Dec. 10, 2012
Optimise HTML5 Apps For Mobile WebKit

  • Use zepto.js not jQuery.
  • Use -webkit-transition and -webkit-transform wherever possible.

Especially useful if you are developing with PhoneGap/Cordova on iPad and iPhone, or Android. Those webkit transforms saved my bacon on a recent iPad project. Here is the basic CSS you want to put on an element you want to optimise:

-webkit-transition: -webkit-transform 0ms;
-webkit-backface-visibility: hidden;

Try replacing $(this).hide(); with a transform that moves the element off screen like this (might need overflow: hidden on your body tag):

$(this).css("-webkit-transform", "translateX(1500px)");

Then when you want to show the element again do this instead:

$(this).css("-webkit-transform", "translateX(0px)");

I also had great success replacing jQuery UI drag-and-drop code with something hand-rolled:

$(this).css("-webkit-transform", "translateX(" + relativeX + "px) translateY(" + relativeY + "px)");

Hope this helps you!

Nov. 26, 2012
Crqlr

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Nov. 19, 2012
Thank You, LMG

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The good folks at Let's Make Games have been supporting the Western Australian indie and commercial game making scene for a while now with generous amounts of their own time poured into reports, moral support, game jams, and numerous events each year, so I makerbotted up these little arcade cabinet award thingies for each of them and gave them out at their recent end-of-year party, which was also great, as always! Thanks again LMGPPL!

Sept. 9, 2012
Epic Problemz

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Aug. 8, 2012
Priority Queue

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Photo by John Leonard.

Warning: post contains serious navel gazing.

Lying around in the dark trying to get my sleeping patterns back into Western Australia time from Western Scotland time has got me thinking a lot about focus and priorities.

  • I used to spend about twenty hours per week in my spare time doing Free-Libre and Open Source Software. I currently manage to allocate about zero hours per week to FLOSS.

  • Almost all of my time is now taken up with commercial work, social life, and family time. Although I would love to write more Free Software, I am ok with this balance for now because spending time with family and friends is definitely not the worst thing to do with your life.

  • I am officially orphaning the Infinite 8-Bit Platformer project. If you are a Free Software developer interested in taking over that project please contact me! There have been a ton of irregular users but the codebase badly needs some love. It's written in Python and Pygame and is GPL licensed.

Infinite 8-Bit Platformer

  • I still get to contribute a bit to Free Software projects during the course of my commercial work - I just don't have the luxury of pioneering my other vanity projects any more - except maybe jsGameSoup which gets used by one of my clients.

  • This whole shift is in general probably a good thing as it is turning me into more of a team oriented and social programmer. It forces me to re-use other people's code and work on other people's ideas more which is a good and efficient way to roll.

  • I have a plan to recover some of my commercial time for specific use on Free Software again in future. This basically comes down to making a way to fund some of that time myself and still keep my family in sustenance. Hopefully that pans out!

  • The one thing I wish I had more time to do is make music. I guess if I wanted this bad enough I would just make it happen but right now, no.

None of this is really a bad thing, just a fact of life. Friends and family are super-important to me right now, life is happy, and I still get to write a crapload of code for my wonderful clients and the very interesting projects they have created. :)