Ben Alman » News

Battlefield 3, Battlelog Hacks

Ben Alman — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 20:20:22 +0000

I’ve been playing Battlefield 3 recently, but the new Battlelog service has a few issues surrounding refreshing and joining servers that are driving me crazy.

I’ve attempted to address these issues with a new userscript called Battlelog Hacks, so check it out and let me know what you think!

2011 jQuery Summit, here I come!

Ben Alman — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:08:43 +0000

Earlier this month, I spoke at the Boston jQuery Conference, where my talk on “Plugin Authoring Best Practices” was well received. It went so well that I’m going to be giving it talk again, but this time online, at the jQuery Summit!

Like last year, I’ll be giving two talks. On the first day, I’ll be giving the aforementioned Plugin talk. On the second day, I’ll be giving a talk on JavaScript Unit Testing with QUnit.

Continue on for more information about my talks and a 20% off coupon code!

I'll be speaking at the 2011 jQuery Conference

Ben Alman — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 19:21:23 +0000

I’m very excited to be speaking at this year’s Boston jQuery Conference. I’ll be giving a talk entitled “Plugin Authoring Best Practices,” so be sure to sign up for the conference, come to my talk, and say hello!

Also, the day before the conference, I’m going to be giving our full-day Bocoup Beginner jQuery Training. If you’re new to jQuery, this training will help get you prepared for all the great talks that you’ll see over the weekend. The training is a good value, with all proceeds benefit the jQuery project.

jQuery Bay Area Conference 2011

Ben Alman — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 18:52:43 +0000

I recently attended the jQuery Bay Area Conference, which was held at the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus Conference Center in Mountain View, California. I decided to go not only from a personal “want to hang out with cool people” perspective, because I know many people who are active in the jQuery community, but also from a “Director of Training at Bocoup” perspective. The former is cool because it’s always nice to interact directly (ie. drink beers) with people with whom your only typical interaction is IM or IRC. The latter is cool because on the day before the conference, Bocoup donated a full day of Beginner jQuery training to a very appreciative group of attendees, with all proceeds going directly to the jQuery Project.

Gig: February 17 w/ Pollotronik All*Stars @ Toad in Cambridge, MA

Ben Alman — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 18:16:27 +0000

Tomorrow night, February 17, the Pollotronik All*Stars are playing some killer funk at Toad in Porter Square, Cambridge.

And since Steve Giannaros just sent an email out to his mailing list promoting the gig, I figured I’d just quote him here, verbatim, and save myself the effort of saying the exact same thing:

As some of you may know, the Pollotronik All-Stars have taken a bit of a hiatus, as the band’s founder and fearless leader, Yahuba Garcia, has been extensively touring with the Ryan Montbleau Band, Martin Sexton, among others… On Thursday, 2/17, the Pollotronik All-Stars will be back in full force at Toad in Cambridge! No cover, usually things get started sometime after 10, and we will play late into the evening - http://toadcambridge.com. You will witness an obscene amount of jamming and hear improvisation at its finest, as well as songs by artists such as Herbie Hancock, John Coltrane, Mongo Santamaria, and Robert Glasper, to name a few.

The lineup:
Yahuba Garcia - congas and Percussion
Peter MacLean - drums
Jason Cohen - keys
Ben Alman - bass
Dan Abreu and Myself - dueling tenor saxophones and EWIs.

The secret ingredient, and the basis of this band, is that we have never once rehearsed and wouldn’t have it any other way. So, if you didn’t know, now you know.

So that’s what Steve had to say. Killer funk, killer lineup.. and because it’s Toad, killer beer. I’ll see you there!

jQuery BBQ now in over 20k sites!

Ben Alman — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 21:42:39 +0000

Just over a year ago, I blogged that jQuery BBQ was going into version 7 of the popular open source Drupal CMS, as a crucial part of the overlay module.

The overlay module allows the Drupal admin interface to appear seamlessly, as a modal window, on top of the current page, while maintaining that page’s context. This was, of course, a great idea, and one that jQuery BBQ made easy, with its built-in cross browser HTML5 onhashchange event and fragment management functions.

And now that Drupal 7 has finally launched, jQuery BBQ provides back button support in over 20,340 sites, not to mention the sites where it was already being used, of course.

Pretty sweet, huh?

The "catch" with try...catch

Ben Alman — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 12:26:35 +0000

In some of my recent work on a much-needed update to JavaScript Debug, I noticed a few “interesting quirks” with try…catch in Internet Explorer 6-8, so I decided to write an article with my observations.

As a change of pace, I decided to post this article to the Bocoup weblog. It’s actually my first article over there, so you should give it a read, and let me know what you think!

Read more about The “catch” with try…catch

In related news, progress on JavaScript Debug has been moving steadily forward, and I hope to have a new version out within a few weeks (which probably means a few months, given my current workload). Either way, stay tuned, because good things are in the works!

Yes, dear.

Ben Alman — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 17:40:05 +0000

This is great. I just discovered the amazing sense of freedom from responsibility and the resulting serenity that only the act of blindly agreeing with whatever your spouse says can bring. All this time, I’ve been arguing my point of view, but to what end? It’s not like I’m going to win anything.

Please note, however, that this only works if you’re not really paying attention. If you actually understand what you’re agreeing with, you bear at least part of the responsibility if things go awry.

It’s like voting. If you know the stakes, but choose not to vote, you can’t complain when the elected official turns out to be an jerk. If, however, you didn’t even know there was an election, then things can’t possibly be your fault, right?

It’s not like I care any less, I’m just choosing to care more about the now instead of the future. This works for me, because by the time the future comes to pass, if I don’t like the situation I’ve gotten myself into, I will have forgotten the entire process that led up to that moment, and if that’s due to the fact that I was never really aware of it in the first place, then so be it.

So, +1 to plausible deniability and “Yes, dear.”

Immediately-Invoked Function Expression (IIFE)

Ben Alman — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 20:33:27 +0000

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a bit of a stickler for terminology. So, after hearing the popular, yet misleading, JavaScript term “self-executing anonymous function” (or self-invoked anonymous function) one too many times, I’ve finally decided to organize my thoughts into an article.

In addition to providing some very thorough information about how this pattern actually works, I’ve actually made a recommendation on what we should call it, moving forward. Also, If you want to skip ahead, you can just check out some actual Immediately-Invoked Function Expressions, but I recommend reading the entire article.

Schrecklichwissen: Terrible Knowledge

Ben Alman — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 18:04:21 +0000

Just now, I was having a conversation with a colleague about the complexity of dealing with unicode in JavaScript Regular Expressions. Basically, what he once thought of as a very simple topic has now become so incredibly complex that he is now overwhelmed, all because he made the mistake (out of necessity, of course) to learn more. In his words, “…and now stuff is all broken, I was blissfully unaware.”

2010 jQuery Summit: Ticket Winners!

Ben Alman — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 20:56:13 +0000

In case you missed my previous blog post, I’m speaking at the upcoming jQuery Summit, a two-day online conference taking place on November 16th and 17th. I’ll be giving two talks, “Idiomatic jQuery” and “jQuery Pluginization” (one each day). In addition to my presentations, there will also be talks by a number of other well-known jQuery community members.

In addition, I promised that a few lucky winners would win a ticket for either the Designer or Developer tracks. So, with a little help from Brendan Eich, Ronald Fisher and Frank Yates, and without further ado…

2010 jQuery Summit: Win Tickets!

Ben Alman — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:45:23 +0000

I’m speaking at this year’s jQuery Summit, a two-day online conference taking place on November 16th and 17th. In addition to my two talks, “Idiomatic jQuery” and “jQuery Pluginization,” there will also be talks by a number of other well-known jQuery community members as well as John Resig, creator of jQuery.

The first day, November 16th, consists of a more designer-oriented track, while the second day, November 17th, consists of a more developer-oriented track. While you’ll learn lots by attending both days, if you can only attend one of the two days, fear not: I’m presenting in both tracks!

And here’s an added bonus: I have a few tickets to give away for each day! First, follow me, @cowboy, on Twitter if you aren’t already following me. Then, send me a tweet telling me which track you’d prefer (Designer on 11/16 or Developer on 11/17), and finally, tell me why I should give you one of these tickets! I’ll notify the lucky winners on Wednesday.

If you haven’t already, sign up now, and I’ll see you online!

Gig: October 30 w/ Nephrok! Allstars @ Atwoods in Cambridge, MA

Ben Alman — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:00:53 +0000

This Saturday, October 30, Artifaktori & The Nephrok Allstars proudly present a fresh, fabulous, freaky chic FUNK EXTRAVAGANZA at Atwood’s Tavern in Inman Square, Cambridge!

Don your funkiest junk (or halloween costume) and get down and groove! There’s going to be a costume CONTEST with multiple categories and lots of prizes, so dress sharp!

The show starts at 10, so RSVP now and I’ll see you there.