Break things, Move fast

Bill Gates Vs. Steve Jobs

2012-06-18T00:00:00-07:00

Epic Rap Battles of History has recently published their most recent video featuring Bill Gates Vs. none other than Steve Jobs himself.

Duplicate key violates unique constraint

2011-09-02T00:00:00-07:00

A few days ago I got this weird error with one of my PostgreSQL databases:

duplicate key violates unique constraint.

Turns out the DB (or Rails) was trying to write the ids at least 2000 numbers lower than the highest number there, so Rails couldn’t save to it.

While the error in itself seemed messy, the fix was a really easy one.

First verify if that is indeed your problem:

SELECT MAX(id) FROM table_name;
SELECT nextval('table_name_id_seq');

If the second number is lower than the first, then you’re in luck because you just have to run this little piece of code and you’ll be on your way to Merry Codeland (Of course, please do your due diligences and backup your databases!):

SELECT setval('table_name_id_seq', (SELECT MAX(id) FROM table_name)+1);

Reload pgsql and rails, and see if it works now. You’re welcome :)

The word impossible

2011-05-09T00:00:00-07:00

One of my least favorite words is “impossible”: it simply has no real value and just goes against everything I believe in, those same things that keep me alive and push me out of bed in the morning: discovery of extra-terrestrial life, vacations in space, and the like. Yes, I know I’m kind of a space geek. I have Doctor Who to thank for that, along with the people behind SpaceX, NASA, Virgin Galactic, and all the similar programs/projects!

Now, notice how I don’t say that I hate the word. Why not? Simply because it is an awesome motivator! Think back to all those articles you’ve read about founders, or scientists, that were told that what they were doing was impossible: the guy who split the atoms for example! He was told it was an impossible feat, and yet nowadays it is a pretty common procedure done in nuclear power stations.

What should you do when someone tells you something’s impossible? I say “keep calm and carry on” (big wink at @biosshadow on this one), because at the end of the day it will be just you and your realisations. People go away, memories fade, but your achievements will always be there and so will your failures.

Do you really want to be that one guy moaning about how he had “that idea”, he could have been “that guy”, the one everybody talks about? I didn’t think so, now it’s time to get up, roll your sleeves and get to doing!

Oh, and I would like to sign off with a great quote:

“Don’t ever let somebody tell you…you can’t do something. You got a dream..you gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves..they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want something go get it“. — Christopher Gardner in The Pursuit of Happyness

How do you get rich

2011-05-07T00:00:00-07:00

If you read the title and thought “What a bold statement, am I going to become suddenly very rich?” I’m sorry to announce that I don’t know any secret recipe to becoming rich, I would already be there myself, but I am sharing some bits I learned in the past year or so of watching various talks.

Do you want to be the next Zuckerberg, or would you rather be the next Jason Fried? What’s the difference between these two you ask, well let me lay down two of them for you: while Zuckerberg is known by a lot of people throughout the world, Jason is making money building things that people actually pay for.

I, for one, would rather build the next 37signals. Sure, I would love to build a company that almost 700 million people use, but nothing beats having real revenues coming in from the sale of actual products. “We found out that having a price is really cool for getting profits” David Heinemeier Hansson said at Startup School in 2008, and I tend to agree with that: my mother has been doing it for more than 10 years now. She’s probably not your traditional startup, but she’s bootstrapped, profitable, and damn proud! If it’s worked for her, and millions more before, why shouldn’t it for me, or anyone else? It sure seems like a better bet than the following formula:

Build startup
Raise money
?????
Profit!!!

Am I saying that everybody should go for that path? No, definitely not. You might have a business model that gets its money otherwise: from the backend, like mint, or from advertising, like google. It’s all a question of choice, and balance. Do you want to be the little guy who’s quitely building, and selling things or do you want to be the $gigantic corporation that everybody knows? The answer might seem obvious “I want to be famous, so I’ll be the next google!”, but it’s definitely not. Again, it’s all about choices.

Choose your path, stay on it, and you’ll get somewhere.

Get Rails 3.1beta1 on Heroku

2011-05-07T00:00:00-07:00

It’s pretty simple, you only have a couple of things to change.

First, in config / environments / production.rb change

config.serve_static_assets = false

config.serve_static_assets = true

Second, in your Gemfile, add

gem 'therubyracer-heroku', '0.8.1.pre3'
gem 'pg'

Now you can do bundle install, commit to git, push to heroku and you should be rocking Rails 3.1beta1 :D

If you’re having database issues, I suggest taking a look at this Gemfile by @sferik

UPDATE: I just started a new project, and it seems like there’s something else to change in config / initializers / session_storerb:

AppName::Application.config.session_store :cookie_store, key: '_appname_session'

AppName::Application.config.session_store :cookie_store, :key => '_appname_session'

UPDATE 2: Thanks to Jeff Gardner, I now understand why the last update is needed: Heroku’s default stack is still using 1.8.x (until June 1st I believe) and Rails 3.1 beta1 is making use of ruby 1.9.2’s key: value hash syntax. To make it work without changing the file you can simply run this in your console:

heroku create --stack bamboo-mri-1.9.2

if you’re creating a new app, and

heroku stack:migrate bamboo-mri-1.9.2

if you’re migrating an existing one!

Have fun :)

How to find ideas

2011-05-04T00:00:00-07:00

Did you ever get hit with what was to become THE idea of the century, or so you thought? How do you weed out the “good” ones from the bad ones?

Sometime last month I had such an idea and thought “Why isn’t it out there yet? The founder would be insanely rich!”. I even asked a couple people what they thought of the idea, they showed me the numerous flaws that existed, yet I didn’t listen. I went on to do some research, market and technology wise, to figure out how I would tackle that problem. That was before I realized that it wouldn’t work.

How did I know? I remembered the numerous talks by Jason Fried/DHH where they were advocating the creation of products that the creator himself would use. I thought about what I wanted to build, and I had no interest in using such a platform – none whatsoever.

What do I do now? Should I lament myself about how my ideas are worthless, or do I roll up my sleeves once again and go down and dirty building things I would actually use? You bet your ass I’m going for that last option! Failure is a good thing, might or might not help you, but it’s mediocrity that is not an option!

I say build things or die tryin! You are the master of your own life after all, right?

Coding projects

2011-04-27T00:00:00-07:00

It’s been a while since I posted about my projects, even though I promised to have at least one project per month! However, I’ve been stumped with school work and finding freelance work so my last project doesn’t even count as an “incomplete” since I barely started it ;).

What was that project? A waking up twilio app that would text you (or call for a fee) at pre-defined times with information that you would leave (a maximum of 120 characters).

Why didn’t I finish it? I blame college for that, and bad bad time management. Yes, I am working on that! My friend @excid3 has some good tips about that in a recent post of his.

Am I going to finish it? Yes, definitely. When? I don’t know yet, “one day”. I really want to finish it though, there’s that thrill that comes when you finish something that is unmatchable. Well, ok, that’s a lie. Getting someone to use it would be pretty awesome!

Bonus point for myself, I have just greatly simplified what I actually want to build! How’s that for a pivot? ;)

Ruby and the power of gems

2011-04-09T00:00:00-07:00

Lately I have been using more and more gems for my diverse Rails projects and gigs (shameless plug: if you are looking for a Rails guy, I’m your guy!), from authlogic to the youtube-g wrapper without forgetting devise or paperclip in the middle just to name a few! I’ve come to the realisation that the power of Ruby is in the gems, an awesome way to distribute new pluggable features for everyone to use.

What do I mean by that? Well, it’s pretty simple: take an app you’ve written, most apps will do, now take a look at your Gemfile, in the case of Rails, and tell me how many gems you’ve used! Could be devise, koala, paperclip, or anything really. I’m pretty sure you will find a bunch of them.

The point is, thanks to the gems you didn’t have to go re-invent the wheel or even have to download a bunch of complicated libraries that you then have to massage into working with your app.

The gems in a whole are awesome because they let you be more efficient so you can spend less time on integrating 3rd party APIs or tools and more time on focusing on your business, your programming, or even having fun!

On learning stuff

2011-03-28T00:00:00-07:00

How do we learn stuff? Some of us do so by reading a book, then re-reading till it somehow gets in their brain while others learn by practicing as they go. I am part of the latter group, I taught myself PHP and, more recently, Ruby/Rails using this technique. Reading just wasn’t enough for me.

Does that mean I could learn any thing I want without ever touching a book? Of course not, it just means that I prefer to go practice the theory offered in the books quickly as possible and this is why I enjoy being a programmer! You get to apply what you learn at your own pace.

Sure, there are a lot of career paths out there that let you practice what you learn, i.e. surgeon, but before you get to cut people up you go through a lot of hoops so that they can make sure that when you do get to apply your scalpel to someone you do it the “right” way.

In the field of computer programming, correct me if I’m wrong, there is rarely a “right way” to do things. We have a series of methods, techniques and methodologies but there isn’t one way out there that everyone uses in the same way: we even indent our code differently, according to our own beliefs (or constraints in the case of an existing codebase). The contrary isn’t always true though, some ways that people program will certainly enervate or even infuriate others that have to work on the code later on.

TL;DR: If you want to learn a new language, tool, framework, or anything really, decide on a project you will work on that will let you use whatever it is you are learning at the time.

Jekyll, or the hacker way

2011-03-26T00:00:00-07:00

As you might have realized, I changed my blog from posterous to Jekyll which is a static site generator. Very simple really:

Set up Jekyll locally with the jekyll gem (gem install jekyll)
Prepare the layout as shown on the wiki
Write (or migrate ) your posts in textile, markdown, or html under _posts
And you’ll have a very simple blog, backed-up on github and always accessible!

Now, why am I switching blog platforms? There are no real reasons other than I’ve been meaning to try Jekyll out for a while now! (And I was getting tired of posterous lags..)

Credits go to Mojombo for the HTML/CSS that I’m currently using, I’ll cook up one of my own some time soon.

P.S: My RSS feed is the same.

Release the kraken!

2011-03-02T00:00:00-08:00

Well, not really much of kraken but more of a source code release. I decided to put podil on github, because viva la open source right?

Sure the code is dirty, and noobish, and nasty, etc. But doesn't matter. I, hopefully, have learned much since then!

Anyways, enough talking. Here it is right there : https://github.com/gduplessy/podil and enjoy.

I will be working some more on it this week-end, to re-add the lyrics finder functionality and fix the facebook commenting.

HotBook : The path towards the light

2011-02-13T00:00:00-08:00

So I've been working on and off (more off than on to be honest) on HotBook for quite some time now. Why? I messed up badly in the form and databases part. What's happening is that I have most of the backend in place but, being the fool that I am, I didn't make use of TDD and now I have a nasty bug somewhere in my model or controller..or view. I'll figure it out, don't really have a choice ;).

At least I've checked off most of the milestones on my list and I have only 2 items out of 10:

Store the scores in the DB.
Use an algorithm (most likely Elo) to learn and decide who to pair.

My other big problem ? ( it's 2 in 1 really but better explained by the worst out both) :

I actually have a post in the works about it, but I have some school work to finish first (Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize!). Now where's my VIm...

P.S: I will publish the source on this one, no matter how ugly the codebase turns out to be.

P.S2: Lessons for future projects : REMEMBER TDD!

Week 1 - Javascript

2011-02-02T00:00:00-08:00

Track 2

Questions

What is a type, and why do you think types are useful in writing programs?
Why do we lose precision when performing operations with decimal numbers in Javascript? Can you think of a few implications of why this would be a problem?
Do you understand why the following operation produces the given result 115 * 4 - 4 + 88 / 2 = 500
What is the use of a backslash character in a String?
What does typeof 4.5 do, and why does typeof (typeof 4.5) return "string" ?
The author writes When your browser loads a page, it creates a new environment and attaches these standard values to it. The variables created and modified by programs on that page survive until the browser goes to a new page.. Without searching on the net, can you think of some variables that might be created in the browsers environment when it loads a page with Javascript in it?

Answers

A type is like a role that an actor plays in a movie, it is responsible for letting JavaScript know exactly what we want it to do with the data that we are providing to it. (The different types in JS are: Number, String, Boolean, Object, null and undefined).
We lose precision because of the fact that JavaScript dedicates only 64bits to Numbers and 11 of those goes to locating the decimal dot within the number.
Yes, JavaScript follows the traditional mathematical model which gives multiplication (*) and division (/) authority over any other operators. The operation ends up being : 115 * 4 = 460. 88 / 2 = 44. 460 - 4 + 44 = 500
It is used to indicate that "the character after it has a special meaning" (string = "Go to\nnew line") or to cancel out quotes (string = "Test\'s shall be overdue").
typeof 4.5 returns the type of 4.5, which would be Numbers. typeof (typeof 4.5) returns "string" because ultimately it is trying to determine the type of (typeof 4.5) which is indeed a string.
I would think they would variables such as resolution and locale (language)

Homework:

Exercises 2.1 - 2.6 from chapter 2

Exercises 3.1 - 3.2 from chapter 3

HotBook Or how to learn Algorithms

2011-01-19T00:00:00-08:00

So as you all know, a few weeks ago I have decided to learn me some algorithms! Well I didn't forget this goal of mine and I'm currently working on an app based around a chess algorithm (haven't chosen one yet, still building the basics at this point). But the algorithm will be used to match users of same "skills". It is definitely not an original idea, but it should get the job done (helping me learn algorithms)

Backend is Ruby on Rails and heroku as usual. The users will come from facebook (thanks to omniauth and fb_graph).

The basic idea is some kind of a "hot or not" concept, where you can choose which of you friends are hotter (grabbed from facebook, with permissions). Yeah..I know, I might have watched the Social Network a couple too many times hehe. Main difference between my idea and theirs is the fact that people are actually accepting to upload their friend list and pictures through the facebook graph API.

Currently I'm done with FaceBook Connect thanks to the tutorial at Rails Rumble and successfully figured out how to grab the profile picture of the user. (pretty easy really: https://graph.facebook.com/#{user_id}/picture?&type=large where type can be : small, normal or large and where #{user_id} is your variable containing the user's facebook id).

Until later, stay put for more.

P2PU Javascript: 101

2011-01-17T00:00:00-08:00

This is my application for P2PU Javascript: 101.

After watching this lecture, I have to admit that i feel some relief at the news that Douglas Crockford says there is only one "good" JavaScript book (JavaScript: The Definitive Guide) as I have been struggling with a lot of books for quite some time, never quite finding one that caught my attention.

According to Douglas Crockford, JavaScript is the most misunderstood programming language in the world for multiple reasons. First because of the language that tend to make new comers believe that it is 1) somehow connected to Java, which it's not and 2) that it's just a scripting language and not a real programming language because of the word "script" contained in its name.

But JavaScript is also the world's most popular language, just looking at the quantity of platforms on which it is installed on today.

The top "key features of JavaScript are:
Loose typing

Easier to type, but you did not have a choice.

Load and go delivery
Programs are delivered as source code. Meaning that it is not compiled, much like html.
Prototypal inheritance
The objects inherit directly from other objects
Lambda
Much like Scheme and Lisp. It is the use of functions as first class objects
Objects as a general container
Unification of "objects" and "hash tables".
Linkage through global variables
JavaScript doesn't have a linker because of the "load and go" delivery. The compilation units are all combined in a global namespace which cause a lot of security issues.
It is interesting to note that the number value in JavaScript is seriously flawed when it comes to floating numbers (e.g 0.2 + 0.1 != 0.3) and there is only one kind of number: number. No integer, just number.

JavaScript also as a external Math library, much like Java.

Exercise Solution

Introducing...podil!

2011-01-08T00:00:00-08:00

Showed it to 4 ~ 5 person already, they played with it and said they liked so I figured I might as well set it free even though I missed the deadline of the IndexTank "Holiday Hack" (lack of planning, I had no real use for their search engine at the end..).

Now to the project itself: Podil ('share' in czech) is a search engine that goes through youtube to find the best suited video for the search query you typed (This is technical speech meaning it grabs the first video it finds..), it then proceeds to search for the name of the song thorugh the API of MusixMatch (awesome database for lyrics!) and displays the lyrics matching the video playing (sadly, it is not always a perfect match and can display lyrics from a different song alltogether)

On the backend, for the geeks (I mean..why else would you be here?) : Ruby/Rails for the codebase and heroku as host. This is my first Rails app and it mainly uses APIs for mostly everything that appears on screen (facebook for commenting, youtube for video and musixmatch for lyrics). I am really enjoying Rails though. It is pretty fun! I got some more ideas that I'll be working on soon enough.

And, since this wouldn't be a 'release' without one, the address is right here : Podil.

Progress

2011-01-03T00:00:00-08:00

First of all, I'd like to wish a happy belated new year to everyone! Hope you guys had fun and started the year well, I know I did with my family dropping in on me..even though it slowed down my programming progresses. Oh well, it's all good: It helped me enjoy the holy days even more.

Now as for my progress, progressed in my rails app (more a website now). It's a mashup of the following APIs: YouTube, for videos, Facebook for chat and like, MusixMatch for lyrics. I have 4 days left to figure out how to include the indextank API..which is proving to be a challenge. But even if I don't make the deadline I'll keep working on it and eventually "release" it (throw the link on twitter ha), a couple people have found it useful so I'm hoping it might be atleast fun for you guys. And it also goes in my resolutions:

Release an MVP every three months (4 a year)
Work on personal projects as much as I can (some of which will become my MVPs) [try different languages also]
Socialize more..way more.

And of course school is starting again this week, so that's going to be..interesting.

P.S: I haven't forgot about the algorithms, just didn't have any time to practise it. (<- to add to my resolutions..)

Ruby on Rails

2010-12-24T00:00:00-08:00

Practically done with the railstutorial.org application (last chapter). Once I'm done with that I'll go through it all again but trying to build my own site/app with it, i need to figure out the layout and general feel for it first though. I found HotGloo to be very useful for this until I whip up the frontend in html/css whereas paper/pencil will do for the DB design. *Phew* That sounds like work! :D

As for the algorithms, FaceBook puzzles seems really good from the looks of it! And with the Hacker Cup coming up (01/07/11), that gives me a reason to practice. Not that I have any pretensions of any kind towards it ah!

Ressources:

Google CR-48

2010-12-23T00:00:00-08:00

Yes, I am the owner of a Google CR-48 ChromeOS netbook (cloudbook? hmm..). I received it last tuesday and have been playing around with it ever since!

I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised with the overral feel of the system. Before I received it, I had been reading alot of reviews that were definetly not too favorable to the CR-48 citing problems such as the touchpad not hitting where it's pointed and having to aim lower or higher..randomly. I'm happy to say that I have no such problem with the system that I received. But the right click could definitely get better, right now I can't do a touch-right click, I have to lift my two fingers and physically click the button.

In fact the "only" (I forgive the other little quirks here and there, afterall..it's a pilot program) problem I could find is the Flash when used for Hulu and sometimes even Youtube, but other than that I like the idea of a cloudbook, even if that idea is not new or that it might possibly tie us in even more.

P.S: That might actually be a good idea to develop. Data hosting for "cloudbooks" so that people can choose where and how to store their data without being dependant on one person or company.

P.S2: Yes, I know that the cloudbook already exists and is probably trademarked. Sue me..

Holiday Projects

2010-12-22T00:00:00-08:00

Here's a list of stuff I intend to do, or at least try to, during these holidays :

Ruby on Rails (Allready started). I always wanted to try this framework and so far so good.
I'm using the tutorial on http://railstutorial.org/ which is really cool. I'm almost done going through it. Next step is using it for a couple projects. (Maybe the indextank "holiday hack" ?)
Hopefully this gets me back to coding in general (Reminds me that I haven't done PHP in a long time..I should pick it up again and see what happens.)

Learn some algorithms. Really, I suck at everything algorithmic. It's about time to fix this. I'm not sure where I should start, google to the rescue hehe. Again need some projects on this also (in php probably)

Learn how to blog, or rather what to blog. That should be easy, I think.

In any case I'll do my best to keep this blog updated with the status of my projects and other (random) things.

Happy holidays!

Drop the the!

2010-12-22T00:00:00-08:00

Lesson of the day? Drop the the.

Awesome Tron Remix

2010-12-22T00:00:00-08:00

Someone just tweeted this song, listened to it. Pretty awesome!
On a side note, I really need to go ahead and watch TRON legacy.. (Done! Loved the soundtrack :) )

The Posterous Experiment

2010-12-20T00:00:00-08:00

To blog or not to blog, that is the question.

Well blogging is a strong word seeing as this is a..mini-blog? (not micro but not full blown either..)

Truth be told this is more of an experiment of mine just to try out the system (along with tumblr). (Posterous looks like it has more interesting people though)

What will I be posting? Nothing and everything. That's about it.