As I was getting perilously close to filling up my old 256GB hard drive, I decided to treat myself to a 512GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD, which created an opportunity to upgrade to the latest Ubuntu, a task I’d neglected for two years. I usually relish Ubuntu’s semiannual releases—that is, until the Unity user interface landed.
I received an email from an editor at Fabrikzeitung, a monthly magazine published in Zurich, Switzerland by Rote Fabrik. They were planning an issue about QR Codes and asked whether I would write an article expanding upon my post, Why does that QR Code go to justinsomnia.org? Of course! As an aside: I believe this is the first article I’ve ever been commissioned to write—and got paid for.
Well, they sent me an actual physical copy of the issue, and it looks very cool.
Front cover of Fabrikzeitung #285
Here’s my article.
Code Confusion
For those who might be curious, you can read the full text here:
The last time Justinsomnia went under the knife was 2007, and the web has changed a lot since then. Allow me to impress this upon you with a single image. The graph below represents the percentage of mobile browser traffic to my blog over those last 5 years. Hello iPhone and Android users!
Mobile traffic from November 2007 to October 2012
In the span of a single year, mobile traffic jumped from almost nothing to nearly a third of my total traffic (before settling down around 15% this year). Given that there’s now a significant global audience of people browsing the web with smaller screens, I decided it was time to get up to speed on responsive web design. (If you’re in the same boat, I highly recommend checking out Apple’s developer docs on Configuring the Viewport. It was eye-opening.)
I spent last weekend in Indiana, celebrating the 90th birthday of my grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Barnette, known affectionately as Grandmommy to her six grandchildren, and Mary Lib to everyone else.