This certainly isn’t new, considering it’s been hiding in my queue for a number of months, but it’s worth mentioning regardless. The Socket-Deer, by Nendo, is an alternative socket plate, equipped with antlers that cradle your cell phone while charging. It’s a simply brilliant idea, but I can’t find a store that sells it. It might just be one of those great-concept-never-produced sort of products. If anyone comes across one in the wild, be sure to let me know.

via Inspire me, now! »

That was fast. I tried out Helvetimail and it fell short of expectations. Luckily, it’s easy enough to modify since it’s simply CSS. The problem, however, is that the CSS sits all in one line of code. With a quick Google search for “format css” I came across Lonnie Best’s Format CSS Online web app. It takes any form of valid CSS and outputs it into a readable format. On top of that, it allows you to customize how you’d like lines tabbed or how to handle brackets. It’s a fantastic find that’s going straight to my deli.cio.us.

I’ve been dying for a decent looking Gmail ever since I signed up. For the past year, I’ve made do with the “Shiny” theme, but it just doesn’t make the cut anymore. Lately, Helveti-anything has been a big hit (see Helvetwitter, Helvetical, and the original Helvetireader). Perhaps that’s telling Google something—people care about design. As much as Google is tied to rainbow colors, I think they’re due for a “Pro” series of web apps that consider design a bit more.

via swissmiss »

This is a great photo by Jim Lind. I really appreciate the balance of raw photography and subtle retouching. There was certainly a solid amount of time put into the composite, but it doesn’t scream photoshop like his other images.

via ShareSomeCandy »

I recently noticed an issue with my Scroller (scrollbar) class. When resizing a window and the scrollbar along with it, the scrollbar’s position needs to be reevaluated. To do so, it simply sets the scroll value to what it was before, but now with the changed scroll area. With how I had it before, this wasn’t an issue when dealing with a small amount of content, but the larger the content, the more noticeable the issue. For some reason, I wrote it so the get function would return the value based on scrollbar’s position. This seems okay at first, but there’s something in the approach that makes the scrollable content jump a bit when resizing.

I kept an open mind, considering I wrote the class a good three years ago when transitioning from AS2 to AS3. After a number of tests, I realized my code wasn’t directly the cause of the problem—though it was indirectly. I assumed a value is a value. Because of this, I assumed by setting a child’s coordinates to particular numbers, it would retain those precise numbers as its coordinates. Unfortunately, though understandably so, a child’s coordinates are only so accurate. Since we’re dealing with pixels, there’s no reason for a set of coordinates to retain ten decimal places if the screen is only going to recognize the first two. Not only that, it rounds to the closest .05. For instance, setting a child’s x and y coordinates to 34.82721 and 68.27495 respectively results in the position of 34.85 and 68.30.

To get around this, if you truly need a higher level of precision, you can use secondary x and y properties and set it up like this:

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private var __x:Number = 0;
private var __y:Number = 0;
 
public override function get x ():Number {
	return __x;
}
public override function get y ():Number {
	return __y;
}
 
public override function set x ($x:Number):void {
	super.x = __x = $x;
}
public override function set y ($y:Number):void {
	super.y = __y = $y;
}

[note] There are times when this will come in handy, but there are also instances where you wouldn’t want coordinates so precise, so use it cautiously.

I came across these sweet Computer Command Clocks this morning. Unfortunately, I already have a wall clock for the living room, but accidents do happen… and at just under $20, it’s a real bargain.

via Design Milk »

Lately, I’ve been feeling the impact of this 30″ Apple display and its toll on my eyes. As a result, I started to wear sunglasses when at the computer. Oddly enough, it helps a lot. Jen reminds me, however, that the sunglasses while on the computer aren’t really helping my cool factor, but I’d rather feel good than have an aching headache by 6. If you’re not much of a sunglasses-inside kind of guy, try out ScreenShade. This little menubar app lets you dial down the brightness of the screen past the minimum setting allowed. It even has global hotkeys, so you can raise or lower the brightness from any app with option+plus and option+minus.

Unfortunately, there are two downsides. For one, I had search around software websites just to find the downloadable app. Any link to the developer’s site no longer work. Secondly, the way in which ScreenShade is able to dial down the brightness is by drawing a transparent fill over the screen. This isn’t a big deal unless you plan to take any screenshots—any image you capture will be darker as a result of the overlay.

via @zacislost

My sister, Lizzy, IM’d me this morning to help her with email configuration woes. Without blinking, I clicked the “Start screen sharing” button and was on her computer. I was able to fix the issue as well as show her exactly what was wrong without saying, “are you at that step yet?” I’m surprised I automatically clicked to share the screen, since I’ve never used it before. I’ve tried to use it before, but for me, at least, it has had a 1% success rate of connecting properly. Maybe that’s one area Snow Leopard touched on. Regardless, next time your family asks for help from their trusty IT dept (you), try screen sharing.

I realize that there’s no shortage of creative USB key drives out there, but I really wish I could own this USB pipe. Unfortunately, it’s an editorial photograph by Kevin Van Aelst for The New York Times and not a gadget from Gizmodo. I’m sure there’s an obscure eBay tech store selling it for $1.99.

via Szymon Błaszczyk »

SQLite has been my life as of late and because of this I’m discovering of a number of tricks. The one I’ll reveal today, once again makes absolutely no sense at all. (Barney shed some light on my previous find, so it wasn’t as astonishing)

Let’s say we have a database of people, and in this database, we separate names into first and last names—this comes in handy for sorting by last name, etc. In our case, we want to retrieve the names into a combined-form, such as name=Jonnie Hallman instead of firstname=Jonnie, lastname=Hallman. This could easily be done, after the fact, in Actionscript, but we want to optimize the process. SQL wizard, James Hall, suggests the following query:

// Correct in SQL // Incorrect in SQLite
SELECT (firstname + ” ” + lastname) AS fullname FROM tablename;

It doesn’t receive an error in SQLite, but it does return a value of zero for that column. In SQL it works though. Here’s the query that works in SQLite:

// Correct in SQLite
SELECT (firstname || ” ” || lastname) AS fullname FROM tablename;

Stunned?—I am. Why would the logical “OR” equivalent be used to combine two strings? If you have the answer to the insanity, please enlighten me. If not, enjoy the tip!

[update] Thanks for the correction on the logical “OR,” not bitwise.