JazzRecord Blog » David Rivers

You Have the Pen (with which to Translate Documentation)!

David Rivers — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:43:29 +0000

Nick’s last post made me think of that fruity dance song from the early 90s (or some time around then). This post is like a remix, except instead of empowering you I’m hoping to exploit your possible multilingualism for the sake of JazzRecord! (And in keeping with blog titles that include exclamation points, I hereby christen yet another reckless blurt of the English language!!…)

JazzRecord is veritably an international JavaScript ORM. It eats at the International House of Pancakes (Are there even any of these restaurants outside of the United States?) and it drives on the wrong side of the road. It can’t help it. It just loves multinationalism. Actually, as of last week, Google Analytics reports that JazzRecord.org has enjoyed visitors from all seven continents! That’s right! Someone from Antarctica visited 3 pages and spent a whopping 14 minutes and 13 seconds on JazzRecord.org! That’s one JavaScript ORMing penguin!!! JazzRecord.org has hosted 72 countries‘ worth of visitors that speak 40 languages, and is particularly well read by Eurasia, and recently Brazil! This is all very exciting news to the JazzRecord team. However, there is a problem with these demographics: I remember very little of my high school German and Spanish courses. Also, I don’t know a lick of Portuguese, Khmer, Russian, or whatever the hell it is they speak in England! We’re hoping that this is where you come in.

The JazzRecord team is always excited to hear from developers that are using the library in other parts of the world, especially ones that speak other languages, but we’re afraid that the all-English documentation might be impeding their usage. So, we’re calling out all fluently bilingual JazzRecord users to help us expand our documentation into other languages! If you fit this description and would like to help out, please send an email to Nick Carter (Project Leader) at thynctank at thynctank dot com or David Rivers (Web Designer/Webmaster) at david at ideogon dot com. We can’t promise that helping us out will get you on Oprah, but we will certainly give credit where credit is due!

JazzRecord is open-source, free software, because a small group of developers devote their blood, sweat, tears, first-born, and third arms to the cause. Unlike the RIAA we believe in the power of transparency and collaboration. However, we do need you (Think like Uncle Sam is pointing you out minus all the negative connotations that the American military would conjure in the minds of our far-reaching user base)! After all, I can hit my Rosetta Stone even harder, but I don’t think my ability to describe an apple in each of the colors of the rainbow is going to get us anywhere!

JazzRecord.org Redesigned! MSIE now exists again!!

David Rivers — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:27:10 +0000

After slacking on deploying some design improvements I made for jazzrecord.org, I finally pushed them today! JazzRecord visitors might notice the jump in version numbering from a 0.1b to 0.5. This should reflect the vast improvements to the library Nick has been making while I’ve been letting the site stagnate! (JazzRecord on Twitter has the skinny on all the juicy commits he’s been making.)

The design improvements are actually weeks old, but thanks to a certain popular browser developed by an unnamed Redmond-based software giant/Windows-peddler, the absolutely gorgeous redesign had to wait until I could procure a copy of said operating system in order to pander to the masses. This proved a more daunting task than common sense otherwise dictates, but I’ve finally been able to test and tweak and prod and poke the new design into MSIE compliance! The funny thing is that only 7.92% of our visitors use MSIE!! (And we suspect that 7% of the 7.92% are microwaves and garage openers spoofing their headers as IE!) However, I am on a job hunt right now, and I realize that the demographic of recruiters and potential employers is probably more inclined to use IE than our beloved Jazz users. I digress…

Note that curvy corner CSS progressively enhances the experience for users of modern browsers! It’s amazing how crappy the boxy corners look in comparison. (Sorry, garage openers!) However, I plan to soon implement image-based curviness, so 92.08% of you guys better bask in the privileged treatment while it lasts!

To whet your appetite for some more jazzrecord.org goodness–coming soon (I have no idea how soon): PDF documentation downloads!

JazzRecord Blog Finally Goes Live!

David Rivers — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:34:12 +0000

In tandem with design improvements I made to jazzrecord.org (which will be detailed in another post), we finally rolled out the JazzRecord.org Blog, a la WordPress! We considered doing this up in Mephisto, the self-proclaimed “best blogging system ever”, but it hasn’t been touched since April, 2008. (Perhaps it got perfect so they decided to not improve it any more? My loss, I suppose.) Therefor, I begrudgingly went along with a WordPress install. And then, we were going to wait until I skinned this bad boy to roll it out, but ya know what? I don’t think you guys have forever, and I’m a busy man. Furthermore, Google Analytics reports that visitors to jazzrecord.org are waning (although it appears that a core demographic of visitors keep on coming back!), so I decided about five minutes ago that we should just get on with it!

World, I introduce to you the Official JazzRecord Blog! Please: bookmark, absorb, subscribe to feeds, reply, read more, come back, tell your dog about us, graffiti-tag the URL onto the sides of buildings (don’t really do that), and then come back again as soon as you break out of the funny/big house!

I will continue to post info. on the status of jazzrecord.org and its documentations, etc. (and also my own contributions to the library, if I ever get time to add another 5 lines! Ha!), and my esteemed co-conspirator Nick Carter will post info. on the status of the library itself. Hopefully Jesse will contribute to the library again and post a thing or two! Or maybe he’ll post about his coffee obsession? I just noticed that Nick rolled out categories–Library, Site Changes, Uncategorized (sexy!), and Wide World of Jazz. So, I guess I’ll be posting about my love for jazz (music) too! Lucky you!! Seriously, please reply on any post that tickles your fancy or makes you scratch your head. The whole point of the blog is that we provide a discussion point with our JazzRecord ORM users! Like always, you can get ahold of us via the jazzrecord.org About page.

Without further ado, I will publish this, the first, blog for Blog.Jazzrecord.Org!!! (I promise sexy skinning soon…sorry.)