Sam’s random musings

McKenna’s battery-powered DEK create iconic lamps:

Sure, we’ve seen a plethora of design-inspired lamps before, but the biggest (and most refreshing) difference between the prototypes we typically see on expo floors or in the back of one’s imagination is that Mark McKenna’s iterations are actually for sale. Big shock, we know, but somehow Mr. McKenna has crafted five slightly different Design Emulation Kits (DEK) that “pay homage to some of the greatest modern designers of our time” by allowing customers to create their own masterpiece using pre-printed parts. Once assembled, the light is then attached to a 9-volt battery to light up the LED within, and at just $29 apiece, these would have that engineering cousin of yours occupied and off your back for days. Click on through for a few more selections.

These would make really cool gifts, check them out

(Via Engadget.)

ProtoPacked 2.13: Protoype + Script.aculo.us == 32kb:

John-David Dalton is up to his packing tricks again, and has created ProtoPacked 2.13:

This updated pack includes compressed versions of Prototype: 1.4, 1.5,
1.5.1 and Scriptaculous: 1.7.1_beta2.

There is also a “Protoculous” option as well (Prototype and
Scriptaculous combined)

Smallest files are:
Prototype 1.5.1 @ 15.8kb
Scriptaculous-1.7.1_beta2 @ 17.9kb
Protoculous (1.5.1 + 1.7.1_beta2) @ 32.5kb

Download from here and find protopacked_v2.13.zip.

Get your difficult to read, hard to update protopack here. But man that is smaller…

(Via Ajaxian Blog.)

Josiah Cole::

19 Things NOT To Do When Building a Website. Via Vowe.

After a current project I bet Lance will have his own choice list.

(Via Dangerousmeta.)

Color Oracle 1.1:

Freeware utility (with versions available for Windows and Linux, too) that allows you to simulate in real time what people with common forms of color blindness will see. (Via Cameron Moll.)

Another app I like to use for this is Sim Daltonism

(Via Daring Fireball.)

1 Click:

My, that’s a big mouse pointer you have there.

(Via OK/Cancel.)

Smashing Magazine::

30 scripts for galleries, slideshows and lightboxes.

Wow that is a great list, some cool toys in there

(Via Dangerousmeta.)

Tapefailure: Web Analytics on Actions:

Joshua Gross, founder of Tapefailure, let us know about their new launch.

Tapefailure records user actions, which are recorded as tapes, and the users can play back the tapes or view various statistics about them.

You can get access to information such as visual mouse maps, and average tapes.

Tapes are recorded via iframes, and the player itself is built using Prototype.

Got to love site metrics, this is cool because you can see metrics as people work around the site…

(Via Ajaxian Blog.)

Slider.js - Prototype based Carousel:

Bruno Bornsztein has created Slider.js, a carousel widget that flips between content, based on Prototype and Script.aculo.us.

You can see it in action, or download it.

Always keeping track of these things…

(Via Ajaxian Blog.)