Merb & Adobe Air File Uploader – Nice!

October 29th, 2008 • Internet, Ruby, Uncategorized, software development
Tags: linkedin

Whilst writing an Adobe Lightroom plugin to upload library items to a rails app, i spotted something i definitely need to play with! Adobe Air and Merb file uploader. Looks rather handy!

Dave Thomas: Security as a measure of effectiveness

October 26th, 2008 • 1 comment Business, Productivity, agile, gtd, software development
Tags: linkedin

I really like this approach – Assess the state of security within a development team and project as an indication of how well a project is going and how effective processes are working out.

It’s another one of those many obvious tests that we all do, but at times i’ve certainly found myself accepting insecurity within a project team as one of those things because the team are new to the pressures or software projects are always uncertain and as such stressful. With a little consideration, it’s clearly more useful to use perceptions of insecurity as more direct indications that change is required.

What might we be looking for? A few possible ideas:

• How secure are the developers about the quality and stability of their code?
• How secure are the developers about rolling code to the various hosting platforms?
• How secure are team members about their relationship with others on the team?
• How secure is the project manager about hitting the deadline?
• How secure is the account manager about conversations with the client?
• How secure are senior management about project and team performance?

The overall intention of improving security is to make everyone feel relaxed. Software development is meant to be fun after all!

Source: Agile Toolkit Podcast ‘No fluff just stuff 2006 tour’

Jason Calacanis – work hard and succeed. don’t and fail

October 15th, 2008 • Business, Productivity, software development, work/life balance
Tags: linkedin

A blunt and no-nonsense approach: Watch the video on Work/Life Balance and Blood Sweat and Tears

37Signals don’t like his style, but in person i very much got where he was coming from – work hard and succeed! As it happens, I’m not working at his pace currently as it’s time for a family life (well, as well as working hard, just not 6-7 days a week like i have in the past), but what he says about people not pulling their weight rings too many bells!

Calacanis has more advice on “How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)“ here

Stop Press! facebook do social networking!

October 15th, 2008 • Business, social networking, software development

As FOWA this year, Mark Zuckerberg confided in us his vision for FaceBook – social networking! Revelation!

As far as the interview with Ryan Carson suggests, he’s only in it for the betterment of the human race. A truly dull and uninvolved interview

The BBC did a much better job and actually asked him why he didn’t sell out! Well done Beeb

Sproutcore – 1st impressions

October 14th, 2008 • 1 comment Apple, JavaScript, Ruby, software development
Tags: linkedin

Today i had a short play with Sproutcore (the “Cocoa for the Web” JS framework used by and optimized by Apple for me.com) for the first time. I was a little surprised with what i found.

The Great

• The development tools are in Ruby using the merb framework
• The development tools adopt a Rails like MVC architectural pattern, with commands like 

sc-gen model example/contact
sc-gen controller example/detail
sc-gen view example/card