So the year is coming to a close and I’d like to communicate some wee open source tools I’ve been working on this past year.

Below is a list of open source tools I have released recently. I would not go as far as to call them open source projects as there is rarely anyone involved in these projects apart from me. I learnt at frozen rails that its great to get involved with other peoples open source projects instead of going out on your own all the time. (something I have a habit of doing.)

If anything here catches your eye, or you want to use it, get involved.

Chef Cookbooks

I have been building a fair amount of server infrastructure lately and have been using the excellent chef tool to help with this.

Along the way I have released a few cookbooks which I have extracted from the work I have been doing. These are in a relatively rough state but do work and are in production use. If you want to help me improve any of these, please go for it.

chef-squid
chef-oh-my-zsh
chef-ipcoffeetables
chef-backup
chef-locales

Deployment recipiez

I have been doing a lot of varied application deployments, all with capistrano. For the last couple of years I have been maintaining a collection of customs scripts which I was including in each project. Versioning was becoming difficult and git submodules are not an amazing workflow.

With bundler its possible to manage dependencies well and it can be used outside of rails projects. Recently I have been writing messaging apis in NodeJS and deploying quite successfully with capistrano and a few setup scripts.

With recipiez its possible to setup a node deployment with upstart, nginx, logrotate and monit. This creates a nice “production ready” environment for deploying node apps.

I have packaged it up and released it as a gem. Instructions for use are in the Readme.

recipiez

OpenSSL Extensions

This is a library written by Nathaniel Bibler of Ruby5 fame. I have used this extensively in an SSL certificate reselling app I have been working on which has not yet seen the light of day.

This library was my first github pull request success. Where you open a pull request, discuss the change with the author, make a few alterations, then it gets merged upstream!

openssl-extensions

Wee Flickr

This is a little sinatra app which is meant to get deployed to heroku. It allows me to include images in blog posts very easily and give me a little textile snippet to paste into blog posts.

This scratches a very specific itch but is a example of a sinatra app communicating with the flickr api. It also has a random image function which give a random image from your flickr stream. This is used on my random flickr desktop script which I use at work.

wee_flickr

Solon

This is a gem for integrating with sage pay server. It lacks the standard api of activemerchant but as the service is offsite it doesnt work that well with the activemerchant api.

Using it might help you if you are doing a sage pay integration within a rails app.

solon

Merry Christmas!

Skinning in front of Store Vengetind

In the spirit of DIY with the likes of the haute route post , here is a description of the DIY Campervan we created last summer.

Helen and I went on a trip to France this summer past, starting in Nottingham and finishing in Inverness after a nice tour of France and parts of the UK.

Wild camping is banned in France along with a few of the other central european countries. Meaning that if you want to be ‘out in the nature’ you need to stay in a campsite or hotel.

However, there is a big campervan culture in France which means that campervans are accepted all over the place and there is a network of aires which provide essential services such as water and waste disposal.

The downside of campervans is that they are very expensive to buy and hire .

Famous refuge and gash

If you want to spend time in the alps or the pyrenees a good way to do it is with a DIY Camper™

There are some amazing Van conversions out there which take a lot of time and money to create. This is not one of them. This conversion can be done for minimal funds and in a couple of days.

Vehicle

Buy a van, max 2m high as this means you can park in regular car parks. Features to look out for are low mileage, ply-lined, carpeted. without bulk head, turbo diesel, side and back doors. Buy something which has a decent resell value as you will likely want to sell the van on after your trip.

As of 2011 £2000 would be a good budget. We started with a Mercedes Vito electricians van purchased from Autotrader vans.

Post training lunch in the heat.

Sleeping

You can pick up an IKEA sofabed for about £100, this acts as both a sofa and a bed! Jobs a good un!

High altitude camp spot.

If you have more time / expertise an mdf sleeping platform design is far superior as it allows you to store luggage underneath the sleeping area when you sleep.

Mods

Solar Shower in Action

• Inverter for a DC power supply (Laptop and Mobile) – sourced from Maplin.
• Large water container. You need a lot of water storage as often days can pass without water. – sourced from Decathlon.
• Solar shower. A large black back with a nozzle attached was excellent for cheeky washes. – sourced from Decathlon.
• Seat organisers, these clip onto the back of seat.
• FM transmitter, good way to listen to Ipod / Phone in the car without modifying the stereo.
• Screw hooks on the ply lining for organising stuff.
• Cooking was done outside with an MSR Whisperlite International stove running on petrol.
• Take a basic tool kit for repairs. Our main issue was the back section of the exhaust needed tied onto the chassis for most of the trip. If you get a good van you will hopefully escape mechanical issues.
• Curtains for the back doors with velcro attachments. Well made by Mrs Palmer.

Tips

• Use the aires in villages for services (but buy something in the village!). You can also sleep in them as well.
• When driving long distance we split the driving and did 2hr efforts, which can be maintained.
• The pyrenees is a lovely area.

4×4 intervals followed by Barbeque

Every half an hour a cronjob runs which runs the following script.

change_desktop.sh

  #!/bin/bash
 
  utime=`date +%s`
  file="/tmp/#{$utime}.jpg"
  curl -L http://weeflickr.heroku.com/random_image > $file
 
  /path/to/change_desktop.rb $file

It makes a call to the wee flickr app which redirects to a random photo from your photostream. (Chooses a random set, then a random photo within that set.) This file is then saved to disk and is passed to a ruby script.

change_desktop.rb

  #!/usr/bin/env ruby
 
  # Author: Alastair Brunton
 
  require 'rubygems'
  require 'appscript'
 
  include Appscript
 
  file_path = ARGV[0]
 
  app("Finder").desktop_picture.set(MacTypes::FileURL.path(file_path))

rb-appscript

Note: This has only been tested on snow leopard and the scripts are currently pretty brittle.

The random flickr photo functionality is available from wee_flickr photopicker.

You also need to delete the /tmp photos now and again so I have a little dirty cron that runs once per day.

  #!/bin/bash
 
  cd /tmp && rm *.jpg

This is a little tool for embedding flickr images on blog posts. For some reason flickr makes this hard to achieve through the web interface so this little sinatra application solves the problem.

This may be a violation of the flickr terms of service, so you might want to remember to credit flickr on the blog posts.

This app is designed to be deployed to heroku.

Steps to deploy

• git clone git://github.com/pyrat/wee_flickr.git
• sign up for heroku account (heroku.com)
• (sudo) gem install heroku
• edit FLICKR_USERNAME in app.rb to yours
• commit change locally (git commit -v -a)
• heroku create [your app name]
• git push heroku master

ALL DONE!

If you click the paste board a textile snippet is copied to your clipboard. It assumes that you are writing your blog posts in textile! And this can be pasted into your blog post.

You may want to use this tool as a base for a markdown or plain html embed code system.

Source is on github, wee_flickr

I spent easter in the Lyngen Alps area of Norway, this alpine landscape has seemingly endless possibilities which are untapped by the masses. It is difficult to get to, in a foreign land and the peaks are relatively extreme.

Here are some tips for doing it yourself on the relative* cheap.

*It is Norway afterall.

Getting There

Take a flight to Tromsø, sas and norwegian fly there. You will most likely be flying from outside Norway, take a flight to Oslo first then there are direct flights to Tromsø from there. There is also apparently a direct flight from Riga (Norwegian sun seekers flight), so if you can get there it can be a cheap option.

Transport

Looking up Tomasrenna and Lakelvrenna

Lyngen has been made famous in the international skiing community by the lyngen lodge with stories of skiing direct to and from the boat! This looks like an excellent holiday which you should for sure do if you can afford it. They also seem to spend a bit of time in Kafjord (across the water from Lyngen) which can sometimes have better snow.

In reality, most of the big, famous peaks are best accessed by car. So hiring a car from Tromsø is likely the best plan. The regular suspects of Avis, Sixt and Hertz operate from there. Shop around.

Accomodation

MIT Fablab and Koppangen Brygger are two good places to stay. (I have stayed in both.)

Koppangen Brygger

If you are looking to go a bit cheaper there is a DNT Cabin and at least one unlocked independent hut in the area (Fastdalshytta). These are like posh bothies, and you need a special key to get into the DNT hut. It is about £11 GBP per night to stay in Jægervasshytta . There are some sweet peaks which can be accessed direct from this hut.

A free option is to go for some camping action. You need to be pretty hardy but there are some good spots in the south west side of the lyngen alps (near Lakselvbukt a bit further south near the alley entrance Ellendalen).

Maps and Guides

• Lyngen Alps Turkart 1:50000 – this is the best map to get.
• Toppturer i Norge by Friflyt – The bible for ski mountaineering (top tours) throughout Norway with quite a few in Lyngen and the surrounding area.
• Toppturer i Troms by Friflyt – A new book describing toppturer in the Troms area of Norway. Has an extensive section on Lyngen.

Video

Here is a video compilation of our recent trip to the Lyngen Alps for Easter 2011.

Have a good trip if you are going and give me a shout if you have any questions.

Koppangen at Dusk

Disclaimer

You should really have been ski touring for a few years, have mountain experience, be able to navigate in the mountains, have glacier experience and be willing to plan a bit beforehand.

If in doubt, hire a guide.

Paper goods

• Buy Peter Cliff’s book – The Haute Route a guide for skiers and walkers
• Buy 1:50000 Maps (Martigny and Arolla (Winter 1:50000 maps, they have ski routes marked on them.))
• Buy 1:25000 Maps (The required maps are mentioned in Peter Cliff’s book.)
• Buy Glacier Mountaineering (good book for glacier travel)

Work out a version of the Haute route that suites your group.

Get a group together

Ideally all of similar ability and maximum 6 people. If possible, go ski touring with the group and meet a few times before the trip to go over plans, shared equipment etc.

Make sure you have the right equipment.

Sort out your equipment beforehand, make sure you have tested everything; make sure your boots are comfortable and dont give you blisters!

Haute route equipment list

Book the huts

Erik Vignettes

It is possible to get email addresses and phone numbers from the Swiss Alpine Club Website attempt to use broken french and book them quite long in advance. It might be worth joining one of the affiliated clubs as this results in cheaper lodgings.

Pick a time to go

We went at the very beginning of April and this was a really good time to go in that the snow was still good and it wasnt too busy on the route. Slightly earlier (maybe a week or 2) would work but you will have to check that the huts are open. Later would also work but you run into issues on the last day with being able to ski out to Zermatt depending on the snow year.

Have a wee bit of leeway in your travel plans

Bad weather may hit when you are on the trip; try to have some extra days in your travel schedule to accomodate this.

Have fun!

Any top tips or questions? Add them below.

Glacier du Mt Collon

Day 5 – Arolla, Pas de Chevres to Pigne D Arolla to Vignettes Hut

We had 2 options on this day.

1. Ski direct to the Vignettes hut, same as the guided groups.
2. Rejoin the original route by crossing the Pas de Chevres, climbing the Pignes Des Arolla and then descending to the Vignettes hut.

Option 2 seemed a lot more exciting and the weather forecast was good to we decided to go for it.

Left the old school hotel last with Johan. Bought ski passes for a long poma which saved us a couple of kilometres and a few hundred metres ascent. Cheating?

Skiers on Montagne d Arolla

Roar took a cheeky line up an extra poma and did a sweet traverse to get ahead of us by like 10 minutes. I caught him on the way up the Pas de Chevres and cained all the Norwegians to the top.

Roar and old sun avalanche

Watched the Dix hut being serviced by heli which was cool, it kept swooping over my head at the top of the Pas de Chevres and down toward Arolla. Happy we bypassed the Dix as the guardian had given me an earful for not cancelling in time the day before!

Rigged up a rope and we downclimbed the ladders onto the Glacier de Cheilon. Was fun to get some ladder action with the skis on the back.

Pas De Chevres

We continued up the cheilon glacier in the heat and up to the Col de la Serpentine where the wind got up considerably.

Lone Skiers

The Pigne d Arolla stretching out before us and the Mont Blanc de Cheilon behind. This looks like a very impressive mountain and seems to be climbing possibilities and skiing possibilities on it.

Mt Blanc de Cheilon

Pigne D Arolla

The conditions were deteriorating slightly so there was a real feel of commitment and challenge in the air. The steep slope to get up to the Col du Brennay looked quite icy so it was time to get the crampons on and skis on the back and ice axe out.

Felt quite exposed on the way up, here is one of Johan getting buffeted in the wind. (hard to show in a photo!) We didnt think we were going to make the Pigne d’Arolla summit.

Johan on the windy icy section.

We got to the top and started skiing again. Eivind and I pushed on ahead, curled round some crevasses and headed toward the Pigne d Arolla summit. Amazingly the wind dropped as we approached the summit and all were able to summit. There was a guide with one client already on the top and he took some nice photos of us. They had climbed up from the Vignettes side.

Looking back the way we came

View from Pigne D Arolla Summit

Some photo taking, then an amazing descent towards the Vignettes hut. One of the best ski views I have ever had.. snow was a bit wind affected but still an amazing descent. Could have been the best descent of the trip.

Erik, Roar, Alastair, Pigne D Arolla Summit

For some reason we were greeting like heroes by the Americans and some of the guides for going the long way round. Was a great feeling to get to the hut and it is potentially the best hut we came across.

Erik Vignettes

Pigne des Arolla descent

Before taking our skis off Johan and I spotted a huge powder bowl down the other side toward Arolla so hit that before retiring to the hut. Really good powder. Johan had left his Thermos in the hotel at Arolla and was seriously considering skiing back to get it. Luckily we managed to talk him out of it!

Glacier du Mt Collon

Most groups were continuing onto the Bertol hut; but we wanted to stick to the classic route so planned to ski direct to Zermatt the next day.

6.5 hours skiing.

Day 6 – Vignettes Hut to Zermatt

Leaving the Vignettes Hut at Dawn

Excitement was high in the night which meant little sleep and we had an early rise for the ‘biggest’ day of the haute route.

The day started sourly as we lost Roar and Erik at Vignettes due to illness. It would be a team of 4 instead of 6 which was a bit sad. The plan was for them to stay in Vignettes for an extra day; luckily there were 2 places left for them!

Glacier du Mt Collon

Glacier du Mt Collon

We eventually got away from the hut at about 7am, just as it was getting light. A cruisy ski down to the Glacier du Mt Collon and on with the skins for the first of 3 cols. Medium length skin up to the Col d Eveque, passed some groups that were in front of us (we were last to leave again). We got stuck behind a guided group on the way up the skin track. Passed them at the top however and we were in concentration / speed / being ‘effective’ mode as we knew the day was a biggy!

Long line of guided groups to overtake!

Skied down the other side of the Col d Eveque, snow was a bit bind affected but nice swooping turns anyway. We then caught up the American group, got a bit of banter with them then passed them on the way up to the foot of the Col d Mt Brule. Got the crampons out again to climb this, my Camp XLC 390 crampons were excellent and was fine with pure aluminium. If going later in the season it might have been a different story.

Col du M. Brule

Col du M. Brule

Col du M. Brule

Pulled away from the stars and stripes and caught up a group of italian stallions all wearing the same closes and using similar skis! A small traverse led us onto the Glacier de Tsa de Tsan were we stopped for a spot of lunch. The climb up to the Col de Valpelline is desceptively long and we worked hard to get there.

Boys up the final glacier

Eivind and his fishnet thermals

Upon arriving we were greeted with an amazing view of the Matterhorn as we left Italy. Time to take the skins off for last time and take some photos.

Me and the matterhorn

Matterhorn (from italian side)

We proceeded to descent the heavily crevassed Stockli Glacier. It wasnt over yet. The great visibility and abundance of ski tracks made it slightly easier but you still needed to watch where you were skiing. It would have been a different story if the weather had been bad and we may have had to ski roped up!

Skiing round some crevasses

Johan and Ice

Snow conditions on the glacier were excellent spring conditions as it was approximately 1130 am when we skied it. If done too much later in the day I doubt it would have been so fun.

Sweet tele turn

Took the right fork and skied directly under the Matterhorn which was extremely cool. Johan smacked his head on a rock due to rotten snow. The dangers of telemark skiing; wouldnt have happened if his heels were attached! I also wiped out here and my bindings DIDNT release when I came over the top, which is actually just as sketchy really.

We just hit this old glacier in time as apart from a little walk we were able to ski all the way to the afterski at 2300m!

Supposed to take 8:30 to 12 hours in the guidebook. Rando racers could so it a lot faster but we were pretty happy with 6 hours!

We met a dutch group who had skied from the Bertol that day. A tasty celebratory beer was consumed.

Relaxing after haute route completion

We advised the young waitress that when the Americans arrived she was to tell them the Norwegians (and scot) had been waiting for ages and had to ski down!

Band playing at 2200m below matterhorn

Skied down to Zermatt from here on long cruisy Cat Tracks.

The fun did not end there.

Chez heine for world class lamb, afterski bar, la poste nightclub, climbing rafters and to out delight there being no bouncers, stage dancing.

I had to make it to Scotland the next day nursing a killer hangover but it was worth it!

We made it! Haute route complete!

Sunglass photo

Excellent weather again, up early and onto the Col des Chaux, felt strong and did it in one go. A good hard start to the day.

Leaving Mont Fort Hut

Top of Col des Chaux

Switched to clothes for warm weather which helped massively. Eivind got his fishnets out, something which an English woman found very exciting.

Towards Rosablanche

Pushed onto the Rosablanche (3336m).

The slope of the Rosablanche is north facing which meant nice dry snow. Dropped the sack and did an extra round along with Eivind and Johan.

Johan Rosablanche

Afterwards we had a tasty lunch on top of a rather large cornice (we didn’t realise this at the time) and then wandered up to the top and took some photos.

Rosablanche

Learnt 2 new Norwegian words, both which translate to bitch.

Next skied all the way from near the Rosablanche summit to the Prafleuri hut. Snow at the top was amazing but it got a bit wet towards the end. Rosti and beer was waiting with the others who got there before us, as our skiing laps took more time.

Johan, Rosablanche Summit

You have to be careful about when you approach the Prafleuri hut, as late in the day there is high avalanche risk.

Some guy broke his ski and a helicopter delivered him a fresh pair en route to a helibombing mission. Only in the Alps!

Helicopter Ski Delivery

A group of plucky Americans arrived late in the day having skied from Trient and an hour or so after they arrived the approach was avalanched.

If you are a strong group I recommend skiing from Trient to Prafleuri in one day if you are doing the Verbier variation, just make sure you keep good time.

Day 4 – Prafleuri – Lac Des Dix – Prafleuri – Pralong – Arolla

Johan and Prafleuri

Started early, weather wasnt ideal with snow and bad visibility. However, the main problem was an overcast night meant that the snowpack didnt refreeze overnight. The snow was completely rotten right to the ground and skiing was challenging.

Col de Roux

All of the guided groups made the decision to turn around, we deliberated for a while but decided to also turn around as it may have not been possible to skin up the Pas du Chat. (It transpired later that a german group without a guide carried on but had to turn around due to snow conditions.) We made the right choice.

We went back the way we came over the Col De Roux to the Prafleuri to look at our options. Apparently the avalanche danger directly below the hut was too high despite the previous days helibombing. Luckily there was a 1.6km disused tunnel under the hut which would pop us out further down the mountain!

Dude in tunnel

There were loads of weird and wonderful ice structured in the tunnel. We walked with some of the guided groups.

The avalanche danger was still relatively high after the tunnel experience. When then relied on the guides to check the slopes and set off a controlled avalanche to evacuate their clients. We potentially would have been faster without the guides (and a swedish prafleuri hut guardian told us about a safer route further to skiers’ right.) but we kept with them.

We finally got to a road but unfortunately this road was closed, lots of large avalanches were funneling into the valley off a huge cliff at regular intervals. To get to civilisation it meant skis on the back and a 6km walk in ski boots to the hamlet of Pralong. Safety!

We eventually squeezed ourselves into a taxi (guided groups had priority) and drove all the way to Arolla. We stayed in the hilarious, ancient Hotel Mt Collon. The food was great, the hotel itself was a blast from the past!

Eivind and his norrona boots

Johan in ancient bathroom.

Hotel Mt Collon

Looking down to Argentiere Glacier and Col du Chardonnet

Managed to actually get the first lift from Argentiere due to taxi and good organisation. We stayed at the Hotel L’Arve in Chamonix, which I recommend.

Rolf and Roar were a bit behind us in the lift line so we managed to have a cheeky expresso at the grands montets cafe.

We got going an headed down towards the Argentiere glacier via the Rognons glacier. Some crevasses but excellent visibility. Long descent to get the skiing legs back. I had done minimal downhill skiing this season, mainly snowboarding and xc skiing.

Rognons descent

We switched to skins on the Argentiere glacier and onto the Col du Chardonnet. On the way up we used ski crampons. I used mine for the first time and learned that skiing downhill on them is not a good idea when there is rocks around. I ripped off the dynafit plastic mount. Bindings were otherwise fine.

Chardonnet Ascent

Looking back to Rognons Glacier

It flattened off then we got to the abseil over the other side. We had 2×30m ropes with us and rope-round-the-back side slipped down the col. This was fine and exciting, potentially later in the season we would require more rope to do this. Also we relied on the next party to unclip rope for us.

Chardonnet

Skinning up chardonnet from Argentiere Glacier

Chardonnet crew

Johan waited for rope release and skied down the last section with the rope, as he arrived at the group he had a very impressive wipeout.

Col du Chardonnet

Next a traverse ski and then up over the Col de Saleina; Skis on the pack for this one and the thin air took a bit of getting used to; tough times.

Fenetre de Saleina

On the other side of the col we saw both the Trient hut and some sexy lines above the Col du Tour. I was persuaded by Johan and Erik to hit this, so off we went for an extra tour.

Eivind

Unfortunately the turns were not as nice as they looked; the snow was breakable crust! So we had to do Italian style turns to make it down.

Food at the Trient was excellent, portions slightly small however and the guardian crew not the most friendly. The main guardian was nice though.

Norsk Crew

Important to drink a lot of water at altitude and to rehydrate in the huts. Water, Coke and Beer all have their benefits!

Heineken and Girl

6hrs 40min

Couloir Copt (Xavier de la Rue hit this.)

Saleina Dusk

Day 2 – Trient Hut to Mont Fort Hut

Up quite early, we were the second last group to leave the hut. Down the Trient glacier where there were quite a few holes.

Col des Escandies

Over the col des escandies, with skis on back and ice axe, no crampons.

Smiling Col des Escandies

Peein Col des Escandies

Nice skiing down the Val D Arpette into Champex ski resort. Saw the point d’orney couloir over the backside of the Trient hut which we should really have hit as the conditions were good for it.

Val d Arpette

Val D Arpette

As we arrived at the ski resort we were lucky enough to arrive around 10:10am when there was a bus at 10:25am which took us to Osieres. From here we got a train to Le Chable via Sembrancher. From Le Chable you can get a cable car to Verbier. Maybe a taxi would be faster but not sure how much it would cost.

Val D Arpette

The boys carried on up to the Les Attelas restaurant for some tasty food. I went to Mountain Air in Verbier and got my binding spacer replaced by a friendly dude for a reasonable price.

Chilled out at Attelas restaurant and hoovered up leftovers, then onto Mont Fort hut for more beers, wine and chilling out.

A funny moment was witnessing a group of yah’s skiing down from the Mont Fort hut half cut in the pitch dark without headtorches at 11pm. Hope they made it safely back without getting buggered!

2 hrs 05min skiing!

As winter comes to an end, its time to get back out on the bikes! My commuting bike (called the bus) has taken a hammering over the winter months and the chain is not in a good way.

Sheldon brown shares a good tip on cleaning chains. Sometimes when you think that you should buy a new chain for your bike, all that it needs is a good clean.

Drop the chain into a plastic Coke bottle with a couple of ounces of un-diluted citrus degreaser, cap it, and shake thoroughly. Fish the chain out with a spoke, rinse in water, and you are all set! (I am told that Pepsi bottles also work, and are easier to remove the chain from, because they have a wider mouth…but I’m a Coke guy, not a Pepsi guy.)

I have had ok results with this method. I only managed to get solvent based degreaser which is horrible smelly cancerous stuff. The bottle top was pretty wee so a larger one in future will be better. It also only worked quite well and not as good as I thought.

I will need to try with real citrus degreaser in the future and see how that goes.

Here is a list of what I took on the haute route. We were a group of 6 without a guide and shared the safety equipment between us.

Generally go as lightweight as possible with everything on the list. Get the lightest possible as in the end it makes your skiing a lot more enjoyable and your skinning easier. Light is right.

Dynafit Bindings seem to be the way to go.

Technical Equipment

• Skis (w/Dynafit TLT Speed)
• Boots
• Poles
• Skins
• Tranceiver – Fresh Batteries
• Shovel
• Probe
• OMM 35L Pack (Maybe 40L would be better)
• Straps for skis
• Harness (Black Diamond Couloir)
• Ice Axe (As light as possible)
• Crampons (Lightweight Aluminium)
• Ski Crampons
• 3 locking carabiners
• 2 non-locking carabiners
• 1 Ice Screw
• Prusik cords (2 times 5m length of 6mm cord)
• Belay device
• 1x dyneema sling (120cm)
• 1x dyneema sling (50cm)
• First aid (blisters, duct tape, sports tape roll (important for blister prevention), plasters)
• Ear plugs
• Wee Headtorch – Fresh Batteries
• Survival Bag
• Compass
• Maps (Martigny, Arolla 1:50000, Missed 1:25000 maps would be good to take these)
• Route Guide (Scan and print out relevent parts from Peter Cliff’s Book)
• Watch
• Victorinox Knife
• 500CHF – get from Geneva Airport
• Toothbrush + Paste
• Mobile Phone
• Silk sleeping sheet (wool covers and pillows are provided by the huts)
• Passport
• Sun Glasses (Category 4 Important)
• Sun screen and lip protection
• Goggles
• 1 liter Water bottle.
• 500ml mineral water bottle
• Pen + Wee Book
• Medication (if applicable)
• Lunch and Snacks – Day 1
• Insurance Docs
• Zip-lock bag for wallet etc.
• Camera

Clothing

• Shell Jacket
• Waterproof Trousers
• XC Ski Bottoms
• Pertex Windproof
• Primaloft Insulation Jacket
• Light Fleece
• Down Vest
• 3 x thermal tops (1x synthetic, 2x merino)
• 1 x thermal bottoms
• Insulated Mitts
• Light semi waterproof gloves (use these most of the time)
• Liner gloves
• Buff x 2
• Sun hat
• Hat x 2
• 2 x Thick Socks (Merino)
• 1 x Thin Socks
• 3 x Boxers

Group

• Skin wax
• Stove + Pan
• Rope x 2

Erik, Roar, Alastair, Pigne D Arolla Summit

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I have been having an annoying problem recently. One of the projects I am working on has a fairly large Gemfile and this is impacting startup time considerably on Ruby 1.9.2.

Ruby Start-up Times is a good article detailing boot up times for different ruby versions with a relatively fresh app.

Well, the development app I am currently working on has 148 gems defined in the Gemfile.lock. I don’t think this is overly excessive as many gems such as devise have many dependencies.

The result is that it takes a long time to bootup rails when using 1.9.2. This means that repetitive tasks such as tests, generating migrations, running migrations, rake tasks, generators, basically anything which requires a boot of the rails environment takes a long time.

This impacts the speedy development feel which rails gives you, diminishing the experience somewhat. I decided to try and see different boot times for different ruby versions.

For the benchmarks I used the same script as used on the post Ruby Start-up Times

  #!/bin/bash
  echo puts Time.now > test_script
  time rails runner test_script
  time rails runner test_script
  time rails runner test_script

Rails startup performance comparison

The graph above shows the average run time for the above script in seconds for each of the ruby versions listed. The ruby versions were installed using rvm. The most recent REE gave a mysql2 segmentation fault so I went with the earlier version.

Results

Rubinius is painfully slow to startup, for me it is currently unusable. 1.9.2 is significantly slower than 1.8.7 for bootup. This is highly frustrating as once the application starts up, 1.9.2 feels snappier than 1.8.7.

REE takes the title for the fastest rails 3 bootup time in development for a project with a number of gems defined in the Gemfile.

Possible reasons for 1.9.2’s terrible performance

There is a thread about this on Rails-Core

To quote Yehuda Katz

There are things that the C require code does in 1.9 that slow things down. One such example is re-checking $LOAD_PATH to make sure it is all expanded on every require. This is something that should be addressed by ruby-core. I’ll open a ticket on redmine if there isn’t one already.

I am also experiencing this problem and a $LOAD_PATH issue seems like a potential cause. Lets hope it gets fixed soon.

Digging deeper there is a bug report on the ruby bugtracker but unfortunately it looks to be scheduled for the 1.9.3 release. It doesnt look like this is going to be coming out any time soon, so another solution needs to be found.

Suggestions for a quick fix

• It is possible to stop bundler requiring all the gems on startup, and you then need to manually require them in your code. This is a potential solution but it would be a lot better if the bug in 1.9.2 could be fixed instead.

• Use REE for most of your development and use 1.9.2 in a separate terminal if you need it for tests etc.

• Some other kind of lazy loading solution would be excellent, or even better someone with knowledge of ruby internals who can fix this problem and it be released as a patch release rather than waiting for 1.9.3.

Productivity in General

Recently I have been increasing interested in productivity. Currently I spent a large proportion of the working day in front of a computer. The challenge has been to maximise the amount I get done but minimise the amount of time required to do this.

Enter Pomodoro

From http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/

The basic unit of work in the Pomodoro Technique can be split in five simple steps:

• Choose a task to be accomplished
• Set the Pomodoro to 25 minutes (the Pomodoro is the timer)
• Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings, then put a check on your sheet of paper
• Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)
• Every 4 Pomodoros take a longer break

The beauty of this is the simplicity of this compared to other productivity system. (GTD)

The key to success here is not getting distracted whilst working on the Pomodoro and respecting breaks, even if you are in ‘the zone’.

I currently use this timer for OSX.

For Linux and Windows fans there is this great air app that works as a pomodoro timer.

Small Improvements to Existing Habits

I have also found that making small incremental improvements to daily habits quite beneficial. The time savings on a daily basis are relatively small but these small savings really add up over time.

Examples

• Learning to properly touch type.
• Memorizing / printing out bus timetables for hassle free public transport.
• Finding annoying things which take time in your daily workflow and improving these processes. (eg. improving bash aliases to make your project workflow more powerful.)

This is the new film from Travis Rice and Crew. Thats it thats all redefined snowboard film making when it came out. This film looks set to push the boundaries even further!

Courtesy of igrigorik.

The Rub

I needed a way of grabbing up to date currency information and an easy way to convert currencies using these up to date rates.

Normally this information requires signing up for premium accounts or writing web scrapers to do this for you.

It turns out that the European bank provides a daily xml for free that contains this information. It is specific to the euro but is fairly trivial to convert this into conversion rates for any of the other currency as the base currency.

Currency Rates is born

gem install currency_rates

It is a simple class for getting up to date currency rates in an array. You pass a base currency which the rates will be calculated against. Connects to the european bank to get a daily breakdown of the rates.

Deliberately lightweight to allow you to build on top of.

Example

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
 
require 'rubygems'
require 'currency_rates'
 
parser = CurrencyRates::Parser.new('GBP')
puts parser.engage.inspect

Valid values for the initialize call are:

"USD"
"JPY"
"BGN"
"CZK"
"DKK"
"EEK"
"GBP"
"HUF"
"LTL"
"LVL"
"PLN"
"RON"
"SEK"
"CHF"
"NOK"
"HRK"
"RUB"
"TRY"
"AUD"
"BRL"
"CAD"
"CNY"
"HKD"
"IDR"
"INR"
"KRW"
"MXN"
"MYR"
"NZD"
"PHP"
"SGD"
"THB"
"ZAR"
"EUR"

Example result array:

[{"currency"=>"USD", "rate"=>"1.58482"}, {"currency"=>"JPY", "rate"=>"130.28671"}, {"currency"=>"BGN", "rate"=>"2.26562"}, {"currency"=>"CZK", "rate"=>"28.05560"}, {"currency"=>"DKK", "rate"=>"8.63284"}, {"currency"=>"ILS", "rate"=>"5.71573"}, {"currency"=>"GBP", "rate"=>"1.00000"}, {"currency"=>"HUF", "rate"=>"317.67159"}, {"currency"=>"LTL", "rate"=>"3.99977"}, {"currency"=>"LVL", "rate"=>"0.81552"}, {"currency"=>"PLN", "rate"=>"4.48653"}, {"currency"=>"RON", "rate"=>"4.94642"}, {"currency"=>"SEK", "rate"=>"10.26180"}, {"currency"=>"CHF", "rate"=>"1.49690"}, {"currency"=>"NOK", "rate"=>"9.11266"}, {"currency"=>"HRK", "rate"=>"8.58558"}, {"currency"=>"RUB", "rate"=>"47.14741"}, {"currency"=>"TRY", "rate"=>"2.50090"}, {"currency"=>"AUD", "rate"=>"1.58992"}, {"currency"=>"BRL", "rate"=>"2.64361"}, {"currency"=>"CAD", "rate"=>"1.57892"}, {"currency"=>"CNY", "rate"=>"10.43290"}, {"currency"=>"HKD", "rate"=>"12.33837"}, {"currency"=>"IDR", "rate"=>"14323.90385"}, {"currency"=>"INR", "rate"=>"72.43649"}, {"currency"=>"KRW", "rate"=>"1770.37938"}, {"currency"=>"MXN", "rate"=>"19.10177"}, {"currency"=>"MYR", "rate"=>"4.83614"}, {"currency"=>"NZD", "rate"=>"2.06591"}, {"currency"=>"PHP", "rate"=>"70.20678"}, {"currency"=>"SGD", "rate"=>"2.02989"}, {"currency"=>"THB", "rate"=>"48.82247"}, {"currency"=>"ZAR", "rate"=>"11.25607"}, {"currency"=>"EUR", "rate"=>"1.15841"}]

Code is also available on github

Accessing bank statements programmatically is a difficult problem. Finance tracking websites like mint involve typing in username / passwords for some US banks and most UK banks dont allow automatic export of statements at all.

UK building society Nationwide recently dropped structured formats from their online statements, offering only PDF! It is shocking that a bank would drop structured data output in favour of PDF in 2010.

Banks should implement OAuth to allow applications restricted access to their bank accounts. From here they should provide an API for accessing your statements in a structured format (json / xml). This in turn would drive innovation of mobile and web financial applications and this will drive more customers to the banks that provide these digital services.

This excerpt from oauth.net describes concept of limited access using OAuth,

Many luxury cars today come with a valet key. It is a special key you give the parking attendant and unlike your regular key, will not allow the car to drive more than a mile or two. Some valet keys will not open the trunk, while others will block access to your onboard cell phone address book. Regardless of what restrictions the valet key imposes, the idea is very clever. You give someone limited access to your car with a special key, while using your regular key to unlock everything.

Everyday new website offer services which tie together functionality from other sites. A photo lab printing your online photos, a social network using your address book to look for friends, and APIs to build your own desktop application version of a popular site. These are all great services – what is not so great about some of the implementations available today is their request for your username and password to the other site. When you agree to share your secret credentials, not only you expose your password to someone else (yes, that same password you also use for online banking), you also give them full access to do as they wish. They can do anything they wanted – even change your password and lock you out.

This is what OAuth does, it allows the you the User to grant access to your private resources on one site (which is called the Service Provider), to another site (called Consumer, not to be confused with you, the User). While OpenID is all about using a single identity to sign into many sites, OAuth is about giving access to your stuff without sharing your identity at all (or its secret parts).

As you authenticate with the bank during the OAuth process it allows existing login credentials to be used, so the addition of oauth to the internet banking suite would be an enhancement rather than a rewrite; Allowing the banks to use there existing internet banking login functionality.

This would bring banks and banking data up to speed with the current developments in technology. There looks to be an interesting development in the US which separates the internet offering from the web technology. Bank Simple could pave the way for a new direction in how we bank.

Traditional banks need to embrace this or risk getting left behind by a new generation of tech savvy online operations.