30 Mar 2010

Lime in time

The lime you see on tatey.com today is the result of continued evolution from the previous six years. Let us take a look back at where it all started.

2004 Stock photo of a lime from an unknown source.

2005 Applying a filter from Adobe Photoshop in an attempt to create a fun, cartoon appearance.

2005 Cartoony and 3D with a subtle texture created by the noise filter. Shadow is inconsistent with lighting. Used a combination of circles, gradients and the free transform tool to create a 3D appearance.

2008 Removed texture and decreased prominence of the shadow in pursuit of a simpler appearance.

For a complete visual history of the tatey.com website, take a look at tatey.com set on Flickr. Lastly, if you haven’t already, you should move your mouse cursor over the lime at the top of this website ;-)


22 Mar 2010

I did it! 45km in the Great Brisbane Bike Ride

First time participating in a large, community bicycle ride was a lot of fun and a great way to spend Sunday morning.

Jeff and Tate

At the finish line. 45km at 9:55am

Had originally registered for the 30km route. Through a combination of poor signage and lack of awareness, I followed everyone onto the 45km route. In retrospect, I’m glad I took the wrong turn. Completing the 45km is a testament to my regular riding. Wasn’t as exhausted as the first time I cycled 30km.


12 Mar 2010

In pursuit of an active lifestyle

Between work, study and personal interests I spend too many hours sitting in front of the computer.

After recently buying a second hand bicycle, I’ve been developing regular riding habits. Riding the bicycle to uni, instead of the motorobike. Riding the bicycle to the local shops, instead of the car. More importantly, I’ve been achieving a minimum of thirty minutes per day.

Short, regular rides are refreshing and enable you to feel alive again. Adii Rockstar feels the same about running.

I now go running for two possible reasons:

  1. If I had a great day at the office, my afternoon run is a perfect way to almost celebrate that day; and
  2. If I had a shitty day up until that point, the run is a great way to clear my head and just feel refreshed by removing myself from that shittiness.

Maybe I’m splitting hairs here, but even though I thus go running for two very different reasons, it has exactly the same result: I feel much better afterwards.

On the 21st of March I’m participating in the The Great Brisbane Bike Ride (30KM) and looking forward to riding though the newly constructed Clem Jones tunnel.


26 Feb 2010

Zoomable Type is Mac OS X's “Show in Large Type” for jQuery

Zoomable Type is a jQuery plugin for reading small text on a display from far away. Text is upscaled to the largest size based on its width and the browser’s viewport.

Zoomed text example

I’m building a web application with many contact numbers.

Reading a contact number off a display and typing it into a handset can be difficult when the text is small and you lose your place.

Apple have already solved this problem in Mac OS X with the “Show in Large Type” functionality found in Address Book and Mail. Zoomable Type implements this as a jQuery plugin for the web.

Zoomable Type is hosted on GitHub and distributed under the MIT licence. Try some examples on the project home page.


15 Feb 2010

My Jekyll fork becomes Jekylless

Formally published as tatey-jekyll, the project has been renamed to Jekylless for two reasons:

  1. Wolfgang König agreed to co-maintain the project with me.
  2. Show the project’s support for LESS CSS.

As a result, the repository has moved and you should now use the Jekylless gem instead of tatey-jekyll. When upgrading to Jekylless be sure to include an empty YAML front matter (Two lines of triple dashes ---) in your LESS files.

Wolfgang recently merged Jekyll 0.5.7, refactored LESS CSS support and added the capability to specify a post’s time in the YAML front matter (You didn’t really publish all your posts at 12AM, did you?).

We’ll continue to stay as close as possible to Jekyll.


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Tate Johnson is a 23 year old Ruby on Rails developer and university student living in Brisbane, Australia. He enjoys riding bicycles, motorbikes, taking photos and travelling.