Elixir Phoenix + Browserify

This weekend I have been playing with a new language/web framework combo. That is Elixir and Phoenix. So far it has been really. Finding out how to do things in Phoenix has been really fun as there is not a lot of information out there on it and many of the blog posts written about no longer work with the latest versions.

Pure.css Jekyll theme

I have done some spring (autumn) cleaning and made a new theme for my blog. If you use Jekyll and like it, you can find it on GitHub. It uses Pure.css and is kind of responsive. It is based on the blog layout with some tweaks. I will probably keep hacking on it and add some more features so stay tuned.

File encoding of your package.json file

If you are using NPM or Grunt on Windows and are having issues running your tasks it would pay to check the file encoding on your package.json file. I was receiving the following error while trying to run Grunt:

Backbone.Marionette Module Anti Pattern

I have recently been using Backbone.Marionette in anger while building Raygun.io. I was struggling to find posts on how to use modules correctly. So of course I ended up using them poorly and have since discovered a better way to use them. I am going to show both the first way that I used Marionette and the new way that I have moved to after discovering the weaknesses in my first approach.

Global Day of Code Retreat 2012

Yesterday Amy and I hosted and facilitated the Wellington code retreat as part of the global day of code retreat. The day went well and we got a full house of developers to practice coding. We managed to get in 6 sessions and worked through a variety of constraints ranging from not using condtionals and only using 4 lines of code, through to not using any return values.

Codemania!

Over the weekend I attended a new conference up in Auckland organised by two stellar dudes Ben Gracewood and Ian Randall. It was exceptionally well organised, the speakers were awesome, the swag bag had some cool gear and the after party rocked long into the night.

Gimono Judogi Review

Gimono is a company from Dunedin creating martial arts uniforms out of a material they call Fortitude. I had been shown their website a little while ago and they looked interesting. I recently ripped my Judogi at training so was on the lookout for a new Gi when I saw Gimono had a special on I jumped on it.