Big Bang Technology

I'm very excited about node.js. I'm sure if you're a javascript fan that you've heard about it too. I'll leave determining the usefulness of node to you. This article serves as a guide to installing, configuring, and deploying node.js on a media temple dedicated virtual server. Even without a Media Temple (dv) you should be able follow along on your own server.

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A couple of weeks ago I made the decision to only write code that turns a unit test from failing to passing. This is also known as BDD (Behaviour Driven Development). This is a big step towards becoming the ninja programmer I want to be. I'll leave the philosophical discussion out of this post, and rather use the time we have together to share what I found to be a pretty good BDD solution for writing JavaScript.

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I've been using the Prototype Javascript Framework more than usual recently to develop some fancy reports for a client. I'm going to share a simple technique that involves using toElement on a class as an easy way to insert it into the DOM.

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Recent updates to the Big Bang Technology website take advantage of Baseline Rhythm to evenly space text elements and help readability. We hope you like it.

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We're poppin a digital collar. If normal twitter is a beat-up oldsmobile with food-stains on the driver's seat and a broken door-handle, our article will take you to a pristine cadillac with suede seats and a nice furry set of dice in the mirror.

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I've been trying to figure out what the best way to share some of the ideas we've been coming up with over the last few months. Instead of doing a bunch of case studies, or trying to get permission from some of our higher profile clients, we've decided to do a short series on how to build an iPhone web application.

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Integrating Github with Lighthouse has been a great time saver. It has allowed us to stay on top of fixes and keep track of everything we're doing in one place. We don't need to have everyone looking through the git logs now! This short screencast shows you how to get things set up.

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This article shows how we've been combining our cascading stylesheets for production usage. We use a combination of a rake script, a borrowed class from the folks over at Prototype.js and a little PHP. This lets us have multiple stylesheets files in development, but then combines them into a single one ready for deployment on the server.

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I recently had an issue with flash videos being corrupted on a project. I decided to use FFmpeg to try to open the file automatically and generate a thumbnail. My reasoning was that if I could open the file with FFmpeg than it probably wasn't corrupt.

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