Archive for April, 2008

Using git to solve problems locally before checking in

Wow… I just had a great git experience.
I had gone down a track of development that was critical for something I’m doing. I ran into a bug that I couldn’t solve without reverting tons of files. Oh oh in subversion land… especially after checking in all those changes.
However, with git it’s easy. I […]

Custom JavaScript events using the Motionbox EventHandler

YUIBlog has a very nice writeup on using custom events to build components.
The Motionbox EventHandler will offer the same capabilities they talk about to the Prototype developer.
The idea here is that you very loosely couple all your components and fire custom events between them to communicate. You do not register callbacks on individual components, [...]

Summing up how I feel about deadlines

Hitting arbitrary deadlines to me sounds good for a highly siloed company aiming to put out "some features." Not a company striving to create a remarkable product in a competitive landscape where innovation is the only thing that's going to count. A company like that needs rapid innovation cycles, feature teams, constant input and [...]

Urgency in software development

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/966-urgency-is-poisonous
When a few days extra turns into a few weeks extra then there’s a problem, but what really has to be done by Friday that can’t wait for Monday or Tuesday? If your deliveries are that critical to the hour or day, maybe you’re setting up false priorities and dangerous expectations.
Sometimes I think we all [...]

links for 2008-04-22

AI Ruby Plugins
(tags: artificial intelligence ai ruby plugins rails machine learning machinelearning)

links for 2008-04-21

Adactio: Journal—Wrapping up The Future of Web Design
(tags: article business design css IA webdesign live blog liveblog)

Import Gmail Contacts using Ruby on Rails | Atlantic Dominion Solutions
(tags: google api howto tutorials)

links for 2008-04-19

RSS: Bypass Password-Protected Feeds with FreeMyFeed
(tags: password rss feed protected stream bypass cool basecamp)

telekinesis - Google Code
(tags: iphone remote control free opensource cool)

RealScoop: Home
(tags: realscoop lie analysis cool analyze emotional public figure)

blacktree-visor - Google Code
(tags: terminal launcher hotkey simbl plugin lookscool)

Maintaining Sass constants in one file… the easy, hacky way

If you're like us and you want to have multiple separated sass files (where the resulting css gets bundled at build time) but want to maintain constants for use across the whole site in one other file, this monkey patch is for you.
Just add a file to your /lib directory (for rails) and require it [...]

Worst Internal Microsoft Video

I got this off of Vitamin News.
The thing about this video that makes it truly horrible is its relatively high production value. Microsoft spent a fair amount of time and money producing this crap. Worse it's for a bad product. I know M$ has the money for this, but to be publicly just throwing it [...]

Paul Miller: Not a good guy and past president of the American League of Lobbyists

Public asked to shape open-government bill
"I don't think the way you advocate is to put everything online and say, 'All right American people, weigh in on that,' because then what's next?" Miller asked. "Are we going to let the American people decide our defense policy, our trade policy, our immigration policy?"
I have no idea what [...]