April 2008
64 posts
Apr 30th
Block to Partial →
Now that’s a neat trick. Will have to play with later this week.
Apr 30th
Apr 30th
Ambitious adapter for SalesForce SOAP API →
That’d be crazy.
Apr 30th
Global Mobile Awards 2008 Winners →
I feel like I should have heard of these companies but I haven’t.
Apr 29th
“Fifteen years ago, enterprise technology was higher-quality than consumer...”
– Douglas Merrill, Google Chief Information Officer, 3/18/08
Apr 29th
&& not 'and', || not 'or' →
Do it!
Apr 29th
Software Development Lessons Learned from Poker →
Best Jay Fields article to-date.
Apr 29th
autotest with growl notifications
There’s a lot of tutorials out there, but this is what worked for me: touch ~/.autotest vim ~/.autotest require 'autotest/redgreen' require 'autotest/timestamp' module Autotest::Growl def self.growl title, msg, pri = 0, img = nil title += " in #{Dir.pwd.split(/\//)[-3..-1].join("/")}" msg += " at #{Time.now.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')}" # TODO: parameterize default image ...
Apr 27th
Apr 27th
Apr 27th
Merb/RSpec tutorial →
Meh, not bad.
Apr 27th
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus →
No one who works in TV gets to ask the question, ‘Where do people find the time?’ You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you’ve been masking for 50 years. Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that’s 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. This is a pretty big...
Apr 27th
Flot charts →
The examples look good. Will have to experiment.
Apr 26th
unix and internet fundatmentals →
going back to basics
Apr 26th
“When you have other guys who are as strong, obviously you are going to have...”
– Kevin Garnett 
Apr 26th
10 years required for any expertise
Researchers (Bloom (1985), Bryan & Harter (1899), Hayes (1989), Simmon & Chase (1973)) have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music composition, telegraph operation, painting, piano playing, swimming, tennis, and research in neuropsychology and topology. There appear to be no real shortcuts: even Mozart, who...
Apr 26th
Apr 26th
rails-fast-sessions →
Heard good things, will try it out on side project.
Apr 25th
Desktop Earth →
NASA photos of the earth, live, on your desktop.
Apr 25th
Gems on GitHub →
Wowie wowie wowie.
Apr 25th
Citizen Media Law Project →
Federal law permits recording telephone calls and in-person conversations with the consent of at least one of the parties. See 18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(d). This is called a “one-party consent” law. Under a one-party consent law, you can record a phone call or conversation so long as you are a party to the conversation. Furthermore, if you are not a party to the conversation, a “one-party consent” law...
Apr 25th
'cost per [x]' ... goal: fewer customer-to-company...
Amazon.com’s focus on “CPX” – contacts per order, contacts per unit shipped, contacts per transaction and contacts per customer. In other words: Don’t just ask how long it took to help the customer, ask how often the customer needed help and why. The goal is to avoid creating a need for a customer to contact the company in the first place. [via Wall Street Journal]
Apr 25th
“Reporter to Michael Jordan: “There’s no ‘i’ in...”
– [via @gruber]
Apr 24th
“Meyers-Briggs is corporate astrology.”
– [via @josephgrossberg]
Apr 24th
No such thing as a safe bear →
“loving, affectionate, friendly, safe bear” … right.
Apr 24th
Apr 24th
Apr 23rd
Apr 23rd
Creating more using less effort with Ruby on Rails →
Pretty level-headed argument for using Rails.
Apr 22nd
Boston Marathon
“I just hope we finish,” said Emily Lynch, a 23-year-old from Sudbury joining friend Katelyn Loporto in their first Boston Marathon. Lynch and the 25-year-old Acton native, both sporting pigtails for good luck, hatched their plan to run after meeting at Boston University Medical School. “We shared the same cadaver,” Lynch said. - Daily News Tribune 
Apr 22nd
Holy Cross Office of Entrepreneurial Studies  →
Go, Cross, Go.
Apr 22nd
Apr 21st
WatchWatch
Half-hour DHH video on the Fortune 5,000,000, short work weeks, doing what you love, staying small, and making money from web apps. Great advice as always, and entertaining.
Apr 20th
Ruby Heroes Awards →
Decided to submit a few votes for my Ruby Heroes. I voted for people whose work I use regularly or expect to be using more regularly. Thus, I voted for: Rick Olson (for restful_authentication, acts_as_versioned, and us_states) Evan Weaver (for ultrasphinx and has_many_polymorphs) Chris Wanstrath (for err the blog, github, will_paginate, and ambition) the Seattle Ruby Brigade as a group (for...
Apr 20th
Kevin Garnett for MVP
On May 22, 2007, professional basketball was effectively murdered in Boston. Garnett transformed every single facet of the franchise upon his arrival, from playing for the Celtics to coaching them to following them to owning them to working for them. What he did can’t be measured by statistics; it can’t even be measured in a few paragraphs like the section you’re reading right...
Apr 20th
Muxtape with Coverflow in Fluid →
Tight.
Apr 18th
Apr 17th
Rails git best practices →
by Tim Pope
Apr 17th
Piston with Git support →
Missed this announcement. Glad to hear it, though.
Apr 17th
WatchWatch
Project Blue Book, “Soundcheck > Jubilee > Turn on Your Love Light”
Apr 15th
Human Trafficking →
Law school project by a friend of mine. Helped him with Tumblr and Scribd.
Apr 15th
Apr 14th
Apr 14th
Apr 11th
Average starting salaries of college grads by... →
My major in college, political science: not even on the list. My minor, philosophy: last. My current career, programming: #2.
Apr 9th
swallow_nil
irb(main):001:0> obj = nil => nil irb(main):002:0> obj.name NoMethodError: undefined method `name’ for nil:NilClass from (irb):2 from :0 irb(main):003:0> swallow_nil { obj.name } => nil def swallow_nil   yield rescue NoMethodError   nil end
Apr 9th
British army tests LSD on soldiers →
Old, but awesome, clip.
Apr 9th
right_aws tip
RightAws::RightAwsParser.xml_lib = ‘libxml’ # faster performance
Apr 9th
Code Generation: The Safety Scissors Of... →
Giles Bowkett’s talk at MoutainWest Ruby Conference. About halfway through. Very good thus far.
Apr 6th