize code

<html>
  <head>
    <title>maximize</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <a href="javascript:moveTo(0,0);resizeTo(3000,3000);">
      Maximize
    </a>
  </body>
</html>

It should look like this:

Next you want to open up this page in Firefox:

You should see a simple page with a link. What you want to do now is bookmark it. You can do this by control + clicking the link to bring up your context menu. Then choose “Bookmark This Link…”

Add a keyword shortcut

Obviously, this has been discussed before. If you’re using Firefox, you can add a keyword shortcut to make it even easier to use this functionality. Since afterall, this is usually the kind of setting you just want to trigger on the fly without having to use your mouse. To do this, simply track down your bookmark, load up the context menu by control + clicking the bookmark, then choose “Properties”

Then type in a short letter into the keyword input box… like “m” (the actual keyword is up to you).

That’s it

Try it out. It’s not optimal, but it does what I need when browsing the web in full maximum real estate.

As a reminder, CSS Naked Day is a world-wide event that lasts for one international day (48 hours) where webmasters around the globe strip CSS from their websites to promote Web Standards with layered semantic markup, and a clear separation between content, and presentation to enhance accessbility.

Cheers!

Hair

My hair appears to have reached a max-length. It’s grown longer than I’ve ever really had it. But now in the shower I’m starting to notice that hairs from my head seem to be clogging up the drain. I have a feeling I’m going to be losing my hair quicker than I think.

Driving

I can’t stand slow drivers. I understand folks driving moving vans or big rigs or it’s somehow obvious that you’ve got a motor problem where I can see smoke coming out of our hood. But besides those people, everyone should be driving fast. The speed limit should really be 85 MPH on all highways that are currently 65 MPH. And what’s with three lane roads that have 35 MPH speed limits. Have you ever driven that slow? Really, try it. It’s hard.

Canadian Beer

In all honesty, wasn’t as great as I thought it was going to be. After trying a dozen Hefeweizen beers in Vancouver, my conclusion is that America still makes better Hef’s (yes, even better than Belgium). People generally say American beer is crap, but it’s not true. It’s just that the only “American beer” people can think of is Budweiser, Miller, or Coors. Go out and try a Widmer Brother, a Blue Moon, a Sierra Nevada, or a Gordon Bierch. You know what I’m talking about.

The Portland Airport has free wifi

I think all airports should have free wifi. Just like the city of Mountain View.

Playing songs on repeat

I am creature of the “repeat song” feature that media players include. When I hear a song I like, I play it to death; over and over and over again. I amaze myself though that even when I’ve played a song 50 times over, I still won’t know the words. It doesn’t mean I’m not listening, it just means I’m listening to their voices, not their words. I consider a song successful if I feel the way the artist had intended, even if I didn’t understand the words.

Canon vs Nikon

This age old debate still seems to populate forums and mailing lists. I personally shoot with Nikon, and I have my own reasons why that I’m not going to into. But really, if you’re one of those people that still complains about this, you’re not taking enough pictures. The only thing that Canon and Nikon users can both agree on, is that they’re both better than Sony and Pentax.

Twitter

I’ve been using Twitter for almost a year now and it’s hard to say why I keep using it. There’s a funny paradox that runs across my mind every time I send a message to Twitter. You see, I do it as a personal benefit to myself. Like keeping a little journal of snippets of what I’m doing as I live. I figure that one day it will actually be interesting to go back and read. On the other hand, I keep my Twitters public and I have “friends” on Twitter. With that in mind I always think to myself “people are going to read this, so I should be clever.” Often times, that keeps me from twittering anything at all. Every twitter I make, I think it’s going to be the last; until I send another.

Facebook

Seriously. Still?

Camping

I have always said, and will always say “Camping without a camp fire is pointless.” If you didn’t have a camp fire, then you didn’t go camping. Period.

Bike to work day

About ten months ago it was Bike to work Day. Kind of like an Earth Day. You know, keep the car at home and pollute the earth a little less than you normally do. I took on this feat, however, I didn’t bike back home (I got a ride back). To this day, my bike has been sitting next to my desk. Perhaps the next Bike to work Day that rolls around, I’ll return home with my bike.

Sushi

About a week ago I tried Sushi for the first time, probably ever, and it wasn’t bad.

Nevertheless, the point being is that I’ve been getting a bit more serious into photography which makes it slightly more complicated to maintain a JavaScript blog. I DO in fact maintain this blog on a daily basis. My delicious feed is updated quite regularly, my prototype submissions seem to come in when people feel like submitting them, and of course my site pulls in my own flickr photos tagged dustindiazcom, effectively showing off my personal favs. However for those of you following my blog because of its original purpose, I apologize, the posts have really come to a minimum. If you haven’t done so already, take a gander at my archives or listen to some old podcasts, or perhaps if you’re motivated sit down and feast your eyes on a classic screencast.

Back to the point

So yeah, I’ve been walking around the planet capturing life with a little black machine in the palm of my hands known as a camera. If you’ve been enjoying what you’ve been seeing on Flickr, please do leave a comment. I’m sure most of you have added me as a friend by now.

I’ve been reading

Like I said before, I’ve been reading pretty much everything on Rockwell as well a few books that have caught my attention like Taking your photography to the next level by George Barr and Designing a photograph by Bill Smith. Both books that go beyond the mechanics of a camera and talk about framing and composition more so than messing around with apertures, white balances, ISO’s, and megapixels. I leave the mechanics to Ken Rockwell since he’s one of the few nerds that actually goes into high ISO comparisons (which by the way, is pretty cool too) but also believes that your camera doesn’t matter (also true (but of course, my opinion as well)).

Depth of Field

Somehow I became a depth of field junky and everything I captured had to do with the fine details. Take for example, this photo:

You can see my favorite beer (Hefeweizen) just coming into focus, which demonstrates a shallow depth of field. As a novice I thought the only way to achieve this was to buy a new lens that stops down with a low number (which is what I did). As it turns out, there’s three ways you can affect depth of field as learned through this interactive depth of field tutorial. After knowing such knowledge I then grabbed one of my older lenses and started taking photographs that revealed close-up details like this maple leaf just by getting up close and zooming in close:

I was instantly hooked to this art-form known as “bokeh” disregarding good color or composition. I figured if it had good bokeh then it was instantly a good photograph.

Good color

Bokeh alone is not good enough, and getting good color is often difficult. To this day I still haven’t mastered the art of white balancing. I know only a little of the science behind it, but it’s hard to tell what’s going on inside my Nikon when I set it to auto mode vs. cloudy mode (which happens to make my photos look warmer (even when it’s not cloudy)). I’m also a sucker for saturated photos, but sadly enough, over-saturating your photos can make them look very amateurish. I know, I have a lot of bad over-saturated photos that I thought were cool.

Good Composition

This is where “your camera doesn’t matter” really comes into play. Composition is really either about capturing the moment or simply lining up angles. Simply centering is the natural instinct of every point-n-shooter. But I’ve found that throwing subjects to the side adds a nice dramatic effect to the composition. Take for instance this fire hydrant I shot near my usual parking spot at Google.

Centering the image would have boring, but throwing it slightly off-centered makes it feel dramatic. Who knows why, but don’t you feel it? It’s as if there was a disturbance in the force and you can see it visually.

Making the perfect photograph

To this day I don’t know what makes the perfect photograph. It is of course an art form just like paintings or music. Art is in the eye of the beholder. But try locking yourself in a small room and take five hundred pictures. Surely you’re going to come out with a picture that is better than one of the other ones.

Photography is like JavaScript

As if you didn’t know it was coming to this. But let me be the first to put it into words. Photography is like JavaScript, and JavaScript is like photography. They are both expressive and beautiful. They can be done bad or good. They are both load and go. Pick up a camera and start shooting or simply grab a code editor, write code, and load it into a browser. Both are fun to compose. Both can view things from several angles. Both can detailed and complicated. Both can be simple. They are both object-oriented.

Conclusion

There is no conclusion. I will keep taking photos, capturing life as I see it. This was more or less an excuse to blog about something since I haven’t done so in over a month. I hope you’ve found it entertaining in the meantime.

Sincerely,
Your Blogmaster