Luke
Rodrigo y Gabriela – 11:11
It is pretty fast guitar flamenco type stuff and I really enjoying designing / coding to it. I’m a fan of no lyrics when working and these guys are perfect for that.

Chad
Adele – 21
I know it is popular at the moment on the radio stations but I have been listening to it because it is a little different then the normal for me.

Chronic Future – Lines in My Face
This is the only album of thiers I like. It always reminds me of the time when I was paintballing more frequently.

DMX – The Best of DMX
Old school rapping at its best. I like his style but not something you can play in the work place without headphone

Tim
Mumford & Sons -  Sigh No More
I love their style. The lyrics and banjo really help me get in a good groove.

Coldplay – Mylo Xyloto
I think Coldplay keeps getting better and better. This album is great and the catchy beats help me get through monotonous div tags.

What are you listening to?

For more information:

Event Website
Facebook Event Page

1. Custom Font Replacement: We had been using sIFR, but shortly after we built this site, cufón came around and we fell in love. Any custom fonts you see are now generated by cufón.

2. Dynamic Sidebar: The old sidebar was hard coded. I took that out and made each section it’s own widget which allows to move them around easily if needed and also add third-party widgets should we choose to do so.

3. RSS: I created a FeedBurner RSS so be sure to update – http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheCodeDojo

4. The Clan: Under The Clan section in the sidebar, you can now click on one of the names and it takes you to a new page with that persons bio and all the posts they have written.

5. Facebook Fan Page: We started a Facebook Fan Page – you can become a fan here: http://www.facebook.com/CodeGreene

6. Custom Share Icons: Mike built us custom share icons to fit our ninja theme. Thanks Mike!

7. Contact Page: Rather than sending you, the user, to codegreene.com to fill out a contact form, you can now send us your requests by going here: http://dojo.codegreene.com/ninjas-for-hire – so drop us a line.

A few subtle changes will be coming in the future – let us know what you think!

Luke, Future of Web Typography
For years typography on the web has been very limited when compared to what can be in the print world. Over the last few years though we have been given more and more tools to help us accomplish good typography on the web. As time goes on these tools will get better and will become more widely supported. There was an article on Smashing Magazine this week that talked about a lot of these tools that are available to web designers. I really enjoyed reading up, refreshing my memory of code I haven’t used in a while, and also learning some new ways of styling type. Read it over, the text on your website will be very happy you did.

Benjam, 20 Helpful jQuery Methods You Should Be Using
While developing a website, I use a lot of tools, both in the creation of the website files (my text editor of choice, file manager, etc.), and within the website itself (CakePHP, jQuery, CSS, etc.), and I’m always interested in finding features of those tools that I might not be very familiar with.  While I have a deep familiarity with the features I use regularly, and a passing familiarity with most of the features of these tools, it’s always good to get a refresher on what I could be using more.  Here is a post highlighting 20 jQuery methods/features (actually 33 methods in 20 groups) that should be in everybody’s familiarity tool box.

Mac, April Fools – PHP Style
This discusses a topic that we often only think about once or twice a year, but it is still worthy of our attention and deserves some practice to improve our skills. Also, while you are there, subscribe to the PHP Developers feed. The main guy, Chris Cornutt, does an excellent job of filtering the best PHP articles.

A friend tipped us off that Abduzeedo had a Friday post on the Awesomeness of Ninjas, mentioning the article probably deserved a spot on the dojo blog. I couldn’t agree more.

From the day I interviewed at Code Greene, Mark (the head sensei here), explained that he was assembling a team of ninjas to do his bidding. Our business has borrowed Japanese philosophy in a number of areas; namely, The Toyota Way, kaizen, and eliminating muda as it applies to workflow and personal improvement. We have 3 actual ninja swords in the office, and we once killed a guy. Well, that’s not entirely true, I can’t actually vouch for the authenticity of the swords.

Anyways, all I really wanted to say is that ninjas are awesome. Go check out the post and relish in their glory.

Luke, Stop Using Stock Photography Clichés

I liked this article because I could really relate to the author. I am super sick of stupid stock photography. This type of stock photography has become meaningless to the user. Especially if the user has seen the same photo in other places before. As users, we are so used to seeing two business people shaking hands that we overlook it immediately, without giving it a second thought. Useless.

Mike, A Form of Madness

Form design is awesomeness, but coding them? Not always the case. Luckily, there’s good news for form coders the world over with HTML5 on the brink of greater support. This article comes from an up-and-coming book all about HTML5. The author introduces some cool new tags and attributes that we can start using right now, including: placeholder text, autofocus fields, spinboxes, sliders, date pickers, and more! Exciting stuff.

Tim, On Web Advertising

This is something I have been very curious about lately, so to find this was a refreshing way to start out the week. It was nice to get Chris’s perspective about online advertising and I know he knows about it because all his work uses it.

What have you been reading recently?

Raspberry Cheesecake

This first recipe comes from Susan Ehlers, spouse of Chad Ehlers who works here at Code Greene, who was willing to share her awesome Raspberry Cheesecake recipe with us.

• 8 oz. cream cheese
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 8-12 oz. Cool Whip / whipped topping
• Graham cracker crust (homemade or purchased)
• Raspberry Pie Filling (or other pie filling or pudding)

Mix cream cheese and powdered sugar together until smooth. Add Cool Whip (8 oz for a pie tin, 12 oz for 9×13 pan) over graham cracker crust. Top with Raspberry Pie Filling, or substitute another topping of your choice. Any pie filling works well, also pudding is a great alternative! Chill until ready to serve.

Ham Loaf

The name might not sound that appetizing, but I can assure you it is a family favorite and people at the party trying it for the first time said they liked it a lot and wanted the recipe. My wife, Susan Newbold, brought this from her side of the family and I’ve loved it ever since.

• 3 lbs. ground ham (Keep it a simple – no fancy smoked ones, just plain. Bone in works fine, or boneless, but preferably one without added water.)
• 2 lbs. ground pork (Almost any cut works great here, we usually use boneless pork chops)
• 2 cups soft bread (you can break it up by hand, or I often use the food processor)
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• The Special Sauce:
  • 1/2 cup pineapple juice
  • 1/2 cup vinegar
  • 1 tsp dry mustard
  • 2 cups brown sugar
• 2-6 rings of sliced pineapple (optional)
• Maraschino cherries (optional)

Mix meat, bread, eggs, milk, and pepper, and knead it by hand until it is well mixed. Form into two loaves as you would meatloaf. Mix sauce ingredients in a saucepan on medium heat until brown sugar is dissolved. Pour sauce mixture over the loaves. If desired, garnish with pineapple and cherries. Bake at 350 degrees for 75-90 minutes. Because we live in Utah, I actually bake mine at 375 degrees because of the high altitude. Check with a meat thermometer to make sure it’s cooked all the way through, probably 170 degrees internal temperature should do. (It is pretty hard to overcook, and you can baste it with the sauce if you’re worried about it drying out.)

Grinding the meat: you can do it yourself with a meat grinder (we use our Kitchenaid mixer with the grinder attachment) or you can order it from your local grocery stores. Some stores won’t do it, but others are willing and usually don’t charge anything extra. We’ve found locally that Harmons will, and Albertson’s used to, but some locations won’t do it for me any more. They usually prefer to do it first thing in the morning in their grinder, so that they can clean the grinder once instead of twice. (They have to prevent cross-contamination, so if they’ve been grinding beef, they’d have to clean the grinder before and after the pork, but if they do the pork first thing on a clean grinder, they don’t have to clean twice.) Because it involves a little extra work, some butcher counter employees get huffy and refuse to do it. You can also usually find ground pork – not out with the other meat, but at the butcher’s counter. Hope this helps!

In my previous post I talked about what I have been doing to my desktop the last little while. I had quite a few email or IM me asking about how the GeekTool scripts I used. Just take these scripts and copy the lines you want into the command area of a Geeklet. Most of these were written by Mac Newbold. Enjoy!

CPU Usage

top -n1 -l1 | grep "Load Avg" | sed 's/.*usage: //; s/ user.*//;'
top -n1 -l1 | grep "Load Avg" | sed 's/.*user, //; s/ sys.*//;'
top -n1 -l1 | grep "Load Avg" | sed 's/.*sys, //; s/ idle.*//;'


Memory

top -n 1 -l 1 | grep PhysMem | sed 's/.* inactive, //; s/ used.*//;'
top -n 1 -l 1 | grep PhysMem | sed 's/.* used, //; s/ free.*//;'


Month

date +%B

Date

date +%d

Day

date +%A

Time

date +%I:%M

AM / PM

date +%p

Weather

curl --silent "http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/forecastrss?p=USUT0078&u=f" | grep -E '(Current Conditions:|F<BR)' | sed -e 's/Current Conditions://' -e 's/<br \/>//' -e 's/<b>//' -e 's/<\/b>//' -e 's/<BR \/>//' -e 's/<description>//' -e 's/<\/description>//'

Look for the ‘UT0078′ here and replace it with the city code you want to display. Get the city code by going to Yahoo Weather and searching for your city. Once found look in the url and you will see your city code at the end of the url.

Weather Image

Create a new Shell Geeklet and use this as the command:

curl --silent "http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/USUT0078.html" | grep "forecast-icon" | sed "s/.*background\:url(\'\(.*\)\')\;\ _background.*/\1/" | xargs curl --silent -o /tmp/weather1.png\

Replace the city code with your city code. ( same steps to get city code as above )

Then create a new Image Geeklet and use this as the url:

file:///tmp/weather1.png

Not having a dock at all has taken some getting used to. I use Quicksilver for just about everything now. I do have a pull down docklike thing at the top middle in case I ever need it. Here is a list of tools I have used to create my new desktop.

CandyBar – Change all the folders icons and HD icons.
Magnifique – Change the folder and App nav areas to black
GeekTool – Add time, weather, and computer status to the desktop.

GeekTool was by far the most fun. You can do much more with it than what I have done here. If you come up with something good for you I’d love to see it.