April 2008
64 posts
Block to Partial →
Now that’s a neat trick. Will have to play with later this week.
Ambitious adapter for SalesForce SOAP API →
That’d be crazy.
Global Mobile Awards 2008 Winners →
I feel like I should have heard of these companies but I haven’t.
“Fifteen years ago, enterprise technology was higher-quality than consumer...”
– Douglas Merrill, Google Chief Information Officer, 3/18/08
&& not 'and', || not 'or' →
Do it!
Software Development Lessons Learned from Poker →
Best Jay Fields article to-date.
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 ...
Merb/RSpec tutorial →
Meh, not bad.
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...
Flot charts →
The examples look good. Will have to experiment.
unix and internet fundatmentals →
going back to basics
“When you have other guys who are as strong, obviously you are going to have...”
– Kevin Garnett
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...
rails-fast-sessions →
Heard good things, will try it out on side project.
Desktop Earth →
NASA photos of the earth, live, on your desktop.
Gems on GitHub →
Wowie wowie wowie.
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...
'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]
“Reporter to Michael Jordan: “There’s no ‘i’ in...”
– [via @gruber]
“Meyers-Briggs is corporate astrology.”
– [via @josephgrossberg]
No such thing as a safe bear →
“loving, affectionate, friendly, safe bear” … right.
Creating more using less effort with Ruby on Rails →
Pretty level-headed argument for using Rails.
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
Holy Cross Office of Entrepreneurial Studies →
Go, Cross, Go.
WatchHalf-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.
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...
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...
Muxtape with Coverflow in Fluid →
Tight.
Rails git best practices →
by Tim Pope
Piston with Git support →
Missed this announcement. Glad to hear it, though.
WatchProject Blue Book, “Soundcheck > Jubilee > Turn on Your Love Light”
Human Trafficking →
Law school project by a friend of mine. Helped him with Tumblr and Scribd.
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.
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
British army tests LSD on soldiers →
Old, but awesome, clip.
right_aws tip
RightAws::RightAwsParser.xml_lib = ‘libxml’ # faster performance
Code Generation: The Safety Scissors Of... →
Giles Bowkett’s talk at MoutainWest Ruby Conference. About halfway through. Very good thus far.