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Damn .trash folders…. gotta remember to empty those out!

Pontificating on Dynamic UX from Rowan Hick on Vimeo.

The basic premise for those that don’t watch the video is - the core web experience over the past number of years, really hasn’t changed - however what we do have, is substantially enhanced productivity through the use of many great frameworks and languages. So let’s look at the core web experience, and how can we alter that based on the behaviour of the user, change the layout and content shown to suit the individual user.

Next Episode, mapping out a system for profiling the behaviour of the user. Look out for a github repo soon.

What *was* interesting is I had no less than 4 different conversations with people about their professional development, be it their ideas or their careers - challenges they’re facing, how to tackle things etc. It was kinda amazing, and made me realise just how important these project/pub/*camp evenings are. Being in a startup, or freelancer you don’t have access to people to bounce ideas off, nor have access to professional development or HR teams. Last night really hammered this home.

So if you’re a team leader, a seasoned development vet, have built a business or two, etc and have a passing interest in Rails, you could do much worse than head out to one of the RoR related events, or any tech events, in Toronto. Ask someone what they do and you never know what kind of conversation you might have..

Software for profit:
Textmate - what can I say
NetBeans - @adamw523 is convincing me slowly that maybe this is the way of the future. Haml plugin needs some work though. I sincerely hope there’s a Textmate2 in the works.
Rescuetime - I’m competitive as hell. Apparently for this week I’m in the Top 1% of users for efficency.
Jungledisk - no nasty catastrophic disk failures here
1password - what, you put your passwords in a text file ?
Expandrive - mounting your server to your local filesystem over SSH …
Mailplane - saved my life
iTerm - put your production servers on a red background, white foreground profile, never again will you forget you’re on a production server…
Skype - one of these days I’m going to give the “laptop handheld video tour” and it will end in tragedy… I just know it. Plus everyone seems to talk to the cats over skype video.. it’s amazing.

Online services:
“rails ourapp” - Tend to build what we need, not a big fan of paying out for something invariably you have to change your processes to suit.
Photos - Flickr Pro Account. Please never let Flickr die
Devguard - kinda rocks for subversion hosting, if you’re not into this whole git hotness yet.

Now, for the fun part..

The brains:
MBP - for profit
Tower - Watercooled (both GPU and CPU), overclocked, beast. C2D E8500 @ 3.59ghz, 4GB DDR2-1000MHZ, EVGA 8800GT, 15′000RPM Velocripator drive. *always* put your money into fast drives, money well spent.
Backup - Lacie BigTriple in Raid 1 config.
Routers - Hacked (DD-WRT rocks)
Mouse - A logitech thing that has outlived currently 3 or 4 Mightymice I’ve used at various co’s …

Video:
BenQ 24″ - 1920 x 1200, anything less is a crime against multitasking, as good as you can get without spending stupid money.

Audio:
NuForce Icon - I like detail (USB, outputs clean audio)
Sophia Electric Baby tube amp - I like detail and warmth, plus, VALVES ROCK.
Energy RC Mini’s - kick ass
Mirage Omni 8″ Sub - when it’s not downstairs

The brawn:
Maple desk - all hand made. Had immense amounts of fun turning stock maple lumber and ply into this. Took approximately two months. Cost a lot more than what any rikety piece of Ikea cardboard would cost (don’t ever think you can build furniture to save money). Amazingly when moving house, I didn’t trust the movers, so I managed to get it all into a VW Golf in one go (albeit I was driving with the top of my head underneath the top of the desk - visualise that!). Comes apart in 3 pieces, only way to lift it.

The last word: