The image histogram actually just displays a graph of how many pixels with each value appear, usually split into all three colors. Using the canvas imageData method its very easy to create a histogram. Basically its a matter of looping through the pixels, keeping track of how many appear at each value and then rendering out a graph.

I did it here. (only tested in webkit). In this example I never actually display a canvas, I use it to extract image data and then pass the dataUrl to image nodes. Canvas is awesome.

One time at a boat show I met sailboat designer Tom Wylie, famous for the Wyliecat, an unusual boat design. I asked him what the theory behind the design was. Was it faster? More efficient? He answered: “less bullshit. more sailing”. Which is to say that it may not be the fastest or best (or maybe it is) but it doesn’t matter, because the point is that there is a lot less work to sail the boat. Easier to reef, easier to tack, etc.

The point of all this is that aside from possible real, excellent uses of node.js I love hacking on it because it delivers the same thing for me. I can throw together a proof of concept really quickly, because there is no bullshit. No server config, no incomprehensible documentation. It uses the same language I use every day at work, so no context switching. If I have an idea I can get it running fast, easily and with less fuss. Less bullshit, more hacking.

Here it is, more or less.

function gotothingy(selection) {
var selectedplace, tempIndex
tempIndex = selection.selectedIndex
selectedplace=selection.options[tempIndex].value
parent.content.location.href = selectedplace
}

Not as bad I thought it would be.

Worst still, the first entry, by this guy, is 141.04kb with 12 requests and just shows ‘hello world’.

So, because I was up at 6 with the baby this morning I re-did the example (without pretty fonts) in under 5kb and one request. (actually only 2.2k gziped)

Doesn’t actually meet the rules, because css transitions don’t work in IE 9. Also I kind of cheated by making a document that isn’t technically valid and using a much crappier image. And I double cheated by requiring Firefox 4, chrome or safari.

UPDATE: This is a great answer to this post.

var routes = [

    /* / */
    function(request){
        if(/^\/$/.test(url.parse(request.url).pathname)){
            return {
                controller:'index',
                action:'index',
                data:{}
            };
        }else{
            return false;
        }
    },

    /* /about */
    function(request){
        if(/^\/about$/.test(url.parse(request.url).pathname)){
            return {
                controller:'index',
                action:'about',
                data:{}
            };
        }else{
            return false;
        }
    },

    /* /news/story/[0-9] */
    function(request){
        var test = /^\/news\/story\/([0-9]+)$/
                    .exec(url.parse(request.url).pathname);

        if(test){
            return {
                controller:'news',
                action:'showStory',
                data:{
                    storyId:test[1]
                }
            };
        }else{
            return false;
        }
    }
];

As you can see, I’ve written the same function twice at the top, more or less. Now there are a couple of ways to refactor this. The obvious one of course is to have the function which acts on this array check if the input is an object or a function and act accordingly, so that the route could just be an object with a regex and info about the action and controller. I decided not to go with this option because I like to avoid code with lots of switching and cases if possible, just running the function seems much cleaner to me.

So instead I created a function that would create the most common case functions. That way I could write my routes like this:

var routes = [

    /* / */
    r(/^\/$/, 'index', 'index'),

    /* /about */
    r(/^\/about$/, 'index', 'about', {foo:'bar'}),

    /* /news/story/[0-9] */
    function(request){
        var test = /^\/news\/story\/([0-9]+)$/
                    .exec(url.parse(request.url).pathname);

        if(test){
            return {
                controller:'news',
                action:'showStory',
                data:{
                    storyId:test[1]
                }
            };
        }else{
            return false;
        }
    }
];

Much cleaner, just as flexible, and to the caller it looks exactly the same, because the function ‘r’ returns a function that looks like the one I created for the news story, like so (I also added the feature that query variables would be added to the data object):

function r(regex, controller, action, data){
    var exp = regex,
    d=data || false,
    ret = {
        controller:controller,
        action:action || 'index'
    };

    return function(request){
        var uri = url.parse(request.url, true);
        if(exp.test(uri.pathname)){

            //get the query string and add it to the data
            var retData = uri.query || {};
            if(d){
                for(var i in d){
                    retData[i] = d[i];
                }
            }

            ret.data = retData;

            return ret;

        }else{
            return false;
        }
    };
};

People like to steal iphones. Its a fact of life. For the most part they just want to sell the phone without your sim card or your data. However, if you are like me you keep a lot of stuff on your phone…a contact list of course, but more importantly you keep your email on it. Also of course a thief could use it to call their best friend far away for free. To prevent this phones have always had the feature of a passcode, which you should be using already on your iphone. At some point in the recent past apple added an even more useful feature: you can set it so that the phone erases itself after 10 incorrect passcode entries.

To enable this setting follow these steps:

Go to general settings:

Click on “Passcode Lock”

Enter a passcode you won’t forget, then set “Erase Data” to on.

Then you should be pretty much only out an iphone when it gets stolen. Still sucks, but not as bad.