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© Heroku

I’ve been using Heroku for some time now. Well, ever since the Heroku Gardens days — which was over a year ago. Seems longer. Anyway, I’ve got a handful of apps on Heroku. Some prototypes and some in production. I also have multiple accounts in play. The only problem is that this isn’t the easiest thing in the world to manage. In case you travel down this path, here are some tips.

Requirements

The following assumes you are on the MacOS, already own multiple Heroku accounts, have installed the Heroku gem, and have deployed a Ruby on Rails application to Heroku before. Otherwise, read the Quickstart docs and you’ll be up and running in no time.

Credentials

Let’s start with your credentials file (i.e. ~/.heroku/credentials). This file is usually created for you by the Heroku gem when you setup your first account. It is a text file with your account login (i.e. email address) on the first line and your password on the second line. To setup multiple accounts, I’d suggest the following:

• ~/.heroku/credentials - Your current account that is in play.
• ~/.heroku/account_1.credentials - Your first account.
• ~/.heroku/account_2.credentials - Your second account.

When you need to switch accounts simply copy the contents of the account you are switching to over the existing credentials file (example: account_2.credentials now becomes credentials). I wrote a couple of simple Ruby scripts to automate this:

• switcher.rb - Makes switching between your accounts a breeze from the command line.
• credentials.rb - This will echo your currently active account from the command line.

You can add the following aliases to your ~/.bash_profile file as follows:

• alias heroc="ruby <path to where you unzipped the script>/credentials.rb"
• alias heros="ruby <path to where you unzipped the script>/switcher.rb"

Now, from the command line, you can simply type “heros” and “heroc” to use the scripts. Of course, you can use whatever alias you want.

Security Keys

Right, so we have the credentials files out of the way but there is one last step. You need to associate your public key with each account. Here is my suggestion:

1. Change directory to ~/.ssh
2. Create your private and public keys for each account by running the following command: ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "<email>" -f ~/.ssh/<account>.identity
3. Type heros <account> to switch account and add the new keys for each: heroku keys:add [path to keyfile].pub

For each Heroku account beyond your first, you’ll need to make use of the SSH config file (i.e. ~/.ssh/config) as follows (thanks to the Heroku support team on this one):

• Host official.heroku.com
• HostName heroku.com
• User git
• IdentityFile ~/.ssh/<account>.identity
• IdentitiesOnly yes

Also, for each account beyond the first, you’ll need to switch to each app directory and type the following command: git remote add heroku git@official.heroku.com:<your app>.git. This will allow you to push and deploy your changes back to the Heroku servers and finalizes your setup.

Workflow

From this point forward, you can switch between accounts as follows:

1. Change directory to the app you want to work on.
2. Type heros to switch to appropriate account.
3. Make changes to your code.
4. Type: git commit -a -m “Your comments.”
5. Type: git push heroku.
6. Have a beer.

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© The Movie DB

A couple of years ago my brother and I set out to frame our own movie posters since the prices for poster prints can add up quickly. In our case, we bought paper prints from places like All Posters, attached them to foam boards (bought via Michaels) with 3M glue spray, built and stained wooden frames (all done by my brother), and finally we worked with a local glass cutter to encase the prints. The result was OK but not great. The use of the 3M glue proved to be tricky to get right and in some cases resulted in minor bubbling of the prints.

That was several years ago. Now I’m researching a different tactic: canvas prints. This would not require glass. Plus canvas would partially work as an acoustic absorber and reduce light reflection from the video source. Ideally, I’d like to obtain high resolution digital images of the movie posters and figure out a clever way to print these images myself onto canvas or fabric. Unfortunately, obtaining high resolution images (i.e. 4500 x 6000 pixels or higher) is proving rather difficult. The alternative is to simply shop for canvas prints, which is easier, and then frame them how you like. Here is what I have found so far:

• All Movie Replicas - Offers movie posters, replicas, busts, memorabilia, etc.
• Movie Goods - Mostly dedicated to movie poster and related images. They supply canvas prints as well a framing abilities.
• The Movie Poster Shop - Supplies movie poster and canvas prints.
• All Posters - A popular place for movie poster prints or canvas versions. They also support framing.
• The Movie DB - While not necessarily related to shops that supply movie prints for purchase, I thought I’d mention this site since it does supply movie-related information including digital images. Most images are in 1920×1080 resolutions. Good for desktop wallpaper.

For me, I’m not sure if I’ll go down this route, but it is worth considering.

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As full release of Ruby on Rails 3.0 draws near, I find myself collecting news, articles, and preparing myself for the transition. Here is what I’ve been reading so far:

• Reading material.
• Introduction.
• Approaching the upgrade.
• Getting up to speed.
• Upgrading to Rails 3.
• Automating a portion of the Rails 3 upgrade process with the rails-upgrade gem.
• Revamped Routes.
• Render Options.
• Active Record Query Interface.
• Understanding the ActionMailer API.
• Generic Actions.
• The Rails Module.
• Discovering Rails 3 generators.
• Validations.
• I18n changes.
• Signed and Permanent cookies.
• Creating new apps with the Rails 3 beta.
• Gem and Plugin Compatibility Checker.

I’m sure I’ll collect more as time rolls on. BTW, you can find these links and more on my Ruby page where I continue to capture useful Ruby information.

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So Firefox 3.6 has been released and is ready for download. With it comes the challenge of determining whether some of your favorite extensions still work and, if not, what the alternatives are. Luckily, in my case, this version release didn’t cause too much trouble. Here are a few issues I ran into along with their solutions in case it is of interest:

1. Easy Drag and Go - I really love the ease of being able to drag links on any page and have them open in a background tab. Unfortunately, this extension no longer works. The equivalent is QuickDrag.
2. Obtrusive JavaScript Checker - I really hate obtrusive JavaScript code. It is bad coding practice, a maintenance nightmare, and truly ugly code to read. This tool helps detect and quickly flag web pages that are bad. Unfortunately, this extension has been broken for some time. The alternative is the Inline Code Finder extension for Firebug which is a much better solution overall.
3. Dust-Me Selectors - This was a cool tool for detecting what CSS code is being used or not used on a web page. I like having it around to keep my CSS code tight. The equivalent to this tool is CSS Usage (a Firebug extension).

For a list of all my favorite Firefox extensions or Firefox related info in general, check out my Firefox page.

Its always fun to look over someone’s shoulder and see how certain technology is used so I thought I’d share my setup. In this case, I’m talking about the home screen of my iPhone since it where I keep the most trafficked applications.

Here is a break down of my home screen (left to right, top to bottom):

• OmniFocus - Inspired by the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen, this is the best app to implement David’s teachings perfectly via software. This app is heavily used (hence being in the first position). Sync’s perfectly with the desktop and truly is my digital brain. Well done OmniGroup!
• Groundwork - At one point I tried to do accomplish all professional work within OmniFocus (and still do when I’m the solely responsible). The only problem is that OmniFocus is for single use and doesn’t work well in a team/collaborative setting. This is why it is handy to have Groundwork around to sync with your Basecamp setup. Perfect for checking status and not loosing ideas while on the go.
• Nezumi - Almost all my Ruby on Rails apps are running on Heroku. This is a handy app for managing your apps while from the road. It is limited in function but having log, reboot, and console access is a nice backup plan.
• Ego - Sounds bad but is actually quite useful when it comes to tracking Google Analytic, Feed Burner, and Twitter stats for various my Ruby on Rails applications.
• Messages - Default iPhone app, sometimes useful. I don’t really use SMS much but keep it around since others like to communicate that way. Personally, I think SMS should die much like email.
• Tweetie - Another app that makes managing multiple Twitter accounts easy. I use Tweetie on both the iPhone and desktop.
• Skype - My favorite instant chat client. I use no other. Obviously, very handy to have on the phone. Also, a great way to save on SMS text costs.
• Calendar - Default iPhone app. What can’t be done (or doesn’t make sense to do) in OmniFocus, is done here. Syncs perfectly with my desktop app. No complaints.
• Maps - Default iPhone app. Always handy and now on the 3GS version of the phone, it does a pretty good job of keeping track of where you are in real-time.
• 1Password - So passwords suck and just about every web site and application known to man does it their own special way. The only way to deal with the chaos is to use 1Password. I love having this on the iPhone because it syncs with my desktop client and allows me to easily cut and paste complicated 20-character or more passwords into my local iPhone app configurations or web pages. BTW, as you might have guessed, this didn’t truly become useful until Apple enabled cut and paste support.
• Dropbox - While some people might like Evernote, I still find files and folders extremely handy. This app does all the heavy lifting of keeping my files and folders synced between all machines. Plus they give you up to 3GB of space for free. Brilliant.
• Billings - When I was running my own consulting company (actually, I still do), this app was used a lot. I keep it around now because I like track my open source and personal project work. I’m mostly curious as to how much time I spend on things and like to know whether my speed is increasing over time.
• AccuWeather - So far the best weather app for my tastes. Since I live in the mountains and ride a metal steed, it is wise to know what is brewing. Especially in the dead of winter.
• Clock - It’s what gets me up in the morning. Also handy for when you are in the kitchen.
• Calculator - For those calculations that would take too much brain power to compute.
• Convertbot - For unit conversion calculations. Handy when cooking or in the garage. It’s also an elegantly designed application and worth looking into if nothing else to help inspire your own designs.
• Phone - While I don’t use the phone much, it does give me access to my contacts.
• Mail - Used often with Inbox Zero discipline. What can’t get processed immediately gets scheduled via OmniFocus.
• Safari - Used mostly for info lookup. Always handy in a pinch and for testing your own sites, of course.
• iPod - Besides, the OmniFocus app, this is probably the secondly most used app for constant learning. Audiobooks and educational podcasts are heavily consumed.

For a list of the apps mentioned above and other iPhone related news, check out my iPhone page for more info.

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© Trinity Brewing Company

Today is the last day working for my current client. Its been an interesting experience and I plan to write more about the banking industry soon but, for now, I’m looking forward to moving on and getting back to doing what I really enjoy, which is working with the Ruby language.

So where am I headed? Well, I’ve been hired, full time, to work at Pactimo - a high-end bicycling apparel shop. All of their software is written in Ruby using the Rails web framework. Development will be on the MacOS and Linux systems. As for me, I’ve been bestowed the title of “Director of Software Development”. In essence, I AM the software team. Yeah, yeah, I know. Oooh, fancy title. No, not really. It means that I’m looking at some long days and sleepless nights for a while but…for those who know me…I wouldn’t have it any other way. Its an awesome opportunity and I’m honored to take the helm.

I’ll have more to say about Pactimo in the future, for sure. As for today, I just want to mention that some of the crew and I will be hanging out for happy hour (5pm) at the following location to celebrate. Swing by, if you are around:

Trinity Brewing Company
1466 Garden of the Gods
Colorado Springs, CO 80907

To new beginnings!

I have a Canon PIXMA MP470 device. It’s a decent printer that doubles as a scanner. The device is perfect for my needs although I would argue that it eats printer ink a little faster than I’d like. Then again, I got it for free, so I can’t complain too much (well if you don’t calculate the long term cost of printer ink over time).

In the past, I used proprietary software that came with the device to scan documents. For printing support, I could easily detect and attach to the printer via Bonjour (as the device is plugged into an Apple Airport so all machines on the network can use it). In the case of scanning, I would have to attach the USB cable directly to my computer. There might be a way to do this via Bonjour but that eludes me at the moment.

Recently, I upgraded to Snow Leopard and discovered that I could scan documents using the native Image Capture application. Perhaps, you could do this in Leopard too? Anyway, this allowed me to no longer require installing Canon’s proprietary printer/scanner software. The only downside is that the Image Capture application doesn’t know how to combine multiple document scans into one PDF. Nor does the Preview application allow one to combine multiple PDFs into one PDF document either. Bummer.

The solution is to use Automator. I generally use Automator for quick image manipulation, resizing, etc but it also has decent PDF support. In my case, where I have several PDF files from multiple scans of a single document, I can use Automator to combine all these PDFs into one file. As part of Apple’s Automator action library, someone has already built an Automator worklfow that does exactly this. You can download the workflow and use it to combine multiple PDF files into one.

Something to think about if you are in a situation like this. It definitely does the trick for me.

Fall is probably my favorite season of the year. The change of colors, the piles of leaves, pulling the snowboard out of hibernation, etc. It’s also the celebration of several personal holidays as well as kicking off an entire end-of-year holiday season starting with Halloween.

This year Halloween falls on a Saturday and we are throwing a Zombie Party! Here are the details:

• Location: Our House (Kate and Brooke)
• Date: October 31st (Saturday)
• Time: 7pm to whenever
• Beverages: A special punch - drink at your own risk. Feel free to BYOB as well.
• Food: Various snacks that, while quite tasty, are sure to make your stomach churn while looking at them.
• Activities - We’ll have games, some prizes perhaps, and two movies playing in the background. We’re thinking “Shaun of the Dead” on the LoFi while “28 Days Later” plays in the HiFi theatre.

The only real requirement is that you arrive to the party as a zombie. The scarier the better. Kate has made sure to send out an evite to the event but this is reminder and a notice to some who might not have gotten the evite to come join us. Leave a comment here or email me directly.

It’s going to be one hell of a good time. Hope you can make it!

Google Profile, if you have not made use of it yet, is a service where you can easily maintain information about yourself. Think of it as the Google version of your about page per se. There also is a Social Graph API where you can do more interesting things with this data. All of this is free to use with minimal effort to setup and maintain. Here is my profile as an example.

The other benefit is that when people search for your name, your Google Profile will show up the search along with your avatar picture. Although, at the moment, your profile info only shows up at bottom of search results. Bummer. I would think this should be the very first things you see in Google search results but maybe they’ll correct this soon.

So deactivate your Facebook account and kick LinkedIn to the curb, Google Profile seems like the better solution for representing yourself and improving your connections.

In an earlier posting on this site, I mentioned that I signed up for Developer Day. Yesterday, I drove to Boulder to attend the event. It was a brutal experience getting there as the first ice storm of the year had just hit. What should have been an hour and half drive (tops) ended up being over two and half hours. The roads were covered in black ice, visibility was low, a section of I-25 to Denver was closed due to a major accident, a lady slammed on her breaks (you should never do that on ice) and nearly spinned her front end into the side of my car, etc. In essense, I really shouldn’t have been traveling. Yet, I made it unscathed and glad I did.

The following are some observations, notes, reflections, etc. from the event.

The Passionate Programmer by Chad Fowler

I didn’t get to hear Chad speak, as mentioned above, but his book The Passionate Programmer is worth checking out.

TurboGears: An Exercise in Natural Selection by Chris Perkins

I had finally arrived at the conference by this time only to catch the end of this talk. I haven’t been following the Python crowd much but what I got from Chris was that the web frameworks in this space are still too disparate. There is nothing like Rails in the Ruby realm where one framework is emerging as a leader. It seems that Chris is pushing TurboGears as one solution to this problem.

The Cloud - Real World Applications and Pragmatics by Rob Sanheim

In this talk, Rob talked about using Chef or, more importantly, Chef Solo. Chef Solo requires less overhead and is a great way to get started without having to get mired in complexity of the more advanced Chef features. Basically, both allow you to write less code and use “cookbooks” which automate a lot of what you need for managing servers in the cloud. These cookbooks can be altered and modified for your needs creating a living, personalized, and updated cookbook for your unique situation.

BTW, the Relevance team has a continuous integration solution called RunCodeRun which might be of interest to some.

Playing Nicely with Others by Jeremy Hinegardner

Jeremy gave a talk on the various tools and languages you might need to get your job done. He mentioned several tools but I’d like to point out MongoDB and CouchDB as alternative database solutions to relational databases. I’ve not had a chance to play with these, myself, but they are on the radar. As for more tools you might need to be aware of, well, check out my Ruby page. That will keep you busy for a while.

Lightning Talks

These were a lot of fun. There are two I’d like to point out. The first was by David Eisinger who’s intro to Ruby loops, blocks, conditionals, etc while producing rap mixes with the MacOS system voices was hilarious. It was a good technique for introducing the language to newbies while keeping it entertaining. The second talk was by Jess Martin who emphasized the “right way” for developing CSS style sheets. BTW, you can find his slides here. There are a few things to take away from this talk:

• Collapse your CSS, don’t nest it (i.e. keep each style to one line). Trust me, you’ll get used to reading CSS this way and it’ll make it much easier to browse. I’m glad to see more people supporting this practice.
• Maintain your HTML structure within your CSS stylesheet. In other words, begin your CSS code with a header, then body, and finally footer as you would when building your HTML. Again, much easier to browse and all of it is in one place.
• Don’t split your CSS into multiple files. Keep one and call it screen.css. In some case you might need a print.css or ie.css but that should do it. You might also need a reset.css or jquery-ui.css, which is fine as well. However, in the case of reset.css or jquery-ui.css, don’t touch these. It makes it hard to upgrade and maintain if you do.

I’ve been practicing these CSS guidelines for some time so, again, awesome to see more people promoting these practices. Although, Jess did mention that its not a bad idea to create CSS IDs and/or classes to mimic your RESTful routes. For example, /public/tasks could be #public #task { color: #000; }. That’s an interesting idea and worth giving more thought.

Stepping Up: A Brief Intro to Scala by Derek Chen-Becker

This was an excellent talk and some of the best exposure I’ve had to Scala since I’ve seen so little of it. That said, if I wanted to couple legacy Java software with a more productive language, I’d go the JRuby route instead of Scala or even Groovy. Scala is an interesting language though and still in its infancy.

Core Animation on the iPhone and Mac by Bill Dudney

Fun talk and demo of animations with Objective-C. There is a lot of amazing things you can do with Objective-C libraries in this space, a lot! I can’t help feeling a little weighed down by the ceremony of the language, though. Again, I’m spoiled with Ruby. It’s hard to get excited about a language where you are forced to type more than you have to. Like Bruce, later mentioned after his talk below, there is definitely a lot of square brackets in Objective-C.

The Archaeology of Language Features in C++, Java and Python by Bruce Eckel

I really enjoyed Bruce’s talk on the archaeology and evolution of programming languages over the years. Granted, this was a limited view where the focus was on C++, Java, and Python. It is clear that Java is a legacy language now. To emphasize my point, I think its best if you see what fellow attendees had to say in this regard:

• chadfowler Today at #developer_day, Bruce Eckel expressed his belief (and pleasure therein) that Java was becoming a legacy language.
• nealenssle Bruce Eckels: “Java is likely going to become a legacy language.” #developer_day
• digokili Dynamic languages are efficient and not afraid to be improved by breaking backward compatibility #developer_day

BTW, you can find these and more by searching for #developer_day on Twitter. Oh, and you might want to read Seeking the Joy in Java.

I would love to see this talk expanded to cover Smalltalk, Objective-C, Ruby, Scala, etc. In fact, a pros and cons matrix of each language with additional links, footnotes, etc. would be handy. This way one could delve deeper into each language to easily study how it ended up the way it did, the choices made, etc. All good stuff.

Final Notes

The TechStars office is awesome. I’ve watched Andrew Hyde produce various videos within the TechStars office before but to experience it first hand was nice.

There were some problems with the event:

• The TechStars address was easy enough to find but the door to the cafe was locked and there was no sign indicating what to do. I later found out there was a second door with a note that you needed to call Ben in order to get in. Boo.
• For some odd reason, no one could figure out how to turn the heater off for the building. The entire day was a sauna. I’m sure the energy bill is not going to make someone happy.

It was fun following the #developer_day Twitter feed while listening to the talks. Good to see people tuned in and providing feedback. I did find myself wishing I could hold up my iPhone over the crowd using some kind of augmented reality app that would show me what people were saying, in real-time, above their heads. Yeah, yeah, I read too much science fiction…bit it will happen…soon.

I did get to speak with Ben briefly about Haml. He agreed that it sucked as well. In fact, I think the words “devil” and/or “evil” were used but my memory could be bad. Fine by me, I hate Haml as well. I do like LESS for CSS though. As for an HTML template better than ERB…well I don’t have an answer to that as of yet.

Spending a dedicated day together with fellow passionate programmers can’t be beat. I wish I could have stayed longer with the crowd into the evening but I had a long drive home. Glad I went despite the weather.

I have released a simple GitHub project called MacOS Setup that makes configuring and using your MacOS easier. Here are a few highlights:

• Configures the .bash_profile file.
• Configures the .gitconfig file.
• Configures the .gitignore file.
• Configures the .irbrc file.
• Adds Looksee, Wirble, and Hirb support to your IRB and Rails consoles.

Feel free to fork the project for your own purposes if you like or simply maintain your own home files and then use this project for installation purposes.

Over a year ago, I write a post about my favorite Ruby feeds. I’ve since deleted that post in order to write about an updated set of Ruby feeds that you should be paying attention to (if not already). I read all of these feeds religiously on a daily basis and have broken them down below by general news and information followed by screencasts/tutorials. Enjoy.

News

• A Fresh Cup - My personal favorite. While you can find similar news via the links below, Mike Gunderloy does an excellent job of summing everything up in place for news, information, and new gems from the Ruby community.
• Ruby Toolbox - A great trending site for finding out what gems are hot and most popular within the Ruby community. This can save you a lot of time when you want to know which gem is the best solution for a problem that has already been solved.
• Ruby Trends - Another trending site. Useful for cross-checking against Ruby Toolbox on what is hot.
• Ruby News - Straight from the source. Find about new releases, conferences, developments, etc.
• Ruby Inside - The inside scoop on Ruby news.
• RubyFlow - A great site for picking up new resources to add to your development repertoire.
• RubyFu - Useful quick news and resource links.
• Ruby Best Practices - A great source of thoughtful discussion, including code samples, on how to write better code.
• Ruby5 - From some of the same guys who provide the Rails Envy podcast below. This is another podcast on Ruby news but in short, 5-minute, segments of usually discussing many of the new and interesting gems being developed.
• Rails Inside - Get the inside scoop on Rails news.
• Riding Rails - Learn what is happening with the Ruby on Rails team.
• Rails Spikes - A multi-authored site of Ruby developers discussing news, tips, code, etc.
• Rails Illustrated - Info on Rails, web design, and the user experience.
• Rails Notes - Another site worth checking out and picking up new learning.
• Rails Tips - As the site description goes: “One man, feverishly posting everything he learns.”
• The Rails Way - News and information dedicated to teaching best practices of Ruby on Rails.
• Ruby on Rails Security Project - A good place to read up on security issues or at least keep your mind in it.
• Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots - Good development tips and tricks, mostly related to Rails.
• Ryan’s Scraps - Interesting news on what’s new and upcoming within the Rails code base. Includes code samples and detailed descriptions and examples of new Rails features.
• Has Many Through - Although he has a low writing frequency, the posts are enlightening.
• Rails Envy - An entertaining and informative weekly podcast dedicated to Ruby, Rails, and web framework news.
• Rails Podcasts - Ruby/Rails podcasts by Geoffrey Grosenbach of PeepCode fame.
• Rails Magazine - News, articles, and information about the Ruby on Rails framework.

Tutorials

• Railscasts - Short screen cast tutorials of Ruby on Rails code.
• Envy Casts - Produced by the same guys that host the Rails Envy podcasts. Each screen cast tutorial will set you back about $9.
• PeepCode - Screencast tutorials like Railscasts but longer in length and not free (roughly $9 per episode).
• Tekniqal - A collection of screencasts that cover some of the Ruby basics.
• Scaling Rails - A series of screencasts on detailing how to scale your Ruby on Rails application appropriately. Produced by Gregg Pollack of Envy Cast fame.
• BDD Casts - Video tutorials on all things related to Behavior Driven Development.

BTW, you can find this list and more on my Ruby page.