Recently, I was refactoring some Jade views of an ExpressJS application which shared significant JavaScript code. The JavaScript part required some variables from the server. Generally, this can be done like this: script(type='text/javascript'). var user = !{JSON.stringify(userObject)}; Previously, the project had the following structure for many …

Just like the Android design and usage patterns, the development for the platform is going through some significant changes. The Google engineers revealed at last year's Google IO Android Studio, an IntelliJ-based IDE specialized for developing Android applications. But not just the IDE was a big upgrade over Eclipse. It …

Last week, we announced our open source boilerplates and promised an introductory blog post for the node.js server boilerplate. So here we go. As mentioned previously, we were getting annoyed with repeated implementations of account management. Even if a lot of it is just adding the excellent passport library …

We have a constant stream of almost daily ideas of new software products. Some are just barely enough for a good laugh, but some make it all the way to a published product. A lot of our ideas are somewhere in the middle, where in your head it's an awesome …

When Marcus and I initially talked about bundling our products in one brand and additionally, on occasion, offering our skills for hire, it took us longer to decide on a company name than on the technologies we are going to use. We both love node.js, providing scalable and fast …

Sorting in MongoDB can cause a lot pain (in the ass!). The problem: MongoDB always sorts case sensitive in the following order Numerics: 0-9 Uppercase letters: A-Z Lowercase letters: a-z For the following examples, assume the upcoming Tag schema and documents in our Tags collection: Schema { name: String, approved: boolean, …

Amazon S3 allows you to set permissions on file basis or per bucket. That is very helpful since you sometimes want to share a complete bucket with the rest of the internet. With the help of bucket policies you're able to make an S3 bucket publicly readable. However, you have …

The long five-month winter in Wisconsin left me with a few kilograms too much and I knew I needed to get back out there and exercise. I usually preferred listening to music during my long runs but I couldn't find anything enjoyable this year. Since my girlfriend pointed out that …