Tim Harvey :: Blog

Take your workspace seriously

2010-03-08T14:08:53Z

I’ve always been fascinated with creating a proper and efficient working environment. I’ve taken a fair bit of inspiration from the terrific writeup and gallery put together by Mitch Haile on his setup. Key takeaways: Have separate coding and administrative areas For coding, screen real estate is king Bush Series C office furniture rocks Ergotron makes fantastic monitor/laptop mounts I’m [...]

RVM installation of Ruby Enterprise Edition on Ubuntu Hardy

2010-03-08T14:57:59Z

I decided to try out Rackspace Cloud for a new worker server that Am I Down needed. Since I wanted to keep the system tight on memory usage, I decided to go with Ruby Enterprise Edition. Unfortunately, I ran into a snag getting it installed via RVM (the terrific tool for running multiple versions of [...]

And now for something completely different

2010-02-05T14:40:34Z

I’ve had the pleasure of spending the last several months working with Squaremouth, the fastest growing travel insurance company in America. They quickly showed themselves to be an ideal client, standing at the intersection of work that I relish and people I enjoy collaborating with. I find myself jumping out of bed each morning, itching [...]

Validate Ruby on Rails model entries with Cucumber

2010-01-21T19:31:07Z

If you use Cucumber, chances are good that at some point in your testing, you needed to verify that a certain set of database records had been created. While this flies in the face of most BDD best practices, I’ve run into a few edge cases the last few months that required this level of [...]

Can you be friends with your clients? I think so.

2010-01-20T14:17:21Z

Over the years, talking heads have told us that one should keep your business and personal life carefully separated. While I’ve generally agreed with that approach, recent shifts in my client base towards more ideal clients has given me opportunities to head in a new direction. Getting our families together Working with John King from Metta Audio [...]

When building web apps, utilize proper indexing

2010-01-19T14:33:05Z

Rails does a lot of crazy wonderful stuff. The downside is that all that awesome power gives you the ability to make some pretty dumb moves. Just because I can get the URL for one of the sites my Am I Down? users get alerts for by using… current_user.sites[0].host.url …doesn’t mean that I necessarily should. That command [...]

Client stats for 2009

2010-01-04T13:38:13Z

As we begin the new year, I would encourage you to review your business and see what unexpected insights you might find. I’m not talking about another look at your products or services, but rather at your processes, finances, and customers. Starting to work ON your business, not just IN it It’s easy for me to spend [...]

SOLD: 2.66 Quad Core “Nehalem” Mac Pro

2010-01-20T12:54:37Z

My business has transitioned significantly towards doing work onsite with clients and more frequent travel. Therefore, it no longer makes sense for me to maintain a monster-powered Mac Pro at my office. Heck, I’m only in the office one or two days now. For Sale – Like-new Mac Pro with AppleCare: 2.66 GHz [...]

SOLD: 13″ black MacBook

2010-01-20T12:55:35Z

After just over a year of consulting work, I upgraded to a 17″ MacBook Pro. So now I need to sell my original laptop. For Sale – 13″ black MacBook with: 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo 4 GB of ram (I upgraded it) 250 GB drive [...]

Samantha Joy Harvey joins our family

2009-10-27T17:00:47Z

At 7:55pm on October 26th, my wife Sara and I welcomed a third little girl to our family. Samantha Joy Harvey weighed 7lbs, 8 oz and was 21 inches long. Jenna and Emmy are thrilled to meet their little sister (while on the phone after Sam was born, Jenna said, “Daddy, I keep laughing when [...]