KrolTech

Shortly after getting my Chromebook, I quickly realized that it was a bit lacking. Sure, I wrote earlier that its a great little device and perfect for surfing – but I also sort of wanted something a tiny bit more. So a little bit of searching lead me toan article explaining how you can very easily install Ubuntu Linux (well a port specifically for Chromebooks) on the device! The process itself was super painless and very easy. [Read More]

I’ve had a bug in my ear lately that I wanted something… different… than the iPad for general home usage and Internet surfing etc. I sort of wanted a laptop, but just didn’t want to pay the money for one. I was looking at some budget ultra-books but even those come in around $800+. There’s the Surface tablets, but the Pros are also $1200+ and the RT just seems like an iPad basically. [Read More]

Great article on why there aren’t more great “web apps” and the difference between an “App” and an “app”. Dan Whalin provides us an excellent introduction to AngularJS. The video is about 60 minutes, but covers a lot of ground and is a great introduction. After I’ve been spending some time with Backbone, I’ve been thinking more and more about maybe making the move onto Angular or Ember – a lot of the Microsoft evangelists seem to be pushing Angular lately – Pluralsight courses are coming very soon! [Read More]

If you’re like me, you have a fair amount of sites that you visit on a daily basis. Personally, I love the Bookmark bar (on Chrome, Firefox, etc). However, you cant really fit a whole lot of sites before you hit the end (width) of the browser and typically get the double arrow “more” dropdown. Well a quick tip is to simply remove the text for all of the bookmarks that have a favicon set (which is probably 90% of them). [Read More]

I’m working on a project, that requires a number of different animations based on user events. I recently switched all of the animations to CSS3 transforms and transitions versus jQuery animations. The improvement has been staggering, to say the least. However, I came across a weird issue today. When attempting to fade an element in after a click event, the element just kept popping into place. It wouldn’t fade. After some investigation I realized that my jQuery was setting the opacity to 1. [Read More]

I’ve been working hard on preparing a mobile app prototype for a demonstration/proposal next week. The goal is to create a native app using HTML5 and PhoneGap. I’ve been building the app using Backbone primarily, and using Adobe’s PhoneGap Build. PhoneGap Build is a cloud based compilation tool that makes things VERY easy to get your app up and running natively. The build tool supports iOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry, HP, and a few others. [Read More]

I completed the Code School course on using Google Chrome Dev Tools. I highly recommend you complete this course – its super quick (probably no longer than 1 hour) and very easy. Yet, I learned a lot. Specifically with the more advanced topics of the dev tools like Profiling, Memory Leaks, Framerates, etc. Started writing my hybrid mobile app for work – learned quite a bit along the way. Working with jQuery Mobile, but its overhead and conventions/takeover is making it less than desirable – perhaps I’ll rewrite the transition animations manually and implement 3rd party Touch/Tap library. [Read More]

A few requests for the full source code for this project have been made. Please feel free to download the full project files via this repo: https://github.com/jkat98/imgettinit_netmvc At the end of last year I set some goals for myself, one of which was to start using and become proficient in Backbone.js. I’ll be honest in saying that I struggled for a bit to really wrap my head around everything that was going on. [Read More]

This post is the conclusion to the article Building a web app using Backbone.js and require.js – Part 1. Please be sure to read that article first before proceeding. In my previous post, we discussed the original idea for the project, outlined what its supposed to do, and started dissecting the project’s main.js and app.js files. Both of those files frequently referred to the “Games” Backbone view and collection, but never really explained them. [Read More]

After 8 long weeks, my cycle with the Barbell Club at Crossfit Generation has come to an end. The entire experience was absolutely incredible, and being that it was my first exposure to true weightlifting I can definitely say without a doubt that I’m hooked. In this particular program, the cycle lasts 8 weeks with mandatory 2 days per week. My schedule was Thursday evenings at 6pm and Saturday mornings at 9am, same times every week. [Read More]