Paranoia is an application for Google Android mobile phones that aims to assist in the tracking and retrieval of lost or stolen devices. Interested?

We provide tracking via GPS or Wi-Fi positioning, and Call/Text Activity Logging. This allows you to get the location of your phone, and see calls placed or texts made with it. How does it know?

You alert your phone either through our online web service, or through SMS text commands if you do not want to register with us. (We understand your paranoia too. ;)

Want to see it in action? Check out our YouTube video below:

I think you’ll agree that our app is awesome. So head on over to the voting site ( http://vote.smartvasnet.com/mobdev/ ) and vote for us!

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¹ – Actually, I help run and manage this site, and provide the space, if you didn’t notice in his earlier posts. (Though Wil does help a lot.)

So vote for Paranoia from Nohako Studios, or I’ll pull the plug on the blog and throw his laptop on the ground, and you will never again get to read and enjoy his scathing indictments of whatever happens to annoy him.

I will also eat his face. ;)

So I’d like to let you know that I’ve been hard at work these past couple of days to fulfill that request and that I’m happy to announce the release of Baseline Aligned Grid. I got a little carried away, and went past “visual representation” and into “web application”. So hopefully, you guys will get some use out of it. I know I will.

If you have any problems with the application, please don’t hesitate to email me at levi.ong@gmail.com or simply comment here. For simple questions regarding operation, just comment here, so everyone can have the benefit of seeing the question/answer.

And now, a screenshot:

I’ve already linked to the app a couple of paragraphs ago, but just for good measure:

Baseline Aligned Grid »

Chances are if you haven’t read those articles or haven’t taken a class in information design or a course similar to that, you won’t understand anything that will follow. Of course, you’re welcome to read on, but I strongly suggest you check out the recommended reading.

Today I will be discussing how to align a grid to a baseline. More specifically, aligning a grid row to a baseline.

I don’t know if this topic has been discussed before, but I’m pretty sure my equation is unique. So if anybody else has produced the same equation, rest assured, I developed this independently. What I’ll show you today is how to turn this:

Baseline at 15 pt, margins at 3 picas, and much horror.

into this:

Much better. Calculations resulted in upper and lower margins of 3 picas, 7.5 pts. (Added: Columns. Don't mind them.)

Using this equation:

B*N*(A+1) – B = P-r (eq.1)

Where:
B = The gutter size as well as the leading/line-height (pretty much, the baseline
N = The number of row divisions you’d like
P = The total page height
r = The “remainder”, or the sum of both the top and bottom margins (if the top and bottom margins are equal, than r = 2m, given that m is the margin height)

A = The number of baseline-heights contained inside a single row. (Obtained via trial-and-error) Must be an integer. Usually ranges from 3 to 8.

The “A” variable may need some explaining, but perhaps it’d be better if I helped you visualize the equation in its entirety.

Let’s expand the first term into:

N*(B*A+B) (eq.2)

Think of B*A as the total row height, and B as the gutter. N is the number of rows. So if you add the total row height and the gutter, then multiply it by the number of rows, you get a series of rows with an extra gutter at the end. This is what the second term does: it subtracts that extra gutter.

This leaves us with the total “printable” page: the whole page minus all the margins. So we equate that to “P-r”.

Now look at B*A. This implies that the row height is a multiple of the gutter. All’s well and good, right? But it’s not that simple. Because A must be an integer, there’s no fixed way to find out how many baseline-heights will fit inside a row for a certain number of rows. The only way is to go through trial-and-error.

Contrary to what you may think, this can actually work to your advantage. If you look at eq.1, your B, N and P are fixed values. The only “unknowns” are r and A. This gives you a flexibility in determining how big you want your margin to be and then balance the row-height, or vice versa. What does this imply? It means that when you’re doing your calculations, you can either start off by setting a minimum margin and then calculate for A and then round off to an integer, or you can start off by setting a cell height and then see if the r value is positive or negative.

So that’s pretty much it. I hope this has been useful to you, and please don’t hesitate to ask questions.

1. I muted the white into a light gray, and lightened the black into a dark gray to reduce the overall contrast. It should be easier on the eyes now.

2. I’m not yet 100% satisfied with the comments section, but it’s already pretty close to how I envisioned it to be. Try not to look at the source code of the comments. You’ll see a lot of strange stuff. :)) Comment threading also works now, so you can reply to other comments. There will still be some changes to this section, but it’ll be kept to a bare minimum.

3. So far I’m liking this layout, and people I’ve asked seem to agree. Special thanks to Wil, Phi and Feanne for their critique.

I’m pretty much done for today; I’ll work on cleaning up the CONSTANTS layout tomorrow, and hopefully, get the archives working.

1. The white space: This is going to be a little tricky, as I really want to keep it pure white. I’ll have to find a way to offset the whiteness by manipulating the layout and maybe distributing the content more. If all else fails, I will have to make it off-white. But I doubt it’ll come to that.

2. The comments: I find myself unsatisfied with the current comments section. I want the names to be aligned outside the comments themselves, and I want there to be comment threading. (so people can reply to each other without  confusion) This is some complex coding stuff for my current level of competence, but I’ll try.

3. The layout: In conjunction with issue #1, I think I want to rearrange the layout a bit, just to see what works best. Right now I’m thinking of doing away with excerpts for the home page and just displaying the content all-out. We’ll see.

Those are pretty much the changes I want to make, (unlisted are the really minor stuff that probably won’t affect how you interact with this site), so expect some changes within the next few days (hopefully).

Thanks for all the support and encouragement you guys have shown on the “launch”. And the comments and suggestions! Very helpful stuff. Keep them coming!