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Your Entire Computer in 7 Years

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Smartphones Helping Magazines Become Interactive

@techpickles mazel tov, Josh!

Brian Del Vecchio @techpickles mazel tov, Josh! 6 minutes ago from Twitter - Comment - Like

I Am Not a Master but a Solutionist

I stumbled upon an interesting essay by Zed Shaw recently titled "The Master, The Expert, The Programmer" pointed out by Avdi Grimm. One part that stuck out in my mind was this excerpt:

What I notice is that my peers are progressing to more and more complicated and convoluted designs. They are impressed with the flashiest APIs, the biggest buzzwords, and the most intricate of useless features. They are more than happy to write endless unit tests to test their endless refactoring all the while claiming that they follow XP’s “the simplest thing that works” mantra. I’ve actually seen a guy take a single class that did nothing more than encapsulate the addition of two strings, and somehow “refactor” it to be four classes and two interfaces. How is this improving things? How can more somehow equal simpler? This should never be the case.

These are the actions of an expert. These experts are very smart, capable, and skilled, but they are too busy impressing everyone to realize that their actions are only making things worse for themselves. In the end all of their impressive designs are doing nothing but making more work for themselves and everyone around them. It’s as if their work is only designed for getting them their next job, rather than keeping them in their current one.

I agree and have always thought the same. I have seen people turn something simple into something complex that will be difficult to maintain. One of my previous enterprise clients produced solution after solution which was so complex that adding a field to a form took a day with all of its levels of indirection.

So many programmers are like sheep, they follow the herd because they think they should and feel if they don't they will be left behind. In my opinion, developers should stand back from the crowd and be an individual and do those things that work for them.

Personally, I will do the simplest thing I can do to solve a problem within the constraints of the problem domain. This is my best interest because I can better maintain code later and it is the best interest of the client because it costs them less and more likely someone else can support it later.

Solutionist

I currently am working on a project that is filled with tests, some created in TDD fashion, some created after the fact. It seems to me, from someone coming in from the outside, that these tests were created for tests-sake and done for the right reasons. The tests are spread out across the project and are not complete and don't cover all of the necessary business rules. When I look at this it seems like it was a waste of the clients money. If we can't rely 100% on what the tests are actually testing, then why do them at all?

I am also working on a project with very little tests, almost none. This project works very well and shows almost no ill-effects of not having a test suite. I will not get into a holy TDD war, it's not my point. I'm just pointing out how two diverse projects from a test perspective can provide value.

I look at the work I have done over the years, some with full test suites and some without and realize what was done was done with a certain business situation in mind. We don't live in a perfect world business is not perfect, projects aren't perfect and neither are solutions.

We are solutionists and we do the best job we can from the experience we have garnered and what the client can afford. I think this is an important point here, we can't really bang our fist on the table demanding TDD from a client who may not have the budget.

I think we should be creating the simplest solutions we can to fit the needs, and budget of the client. If simple is a one form application, then do it. If simple is a 20 form application with full test suite, then do it. Simple is what gets the job done.

RE: RE: RE: RE: RoR Developers for Comodo Group Inc. (Ukraine, Odessa)

Ruby on rails: how to install ruby 1.8.7 on windows

Das abgefahrene Kiffer-Film-Quiz zu Contact High

Contact High ist eine skurrile Mischung aus �si-Kom�die und Kifferfilm, den ihr euch nicht entgehen lassen solltet. Wir haben euch ein Expterten-Quiz zum Thema gebastelt.

�ber den Kifferfilm Contact High berichteten wir bereits ausf�hrlich. P�nktlich zum DVD-Start des Streifens haben wir f�r alle Gras-Experten und Film-Liebhaber ein Quiz zum bekannten Genre des Kifferfilms gebastelt. Ihr habt Viel Rauch um Nichts, Ananas Express und Lammbock – Alles in Handarbeit bereits tausendmal gesehen? Dann testet hier euer Experten-Wissen:

Mehr Infos
zu Contact High

© Delphi

@kevsmith the heart pounding will add a degree or two to your body temp?

Nolan @kevsmith the heart pounding will add a degree or two to your body temp? 13 hours ago from Twitter - Comment - Like

@mickael don't disagree, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was limited to a single app. probably will depend on CPU and memory specs.

Nolan @mickael don't disagree, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was limited to a single app. probably will depend on CPU and memory specs. 13 hours ago from Twitter - Comment - Like

Fresh Thinking: Against Guruism, Unconferences, and Social Media Experts » SearchViz: Get Found

(posted by arafatm)

yak shaving is most easy with fresh razor blades. #protip

Nolan yak shaving is most easy with fresh razor blades. #protip 13 hours ago from Twitter - Comment - Like

[Music] Stephin Merritt - The Man of a Million Faces

Why You Shouldn’t Use Float for Currency (floating point issues – explained for Ruby and RoR)

Ben Alman » jQuery BBQ v1.1 and jQuery hashchange event v1.0

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

(posted by vinbarnes) zoom

(posted by vinbarnes) zoom

Alicia Keys - Empire State of Mind Part II (Live on SNL)...

Alicia Keys - Empire State of Mind Part II (Live on SNL) 1-9-2010

@zeldman just watched Annie Hall for the first time last night. It almost made me uncomfortable how much I could relate to it.

tylr @zeldman just watched Annie Hall for the first time last night. It almost made me uncomfortable how much I could relate to it. 19 hours ago from Twitter - Comment - Like

我们没有高科技，只有臭狗屁

看了这个新闻：http://www.javaeye.com/news/12856-Sixth-Sense “震撼人心的新科技 - Sixth Sense”，真的被里面的“第六感”震撼，但是佩服人家之余却是淡淡的无力感，想起梅尔吉普森几年前拍的那部玛雅人电影《启示》，影片的内容黑色血腥倒不用说，最后一个镜头让我印象很深刻，因为一直都在演丛林中的事情，我还以为故事发生在某个远离现代文明的时期，可是结尾玛雅人赶到海边看到的却是战船大炮，“八国联军”正准备登岸。

本来想发发牢骚，可是想想都是无解，算了，只有──如题！

加赠《启示》这部片的第一句话：A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within ── Will Durant

RE: RE: RE: RoR Developers for Comodo Group Inc. (Ukraine, Odessa)

RE: RE: RoR Developers for Comodo Group Inc. (Ukraine, Odessa)

@jimweirich almost got me to jump in the car and make, presumably, a multihour drive.

Nolan @jimweirich almost got me to jump in the car and make, presumably, a multihour drive. 14 hours ago from Twitter - Comment - Like

RE: RE: RE: RE: что вы думаете о Ruby on Steel!! Visual Studio 2005-2008

Shoes packages your Shoes app as a .shy format file.

Popular Wiping Methods

Mathew Ingram Joins GigaOM

The Things that Compose Agile Environments

Which Victory?

Links for January 10th through January 11th

Making Friends with FFI

Is your Ruby C Extension lonely? FFI can help

Lonely? Many Ruby programmers have found the need to make calls on C libraries. Sometimes this is for writing performance-critical code and sometimes it is to use an existing library written in C. Ruby extensions are created by writing a small amount of glue code in C. The downside is that you need to compile your C code wrapper. This requires you to either release versions of the compiled code for all platforms or force your users to have a development environment. Furthermore, the extension is only guaranteed to run on the standard Matz Ruby Implementation (MRI). This means that your shiny new extension cannot necessarily be used by other Ruby VMs such as JRuby or MacRuby.

Make friends. If you want your C code to play nicely with the other VMs out there, then FFI (foreign function interface) is the answer. FFI is built-in to JRuby and MacRuby; MRI requires a compiled gem for FFI access. After a night of experimentation, I was able to get C code from the Chipmunk Physics library running in Ruby via FFI (chipmunk-ffi). Just tell FFI what function to attach, what arguments it takes, what the return type is, and it will take care of the rest. FFI is a great tool that any Ruby developer should have in their tool belt and consider against writing a C extension.

C code:

void cpInitChipmunk(void);

To call it from Ruby:

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# sample from chipmunk-ffi

require 'ffi'
module CP
  extend FFI::Library
  # load a C library
  ffi_lib 'chipmunk'
 
  # look up a function
  attach_function :cpInitChipmunk, [], :void

  # call the new function
  cpInitChipmunk
end

More Info:

why use FFI

projects using FFI

presentations on FFI

Proposal Submitted for Scottish Ruby Conference

Today I’ve submitted a proposal to be considered for inclusion in the Scottish Ruby Conference this year.

Fingers crossed, I’ll be accepted as a speaker!

Firefox 3.6 RC1: It's fast.

Brian Del Vecchio Firefox 3.6 RC1: It's fast. 2 hours ago from Twitter - Comment - Like

Ruby on Rails Developers – Central London

"I bought another case of Rock Star. Expect architectural changes"

Gerade die 1619. Fratze auf #dailyfratze hochgeladen: http://dailyfratze.de/michael/2010/1/11

Michael Gerade die 1619. Fratze auf #dailyfratze hochgeladen: http://dailyfratze.de/michael... 9 hours ago from Twitter - Comment - Like

michael am 11. Januar 2010

Michael michael am 11. Januar 2010 - http://dailyfratze.de/michael... 9 hours ago from michael | DailyFratze.de - Comment - Like

dlouhy: My Calc 2 professor's name is Donald King. I'm going to hopefully win this class via TKO.

Brian Del Vecchio dlouhy: My Calc 2 professor's name is Donald King. I'm going to hopefully win this class via TKO. - http://twitter.com/dlouhy... 3 hours ago from Twitter / Favorites from... - Comment - Like

50+ Most Wanted Blogger Templates

Cloning a remote branch using Git

Ruby 1.9 character encoding field notes

As you probably already know the String class became encoding aware in Ruby 1.9. This makes it possible to manipulate strings on the character level instead of on byte level. However, it’s still a general purpose API which means writing a few lines of code to get stuff done.

It’s common to choose one internal representation for character data in an application and convert all incoming strings to this representation. For example, in modern applications strings are often encoded in UTF-8 or UTF-16. I took some time to figure out how to do this in Ruby 1.9.

The biggest problem with receiving data from external sources is trust. Sources can lie about their encoding or provide broken data. Sometimes it gets mangled accidentally and sometimes someone is attacking your application with a carefully crafted payload.

Problems can arise on a lot of levels. Just think about receiving an HTTP response from a webserver. Things can go wrong in the proxy, in the client library, in the string implementation of your language. Meta-data about the encoding is stored in HTTP headers, the HTML, and now in String. The same problems exist with data coming from databases, filesystems, and caches.

You can trust some of these sources more than others. For example, you can control the data going into a database so you can trust the data coming out. In contrast, anything coming from the internet should be considered potentially dangerous.

My solution for these problems is a new method on String called ensure_encoding. It makes sure the data in the string is at least compatible with your internal strings. Depending on the options you pass it will respond differently to broken data.

As an example, let’s take an HTTP POST to a web API. Assume we’ve explained in the API documentation we only accept UTF-8 character data and will be very strict about this. Our code might look something like this:

require "ensure/encoding"
begin
  params.each do |key, value|
    params[key].ensure_encoding!(Encoding::UTF_8,
      :external_encoding  => Encoding::UTF_8,
      :invalid_characters => :raise)
  end
rescue Encoding::InvalidByteSequenceError => e
  send_response_document :unprocessable_entity,
    "Sorry, your request contains invalid encoding" +
    "and can't be processed (#{e.message})"
end

You can find more examples on the GitHub project page and in the source. Normally I try to extract code from a running project, but we don’t run any production code on 1.9 yet. It would be great if you can help out with testing the code. I’ve released the code as a gem, so it should be really easy to install.

$ gem install ensure-encoding

Please leave any bugs, problems, or suggestions in the GitHub issue tracker.

BBC News - Reporter breaks an 'unbreakable' mobile phone at CES

chartier:

With a chuckle-worthy video that I’d love to paste here, but for some reason the BBC does not do the whole “let people view our stuff everywhere” thing.

Как добавить в конкретный Ruby-объект какое-нибудь свойство

Tobey Maguire verspricht Spider-Man 4

Ger�chte um den Filmstart von Spider-Man 4 haben Tobey Maguire zu einem Interview gebracht. Er spricht �ber Peter Parker und die Produktion des Films.

Tobey Maguire verspricht den Spider-Man-Fans einen vierten Teil. Der Start des vierten Spider-Man Teils sei nicht in Gefahr, macht der 34-J�hrige Schauspieler in einem Interview klar. Vor kurzem gab es Ger�chte, dass der Starttermin der Fortsetzung verschoben werden soll. Deshalb machten sich Fans Sorgen, ob er �berhaupt erscheint. Regisseur Sam Raimi und die Sony Pictures Studios seien sich nicht �ber die Storyline einig. Der Hauptstreitpunkt sei, welcher B�sewicht aus dem Spider-Man-Universum die Rolle von Spideys Gegenspieler �bernehmen soll. Sam Raimi w�nsche sich John Malkovich als Vulture, ein Ingenieur und Erfinder. Sony habe andere, unbekannte Pl�ne.

Thor, eine andere Marvel Superhelden Story, soll auch im Mai 2011 in die Kinos kommen. Das macht den Release von Spider-Man zum gleichen Zeitpunkt sehr unwahrscheinlich. Tobey Maguire : „Wir befinden uns in der Mitte eines Prozesses, wir haben schon eine Menge tollen Stoff, in Sachen Story und Script- nun m�ssen wir nur noch versuchen alles zusammen zu bekommen und das so schnell wie m�glich.“ Er stellte klar: „Nat�rlich sind solche Filme gro�e Unterfangen und so was braucht mehr Zeit als ein Drama oder etwas, dass einfacher gestrickt ist.“ Mit anderen Worten Tobey Maguire versucht seine Fans zu beruhigen, aber k�nnen wir ihm das abnehmen? Zum genauen Releasedate will er sich nicht �u�ern. Vage spricht er vom Jahr 2011.

„Es ist alles sehr aufregend f�r mich. Ich denke die Evolution des Charakters ist wirklich aufregend. Er gr�ndet auf dem bisherigen Geschehnissen und der Charakter hat sich bislang kontinuierlich entwickelt. Jetzt brauchen wir eine richtige Entwicklung oder eine Evolution“, sagt Tobey Maguire begeistert. Ein weiteres Indiz, dass eine heile Welt nach au�en darstellen soll. Maguire wirbt f�r sich, den Film und die Filmfiguren. Marketing zu rechten Zeit, aber es klingt etwas unglaubw�rdig. Was Hoffnung macht, ist, dass Sam Raimi vor einem Jahr bei den Filmfestspielen in Cannes sagte: „Wenn ich �ber eine Welt nachdenke, in der die Peter Parker Story ein anderer macht, geht es mir schlecht.“

Schaut euch das Interview bei bbc.com an.

_{W�hlt euer Lieblingskino und gewinnt zwei Kinofreikarten! Moviepilot sucht die beliebtesten Kinos im Lande – die Top 200 findet ihr hier.}

© Sony Pictures Entertainment

Aus alt mach' neu - Das UCI Colosseum in Berlin

Auch Multiplexe k�nnen Charme haben. Daher stellen Euch im Rahmen unseres Kinovotings heute das UCI Colosseum in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg vor.

In unserer Aktion Ein Herz f�r Kino wollen wir Euch das beliebteste Kino Deutschlands w�hlen lassen. Nachdem wir bereits �ber das Lichtblick Filmtheater in Oldenburg/Holstein berichteten, wollen wir Euch heute wieder ein ganz besonderes Kino vorstellen.

F�r viele ist das ja eine Glaubensfrage: Geht Ihr in das winzige Kiez-Kino, in dem Ihr die Betreiber pers�nlich kennt und der Stammsessel im unklimatisierten Mini-Saal schon den Abdruck Eures Allerwertesten hat? Oder zieht Ihr das anonyme Multiplexkino ohne Seele, aber mit bequemen Sesseln und modernster Technik vor? Die Kinokette UCI-Kinowelt, die vor allem auf Multiplex-Kinos spezialisiert ist, l�dt in Berlin in ein ganz besonderes Kino mit bewegter Geschichte ein, das die Vorz�ge aus beiden Systemen verbindet und sich so einen Spitzenplatz in unserem Lieblinkskino-Voting erobern konnte: Das Colosseum in Prenzlauer Berg.

Nachdem das Geb�ude 1894 als Pferdestall und Wagenhalle errichtet wurde und im Ersten Weltkrieg als Busdepot diente, bauten Architekten in den 20er Jahren auf dem Gel�nde ein Kino. Das war die Geburtsstunde des Colosseums, des ersten Filmpalastes im Berliner Arbeiterbezirk Prenzlauer Berg. Der lange, schmale Zuschauerraum bot 1200 Zuschauern Platz. Am 12. September 1924 er�ffnete das Lichtspieltheater mit “Coolibri”, einem Stummfilm von und mit Ossi Oswalda. Begleitet wurden die Stummfilmpremieren im Colosseum bis zur Einf�hrung des Tonfilms 1929 von einem bis zu drei�ig Mann starken Orchester. Im Zweiten Weltkrieg diente das Colosseum als Lazarett und W�rmehalle. Nachdem es zwischenzeitlich als Ersatz f�r das Metropol-Theater diente, wurde es 1957 zum f�hrenden Premierenkino des Ostens aufgebaut.

Nach der Wende erweiterte der Betreiber den historischen Bau mit der denkmalgesch�tzten Backsteinfassade um ein Multiplexkino mit 10 S�len, das die Geschichte des Kinos mit modernster Technik kombinierte. Heute bietet das Colosseum seinen G�sten bis zu 2.814 Pl�tze, eine charismatische Lobby und historisches Flair.

Falls ihr Euer eigenes Lieblingskino ebenfalls an prominente Stelle bringen wollt, macht unbedingt mit bei unserem Voting. Seht nach, ob euer Favorit schon in unserer Liste steht. Bald werden die ersten Kinogutscheine verlost! Scheut Euch nicht und sagt es weiter: Mitmachen – Herz verschenken – Gewinnen! Die Gewinner der ersten 400 Kinogutscheine werden in den kommenden Wochen benachrichtigt werden.

Alle Infos zur Lieblingskino-Auswahl und dem Gewinnspiel

© Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin

Tom DeLonge of Blink-182 is a Social Media Maven

Code Retreat Grand Rapids

Atomic Object will be kicking off the Code Retreat 2010 season by hosting a retreat in Grand Rapids, MI on February 6th at Atomic HQ. “What is a Code Retreat?”, you ask? Code Retreat was dreamed up by Corey Haines, Nayan Harjatwala and Patrick Wilson-Welsh during some spare cycles at the Codemash v.2.0.0.9 conference. They wanted to create an event that would allow software developers to gather and practice their craft away from the pressures of writing production code and delivering business value. It would be a place where developers could come together and improve their ability to write clean and responsible code and ultimately improve their ability to deliver more business value to customers.

It wasn't long before Corey, Nayan and Patrick's idea came to fruition; weeks later, the first Code Retreat was held in Ann Arbor, MI. About 30 developers passionate enough about their craft to spend a whole Saturday geeking out with other developers were in attendance, including some well known people in the Agile/XP community such as Ron Jeffries, Chet Hendrickson, J.B. Rainesberger, Bill Wake, and of course, Corey, Nayan and Patrick. Since this first event there have been several more Code Retreats in places like Cleveland, Chicago, Toronto, Philadelphia, and even Scotland.

So by now you might be asking yourself, “What exactly goes on at these Code Retreats?” Code Retreats typically follow some very simple guidelines. The problem domain that has been adopted is Conway’s Game of Life, which has a small enough problem space, allowing developers to not get overwhelmed by complex business rules, yet complex enough that most pairs won’t be able to finish it. We pair program in ~40 minute iterations on the problem domain, and when the iteration is finished we switch up the pairs and throw away the code we just wrote. The reason behind throwing away the code is because the goal is not to write code, rather it is to learn and practice. We hold retrospectives twice throughout the day to get a feel for how things are progressing, once at lunchtime and once more at the day’s end, and make any adaptions to the process as necessary.

If you are interested in attending, we ask that you RSVP using the Code Retreat website at http://coderetreat.ning.com/xn/detail/2712512:Event:3302?xg_source=activity so that we know how many people to plan for. Atomic Object will be providing the space and food for this event, if you are traveling and need hotel recommendations feel free to contact Jeremy Anderson (jeremy.anderson_AT_atomicobject_DOT_com).

RT @ballardian: RT @factmagazine: BBC's Brian Eno documentary premieres this month: http://bit.ly/52SYau

Brian Del Vecchio RT @ballardian: RT @factmagazine: BBC's Brian Eno documentary premieres this month: http://www.factmagazine.co.uk/index... 3 hours ago from Twitter - Comment - Like

@ballardian Why block? RT @bruces Just passed 7,000 followers. Since it's a closed account, they're all human beings.

Brian Del Vecchio @ballardian Why block? RT @bruces Just passed 7,000 followers. Since it's a closed account, they're all human beings. 4 hours ago from Twitter - Comment - Like