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Welcome to ChrisYap.com
That's me: Chris Yap. I am a San Francisco-based designer and developer, working primarily in web technologies. I've been at it since 1999 and have loved almost every minute of it.
I am also a lifelong musician, with experience working in a variety of mediums. I have experience in classical music, having studied the violin for 20 years and the piano for 12 years. Since 1996 I've also been a DJ working with electronic music, and more recently have worked on a variety of original productions and projects.
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- Google's HTML5 YouTube Videos Don't Need Flash
No Flash! I have to admit this could be a great thing for many* web developers.
* Sorry Flash dev buddies… :/
Jolicloud is a really interesting project that just came out in public beta (er… “pre-beta”? I’m not sure what the deal is with that.) It’s a streamlined OS based entirely around cloud services and intended for netbooks. The UI is designed with these parameters in mind. Basically it’s really simple to use and gets you to your gmail, facebook, twitter, audio/video streams, pandora, etc, quickly and easily.
I just installed it on my beleaguered old Asus eeePC 701 (ie the 4G), and even on this very limited hardware and small screen resolution, it’s running great, and so far has been problem-free.
Of equal importance is the fact that the installation process was a total breeze. I’ve gone through the sheer hell of putting ubuntu on this thing before and so was wary to try anything new but this was a very easy experience. You create a USB booter on your main computer (in my case mac) and just boot right into the almost automated install process. Very smooth, and of critical importance for the Jolicloud team to get right. Great job guys.
If you’ve got a netbook or other secondary portable computer sitting around, I’d recommend giving this thing a shot, I think it’s going to be fun to use for the purpose it was intended for… easy cloud-based computing and other computing that doesn’t require a whole lot of processing power.
There’s a list of compatible devices here, though I wonder if it’s entirely complete, seems like you should be able to install this on a lot of hardware. Maybe it’s a driver issue.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention one of the biggest advantages of Jolicloud: it’s FREE.
How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell - The Oatmeal
Sad but so often true. Right down to the comic sans. Thanks Halon for the link.
- Disappearing local datastore on Django app engine
This frustrated me so I’m posting this quick note in case it helps someone else sometime. Apparently Google App Engine’s local server will occasionally just delete your local datastore for no reason. Just disappeared into thin air. Suggestion: if you use the Google App Engine launcher, when you launch the server the console output will print the location of your...
Percussion Lab - Live & DJ Sets from Around the World
Lots of great, free, downloadable sets here for the IDM enthusiast. Great job Praveen Sharma!
- The Memcache Python API - Google App Engine
I’ve become a big fan of Google App Engine and recently started using their dead-simple-to-use Memcache Python API. If you’re on App Engine, look into this for dramatically improved response/load times on your data-heavy pages. I’m blown away with how easy this is.
