Mike Ball

A simple example demonstrating all-CSS, no-JavaScript modal dialogs.

A few notes on JavaScript modules.

TimesGrapher seeks to shed light on what topics are covered by the New York Times from year-to-year.

A simple pattern for authoring integration tests for a Rails app.

A basic Ruby class example to illustrate a few of the language's features.

Too much internet.

An overview of automated tests for the uninitiated.

wp2middleman is a Ruby gem that migrates the Wordpress posts in a Wordpress XML export file to middleman-style markdown files. wp2middleman provides a wp2mm commandline executable, as well as a WP2Middleman module.

For Artclash’s 2012 West Philadelphia Fun-a-Day show, I drew 31 dream homes, one each day through the month of January.

Lobber is a simple command line utility used to quickly upload a directory to Amazon S3.

My map of 2009 – 2012 complaints filed with the Philadelphia Police Advisory Commission won first place at the 2013 Barcamp News Innovation Hackathon.

A few NICAR 2013 highlights and reflections.

How to use Tabletop.js as your JavaScript app's datastore.

Some small shell scripts to automate manual gem downloads & uploads.

An overview of a small Ruby gem I built on Philadelphia's public geodata.

A quick tutorial in using a simple NPM module I built.

A beginner's tutorial in deploying a Node.js app to Heroku.

A technique for mocking HTTP requests in your Node.js tests.

CSS authoring can hurt.

Using Node.js's fork to write tests against a server.

Leveraging git in collecting team performance metrics.

A set of images for use by Nate Rappole as a postcard series.

My notes on getting postgres running on Mac OS via a homebrew installation.

My notes on Nichalas Zakas' Fluent 2012 talk.

A beginner's guide to deploying a Wordpress app to Pagodabox's cloud service.

Leveraging open data to track Philly lobbying efforts.

How to add new fields to an existing, Heroku-hosted Django project's database.

The organizers of TEDxPhilly contacted me to create a seam-less, infinitely tiling illustration to be used as a background image throughout the conference’s web collateral.

Some beginner's notes; collected for a recently-hired junior developer.

A simple how-to outlining the Github fork, branch, and PR workflow.

I wondered if it could be done; here's a quick and dirty technique.

My quick solution to a CSS challenge.

A controversial technique for writing unit tests against private methods.

My notes on Addy Osmani's JavaScript design patterns ebook.

An overview of a quick bash function I recently wrote.

A bash function for working around a Subversion annoyance.

My notes on using Vim's surround plugin.

I partnered with Gabriel Farrell and Cecily Anderson to design and build ourphiladelphia.org for Common Cause, a nonprofit, nonpartisan citizen’s lobbying organization working to promote open, honest, and accountable government.

An overview of a basic Wordpress theme I was tasked in creating.

A typeface I created in illustrator.

Some colleagues and I recently released ourphiladelphia.org.

I created a simple brochure website and letter-pressed invite for Taylor & Juliette’s wedding.

Gabe Farrell and I developed this site for the New York-based transmission arts advocacy organization free103point9.

Clap Yr Hands is a zine I occasionally publish, usually featuring illustration and collage.

T-shirt design.

Battles: Sea and Land are two illustration-based narrative zines made in the Summer of 2006.

This quarter-size zine is a collection of illustrations I made while living and teaching English in Bangkok, Thailand in 2005/2006.

Hand drawn illustration for the zine Polaroid Celluloid.

For Artclash’s 2010 Fun-a-Day show, I drew 31 portraits, one for each day of the month of January.

Nate Johnson, Kara Schlindwein, and I collaborated on this book of 31 illustrated patterns for Artclash’s annual Fun-A-Day art show.