Oakland Parking Violations and Fines

I just got a parking ticket from the City of Oakland, but the ticket didn’t have any indication of how much the parking fine was!

In the past, the tickets were accompanied by a sheet of paper that listed violations and their associated fines. Now, that list is not included, and the only ways to determine the fine amount would be to:

• call the City of Oakland

• look it up on the internet

Luckily I did manage to discover a listing of the City of Oakland’s Parking Violations and Fines.

Oct 15, 01:16 PM Comment

Tweet Design

This analysis of how to best write a Tweet is a fantastic example of how old school usability principles can be applied to “new” media.

Aug 24, 11:53 AM Comment

CakePHP ACL and Auth: Record Level Protection

The most common initial question people have when learning about the CakePHP ACL component is: “how do I let a user edit her own profile BUT only that one profile”?

The short story is that the CakePHP ACL component does not, nor is meant to, automatically provide this kind of record level protection.

Examples of how to do this are contained in this post.

Mar 1, 10:38 PM Comment [5]

How To Play Hearts With Only Two Players

To successfully play Hearts with two players a few modifications must be made to the game.

The key modifications that allow you to play the game with only two players are:

• each player is only dealt 7 cards
• each player always draws a card after playing a card

• a trick consists of 4 cards successively placed down by two players in an alternating fashion

The result is a game that captures the spirit of hearts, but with a lot more of an element of chance added. Some of the strategy that a 3-6 person game of hearts has will obviously not work as well. However, the added dose of luck that the rules below provide helps level the playing field for players of unequal skill, so that this game can be a way to introduce hearts to someone without them always losing.

Feb 14, 08:49 AM Comment [1]