mushroomPiotr 'mushroom' Grzyb

Archive for the ‘blog’ Category

2011 New Year’s Resolutions

  1. Take more pictures
  2. Ride more bike
  3. Read more books
  4. Live more healthy
  5. Learn how to grow and prune bonsai trees
  6. Travel more
  7. See more live music
  8. Build an iPhone app

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2010 Products I Can’t Live Without

Due to the end of year coming and inspired by Kevin Rose’s list, I decided to mock up my own list of favorite products over time. Here is my 2010 list of products, tools and services I can’t live without:

  • MacBook Pro – My primary computer. Doing all computing work on it.
  • Safari – Web browser of choice. Was using Chrome before but since I have Mac Safari suits me better.
  • Gmail – Best email service and client on earth. Recently started using it with Sparrow desktop client.
  • Evernote – All my notes and todo lists sits here (or there… I mean on cloud). If you era not using Evernote start. Free plan is enough for me.
  • iPhone 3G – Always with me.
  • Gowalla – I do not want to give praise but I was first to create spot in Poland, using Gowalla since then to ‘check in’ places.
  • Tweetie (Twitter) – I mostly use Twitter to follow some people from web industry.
  • Facebook – One and only social network.
  • Dropbox – I’m sure there is no surprise here, but honestly if you are not using Dropbox you are surely missing out.
  • Boxee – Using Boxee app to watch movies and TV shows from the couch.
  • Coda – Doing all my coding work here.
  • Photoshop – After Coda my most used work tool.
  • 0to255 – Colour problems solver.

What are some tools, services or websites you couldn’t live without this past year?

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Eliss

I’ve bought Eliss some time ago. Simple graphic, nice music, straightforward controls and interesting idea. The goal is to group and split planets to fit them into squeesar this gives supernovas which dissapear. Each completed supernova gives you one point. Crucial is to keep planets of different colours apart. When different colours overlay part of life meter is taken away. Gameplay is a little like Twister for your fingers.

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Divvy – window(s) resizer for Mac

Recently I’ve encountered a problem which is the resizing of window(s) on a Mac. Do not get me wrong scaling windows is very simple, what can be annoying for example, is maximizing the window in the Windows way (to fill the entire screen available). For example, maximized Safari occupies the entire height of the screen but the width has to be adjusted manually.

After ‘asking’ Google a few questions I’ve received a list of several programs whose goal was to change the window sizes. After reviewing their options and how to handle one seemed interesting.

Divvy, as the only, offered interface. To change the size you just select desired number of previously defined rectangles you want the window to occupy. After assigning global shortcut to it it is really fast and straightforward. With the price of $14 it in not the best bargain but entering coupon code I’ve been able to save 20%.

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Twitter background 101

So you have Twitter account from some time. Wether it is your personal or company account it is good to personalize the look and feel to represent your selfhood or image of business. Of course there is nothing wrong about having default background all of Twitter’s predefined images are lovely and clean.

Let’s see what are main trends in Twitter background industry and learn something about creating them.

1. Repeating pattern
This technique is probably as old as internet. We just need small image and it will be repeated to fill whole background. If we will craft one special tile we can achieve endless pattern. This kind of background will fill display with every resolution.

2. Super large image
This solution provides larger area for our creativity but the drawbacks are large image size (longer loading time) and not full screen coverage on very big resolution.

3. Faded out image
My personal favourite and neatest approach. Combination of image faded out to solid colour and same colour set as Twitter background. This scales up to every monitor size.

Create your own?

There are virtually no limitations regarding designing Twitter background. Only rule to remember is that column with tweets is fixed width and regarding viewers resolution more or less of background is visible.

You can read more and find inspiration in this post about Twitter backgrounds. There is useful Photoshop template available to download.

You are more than welcome to be inspired by my own Twitter background.

— UPDATE — After launching #newtwitter central box width has changed so there is a new template.

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Horror Vacui iPhone app

Another iPhone app review. This time I’m taking a look at Horror Vacui by Shaun Inman (well known from his commercial projects Mint and Fever).

Horror Vacui is a strategy board game with one simple rule “Nature abhors a vacuum”. Actually rules are more complex but since you play it a few times they become clear. There are two players: water and earth. Each of them is randomly given one of three cards: hot, cold or neutral. Oposite nonneutral cards neutralize each other. Hot or cold makes neutral hot or cold and neutral stays neutral. Rules are explained in nifty ingame tutorial with animations.

As to the design app is made to look like old 8bit games. It is very interesting to see this kind of design on such a modern device like iPhone. Also the music is stylised to the old console games from early 80′s.

Shaun Inman is working on new game Mimeo. This will be platforming game and I’m really looking forward to it.

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MTB Season Opening

First bike ride of this year is behind me!!! I’ve taken out my bike after a half year break. He needed no repairs just quick tyre inflation check at nearby Orlen gas station. Hopefully he will last whole season without any problems. However I have short wishlist of parts I would like to upgrade:

  • fork [RS Pike would be nice or anything more sophisticated than Suntour Duro :)]
  • grips
  • rear derailleur [it's not most accurate after last accident]
  • frame [I know that 14kg is not the worst score for bike with fat (2.6") tires but something lighter would be nice, maybe full suspension]

Generally my dream bike would be Specialized S-Works Enduro Carbon but it’s waaaay out of my price range…
Specialized S-Works Enduro Carbon

So with new season there is time for some new training progress tracking system. So far I’ve been using BikeBrother.com. It was working more than fine but during winter I stumbled on DailyMile.com. DailyMile is nice junction of training log and twitter. The main power of this system is developed Workout Posting module. We can post many types of activities (Fitness, Run, Cycle, Swim, Walk and more), add a new route or select old one, add note and even sync all data from external device. After posting we can view our progress in very nice set of graphs.

I hope that this season will be great. I’m looking forward for summer holiday and maybe anoyher MTB trip… (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)

IMG_3166

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Facebook profile picture 101

In this little tutorial I will list some advices that will help you create more interesting Facebook profile picture. Sure most of Facebook users will just upload a photo of themselves and change it from time to time to more recent one. But with just a little effort and tips from this tutorial your profile can stand out from the crowd.

Size matters, so if you upload a foto of yourself it is usually resized to fit left sidebar of your profile. Sidebar is 200 px width consequently we need to keep our picture equal or smaller to avoid resizing. As to the height we can create picture up to 600 px. Using whole height we can accomplish neat effect or contain some additional info about ourselves.

Above rules and tips can be applied to Facebook pages.

You can download .psd file with background prepared for developing your picture.

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SparkUp 2010

I’ve just registered for SparkUp conference. I’m really looking forward to this event. There are two paths of lectures all so interesting I can’t decide which to attend.

So far my schedule will look like this:

10:00 – 10:20 Conference opening

10:20 – 11:20 Web Development 2.0 – Bruce Lawson
11:40 – 12:40 jQuery: Write Less, Do More – Remy Sharp
13:00 – 14:00 CSS3

14:00 – 15:00 Lunch

15:00 – 16:00 jQuery for designers: the essentials – Remy Sharp
16:20 – 17:20 Mobile Social Location – Matt Biddulph

Full schedule can be found here.

UPDATE: Big news. Inayaili de León will be speaking in CSS3 segment. Cool!

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