Opensource version of maxgif.com

Once google made searching for gifs possible I lost almost an entire day just looking for corgi gifs. This led to making a site that showed blown up versions of the gifs. It's the same thing as maxgif.com (nsfw). I wanted to set this up so anyone could do the same thing. I put the code up on github.com so others can check it out.

Have fun. Put a link in the comments if you used it somewhere.

Social : Google Plus profile

Finally added myself to Google Plus. I also added a link to the side bar. Check it out.

Books : Apress sale

Apress is having a big sale on Apple/iOS/Mac books to celebrate Steve Jobs 55 birthday. Use the order code JOBS55 to get a 55% discount. I've had my eye on a few books that I picked up at a really good price. Hard to pass up a good book sale.

Gaming: The Room, Little Inferno and Node.Hack

Most of my gaming now a days happens on a tablet because it's easy to hop in and out. Every once in awhile I'll run into something that really grabs me and I keep playing for hours on end. Here are some recent examples.

The Room

The concept reminds me a lot of The 7th Guest in the fact that it's puzzle based and sometimes not very obvious what you need to do next, but it still keeps you hooked. The game consists of a room with a box on a table. The box has multiple boxes inside it and the goal is to solve the puzzles on the current box to get to the next nested box. The concept is simple but the puzzles aren't. If you get stuck there is a hint system in the top left of the screen. I'm on box three and it's probably going to take an hour or so to figure it out.

This is currently on sale for $0.99. The normal price is $1.99

Little Inferno

This is a simple game on the outside, but has a few layers to it. On the outside it's a game about burning things. The more things you burn the more money it gives you to buy new things to burn. There is a combo system that rewards you for burning combinations of things. For example placing the pirate and bike in the fireplace and burning them both gives you the Bike Pirate combo. There are 99 combos and not all of them are easy to figure out. There is actually a story to the game that you can ignore for the most part but the ending is far more rewarding if you don't. It's told through letters you get in the mail that you can burn for money.

It's list price is $4.99. The PC and Wii U version is $15.

Node.Hack

This puzzle game plays very heavily on a risk/reward mechanic. The player navigates a maze that's populated with enemies. The goal is to dodge the enemies and collect points detonated as different colored nodes. Once green bar at the bottom is full the level starts falling apart. You can still collect points before leaving and this is where the risk/reward mechanic comes into play. There is a leader board system for each level and achievements for killing enemies with specific weapons under certain situations.

It's tough but rewarding once you reach the end with a higher score than your buddy. Every time I think my score is pretty good the wife has done far better.  It's on sale for $0.99.

jQuery / Javascript: Detecting orientation and updating for it

I'm getting started on a new mobile project at work. The first step is playing with the orientation of the device and updating the layout so it takes advantage of the available space.

The javascript event you're looking for is orientationchange. You can watch for this with the jQuery on method.

$(window).on('orientationchange',updateDisplay);

The handler method will look at the window.orientation to figure out if it's portrait or landscape.

if(Math.abs(window.orientation) === 90){
// landscape: do stuff
}
else{
// portrait: do stuff
}

You can see an example here.

iOS : A short list of PDF viewers I've tried

I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about how I can transition to ebooks for programming reference. I've had a e-paper Kindle for three years and haven't purchased a single physical book since. Typically with technical books I end up writing a lot of comments in the margins, adding page markers with notes on them and highlighting everything.

I tried reading PDFs on a e-paper Kindle and it doesn't work well at all. You can't adjust the font size, page drawing is painfully slow and the device isn't built well for my workflow. Kindles are perfect for relaxation reading, but not that great for much else.

I started looking for an iPad PDF reader and there are no shortage of those. I tried quite a few readers and read about a lot of others.

Adobe Reader (app link)
I used this for about a week. The page flipping speed was ok. It had trouble with large PDFs. Note taking wasn't that great and highlighting wasn't much better. For a free app it will get the job done, but I was looking for something better.

PDF Reader Pro (app link)
This started off as a promising app. Highlighting was ok and it the app was responsive. The problem I had was page turning wasn't that smooth. It had trouble zooming in a page and the interface wasn't that great.

iBooks (app link)
You can read PDFs with this and thats about all. No fancy features here.

Kindle for iPad (app link)
Limited note taking and highlighting. Not that great.

PDF Expert (app link)
This is by far the best PDF reader I have ever used. The interface is really clean and well laid out. It supports book syncing with dropbox so all of your comments and highlights are backed up to the cloud.  It also supports syncing with a Webdav Page turning is incredibly fast and supports border tapping and swiping. It will zoom in on a page so you don't see borders and it doesn't clip any of the text. It supports a page grid view so it's easy to find a page if you've lost your place. It supports tabs at the bottom of the app so you can have more than one book open at a time.

I really can't say enough good things about PDF Expert. I was hesitant paying $10 for an iPad app, but it's true that you get what you pay for. Anyone looking for a PDF reader should give this app a try. 

Javascript : Updating the search parameters with window.location

I ran into an issue with Firefox not navigating to a new address I set via windows.location. Here's an example of a url I was trying to set.

windows.location = "?page=account&this=that&foo=bar";

There's a property on the location object called search. When updating a partial url this should be used.

windows.location.search = "?page=account&this=that&foo=bar";