1. Heroku (a Ruby on Rails host) uses Git as its deployment mechanism
2. Git supports branches as a more native concept than Subversion

Here’s a few things I’ve noticed about Git:

1. The wording seems off:
   • git checkout <mybranch> is used to change between branches in your working copy. In Subversion, checkout is what you do to get an initial copy of the repository. git switch <mybranch> seems like a more accurate command.
   • By default, Git doesn’t commit the changed files. You need to call git add <my file/path> to add those files to the commit. If you delete a file, you call git rm <my file> to add the removal of the file to the commit. To remove the file from the commit, you call git checkout… it just seems quite confusing. I like the way this prevents files being accidently committed but I think it could have been made clearer. If you want Git to behave like svn, you call git commit -a
   • git branch <my branch> actually creates the branch rather than changes to it.
2. Because Git is a distributed SCM, the branches you create locally are not necessarily present on a remote copy of the repository. Likewise, if you git pull a remote repository, you don’t automatically get the branches. The worst thing is tagging. This is very useful for marking releases but tags are not pushed to a remote repo unless you pass an optional flag. This seems dangerous because if you forget this flag the tag only exists on your computer and not the master repository.
3. Also, it’s worth remembering that Git isn’t during a remote backup of your code until you actually do a push to a remote server
4. Annoyingly, when you switch branches using git checkout, it doesn’t seem to warn of uncommitted files (or, as is Git’s way, it might warn but does it anyway). This has led to some unintended contamination between branches and is just something to watch out for.
5. Unlike Subversion, the cmd-line really is the best way to experience Git. I used the nbGit plugin for Netbeans but found it incredibly slow and clunky. Perhaps better tools will arrive.
6. The main hosting site for Git is Github which is great for open source projects (social forking!) but I’ve chosen Codebase as I can host Git and Subversion projects, along with their associated tickets and milestones. Codebase can also do an automatic push which I might use to ensure each push to the production repository is pushed onto Heroku.
7. Worryingly, I have managed to corrupt my local repo though it might have been due to a power failure

Another thought: After 2-3 manic days doing too much, Hilary asked me if I was ready to go back to work on Monday (after my gallbladder operation last week). My response, as always, was:

“If I start work on a Monday morning all bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed then I know I’ve wasted my weekend. If I’m completely
fucking exhausted, I know I’ve done my best to cram 7-days of life
into a 2-day weekend. I’ve lived“

First stop was Cork’s English Market which was pretty much a trial-by-fire for me. Firstly, I had to find something to photograph and I tried to recall photos I’d liked from more exprienced street photographers. Also, there was no hiding and discretely snapping away — everyone could see exactly what/who you were photographing and I get pretty self-conscious photographing other people. I ended up mostly focusing of the food or engaging in some meta-photography — photographing photographers taking photographs.

Once out on the Grand Parade I was feeling a lot more comfortable and could start using subjects/styles I was more comfortable with. In this case, slow-shutter speed and panning with the traffic.

Lastly, I indulged in some more meta-photography as everyone was lined up along the bridge to see the last of the Lee Swimmers home.

I shot about 180 photos (making me very conservative compared to others), edited it down to 75, and I’ve published 30 on my Smugmug gallery. I’ll be sharing them on the photoblog during the week.

Two earlier second generation drugs, terfenadine (Seldane) and astemizole (Hismanal), in rare cases, caused dangerous heart rhythm abnormalities, particularly in high doses or in people who have liver disease or are taking certain other medications or ingesting grapefruit juice…  Allegra, Zyrtec, and Claritin do not appear to pose any of the dangers associated with Seldane. Until more is known, anyone who takes a second-generation antihistamine [such as Zyrtec or Claritin], though, should probably avoid or use with caution combinations with grapefruit juice…

Not exactly the cure I was looking for.

There does seem to be anecdotal evidence that grapefruits can prevent hayfever but nothing I couldn’t find about how or why, so perhaps I’m a unique case. Anyway, if you’re a hayfever sufferer and your eyes are watering to the point of distraction, try drinking a bit of grapefruit juice. After all, whatever doesn’t kill you might cure you!

P.S. remember, I’m not a Doctor — not even a pretend one, so don’t blame me if it all goes tragically wrong.

Mary Carty gave a great introduction to email marketing: It’s free; Be personal; Start a conversation; Get permission, never buy a list; Make it regular and stick to it; Everyone has some information they could share; Create value for your users.

James Kennedy talked about bootstrapping a start-up. He’s very much focused on the building a salary-replacement, time-freeing business rather than empire building (which I can relate to). Talked about evaluating the business ideas based on: how easy it is to describe in a single sentence; Would 400people pay €25/month; Does it require < 10hours/month to run; Is there an existing need; is it a niche?

Joan Mulvihill of Starting Today talked about her experiences of being made redundant and coping with the recession. Engaging and funny: “No pity parties” should rank up there with “Fuck the Recession” as a new slogan!

Pat Hough talked about some basic sales strategies: You need to have 10 different sales avenues; For every 20 cold calls, 10 result in a meeting, 2 in sales — i.e., each sales has 9 rejects; need a 10sec short explanation of your business with clear client benefit; your enemy is your customer’s status quo (i.e., whatever is currently working for them).

Brian O’Kane gave 10 things you need to know before you start a business. Top tips were: The only thing that matters is sales and business planning != business plan.

I usually give panel discussions a miss as they are inevitably weak and insight-less, but not this one!

• Everyone agreeing that lots of small businesses are the future, not big multinationals.
• Everyone agreeing that Enterprise Ireland isn’t aimed at small start-ups. Their job is to bring in / create large companies with high revenue potential. EI might provide good advice and valuable contacts but their money isn’t worth the paperwork.
• Someone from the audience was hammering on about Export (i.e., we must export to survive). Seemed strange to me as most web-businesses are export businesses by default but there’s still plenty of money to be made in local markets (just think of all the businesses in your local town). “Export” just sounds like such an old-world way of thinking. I think James Kennedy’s approach of proving the business in Ireland before moving outside makes a great deal of sense. I felt the questioner was confusing the need for a business to make a profit with the need for the country to recover. And, surely, if lots of small business are making money, that’s got to be good for the country.
• Mentoring of small businesses was identified as a big deal. You don’t need to take a dragon’s deal to get great advice (free!) from your peers.

I was a little disappointed that we ran out of time and the Pitching Competition didn’t happen but I guess that just shows how involved the panel discussion was. Some of the highlights of the day happened over lunch or in the corridor, talking to other attendees. It was a great mix of people in fields as diverse as event management, engineering analysis, software, etc and super- super friendly. Having attended FOWA a few weeks back I was struck by how much more friendly, helpful and social the BizCamp crowd was.

I have gallstones, as did my wife, and there’s a 1 in 5 chance that you will suffer from them during your lifetime. Basically, these little deposits can be a small as a grain of sand (mine are quite small) and happily sit in your gallbladder without generating any symptoms. However, when they do cause problems it often feels like this iconic scene from Alien:

Ultimately, the only real cure for gallstones is to have your gallbladder removed. However, in the meantime, you’re going to need to control your diet to avoid these devastating attacks and prepare for surgery (I believe surgeons won’t operate if the gallbladder is inflamed). Here’s some ideas for a gallstone-attack-avoidance diet:

The aim

A low fat diet which minimises the occurrence of gallstone attacks. Typically, you need to restrict yourself to items with less than 5g fat per 100g serving (i.e., < 5% fat). Do not be confused by product labelling which gives the fat content of a smaller serving or the percentage of your daily fat allowance — both will get you into trouble. Always check the label!

Things to avoid

• Any Butter
• Oil – if you need a little oil for frying use spray-on oil which is very efficient and actually contains an oil/water mix
• Chocolate
• Fatty meats such as duck and lamb
• Cream
• Cheese
• Some curry sauces (too creamy)
• Cheesy pasta sauces / Italian dishes such as lasagne
• Replace full-fat milk with semi-skimmed or skimmed (I seem to be fine on semi-skimmed milk)
• Breakfast / Energy bars
• Crisps
• Nuts

Main Courses

• Meat: Chicken, lean mined beef, white fish, pork rashers or ham with all the fat trimmed off
• Pasta sauces: Most tomato-based sauces contain very little fat (the “light” sauces are actually light on sugar). Make your own creamy pasta sauce with light or extra light Philadephia and some semi-skimmed milk —just remember to add plenty of herbs to taste!
• Stir fry: Most asian sauces are fine
• Spicy foods: Chilli and some curry sauces are fine (but not those which are based on coconut milk)
• Rice, potatoes and pasta will form the bulk of the meal
• Add plenty of interesting veg too!

Dessert / Treats / Snacks

• Yoghurt
• Yoghurt drinks like Yop!
• Low-fat flavoured milk
• Weight-watchers desserts (mousse things with < 5% fat)
• Jacobs Low-fat fig rolls
• Jaffa Cakes
• Toast and jam (no butter!)
• Fruit: anything and everything except avocados
• Fruit smoothies like Innocent drinks (just watch out for anything with cream or ice cream)
• Jelly sweets
• Mints
• Low-fat “diet” bars like Alpen and Fitnesse bars (a great way to sneak a little chocolate in!)
• Starbucks “skinny” muffins (and a no-fat banana & choc chip muffin recipe Hilary found) but beware because the regular muffins ruined a perfectly good Friday!

“A sign of the times”

“In these difficult times”

“The world we live in”

“At least you still have a job”

I fucking hate these stupid platitudes which are currently being banded around in boardrooms up and down the country (including ours, this morning, when free tea & coffee was cancelled). It’s as if uttering one of these phrases makes everything ok, that we can’t argue with the choices, that we can’t dare to dream of something better. It’s that assumption that dreams must be abandoned that really irks me.

I’ve been moved from feature development, to backlog defect fixing, to customer development support, to QA on an entirely different product — all in the space of a year. I now work report to a manager in another country, work on a product which only 4 people in the building work on and I’ve been told, in no uncertain terms, not to look for development work within the QA role. I must simply accept my fate, play my part as the pawn to be moved about, and dance like a monkey performing the same repetitive manual test scripts. Oh, don’t even think about trying to automate that you naughty developer! This is screwing with my career and, whilst those decisions might make sense from a business perspective, this isn’t something I’m going to be happy with. I’m fucking pissed.

What will I do? Firstly, there are choices everywhere and anywhere, in every situation. So, I’m going to accept my lovely new QA role with open, if somewhat limp, arms. I’m going to do my job to a level which will neither get me fired nor garner me any awards or praise. I’ve abandoned any and all prospects of a long term career as an employee so I’m not trying to impress anyone here. I need to take my fate into my own hands and no longer be beholden to the decisions made in corporate boardrooms. I’m going to concentrate 100% of my life energy into starting a business and growing it to a level that will replace my full-time job. It’ll take time, possibly lots of time, but that’s even more reason to start. right. now.

I’ve also got a few new catchphrases for “these difficult times”:

• Fuck it
• Fuck that
• Fuck the Recession and
• Fuck the “Real World”

• Ryan Carson gave a very practical, actionable talk about starting a small web business. A terrific start to the event and well worth listening too. If nothing else, it pointed me to Spreedly which should save me a ton of time and hassle
• Eoghan and Des from Contrast gave a very ambitious (as is their nature) talk about conventions and when/how to break them. Hugely entertaining although if I’m giving an honest review I’d say that a fast-paced presentation perhaps doesn’t suit Des as non-Irish audience members had trouble understanding him. Personally, I found it very interesting and funny. Well done.
• Robin Christopherson gave one of the most poignant presentations of the day on website accessibility. This was part presentation and part demonstration as Robin himself is blind. There is nothing more awe-inspiring to a techie than watching someone surf the web using a screen reader. It was a practical demonstration of how hard sections of our society find surfing the web, and what web designers can do to ease their burden.
• To me, Blaine Cook and Emma Persky gave the weakest talks of the day. Blaine was talking about the future of social networks and how large all-encompassing networks aren’t the future. However, he didn’t lay-out and actionable things which the audience could take away. What should developers by using or building to bring about the future of micro-networks he was discussing? I admire him for talking about something which matters to him but it just didn’t have much impact for the audience. Similarly, Emma was discussing using Ruby without using Rails, essentially promoting the use of alternate frameworks, or even none at all. This presentation could have been so much more powerful, interesting and useful if she’d actually provided code examples or performance metrics comparing the implementations in Rails, Merb, Sinatra, Google App Engine etc. It just could have been so much more. Both of these presenters had so much practical experience to offer the audience and instead gave fluffy opinion pieces.
• Morgan McKeagney of IQContent gave a good talk comparing the 1970’s punk scene with today’s Web 2.0 world. We’re “in the shit” and we need to avoid being one of the failed bands left behind by U2. Less like Virigin Prunes and more like U2 (at least in terms of success — Bono still annoys me). Are you just playing guitar in your bedroom or are you building something people care about, which is useful to them, which they’ll pay for?
• Simon Willison gave a very entertaining, scary and educational talk about website security issues. I’d read about XSS, CSRF etc, and I knew what sort of measure you’d take in Rails to avoid them, but I never really understand the whats and hows of these attacks. Security documents are very boring but when someone gets up on stage and demonstrates how they work, suddenly in 30minutes you’ve understood more than any document could give you. Very worthwhile attending just for this.
• The first 2 120-second startup pitches were pretty poor (in my opinion). They seemed ill-prepared, waffling and not as enthusiastic about their product as I thought they would be. This was my first time seeing startup pitches so my expectations might have been way out. Some points I gathered: Say what your site does (in the first 20seconds!); Show your site; Be passionate about it! Robin Blandford gave a really good pitch through, which easily demonstrated what the site did, who it was aimed at and his own qualifications for developing it. This pitch was much more like what I was expecting. On the other hand, it was a great learning experience for the other entrepreneurs to pitch in a ’safe’ environment where no money was at stake.
• David Heinemeier Hansson was arguably the star attraction of the conference and he didn’t disappoint. Fuck the Real World. Build a startup Business. These were really good rallying cries for the troops which were all well received. Even if you’ve been following 37Signals there was a good section on why their ‘Getting Real’ philosophy still applies to you. They started small too.

The biggest disappointment with the event was the tiny social spaces available and complete lack of free refreshments. This meant that everyone disbanded during the breaks and unless you already knew people there were very very limited networking opportunities.

On the one hand, the influx of women into the Irish workforce was the main reason for our rapid economic growth. It was women — not EU-funding, not low corporation tax, not academia, but women — that grew this country’s GDP. That is pretty amazing. I wish I could find the Economist article from a few years back which examined these issues. It makes sense when you think about it: increase the workforce, increase the GDP. This was universally a good thing for Ireland.

On the other hand, many (most?) households were getting two incomes and we had almost 0% unemployment. This meant that there was a large amount of disposable income which, you could argue, is the primary reason behind the property boom and Dublin becoming one of the most expensive cities in the world. After all, when you had two professional salaries coming into the household, why wouldn’t you buy a €500,000 house? Or €750,000?

We got rich and our prices rose to match… but now we’re poor it doesn’t work so well. The problem is that now there are an increasing number of household with only one income, and it’s hard to live off one income when the economy is still structured towards two-income households.

The company is losing money hand over fist so I can only assume that these workers are happy to work for free — because there sure as hell isn’t going to be any money to pay them. And, lets face it, it’s not like no one could see this coming. The primary markets of Waterford Crystal’s tacky vases, bowls and decanters are American tourists and golf tournaments. Frankly, anyone who believes that there’s a viable business in manufacturing these sorts of goods in Ireland is of below average intelligence.

There was some headline in the Independent today about people who joined the company straight out of school and now have no where to go. Well, I’m sorry but did you ever consider that the company may close the factory? Did you ever seek to advance yourself through education, changing companies/jobs or location? Or were you happy to stay where you were and have the unions fight on your behalf?

I’m am completely astounded with the apparent attitude that it is the workers and unions that decide how the business conducts itself. This is not the way it works. If you don’t like having your entire life depending on the decisions of some high-up accountant then you need to work for yourself — and yes, that means putting in the efforts to get yourself up to that level. We have no rights to a job, no rights to have companies continue trading indefinitely and no rights to keep those companies within Ireland.

Personally, I’m expecting to be laid-off this year and I’m working hard to prepare for such a catacysmic scenario… I just don’t understand why no one else seems to think like that.

Sorry, I needed to get that out of my system.