Brian Tomlin

Earthquake + Twitter Map Mashup

Brian — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 23:06:11 +0000

I recently had a hankering to dust off my Google Maps API hat and throw together a mashup with their v3 API. After two days of coding late into the night (during my off hours) I am proud to present the initial version of this mashup application.

This app combines recent earthquake data from the USGS with a localized Twitter search. By using words like “quake” and “earthquake” to filter the results, the tweets are then plotted on the map.

I wrote this application using the following languages and libraries:

HTML5
JavaScript
JQuery
JQueryUI
PHP
Google Maps API
Twitter Search API
USGS Data API

In later posts I will outline how I created it and what my plans are for it’s future. (I’ll also provide a link to the full source code)

For now, you’ll just have to play with it yourself.

Earthquake Twitter Map Mashup

Disneyland Fight Club

Brian — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:43:53 +0000

While he may have lost the fight with employees at Disney’s California Adventure in Anaheim, CA but he sure took the pepper spray like a champ.

Remember kids, when dad gets drunk and belligerent at a theme park be sure to break out your smartphones and record away!

Blurring the Lines Between Web and Mobile Apps

Brian — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:36:43 +0000

In the age of HTML5, CSS3, advanced JavaScript libraries, and modern browsers the difference between web applications and compiled mobile applications is shrinking at a rapid rate.

In his blog, Pete LePage highlights the opportunity for web apps to bridge the UI gaps that their mobile counterparts fill and in some cases can even replace. Always keep mobile and tablets in mind when developing your future web applications!

Building A More App-y Web

HTML5 Boilerplate v3.0 Released

Brian — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:35:33 +0000

The guys and gals over at HTML5 Boilerplate have just released version 3.0 of their HTML5 template. What was already a solid boilerplate design has been trimmed down to be even leaner and meaner. I’m still reviewing the details but so far I like what I see.

Not familiar with HTML5? This boilerplate template is an excellent learning tool that provides an extensive list of tips and tricks to make your pages HTML5 compliant while optimizing them to load as fast as possible.

It doesn’t matter what your server-side codebase consists of, the templates on HTML5 Boilerplate will work for you. If you haven’t given it a chance yet, now is the perfect time to try it out.

New Site Launched

Brian — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 05:14:49 +0000

The site redesign has finally here. My personal website had languished for quite some time and was being slowly strangled by GoDaddy’s atrocious hosting servers. I used this as an opportunity to scrap the old site and move to a much faster and flexible web host. (WebFaction)

After playing around with various blog and CMS platforms I landed on WordPress after using it for my wedding website earlier this year. I am incredibly impressed with the quality of the application, it’s active community, the ever expanding number of plugins and extensions, and how easy it is to use on a daily basis. I used Drupal in a previous project and after banging my head against my desk for the thousandth time it was a breath of fresh air to move over to WordPress. I can’t say this enough, if you’re looking for a stable, easy to use blog/CMS platform I would make sure that WordPress is on your short list. (WordPress)

Now that the site is on a better web host and is leveraging a better platform, I will start updating it with all sorts of things. Even though married life is keeping me busy I’ve got a few good projects on my to do list and will make sure to keep the site up to date with what I’m working on and what I’m doing.

Thanks for stopping by!