Paul Kim of Noodlesoft started blogging last month after I bugged him for months to do so. I do this kind of nagging with several people I know. I am hoping to improve the Mac blogging landscape by encouraging more development-oriented writing.

With Paul, it looks like I’ve succeeded. His latest article is a wonderful write-up on achieving the perfect gradient fill for an arbitrary path. He observes that simply applying a gradient to the bounding box can cause undesirable effects, depending on the shape being filled and angle of the gradient. Interesting!

I didn’t write the article, and I probably wouldn’t have figured out the trigonometry myself, but I can still take a little pride in that entry. In fact I get to take little tiny bit of credit for every great post he ever writes. I’m a blogging venture capitalist! If I convince enough people to write good stuff, then I can stop writing and just point people at their entries. Then I’ll have “really made it,” and I can get back to programming full-time!

Paul’s post describes how to perfectly mix colors in an arbitrary shape, but it also follows a sort of perfect mix for technical blogging. He probably followed these steps subconsciously, but let’s identify them for posterity:

1. Identify a problem related to your own experience.
2. Explain the problem in simple terms that non-specialists can understand.
3. Allude to but gloss over the difficult steps you went through in solving the problem (doing the trigonometry).
4. Present a working conclusion that everybody can share and enjoy.

Bonus points for pretty pictures with OmniGraffle.

I strongly encourage you to check out Paul’s blog if you haven’t already. It’s developing quite nicely, and I know where I’ll be turning the next time I have to fill shapes with gradients. I won’t be doing the trig myself!

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