blogforsamurai.com has been bumped to version 0.1.2, heralding the following changes:
Capistrano is now in use. If you’re a web developer, of any shade or pattern, then I highly recommend you take a good, long look. It’s the uber-deployment tool du jour. Du monde. Whatever, I don’t know French, but I do know that I’m a fool for not implementing this sooner.
Also, I recommend the preview version of Capistrano 2. For one thing, it includes different deploy strategies, one of which exports locally, compresses, and then uploads the code. A boon considering that my internal SVN isn’t publicly accessible.
I added Google Analytics. It’s not that I’m too interested in the viewing habits of my five readers, but rather, I think it’s a tool that I should become familiar with. I’ve recommended it to others without fully investigating it myself, and that needs to end as well. But I promise… no ads, never. Not here.
Live preview when editing/creating a post.
Ah, new favicon. I almost forgot.
New 20th week sonograms for your viewing pleasure over at my flickr page. Enjoy.
32 downloads left on May 23rd. I ran down my Save for Later and seeing nothing immediately compelling, I decided to grab a John Zorn album, a habit and a comfort since I love his music. But after the search I was met by a dark, sinister void… all gone.
And thus I learned that Tzadik had pulled their catalog from eMusic. Apparently, there’s been a revolt against the lower payout and some labels have been unable to make a decent profit (one even losing money for every download). That’s a shame and I hope they find greener pastures elsewhere.
There’s plenty of reading material on the subject if you’re interested, but this one was well-written and offers some solutions.
Today I received an email from a recruiter who had managed to stumble across a very stale resume that I had left up on monster.com. Ironic, because it was for a position that I’m trying to fill. Hopefully I’d find my old self qualified for a position I’m vacating, but I’m not sure that guy had the prerequisite experience.
So I attempted to completely cancel my monster.com account, and lo and behold, it’s not possible through the site. They recommend that you deactivate searches and jump through some hoops, but come on now… I just don’t want to play anymore, and the only real way to cancel is to call. Call?!? Now you’re acting AOL-ish and slimy, and the sooner I get out of this one the better. At least Friendster and Newshutch, as two examples, were kind enough to let me clean house online.
The foodforsamurai site has finally been updated, bringing its style inline with this blog:
On a technical note, the layout of the new site is driven by Yahoo! UI Grids, which is simply some CSS that creates predefined grids. Although my use of it was relatively simple, I can see how this can help manage complicated layouts with ease. So check it out, and while you’re at it, browse over the rest of the YUI toolkit as well.
If you live in Williamsburg/Greenpoint, Brooklyn, then you owe it to yourself to watch the Toxic Brooklyn series over at vbs.tv.
I haven’t lived here long, but my immediate reaction was still one of anger. Shear, crazy anger aimed at the impersonal, immoral oil industry and the coddling government. Are the people in charge here that stupid or lazy or greedy or diabolical, to the point that they simply don’t care? Justice and fairness must live somewhere at the bottom of Newtown Creek.
I don’t know if this exists or not, I’m mainly just throwing it out there. Out there to whom, I wonder…
Programmers should get together and start reading clubs, a la Oprah’s book club. Sorry, that may not exist anymore, but daytime television and myself haven’t talked in years. In any case, I believe code literacy doesn’t get enough press when it comes to programming education, and code review clubs could be a great way to spread best practices and highlight great code.
This thought process was primarily kickstarted by the sample stuff over at caboo.se (and related blog entries). It’s a great example of Rails done well, and veterans and newbies alike stand to gain. And why stop there? It would take a lifetime to study all the great open source code, but within individual communities it shouldn’t be hard to pick the winners and start reading.
I picture it like this: at the beginning of every month or so, an app is selected. Maybe it’s voted upon or a rotating leader chooses it, whatever works. Everyone in the club is expected to read the source and find something interesting – good or bad – to present to the rest of the group. It could be a detailed analysis of a particular algorithm, or maybe a high-level architecture breakdown complete with slides, or even just a “hey check out this cool function”. Even better, maybe you show up with a list of questions, nothing more.
Point is, it should cater to everyone, banning any air of exclusivity that all too easily arrives as geeks form en masse. In the end, the club is about learning and sharing that knowledge with others.
At each meeting, a “secretary” should be designated, and it’s this person’s job to take and gather notes, get copies of slides and so forth, and ultimately help build the club’s Tome of Knowledge (Wiki of Wisdom?).
And that’s it. Nobody laugh. Please.
Disclaimer: I’m being a bit hypocritical here. Although I advocate learning and sharing, I haven’t yet taken the steps to involve myself with any community at all. I do promise, however, to get my act together soon and fall in rank. Let’s just say that so far, I’ve been saving you all from having to stare at my ugly mug.
The Cats of Mirikitani – catch this on PBS. It documents an elderly Japanese man living on the streets of New York who turned out to have an amazing, traumatic past. Truly sobering. And the filmmaker defies the term bravery.
What would I do without PBS? I probably wouldn’t have a conscience.
Summer’s approaching and my wife is onto something – a glass of red wine garnished with a single ice cube is wonderfully refreshing. Instant cooling commences. Take a hint.