May 2012
1 post
Metrics vs. Goals
The common knowledge is to create a goal and then work towards it.  Looking back, one of the achievements that I’m most proud of happened without a set goal.  I decided to lose weight and lost 150lbs doing it wrong.  I didn’t have a target weight and I weighed myself every single day.   That’s weight as a metric vs weight as a goal.  I could try new things and see if they worked...
May 30th
April 2012
3 posts
Prefer send over eval [ruby]
You don’t loose your stack trace when you use send like you will with eval
Apr 17th
Problems with the office : There's always somebody...
Suggested prerequisite Stephen Pressfield’s The War Of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle Go ahead, I’ll wait. The resistance is always looking for a way to get you to not do your work.  Especially if it’s important.  The problem with an office is that there’s always someone screwing around.  I’m actively in favor of screwing around.  I believe that it’s...
Apr 14th
Procrastination of BIG Ideas
No surprise in the fact that it has taken me a long time to get to writing this. The Bigger the Idea, the bigger the impact, the bigger the Resistance.   Cut down the Big Idea to a quick win.  Cut down the Resistance. 
Apr 14th
March 2012
1 post
Ruby 1.9 tap; Is it dangerous?
https://gist.github.com/204142 Can anyone explain why that behaviour is happening?  If you’re using tap you rightly expect the input to equal the output.  I’m really curious on this one.
Mar 15th
January 2012
1 post
“The path of the righteous programmer is beset on all sides by the inequities of...”
– http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2355632
Jan 6th
December 2011
1 post
Don't Write Tests
Writing code without tests usually looks like this for me.  Let me know if it sounds familiar. Open the console Create some base objects (usually Active Record Models) Write some code reopening classes along the way See if it works the way I expect it to Copy the code to a scratch space Repeat 3 - 5 until I think I’ve got what I’m looking for (occasionally jumping back to 1 to...
Dec 31st
April 2011
1 post
I ain't mad at'cha
[excuse the poor grammar in the title, it’s a song title.] I was directly effected by the recent EC2 outage as a Heroku customer. I’ve heard a lot of chatter about how this proves that the cloud isn’t “all that”.  I disagree.  Simply put downtime happens.  One of the things that I pay for as a hosted (cloud) customer is that when downtime happens, I’m not...
Apr 25th
June 2009
1 post
Beauty in action
When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. R. Buckminster Fuller I want to write more on this subject but for now I’m putting this out in the universe to remind me.
Jun 4th
May 2009
1 post
On flawed heuristics
Philip Greenspun has a post that has caused a bit of an uproar in the Rails community. You have to scroll down quite a way to get to the moral of the story. Actually you have to scroll all the way down to the comments. The point of the story was to show that the MIT-trained programmer with 20 years experience and an enthusiasm for the latest and greatest ended up building something that...
May 20th
March 2009
1 post
Database of Choice
Relational databases are meh.  There are sexier storage technologies out there for web development like document oriented and object databases.  Still the relational database is often the day to day workhorse of most of our projects. Just a moment ago I had to decide what (relational) database to use to back a project I’m working on.  I’m going with PostgreSQL.  There are a lot of...
Mar 25th
January 2009
1 post
What is the relational model good for?
That my friends and neighbors is the question.  I could implement what I’m working on presently using either related tables and maybe some single table inheritance.  Alternatively I could implement it using ActiveRecord’s composed_of functionality.  So far I’ve done the latter.  I was looking at prototyping the former. After some consideration I’ve come to the conclusion...
Jan 29th
December 2008
8 posts
Development with Humor
I give you Mediocre In Place Controls Basicly I needed to work around the use of the calendar helper in Super Inplace Controls. —R
Dec 28th
ActiveScaffold With Dr. Nic's Magic Models
If like me you’ve been frustrated trying to get Dr. Nic’s Magic Models and ActiveScaffold working together Here’s your ghetto patch —R
Dec 17th
Issue 593 - activescaffold - Google Code - (1 of... →
Dec 16th
Need Ruby Text Editor Suggestions - (1 of 19) →
Dec 15th
http://developer.spikesource.com/wiki/index.php?title=Projects:TestGen4Web
Dec 5th
neubauten.org: Einstuerzende Neubauten →
Dec 3rd
zerosum dirt(nap) - Testing Workling with RSpec →
Dec 2nd
Ruby on Rails 2.2 Release Notes →
Dec 1st
November 2008
33 posts
Let me google that for you →
Nov 27th
Nanite Monitor App →
Nov 26th
Gizmine →
Nov 26th
Need Ruby Text Editor Suggestions - (2 of 18) →
Nov 25th
Pathfinder Development » Rails 2.2 For Me And For... →
Nov 25th
Need Ruby Text Editor Suggestions - (2 of 16) →
Nov 24th
Sorcery 101 - Friday, November 21, 2008 →
Nov 24th
Need Ruby Text Editor Suggestions - (3 of 14) →
Nov 23rd
rklophaus's nitrogen at master — GitHub →
Nov 22nd
Need Ruby Text Editor Suggestions - (2 of 11) →
Nov 22nd
Need Ruby Text Editor Suggestions - (6 of 9) →
Nov 22nd
Need Ruby Text Editor Suggestions - (3 of 3) →
Nov 21st
DAIM - Swinging DAIM | BlackBerry Curve 8300 Skins... →
Nov 20th
Teamtastic | great teams connected →
Nov 19th
Ryan's Scraps: Roxy: A Ruby Proxy-Object Library →
Nov 19th
Untitled →
Nov 18th
Optimo Hat Company →
Nov 13th
PatHelland's WebLog : Memories, Guesses, and... →
Nov 12th
Tutorials – js.io – Networking for the Web →
Nov 11th
TweetDeck →
Nov 11th
MBT Shoes – Home of the Anti shoe →
Nov 11th
Microframeworks take 1
So far Waves and Ramaze wouldn’t install cleanly.  Admittedly it’s not Ramaze’s fault as the problem lies in the memcache client and all that mess. Forking Sinatra —R
Nov 8th
why's camping at master — GitHub →
Nov 8th
UnderstandingAggregation in Ruby on Rails →
Nov 8th
home [Ramaze] →
Nov 8th
Home →
Nov 8th
thoughtbot: projects →
Nov 8th
The Microframework Shootout
I’ve decided to write the solution to a common problem I have in a variety of microframeworks. The Problem: A registration (name, address, email, phone, et al) using the ‘valueobjects’ I’ve been defining for this space. The Frameworks: Waves Ramaze Sinatra merb (is merb still micro?) Unicycle Coset Camping Rack (Raw adapter) Ordered in likelyhood of...
Nov 8th
PoolParty! →
Nov 7th
nokogiri-1.0.3 Documentation →
Nov 7th