Larry Wright

Adding a Today I Learned Section to the Site

Sat, 23 Sep 2023 03:54:17 +0000

In the interest of sharing more things here, I’ve added a section to the site called “Today I Learned (TIL)” These are short write-ups of things I learned that don’t need a full blog post but I share them here because they might be useful to someone else (or just as likely: useful to me in the future). They are mostly going to be technical in nature (at least they all are so far), but it’s possible something non-technical will be included in the future.

You Can Use 1Password for Two Factor Authentication

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 12:52:00 -0500

I’ve been using 1Password for what seems like forever. My whole family uses it so that we can share passwords securely, things like streaming services, wifi, and the like. It works, I trust it, and it’s got a ton of functionality. I’ve also been moving everything I can to using multi-factor authentication, and have mostly used Authy for that, which works fine. Somehow I missed that 1Password had added support for this as well, and it can automatically fill it in for you.

How to Use Terraform with Existing Infrastructure

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 02:00:00 +0000

Using Terraform with existing infrastructure. Add the existing resource to your Terraform file: resource "aws_route53_zone" "primary_zone" { name = var.root_domain } Then run aws cli command to get the ID: terraform import aws_route53_zone.primary_zone <resource id> This adds the resource to your state file, as if it had been managed by Terraform all along. References Import: Usage | Terraform | HashiCorp Developer

How to Add a Canonical URL in Hugo

Tue, 22 Aug 2023 02:00:00 +0000

I was getting errors about canonical URLs in the Google console( “Page is not indexed: Duplicate without user-selected canonical”). After a little digging, it seems the fix is to add a link in the <head> tag to specify the canonical URL. This blog post shows how to accomplish this in Hugo. The solution looks like this: <head> ... <link rel="canonical" href="{{ .Permalink }}"> </head>

How to Fix Google Not Being Able to Fetch sitemap.xml

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 02:00:00 +0000

I ran into an issue in Google’s search/webmaster console. I submitted the sitemap url for a site and it gave me an error saying that it couldn’t fetch it. I confirmed that the XML was valid and that the url was reachable, but still no luck. I also tried a number of suggestions I found online but they didn’t help either. Then I found a suggestion deep in a comment thread somewhere that suggested trying a different url, like appending ?

Best of 2022

Mon, 16 Jan 2023 22:56:13 -0600

2022 was the first year in a few where I felt like I took a lot of pictures. After a few years of not taking hardly any it felt good to get back to it. The highlights of this year are: Senior portraits that I took of my oldest. Homecoming pictures of my daughter and her friends (from two separate homecomings no less) as well as my son and his date.

Some Useful COVID-19 Resources

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Like a lot of people, I’ve been closely tracking the COVID-19 pandemic. There are a lot of useful resources for keeping track of what’s happening with COVID-19, but there’s also a lot of misinformation. I wanted to put together a collection of the things that I’ve found to be useful, and more importantly accurate.

The Week In Links - Feb 8, 2019

Fri, 08 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

» Cal Newport on Why We’ll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes It’s a fair analogy, I think. I’m not ready to trade my iPhone in for a flip hone, but I’m rethinking my relationship with my phone and with social media in particular. » Watch a Homemade Robot Crack a SentrySafe Combination Safe in 15 Minutes Last Christmas, Nathan Seidle’s wife gave him a second-hand safe she’d found on Craigslist.

A Collection of Links About Github Actions

Thu, 24 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Github Actions is really intriguing, and I’m excited to get my hands on it. It’s not enabled for my account yet, but once it is I’m going to dive in and automate a bunch of things, starting with the publishing of this blog (which I currently do with AWS CodeBuild). While I wait paitently-ish, I’ve collected some links to things I’ve read about it. » GitHub Actions: built by you, run by us The blog post where Github announced Actions.

Maternity Shoot

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 18:25:52 -0600

I did a maternity shoot a few weeks ago. These are some of my favorite pictures from that session.

The Week In Links - Jan 19, 2019

Sat, 19 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

These are the things that captured my attention in the past week. » A story of an online stalker takes a bizarre turn down the rabbit hole I watched this story unfold on Twitter over a weekend, and it kept getting crazier. You should also read Chloe’s own post on the matter.. » The curious case of the Raspberry Pi in the network closet A story of a completely different sort, but no less interesting.

New Year, New Blog

Tue, 08 Jan 2019 12:40:27 -0600

Once Upon a Time on the Internet Once upon a time, I had a blog. This was in the days before social media, mostly. I’d occasionally write some longer things, but often times I’d just share links to things I found interesting. Sometimes I shared pictures. I even did a series of interviews at one point. It was never a terribly popular blog, but that wasn’t really the point. It was a creative outlet for me, a chance to work in a different medium - prose instead of code.

Best of 2018

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 22:56:13 -0600

I usually take a lot of pictures in a given year, and 2018 was no different. Out of the thousands of pictures I took, these are my favorites. Most are taken with my main camera, a Canon 6D, but some are moments captured with my phone.

It's a Girl!

Sun, 04 Nov 2018 16:43:36 -0600

License

Sat, 11 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Content license All non-code blog content is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA. Code license All source code files and snippets found on this blog, unless otherwise explicitly noted, are licensed under the terms below. Copyright 2000-2018 Larry Wright Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.

On the Beach

Thu, 26 Jul 2018 16:30:56 -0600

Lighthouse Staircase

Wed, 25 Jul 2018 16:59:46 -0600

Atlantic Ocean, Daytona Beach

Tue, 24 Jul 2018 16:30:23 -0600

Fireworks 2018

Wed, 04 Jul 2018 14:48:54 -0600

I made a second attempt at shooting fireworks this year. I forgot my remote shutter release, and so had to trigger the camera from my iPhone. That works OK, but there’s enough lag that it’s not ideal. They still turned out pretty well.

About Me

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a perpetually curious person who likes working with smart people to use technology to solve difficult problems. I have had a 20+ year career in technology, and in that time have had roles that included developer, team lead, manager, architect, and more. Since 2012, I have been focused on both infrastructure automation and cloud technologies, working with Chef, Jenkins, Ruby, Python, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and others. Currently I work for Accenture as an architect on the Accenture Cloud Platform.

Scenes From a Farm

Sat, 05 Nov 2016 15:36:22 -0600

A friend asked me to take some pictures of the farm that had been in their family for generations, before some of the items were sold. This barn has stood for over 100 years. Alas, it’s unstable and due to be torn down. The wood, however, is being salvaged. This convertible has been sitting idle for too many years. It’s been in a shed the whole time, so the paint is quite well preserved.

Breaking the Cycle

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 21:00:00 +0000

One of the recurring themes in my quest to be organized is that of todo list staleness. Inevitably, the cycle looks like this: I sit down, and in a burst of creative energy I create a beautifully crafted, perfectly organized todo list. It’s a thing to behold. Everything is broken down into nice orderly projects, each with a clearly identified next action. There are contexts assigned to everything: this one is an errand, this one needs to be done online, this one needs to be done in the kitchen.

Cyclemeter for iOS: A Great App for Cyclists (and Runners Too)

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 10:00:00 +0000

I try to ride my bike most mornings, assuming it’s not pouring down rain. It’s the same route most days, but it occured to me a few weeks ago that I really had no idea how far, or fast, I was riding. Being the nerd that I am, I decided to find a technology solution to this problem. Enter Cyclemeter Dedicated bike computers and GPS devices have existed for some years now, but like most everyone else these days, I’ve got an iPhone with a GPS built right in.

How to Use Prismatic to Discover the News You Care About

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 10:00:00 +0000

As the title of my blog implies, I’m a curious person. I like learning, and I’m addicted to keeping up on the latest news about things I’m interested in: programming, design, and the like. Sometimes I find it hard to keep up with it all. About a month ago, I discovered Prismatic, and it’s changed how I read the web by making it easier to find the news that I care about.

How to Make the Best Cup of Coffee at Home

Fri, 25 May 2012 09:00:00 +0000

I am a huge fan of coffee and over the years I have tried a lot of different means of preparing it. I currently own a french press, a drip maker, and a stovetop espresso pot. All of these make good coffee, with each having its own set of pros and cons. Last year, however, I discovered the best method for brewing coffee: Aeropress. It makes delicious coffee, takes up almost no space in your kitchen, and cleanup is easy.

Cool Tool: If This Then That

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 10:00:00 +0000

I tend to be a little skeptical of the new and shiny. There is often a lot of hype about how life changing some new website or gizmo is going to be. Sometimes, however, something comes along that does live up to the hype. The latest one I’ve found is a rather nondescript site called ifttt. The URL is strange, until you understand that it stands for “If This Then That”.

Steve Jobs

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:00:00 +0000

Like Marco Arment I’m not qualified to eulogize Steve Jobs, but I owe a lot to him so I need to say something. My first computer was an Apple //c. 1985. I spent a lot of time on that computer. A lot. Probably an unhealthy amount. I was a nerdy kid to begin with, and I instantly fell in love with it. I spent endless hours on that computer. Playing games, writing programs in BASIC, and generally just exploring the new world that it opened up for me.

Backing Up Your Data With Fog

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Fog, in case you haven’t heard of it, is a fantastic cloud computing library written in Ruby. It provides a unified interface to several popular cloud computing platforms(including Amazon, Rackspace, Linode, and others), making it easy to interact with them from Ruby. It currently supports four types of cloud services: storage, compute, DNS, and CDN. Fog has become very popular lately, and serves as the backbone for Chef’s cloud computing functionality, which is how I first became aware of it.

Handling Incoming Email With Your Web Application

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 12:00:00 +0000

This morning I was looking for a way to handle incoming email in a web application (similar to the way Highrise and Evernote let you email things to a special email address and have them put into their system). There are a number of ways to do this via procmail, or by using something to connect to your mail server using POP or IMAP and reading emails, but I was looking for a way to do this without having to host my own email infrastructure.

The Week in Links - 12/4/2010

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Full-Ack: an Emacs interface to Ack Ack is a useful little app for searching source code. If you ever use grep for finding things in your code, switch to ack immediately - you won’t regret it. This is a handy front end to ack for Emacs users. Information architecture: A How to I’ve been learning about information architecture lately as it’s becoming increasingly important for my job. This is a good overview.

The Week in Links - 11/11/2010

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 06:00:00 +0000

Things You Should Do Immediately After Launching a Website Some of these are common sense, but there are quite a few non-obvious ones here. A good checklist. Running Shells in Emacs: An Overview | Mastering Emacs Working with shells in Emacs is very useful; I almost always have a small one running at the bottom of my window to run commands in. This explains the differences between the different kinds of shells in Emacs, how to use them, and how to change their settings.

Training Your Technical Staff When You Don't Have a Budget

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 22:00:00 +0000

When budgets get tight, it can be difficult to provide adequate training for your staff. Over the last couple of years, I’ve found some ways to provide some training even in the face of a shrinking (or non-existent) budget. Regional conferences If you still have some budget, but maybe just not as much as you are accustomed to, look to smaller regional conferences as an alternative to the larger national ones that are in major cities.

The Tools I Use

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Inspired by Mike Gunderloy’s recent blog post, I decided to put together a list of the tools I use, both hardware and software. I use a Mac at home and a Windows laptop at work; I plan to cover the Windows tools in a later post. Hardware MacBook Pro My primary computer is a late-2007 17" Macbook Pro with 2gb of RAM and a 160gb hard drive. I love this laptop, but I made two mistakes when buying it.

Generating Realistic Test Data With Ruby

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:00:00 +0000

Generating semi-realistic test data for an application can be a pain. If the data already exists, as in the case of an upgrade to an existing system, you can generally create data based on the existing database. But what if you need a large sample of data for a brand new system? If you have simple data requirements, there are some Ruby gems that can help you out. Faker is one such gem, which lets you generate realistic names, addresses and phone numbers.

A Collection of Great Tools for the Ruby Developer

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:00:00 +0000

I’ve been a bit heads-down lately, working on a super-secret project in Ruby. More on that in the near future, but in the meantime I wanted to share about a few things that I’ve started using. Shoulda When I started my new project, I wanted to try one of the new testing frameworks for Ruby. The problem is there are a number to choose from. What to do… I settled on Shoulda.

The Programmable Government

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 10:00:00 +0000

We are headed toward a time where the workings of government are much more visible to the American public. Through things like the Freedom of Information Act, this information has technically been available for some time - but not in a form that is easily consumed. This is starting to change. The emergence of open APIs that provide access to information about how the government is operating is a massive step in the right direction.

A Brief Introduction to the Arduino

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:00:00 +0000

:http://www.flickr.com/photos/remkovandokkum/2667608562/in/set-72157606159601535/ For Christmas, I got an Arduino. Well, really I got two coffee pots. Identical ones. So I returned one of them to Amazon, and used the refund to buy an Arduino starter kit. It’s a neat device, with a ton of potential. Here’s why. Ok, so what is it? The Arduino is an open, hackable microcontroller, designed to be easy to program and easy to build things with. Simply put: the ultimate hacker toy.

Interview: Mike Rohde - Designer, Blogger, Sketchnote Artist

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Introduction Today’s interview victim is Mike Rohde. I’ve followed Mike’s blog for a number of years, and I had the good fortune to meet him at the inaugural SEED conference (see his coverage here and mine here). Mike has gained fame recently for his Sketchnotes - notes and hand-drawn pictures from events such as An Event Apart, SEED, and the upcoming SXSW 2009, but apart from that he is a talented writer and designer with a large portfolio of websites, logos, and other impressive work.

The Coming Decline of Rss and Atom

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 10:00:00 +0000

Ever since I discovered Bloglines some years ago, I’ve been hooked on RSS. I subscribed to a slew of feeds and treated it like a to do list, always trying to get it to zero. Subscribing to those feeds enabled me to see and learn about a lot of things I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Since that time, RSS feeds have been my primary source of what’s new and interesting in the world of technology.

Some Software Was Harmed in the Making of This Site

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:00:00 +0000

As noted on the about page, I decided to write my own software to run this site. The following technologies were harmed in the making of this site: Ubuntu Linux on VPSLink VPSLink has good deals on VPS hosting. I pay $24 per month for a 256mb VPS, with impressive uptime. I originally intended to go with Slicehost, but they had no slices available at the time (and didn’t for several months as I recall), but I have not been dissapointed with VPSLink.

Welcome to the New Site

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 14:00:00 +0000

I’ve maintained a blog since sometime in May of 2005. As with many blogs, posting regularity varied. Sometimes it was daily, sometimes a month or two would go by with nothing new at all. This is something different. The content on the old site changed over time, just like it’s author. Interests come and go, technologies that were once shiny and new have lost some of their shine. I stopped writing short posts that were mostly links to other people’s content, and starting writing longer articles.

In Defense of Twitter

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Twitter bashing has become a bit of a past-time for some people. I don’t think that the criticism leveled at Twitter is fair or accurate. It is generally based on a misunderstanding of the technical problems they are facing. In the case of TechCrunch, it’s a desire to drive traffic to the TechCrunch website by fabricating conflict and making personal attacks. Twitter has had a hard time scaling. This is obvious to anyone that uses the service, and is readily admitted by the people behind Twitter.

Cool OS X Application: Shelf

Thu, 29 May 2008 09:00:00 +0000

One of the most useful ideas I’ve seen in the past few years was Dashboard. Dashboard was an open source project launched by Nat Friedman of Ximian (since acquired by Novell). It’s aim was to provide a “dashboard” of information relevant to you while you were doing work. If you were having an IM conversation with your friend Bob, it would show you the last few emails Bob had sent you, previous IM conversations with Bob, Bob’s contact information from your address book, etc.

Links for 5/27/2008

Tue, 27 May 2008 13:00:00 +0000

I’ve built up a big backlog of links. Here’s the first batch. Unix Command Line Kung-Fu 33 Pages of command line goodness. I’ve been rocking the command line for almost a decade, but there’s a ton of stuff here I didn’t know. Update : Hal Pomeranz, who created this document, sent me an email with a link to the PDF version of the document. You can find it here. Thanks Hal!

Video Lectures

Sun, 25 May 2008 01:00:00 +0000

I stumbled across a great site tonight, chock full of the geekiest videos I’ve seen. The main sources seem to be university lectures. Very good stuff, and in a variety of disciplines such as Computer Science, Business, Chemistry, and Mathematics. Check it out: Video Lectures.

The Two Kinds of Programmers

Fri, 16 May 2008 02:00:00 +0000

In my time as a developer, and now managing a team of developers, I have come to realize that there are two kinds of programmers: the Journeyman and the Craftsman. These terms aren’t mine - I’ve seen them used other places - but they describe the developers I’ve worked with pretty well. The Journeyman …knows one programming language. …knows one operating system. …can’t be bothered to learn something on their own.

My Favorite New Site: Tripit

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 03:00:00 +0000

I’d heard (first from Joel Spolsky, I believe) about a cool new travel planning site called Tripit. I’m making arrangements for a trip to St. Louis later this month, and so I thought this would be a good opportunity to try it out. To say the least, I’m impressed. The first thing that I noticed was the registration process: there isn’t one. All you have to do is take any travel-related email (hotel confirmation, airline itinerary, etc) and forward it to plans@tripit.

Links for 4/2

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:00:00 +0000

A list of random and assorted things I have found lately New York Times blog on open source technology at the Times “A blog about open source technology at The New York Times, written by and primarily for developers. This includes our own projects, our work with open-source technologies at nytimes.com, and other interesting topics in the open source and Web 2.0 worlds.” There are a lot of nice posts in there, including one on how they used EC2 to convert their archives to PDF.

Mac Question: What Books Should I Buy?

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 15:00:00 +0000

I’ve owned the Macbook Pro for a little while now, and am getting comfortable with OS X. I think it’s time to dig a little deeper though, so I’m going to buy a book or two. I’m a long time computer user, and have a lot of *NIX experience, so I’m not looking for something too basic. I’d like something that will teach me the ins and outs of the whole operating system, and let me go from being “comfortable” to “power user”.

Is SwitchPipe the Solution for Rails Shared Hosting?

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 01:00:00 +0000

Peter Cooper (who I interviewed recently ) has just announced SwitchPipe, which aims to make deploying and hosting Rails (and other frameworks, such as Django) applications easy. From the site: Introduction / Overview\ SwitchPipe is a proof of concept "Web application server" developed in Ruby. More accurately, it's a Web application process manager and request dispatcher / proxy. Backend HTTP-speaking applications (Web applications) do not run directly within SwitchPipe, but are loaded into their own processes making SwitchPipe language and framework agnostic.

Links for 1/29/08

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 02:00:00 +0000

Monday Question: What Is Your Text Editor, and Why?

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:00:00 +0000

Monday Questions is a recurring series on Approaching Normal. For more questions like this, please visit the archives The text editor is the programmer’s main tool. The best programmers I know are masters of their chosen editor, whatever that might be. Knowing how to be productive with your editor can make the difference between a good developer and a great developer. So today, I’m asking you to share with us what your favorite text editor is and why.

Monday Question: What Music Do You Code By?

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:00:00 +0000

Monday Questions is a recurring series on Approaching Normal. For more questions like this, please visit the archives Most people, it seems, listen to music while they work. Whether it’s to aid concentration or drown out their coworkers, I see most people do it. So today’s question is: What music do you prefer to code/design/whatever by? I have very diverse musical tastes and listen to just about everything, but I find that lyrics are distracting when I need to concentrate.

Monday Question: What Is Your Development Machine?

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 12:00:00 +0000

Monday Questions is a recurring series on The Curiosity Project. For more questions like this, please visit the archives As previously noted I recently switched my development environment from a Linux laptop to a Mac. This Monday’s Question is: What is your development machine? Tell us your OS, hardware specs, etc.

Interview: Geoffrey Grosenbach on PeepCode, Entrepreneurship, and Making Book Publishing Easier

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:00:00 +0000

This article is the second in a series of interviews that I will be conducting over the next few months. For the other interviews, please visit the archives Thanks for agreeing to do this interview. Can you start by telling everyone a little bit about yourself? I live in Seattle, home of the world’s most pretentious Ruby brigade. I’ve been doing professional development for almost 10 years. Do you consider yourself a developer who happens to be an entrepreneur, or is it the other way around?

Interview: Peter Cooper on Rails, Entrepreneurship, and Developing on Linux

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:00:00 +0000

Note: This is the first in a series of interviews I will be doing over the coming months. Thanks for agreeing to do this interview. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? I’m Peter Cooper, a Ruby developer and author from the wild, barren north of England. I’m probably best known in the Ruby community for being the author of Beginning Ruby, published by Apress, as well as the editor of Ruby Inside, the most popular Ruby related weblog.

Coming Soon: Interviews

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 11:00:00 +0000

Beginning tomorrow, I’m going to be publishing a series of interviews. I’m going to start with notable people from the Rails community, but over time I would like to branch out into other areas. The first interview will be with Peter Cooper, whose book Beginning Ruby I reviewed recently. In the coming weeks I will be publishing interviews with Geoffrey Grosenbach and Robby Russell, with more to follow. If you have suggestions for other people I should interview, please leave a comment or send me an email (my email address can be found on my about page:http://larrywright.

Monday Question: What Source Code Management System Do You Use, and Why?

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Monday Questions is a recurring series on Approaching Normal. For more questions like this, please visit the archives I’ve been a CVS and SVN user for a number of years. Recently I’ve been watching all of the buzz around distributed SCMs, Git in particular. Git has been adopted by a number of projects lately, Rubinius being the one I noticed most recently. I took down my SVN repository when I moved web hosts, and haven’t put it back up yet.

Monday Question: What Books Changed Your Life?

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Monday Questions is a recurring series on Approaching Normal. For more questions like this, please visit the archives I’m an avid reader, if you haven’t guessed by now. So today’s question is What books have changed your life? As always, post your answers in the comments below.

Monday Question: What Are Your 3 Favorite Technical Sites?

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Monday Questions is a recurring series on Approaching Normal. For more questions like this, please visit the archives I’m always on the lookout for good sources for technical information. So, today’s question is: What are your 3 favorite technical sites? Post your answers in the comments below.

Rails Snippets - 11/29

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Holy Shmoly, Ruby 1.9 smokes Python away Initial performance numbers would seem to indicate that Ruby 1.9 (due by Christmas) will be lots faster. Quoted-Printable: My .irbrc If you spend a lot of time in IRB (most of us probably do), it’s worth taking the time to learn how to customize it. This is a good start. Faker Nice clean library to generate fake data. The home page says it’s a port of Perl’s Data::Faker library, which I’d never even heard of.

Book Review: Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:00:00 +0000

I think Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional is a better first Ruby book than the venerable Pickaxe. The previous statement is almost heresy in the Ruby community. Don’t get me wrong, you should own the Pickaxe. It’s a great book and certainly lives up to it’s description as “the definitive reference to Ruby”. However it’s much more of a reference book than an introduction to the language. And it’s huge - 864 pages.

Monday Question: Who Are You and Why Are You Here

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Monday Questions is a recurring series on Approaching Normal. For more questions like this, please visit the archives Feedburner tells me that I now have over 100 subscribers to my RSS feed. That of course doesn’t include the people who read this via Planet Ruby on Rails. In honor of this milestone, today’s question is: Who are you, and why are you here?. I’d like you to introduce yourself, and tell me why you come here.

MacBook Pro After One Week

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:00:00 +0000

So I’ve had the MacBook Pro for a full week now. Here’s my assessment. I don’t at all regret the decision to get the refurbished model. I saved $400 and the unit appears to be flawless. That said, the Wireless Mighty Mouse I bought with it was D.O.A. This thing is really, really fast. Apple customer service is awesome. So the Mighty Mouse was dead. I called Apple’s tech support and explained the situation.

Book Review: Practical Rails Social Networking Sites

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:00:00 +0000

Summary Rails Social Networking Sites walks you through the process of building a Web 2.0 social networking site (something like MySpace), called Rails Coders that includes the features you would expect in that sort of site: User signup and management (based on restful_authentication) Content management Blogging (with web services) Markup languages like Textile and Liquid Mashups using Google Maps and Flickr photo management (attachment_fu and RMagick) Tagging This book is not, of course, about building social networking sites, though that does serve as the exercise in the book.

Monday Question: What Technologies Are You Exploring?

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Monday Questions is a recurring series on Approaching Normal. For more questions like this, please visit the archives This is a follow up to last week’s question How do you decide what technologies to explore? Today I want to know What technologies are you exploring? I’ll go first. Aside from Ruby and Rails, Erlang and CouchDB are the things that I’m currently spending time looking into. Post your answers in the comments below.

Rails Snippets - 11/13

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 12:00:00 +0000

RESTFul OpenID Authentication A plugin to do OpenID authentication in Rails, in a RESTful way. Off the Rails - An alternative Rails stack Competition is good. Merb and the like provide that competition to Rails. This article runs through an alternative to the Rails stack. It’s always good to keep an eye on what else is out there. Rands in Repose: The Nerd Handbook Ok, this is a bonus link. Not at all Rails related, but relevent to you if you’re reading this.

Monday Question: How Do You Choose What Technologies to Explore?

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:00:00 +0000

Monday Questions is a recurring series on Approaching Normal. For more questions like this, please visit the archives Technology moves at such a rapid pace that there is constantly something new that is tempting me to explore it. I find it very difficult to pick and choose which things to devote time to learning. So today’s question is: How do you choose what technologies to learn more about, and which to ignore?

I Bought a MacBook Pro

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 04:00:00 +0000

As a follow on to last week’s post, I ended up buying a 17" MacBook Pro this week. I went with a refurbished model (which saved me $400), and skipped the high resolution display. It should be here on Wednesday. It’s my first Mac, and I’ve wanted one for ages, so I’m excited to get it.

Rails Snippets - 11/7

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Troubleshooting Ruby Processes: Leveraging System Tools when the Usual Ruby Tricks Stop Working A new book from O’Reilly on troubleshooting Ruby (and Rails) apps. From the overview: This short cut introduces key system diagnostic tools to Ruby developers creating and deploying web applications. When programmers develop a Ruby application they commonly experience complex problems which require some understanding of the underlying operating system to be solved. Difficult to diagnose, these problems can make the difference between a project’s failure or success.

Monday Question: What Are You Reading?

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:00:00 +0000

I’m going to start posting questions for my readers every Monday. At least until I run out of questions. Last week, I posted a collection of mini book reviews. I have a bit of an addiction to books, which should be obvious by now. So today’s questions is: What are you reading? Doesn’t matter whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, technical or biographical. Let us all know what you’re reading (or have read recently).

Questions Before I Buy a MacBook Pro

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 19:00:00 +0000

So I think I’m about to buy a Macbook Pro - the 17" model specifically. Before I do, I have a couple of questions that I’m hoping someone can help me answer: Is the High Resolution (1920-by-1200) display worth the extra money vs the 1680-by-1050 display? I’m going to buy a Refurbished model from Apple, due to the substantial cost savings. Does anyone know of any reason not to? A quick google search doesn’t seem to reveal people having issues, but I thought I’d ask.

Rails Snippets - 11/2

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 13:00:00 +0000

New in Rails: Request Profiler Jeremy Kemper recently committed a request profiler to Rails. It lets you make a request to a URL repeatedly, and then see an HTML or text report of where your code is spending it’s time. This looks very handy. Building Tempo With Rails - Part I A walkthrough of building an app with Rails, which includes feature definition, using Piston to manage plugins, and Restful Authentication.

SEED Conference Recap

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:00:00 +0000

I attended the first SEED Conference on Monday. It was a great event - it exceeded my expectations, and was a bargain at only $395. The event itself was small (the website says 135, but it seemed like there were a few more than that), and relatively informal. The venue was the McCormick Tribune Campus Center on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology. The building is very interesting in and of itself, lots of different colors and textures, and the El runs right through the building.

Rails Snippets - 10/31

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:00:00 +0000

The Halloween Edition Obvious Code: Creating a simple news publishing system in Rails 2.0 One of the first tutorials I’ve seen that focuses on Rails 2.0. Deploy a Ruby on Rails app on EC2 in five minutes This would seem to make deploying a Rails app on Amazon’s EC2 very simple: EC2 on Rails is an Ubuntu Linux server image for Amazon’s EC2 hosting service that’s ready to run a standard Ruby on Rails application with little or no customization.

Rails Snippets

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 08:00:00 +0000

A collection of Rails links Using Paypal with Rails This is a nice step-by-step article on integrating PayPal with your Rails application, using ActiveMerchant. Rails 2.0 Features: Multiple Views I’ve only skimmed over the new features in the upcoming 2.0 release of Rails, but this looks like one of the nicest features. This is a good explanation of how it works and why it’s useful. Mongrel 1.0.3 is out A bugfix release of Mongrel is out.

SEED Conference

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 14:00:00 +0000

I will be at the SEED Conference in Chicago on Monday. If you’re reading this, and you’re going as well… say “Hi” in the comments below :)

What I've Been Reading

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0000

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz :http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385512058?ie=UTF8&tag=approachingno-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0385512058 Geeks are, generally speaking, much better with technology than people - I’m no different. But the fact is your ability to build and maintain relationships with other people will take you farther in life than any technical skill you can acquire. For a lot of people, myself included, these are just not skills that come naturally.

Marc Andreesen on Career Planning

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 02:00:00 +0000

Marc Andreesen has written a very good series of articles on career planning that is worth a read, regardless of whether you are just starting college or have been working for decades. Marc has a lot of good thoughts on how to choose a career, a college, and a job. He then goes on to explain his ideas around what skills you need to develop to be succesfull. The series so far contains three articles:

Paul Graham on Stuff

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 15:00:00 +0000

Paul Graham has a new article up called Stuff: I first realized the worthlessness of stuff when I lived in Italy for a year. All I took with me was one large backpack of stuff. The rest of my stuff I left in my landlady’s attic back in the US. And you know what? All I missed were some of the books. By the end of the year I couldn’t even remember what else I had stored in that attic.

Fake Steve Jobs Outed

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Fake Steve Jobs has been outed. It’s Daniel Lyons, a Senior Editor at Forbes. He was outed by Brad Stone of the NY Times . I had always suspected it was a journalist or writer of some sort - the writing quality was too good to be a random schmo.

Links for 8/4

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 21:00:00 +0000

An assortment of tasty distractions. A fun collection of classy insults. Here are a couple of choice ones: “A modest little person, with much to be modest about.” - Winston Churchill “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.” -Clarence Darrow What 120 calories looks like. Nice reminder. Via Jeremy Zawodny A productivity tip from Jerry Seinfeld I really didn’t believe this until I read it.

Random Things

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 05:00:00 +0000

I have a few articles I want to publish, but I’m holding off until I have this site moved over to Slicehost. In the meantime, here’s a kottke - style list of random things that have caught my eye lately. How to Charm a Woman I am(thankfully) long past dating, but just because you’ve convinced her to marry you doesn’t mean you don’t still need to charm her. How YouTube scales

Surely This Is a Sign of the Apocalypse

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 01:00:00 +0000

Just seen on TechCrunch: Why are you people searching for Britney Spears!? She is hardly the eye candy she once was so I just don’t understand how she has topped Yahoo’s most popular search terms for the fifth time in six years but is appears that the flashing, divorcing baby mama has. Tonight at 9 p.m. PST, Yahoo will release their most popular search terms of 2006. In the top five are Britney, WWE, Shakira, Jessica Simpson, and Paris Hilton.

It Really Just Makes Me Want to Buy an iPod for Spite

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 04:00:00 +0000

So, how’s Microsoft’s iPod killer being received? The Sun Times’ Andy Ihnatko sums it up: Result: The Zune will be dead and gone within six months. Good riddance. Yeah, what he said. I’ve not seen a positive review of this thing yet. And the junior marketing flunky who came up with “squirting” as the metaphor for transferring content wirelessly needs to find another line of work. It just sounds dirty. Like you could get slapped for saying it out loud in mixed company.

Seth Godin: The Best Time to Start

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 04:00:00 +0000

I’ll try to prevent this from becoming another Seth Godin lovefest, but Seth’s article on the best time to start a business was too good not to write about. From the article: The best time to start is when you’re out of debt. The best time to start is when no one is already working on your idea. The best time to start is after you’ve got all your VC funding …the best time to start was last year.

A Change in Perspective

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 03:00:00 +0000

Photo by Tom Stone I often find that it’s difficult to be content with what I have in life. It’s too easy to focus on what you don’t have - a new car, a bigger house, that shiny new MacBook Pro - and forget about how much you do have. Modern society doesn’t make this any easier, particularly in the geek culture where something you must have comes along every few seconds it seems.

Free Web Design Resources

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 03:00:00 +0000

It’s a poorly kept secret that I couldn’t design my way out of a box (take note of the generic template used on this site). Therefore, when I need to put together a web page I often turn to free html/css templates as a starting point (or if nothing else, a starting point). Here’s a few of the sites I’ve discovered with decent html/css templates: Open Source Web Design - One of the oldest sites, and one of the best.

Links for 10/31/06

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 03:00:00 +0000

The latest in a long series of things distracting me from other things that are likely far more important: Sun: Learn about JRuby - I look forward to playing with this someday soon. Yahoo: Ruby Developer Network - Yeah, I’m a little late on this one. Included just in case you have spent the recent months in a cave. Free CSS Templates Very nice stuff here. The Shire of Bend, Oregon - Middle Earth-ish homes.

David Galbraith on Sustainable Business Models

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 14:00:00 +0000

In response to the previously mentioned buyback of Odeo, David Galbraith has written an insightful article on the topic of building companies with sustainable business models. His position (a smart one) is that venture capital shouldn’t be the default, it should be for the edge cases - companies with big infrastructure needs that are growing more rapidly than they can manage. From the article: Every venture funded tech company is predicated on the idea of ’exit’, the point where the company is sold to a bigger one or has an IPO, so that the investors see a return and move on.

Apparently, I'm a Joiner

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 13:00:00 +0000

I typically avoid joining each new social networking thingy that comes along, but I’ve joined two lately. The first was LinkedIn. You can view my public profile here, feel free to add me if you’re so inclined. My email address associated with me there is larrywright at gmail dot com. The second one was Twitter, which is a new-ish site from the folks at Odeo (which, as an aside, was recently bought back from the investors - way to go Ev), that lets you keep up with what your friends are doing at any given moment.

Links for 9/18

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 01:00:00 +0000

A random sampling of the things that I’ve found interesting lately: Airplane Seat Etiquette If you ask me, reclining your seat on an airplane is a declaration of war. There are few things in the world that are ruder. Mark Fletcher leaves Bloglines He’s technically leaving Blogline’s owner Ask, but that’s a minor detail. I was a happy Bloglines user for a long time, but it started to lag behind the other readers.

How to Make Sortable Tables in Textile

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 02:00:00 +0000

One of my favorite organizational tools is Instiki. I use it for note-taking, maintaining reference information, and keeping lists. I have several lists that I keep in tables, and the other day I had need to make them sortable. Here’s how I did it. The first thing you need is Stuart Langridge’s sorttable Javascript library. This is a library that allows you to make any table sortable, just by giving it a class of “sortable”, and a unique ID.

Partitioning Databases in PostgreSQL

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 01:00:00 +0000

I recently came across a presentation given on migrating a very large database (as in, tables with 1.8 billion rows) from Oracle to PostgreSQL. It describes some of the issues they had along the way, including having to move from Linux to OpenSolaris due to stability issues. One of the more interesting challenges they had to solve was the lack of support for partitioning in PostgreSQL. Oracle allows you to partition tables, so for example if you had a large table, you can cluster the data into various segments - dates in their case.

Links for 8/28

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 01:00:00 +0000

Free Programming and Computer Science Books - No explanation needed Getting Started With Getting Things Done One of the most popular posts on 43Folders, and a great introduction to Getting Things Done 16 Year Old Guitarist Plays Pachelbel’s Canon Pretty amazing Guy Kawasaki - Ten Things To Learn this School Year - Includes “How to survive a meeting thatâ€™s poorly run”, and “How to explain something in thirty seconds” among other great advice.

What I'm Reading

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 02:00:00 +0000

I tend to read a lot. I’m one of those people who has four or five books in various states of being read at all times. I’m always interested in what other people are reading, so I thought I’d share the books that I’m currently reading, or have just finished: Practices of an Agile Developer I’m about 1/2 way done with this one. I like it so far, but I’ve liked every book from the Pragmatics that I’ve read.

Links for 8/24

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 02:00:00 +0000

Ten Things You Shouldn’t Buy New The usual suspects are here, but there’s some things I hadn’t considered. The Complete Running Network - New blog dedicated to running. I’m trying to get back into running, so this is a useful resource. Writing a Typo Sidebar Test First Just what it says, good insight into the process. Datebocks - Intuitive Date Parsing - Javascript library that let’s you handle dates like “Tomorrow”, and “Next Friday”, as well as more traditional date formats.

Salaries: Keep Them Secret or Make Them Public?

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 02:00:00 +0000

I found an interesting pair of articles recently covering the topic of salaries. The first article, Why secret salaries are a baaaaaad idea, makes the case that all salaries should be public within a company. The arguments are pretty compelling, especially since I just finished reading Ricardo Semler’s book Maverick, which is an extraordinary book about an extraordinary company in Brazil. Among other things, employees set their own salaries, which are public.

Quote(s) of the Day

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 12:00:00 +0000

“We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.” Frank Tibolt “Far better it is to dare mighty things to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered with failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that know not victory or defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt

5 Tips for Interviewing Well

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 02:00:00 +0000

I’ve been interviewing people (mostly programmers and management/leads) for about 7 years. I would guess I’ve interviewed over 100 people (if you include college recruiting job fair “mini-interviews”). In that time, I’ve seen and heard some amazing things. I won’t share horror stories, because that’s not terribly helpful. Instead, I’ve put together a list of 5 ways to interview well. Without further ado: 1. Show up. This seems obvious, but let’s elaborate a little bit.

Links for 7-19

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 02:00:00 +0000

The various shiny objects that caught my eye lately. 11 Ways of Staying Focused Probably my biggest challenge, I need all the help I can get. Top 14 Stumbling Blocks for New Businesses Some of this I’ve seen elsewhere, but there’s soom good points in here. What is a Wiki - And How to Use One for Your Project I know what a wiki is, but this is a good introduction on how to leverage them for projects.

Links for 7/6

Sat, 08 Jul 2006 01:00:00 +0000

The Garden State Effect Good movie, great post Mark Pilgrim’s Essentials 2006. - Mark just switched to Ubuntu Linux after many years with Macs. Nice Markets for the Potential ISV Ian Landsman’s list of good potential markets. There’s some interesting thoughts in here, but his reasoning is more interesting. Rewired Brain Revives Patient After 19 Years The title says it all. Amazing.

6/25 Random Links

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 03:00:00 +0000

These are the shiny objects that captured my attention the last couple of days. Five Things Every Micro-ISV Should Know About Intellectual Property - Primer on IP Pricing a Project - Good advice on setting rates, as well as how to price a project as a whole Seth Godin - How to get traffic for your blog - My shameless fan-boying of Seth continues.

Relevance Announces Streamlined

Sat, 24 Jun 2006 18:00:00 +0000

Update: I somehow managed to misspell Relevance’s name. Fixed. I’m missing RailsConf this year (I have no excuse, I live two hours away). I’m living vicariously through the other attendees though, keeping an eye on the blog posts. One announcement that I just caught was that Relevance has announced Streamlined, which is a framework on top of the Rails framework. Some of the interesting features include (pulled from Justing Gehtland’s post):

6/23 Ruby & Rails Links

Sat, 24 Jun 2006 02:00:00 +0000

A few links that caught my eye today: An introduction to Ruby on Rails for DB2 developers Nice article if you’re a DB2 user and want to know what the fuss is about. Written by Edd Dumbill. Ruby-Gnome2 Website - Appears to be a decent GUI toolkit for Ruby. I wish someone would get QT’s Ruby bindings working on Windows. The thing I miss most about Python is PyQT. Sapphire in Steel: The Little Book of Ruby - Nice introduction to Ruby with plenty of code samples, in PDF form.

Metaphors and Analogies

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 01:00:00 +0000

From a list of metaphors and analogies used in high school writing: She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

Montastic Is Fantastic

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 01:00:00 +0000

Probably the worst title I’ve ever chosen for a post. Regardless, I’ve been using Montastic for a month or so now, and it’s great. It’s a free website monitoring service that lets you know by email when it can’t reach one of your sites. It’s got a limit of 100 sites (I’ve got a ways to go before reaching that). I’ve only received one false positive since I’ve started using it.

More Seth Godin

Thu, 08 Jun 2006 02:00:00 +0000

Seth Godin speaks at Google. Great stuff.

Why I Want to Have Seth Godin's Babies

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 14:00:00 +0000

From his post No to average: This is scary. It’s really scary to turn down most (the average) of what comes your way and hold out for the remarkable opportunities. Scary to quit your job at an average company doing average work just because you know that if you stay, you’ll end up just like them. Scary to go way out on an edge and intentionally make what you do unattractive to some.

American's Commutes Keep Getting Longer

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 01:00:00 +0000

According to Reuters, our commutes just keep getting longer and longer: Dave Givens drives 370 miles to work and back every day and considers his seven-hour commute the best answer to balancing his work with his personal life. Umm, yeah. This is obviously extreme, but it sounds like ridiculously long commutes are becoming more common: In the most recent U.S. Census Bureau study, 2.8 million people have so-called extreme commutes, topping 90 minutes.

Web Standards in a Nutshell

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This is the most concise representation of why web standards are important that I’ve seen.

Ruby Is a Titanium Mountain Bike

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 03:00:00 +0000

From Tour de Babel If languages are bicycles, then Awk is a pink kiddie bike with a white basket and streamers coming off the handlebars, Perl is a beach cruiser (remember how cool they were? Gosh.) and Ruby is a \$7,500 titanium mountain bike. Worth the read.

Why Is It So Hard to Be Like Apple?

Sat, 04 Mar 2006 03:00:00 +0000

By now, everyone has seen this video, which shows what would happen if Microsoft redesigned the iPod packaging. It’s spot on, but it got me to wondering: Why is it so hard to be like Apple? On the surface, it seems simple. Create well-designed, simple, user-centric devices, and promote the heck out of them. It seems simple, but clearly it’s not or everyone would be doing it. There have been countless “iPod killers” brought to market over the last few years, but none of them have made a dent in Apple’s market share.

Interactive Touchscreen Demo

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 14:00:00 +0000

This is the coolest thing I have seen in a long time. There’s some brief information about the research behind this here.

Chuck Norris Facts

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 18:00:00 +0000

A list of facts about Chuck Norris Contains gems like: Chuck Norris has counted to infinity. Twice. The Great Wall of China was originally created to keep Chuck Norris out. It failed miserably. Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits. Someone has way too much free time.

How to Integrate Remote Employees

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 13:00:00 +0000

One of my “must-read” blogs, Rands in Repose has a post seeking advice on keeping employees who work from home (or any other remote location) in the loop. I’m ready to learn and that’s today’s question, “How do you, as a remote employee, stay in the loop?” The converse, if you prefer, is, “How do you, as a co-worker or manager of a remote employee, keep everyone on the same page?

Things I Want to Own Someday Just to Say I Did

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:00:00 +0000

These are in no particular order: Apple Newton Messagepad 2100 NeXT Computers NeXTStation Sun SPARCStation Voyager Tandy Model 200 Why yes, I am a geek. How did you know?

The Power of Lists

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 03:00:00 +0000

One of the things that impacted me the most about GTD is lists. It’s such a ridiculously simple concept, but it’s incredibly powerful. I was reminded of this recently when I saw an article at Boxes and Arrows called Check It Twice: The B&A Staff Reveals the Way They Make Lists. It isn’t about GTD at all really, but it’s useful nonetheless. It includes things like “Holiday cookies”, “Refrigerator lists”, and even included a bit about Backpack, but the one that I found most interesting was called Mantras:

Micro-business Links

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of micro-venture links from the last couple of days: Mark Cuban on Success & Motivation Mark Cuban, whose writing style I really enjoy, posts a collection of the articles he’s written over the last few years on how he got to where he is today. Life Beyond Code - 10 Questions to ask yourself when you are small Rajesh Setty does a reality check for startups. I found both of these via microISV, which is a great resource for people interested in that sort of thing.

Just Do It

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 04:00:00 +0000

Steve Pavlina has updated one of his older articles into a new one titled Do it Now, in which he describes the method he used to graduate college in three semesters with a 3.9 GPA. From the article: In order to accomplish this goal, I determined I’d have to take 30-40 units per semester, when the average student took 12-15 units. It became immediately obvious that I’d have to manage my time extremely well if I wanted to pull this off.

John Vlissides

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 02:00:00 +0000

Via Martin Fowler, I learned that John Vlissides died after a long battle with cancer. John was one of the Gang of Four who wrote the definitive book on design patterns. His page on c2 has been turned into a sort of memorial wiki page by the people who had met him. Aside from the book, he has had a significant impact on a number of people. I do wish I had gotten to meet him.

Dating Rules for Software

Sun, 20 Nov 2005 21:00:00 +0000

Over at the Creating Passionate Users blog (which has more useful information on it than any other blog I can think of), there’s an excellent post called If your software was on a date which lays some ground rules for your applications: How would your software (or product, service, book, cause, etc.) behave on a date? Perhaps the best model for software developers is the singles scene, so let’s see how this time-tested dating advice for men might be applied to software:

Book Review - Ship It!

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 21:00:00 +0000

Ship It! By Jared Richardson and William Gwaltney Jr. Introduction Ship It! is a book about basics. It’s an education in the fundamental practices that are needed to develop software successfully. This is the stuff they don’t teach you in college. Ship It doesn’t espouse a particular methodology (such as Scrum or XP). Rather, it is a set of practices. The advantage of this is that you don’t have to adopt everything in an all-or-nothing fashin.

PostgreSQL Tools

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 02:00:00 +0000

A collection of tools that support PostgreSQL, courtesy of a commenter in this Slashdot post (both commercial and non represented here). pgAdminIII Side note on this one - there’s a beta of the new version out, the UI is quite improved. DBvisualizer EMS Postgresql Manager PHPpgadmin Sybase Power Designer ERWIN data modeller CASE Studio 2

Links for 11/7

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Creating a header background Good information for the design challenged (like me). Tag database schemas A good look at a variety of database schemas for “taggable” information. Creating a business logo Ian Landsman walks through the process of creating a logo for your business. Creating printable documents with Ruby Discussion of PDF::Writer, both standalone, and with Rails.

Great Languages Are Intuitive

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 23:00:00 +0000

One of the things that I love about Ruby is that it’s intuitive. If I don’t know the syntax for a particular thing, I can often just guess. More often than not, I’m right (or real close). That’s the mark of a great language. It behaves like you would expect it to behave. Ruby==Love.

Dean Kamen on Innovation

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 02:00:00 +0000

There’s an interview in the latest Make magazine with Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway and many other cool things. It’s a good interview, and definitely worth your time to read it. One thing that stuck out was this quote on designing things: “I do very little research as to what the product should be … if you do “product research”, the product that you end up with will be similar to what already exists”.

Finding Inspiration

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 19:00:00 +0000

As I meander through the internet, I often find sites that inspire the wannabe designer in me. I’ve started collecting them, so that when it comes time to develop applications, I have a collection to go to for inspiration. In the event that I’m working with a designer, it gives me something to send them and say “I like stuff like this”. Here are a few recent favorites: LukeW Portfolio

Wil Shipley on Unit Testing (and Why He's Wrong)

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 03:00:00 +0000

Wil Shipley is the author of several well known Mac applications, notably OmniGraffle and Delicious Library , and has a well-read blog. In a post here he asserts that “Unit testing is teh suck”. Although Wil is a bright guy and very likely a better programmer than I will ever be, this is completely out of touch with reality. I suspect anyone that has done TDD, or even used a unit testing tool would agree with me.

Don't Make Me Think - Second Edition

Sat, 17 Sep 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Steve Krug’s classic book Don’t Make Me Think has been released in a second edition. This book helped me understand web design and usability better than any other. via

Basecamp Talk on ITConversations

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 11:00:00 +0000

Jason Fried’s talk from O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference is up on IT Converstaions I’m only about halfway through, but it’s great so far. I’ve not seen Jason speak in person(Jason & Co, PLEASE schedule another Building of Basecamp in Chicago!), but I’ve heard several talks of his online, and they’ve all been great. This is no different.

Moving From Doing to Managing

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 19:00:00 +0000

5 years ago, I went from being a “doer” (ie, a programmer), to being a manager. This was not an easy transition. I suspect some people find this transition easier than others, but I think most everyone who makes the leap struggles in some way. If you’ve recently (or maybe not so recently) made this move, you may find an article by Dave Gray helpful. It’s entitled “The craftsman-to-manager paradox”. Dave defines the paradox as this:

KEXP

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 19:00:00 +0000

KEXP is an amazing radio station out of Seattle, that simulcasts online. They don’t play much in the way of mainstream stuff, but if your tastes run more towards the eclectic/alternative, you’ll enjoy it. They also have an impressive collection of live performances, and now even have a podcast that highlights artists you may not have heard of. Check it out, you won’t regret it.

More on FireFox Tuning

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 01:00:00 +0000

After my last Firefox post, I found an application that alleges to tune Firefox automatically. It’s free, but appears to be Windows only. via

Robert Scoble Is Not Right in the Head

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 21:00:00 +0000

In this post Robert asserts (as he has before), that “the thick client is coming back”. I’ll agree that some apps are best as desktop applications, but that list is dwindling quickly. Maybe you haven’t seen this, or this Robert, you’re starting to sound a little like these guys.

Speed Up Firefox

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 11:00:00 +0000

Firefox has seemed sluggish on my Ubuntu installation, which I attributed to my aging 1.1Ghz PIII, and rather limited memory (512MB). In a fit of frustration, I googled for “speed up Firefox” and came up with some good tweaks to the config that made a huge difference. If you are a Firefox user, you owe it to yourself to check this out. Link 1 - This is a good start, and if you do nothing else, make these changes.

Links for 8/27

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 02:00:00 +0000

MySQL Cheat Sheet - Commonly used MySQL commands, all in one convenient HTML page. Explaining TDD to a non-techie Great way to explain Test Driven Development. Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer? - I’m really surprised (or perhaps frightened) at how wrong I was on this quiz. Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby - Yeah, this is an oldie, but a goodie. This is chapter 3, the best (and funniest) introduction I’ve seen to the Ruby programming language yet.

MS Security Response

Sat, 27 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’m not a huge fan of MS, but there’s a fascinating article at eWeek on how Microsoft responds to threats (particularly this last worm). It’s an interesting insight into how good MS has gotten at responding to this stuff.

Color for Coders

Sat, 20 Aug 2005 23:00:00 +0000

If you’re design challenged (like me), you need all the help you can get. I stumbled upon a good article that explains color theory, with links to sites that implement various kinds of color schemes (complementary, monochromatic, etc). link

Python vs Ruby

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 01:00:00 +0000

Ian Bicking (a python developer I have a great deal of respect for) has a good comparison of Python and Ruby, focusing on the things that are unique to dynamic languages. link

Django vs Rails

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:00:00 +0000

There’s a relatively in-depth comparison of the Django framework to Rails over at Sam Newman’s site. It appears to be a relatively fair comparison. It’s interesting that both frameworks were extracted from large development projects in roughly the same time period, although Rails has been publicly available for longer, and has more mindshare at the moment. I’m happy with Rails, but I wonder whether I would have bothered with it if Django had been available when I started looking at Rails.

World's Hardest to Debug Programming Language

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 01:00:00 +0000

Someone wrote a programming language consisting entirely of whitespace (you knew it would happen eventually). Now maybe people will stop making fun of Python. via

Passion Reviews

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Kathy Sierra, who runs the excellent Creating Passionate Users blog, is doing a series of “passion reviews”. She’s started with http://www.37signals.com Signals. Interesting article, but I suspect if the Signals get any more positive PR, they’re heads may explode. via Ted Leung

Links for 8/10

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 01:00:00 +0000

Martin Fowler has a great introduction to Rake. If you’re not familiar, Rake is similar to Ant, but instead of build files written in XML, they’re written in Ruby. If you’ve ever written a complicated Ant script, you know how verbose and complicated they can be. Rake is the answer to your prayers. Novell has put OpenSUSE 10 into beta. Google Sightseeing is a cool collection of images from Google Maps.

Links for 8/6

Sat, 06 Aug 2005 06:00:00 +0000

A collection of links from the last week or so: Linux Command Line Tips A web site of Object Oriented Tips A very lengthy explanation of the f/stop A good collection of XHTML templates

Seth Godin on Small Companies

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 02:00:00 +0000

Seth Godin has a brilliant piece on the advantages of small companies. It seems to me that the greatest innovation in technology (particularly software) is being done by micro-companies. These are companies like 37 Signals(5 people), Robot Co-Op(7 people), and Delicious Monster(7 people). I think that larger companies tend to be very good at stifling creativity. There are notable exceptions (Google comes to mind), but by and large this rule seems to hold.

Endless Tinkering

Wed, 01 Jun 2005 01:00:00 +0000

I’m a big fan of GTD. A lot of people ramble on about “so-and-so changed my life”, but in this case it’s true. I had never been organized a day in my life until I discovered David Allen and his system. I’m not saying I’m some sort of uber-organized person, but I’m 1000% better than I was. There is a big community that has built up around GTD that spends a lot of time swapping tips on how best to implement the system.

Exporting a Database Schema in MySQL

Mon, 30 May 2005 21:00:00 +0000

File this under “Useful things to remember”. The following bit of command line magic will export the schema of your database. mysqldump –no-data –tables -u YOUR_USER_NAME -p DATABASE_YOU_WANT_SCRIPTED >> FILENAME.sql An example looks like this: mysqldump –no-data –tables -u larry -p contacts >> contacts.sql If you want the data as well, omit the “–no-data” portion.

How to Use Eclipse as a Ruby on Rails IDE

Sun, 29 May 2005 02:00:00 +0000

Update 11/23/2005: Months later, this is still apparently a popular topic, as it’s one of the most viewed posts here. Time has passed though, and there’s a better option: RadRails. It’s built on Eclipse, but includes Rails-specific tooling, which the configuration discussed below does not. It’s well worth your time to check out. In this short tutorial, I'm going to walk you through setting up a code editing environment for Ruby on Rails using the Eclipse IDE.

Automatically Deploy Your Rails App to a Test Server

Sun, 22 May 2005 17:00:00 +0000

Mike Clark has a great script to automatically deploy your Ruby on Rails application to a test server whenever someone commits a change to the subversion repository. I’m just starting to use svn for my projects, I’m going to have to try this out. You can read the article yourself here.

Web Design and Development Links

Sat, 21 May 2005 14:00:00 +0000

Here’s a collection of links useful to web developers and designers: Stuck Domains A website that lets you search for domains that have recently expired, by keyword. 196 Stylesheet Resources The title says it all. Lots of good CSS stuff here Design tips for non-designers A good set of tips here, particularly for those of us who aren't blessed with the gift of design sense. There's an awful lot of good stuff on YourTotalSite in general.

Backpack API

Wed, 18 May 2005 03:00:00 +0000

The Backpack web service has been available for a few short hours, and already O’Reilly has started using it on their Radar Blog. They’ve devised a nifty way of tying together content on their public backpack pages, with the Amazon API in order to produce their books page. This reminds me a lot of shell scripting on a *nix system, tying together applications to build something new. Very cool stuff.

Great Presentation on Ruby on Rails

Fri, 13 May 2005 02:00:00 +0000

Obie Fernandez of ThoughtWorks put together a great presentation on Ruby on Rails for the Agile Atlanta group. It does a good job of covering all of the things that make Rails great. See for yourself here. (via Curt Hibbs post to the rails mailing list)