Mentalized comments

Comment on How to make a crappy API

2011-06-24T16:48:44Z

This is totally thedailywtf-worthy.

Good luck with that interface!

Comment on How to create a ribbon effect in CSS

2011-07-19T14:27:30Z

Thanks!

I think there is a typo in the CSS. In the block

.ribbon:before, .ribbon:after {
}

border-bottom-width, should be border-top-width, right?

Comment on How to create a ribbon effect in CSS

2011-07-19T18:53:23Z

Yes, you are correct. Updated.

Comment on Announcing r-conomic

2011-08-07T10:51:05Z

Nicely done Jakob, and thanks to you and Lokalebasen for sharing. This makes me want to do e-conomic integration into Podio, but alas a Python library would really be better for that. Still, it's nice to have your good clean Ruby code as a starting point ;)

Comment on The state of Ruby in Denmark

2011-08-11T15:11:57Z

Yes! I'll take that challenge :)

Comment on The state of Ruby in Denmark

2011-08-12T07:26:36Z

Ja, får mig til at tænke på filosoffen Stephan Molyneaux:
Han er inde på at hvad der er frit, åbent og båret frem af egen fri vilje og ikke tvang/penge, altid vil vinde i længden! Ruby er dejligt anarkistisk på den fede måde :)

http://www.freedomainradio.com/

Comment on Hvad bruges pengene til?

2011-08-14T10:32:57Z

Interessant oversigt! Kanon arbejde! :)

Comment on The state of Ruby in Denmark

2011-08-23T16:15:09Z

As one of the founders of Odense .NET user Group, I can say that the money that Microsoft has don't make much difference.
Sure, they make stuff like Community Day once a year here in Denmark.
ONUG (short name for our User Group), have gotten some things from Microsoft, like some free beer and some swag. But in my experience you don't get good community for offering free stuff (swag), quite the contrary I think - it makes the member a consumer instead of making them a contributor.

As a free time ruby, for fun, programmer, I've looked at Copenhagen.rb, but as I live in Odense, it's a little far way. But maybe someday :)

The .NET Community is right now experiencing a halt of excitement, and progress. We have ASP.NET MVC, that is just like 10% of rails, and Microsoft is using all it energy to push out Azure, that is cloud hosting for the "business-suit" guys. That's not fun for us. It's boring.
ANUG (The user group in Århus) has done two code camps about ruby and ruby on rails - they was quite popular we hear. So there clearly is a will to look over the fence. But I think that for any programmer, it's a hard move from being a one-programming-language guy to be a best-programming-language-for-the-job kinda guy.
We see that a lot when talking javascript. A lot of .NET programmers are avoiding javascript the best they can.

So very long comment... sorry. But what we are doing right now in ONUG is to try to convert from a more .NET focused user group, to a web oriented user group, so hopefully that will in time also mean, that I will meet some fellow Rails developers to mingle with :)

Also, if there is any Rails programmers on the Fuen area, that are up to some beer and socializing, give me a ping on twitter (@jesperbjensen)

Comment on The state of Ruby in Denmark

2011-08-23T17:53:34Z

Challenge accepted.
Also, how do I go about knowing the dates for the copenhagen.rb meetings without subscribing to the mailing list?

Comment on The state of Ruby in Denmark

2011-08-24T01:46:24Z

Thank you for leverage ruby to the world wide scale. I'm pretty happy working with Rails v3 now.

Comment on Digging into Objective-C (again)

2011-09-08T09:07:23Z

While switching from Ruby to ObjC (iOS in my case) is a walk down memory lane anno 1985 one miraculously adapts to the syntax. We all know square brackets are hurtful to the eye but after a while it'll just feel natural to concatenate two strings by writing a ridiculous amount of code. Core Data is also an acceptable substitute for Rails' ActiveRecord (sort of).

However, the sorry state of open source libraries for iOS saddens me. It is clear to me, that iOS still rests on its closed source roots. It is not so long time ago that the iOS API had a hefty NDA attached to it and I think it has left the people involved in iOS development with a closed source mindset. There are some pleasant exceptions to this and people have started hosting iOS projects on gitHub. However the lush open source ecosystem that surrounds Ruby and Rails seems like a distant Utopia.

Comment on Digging into Objective-C (again)

2011-09-08T10:18:46Z

Nice write up Jakob.

It definitely is quite a jump from Ruby development to Objective-C.

I find the lack of structure confusing as-well. It would be nice to have a views/lib/app whatever structure.

And working with strings totally reminds me of my C days... It should be easier to work with something so fundamental.

Comment on Pepper - a Redmine theme

2011-09-21T19:43:04Z

Simply stunning. We have been looking for a replacement Redmine theme for a LONG time, however none of the ones we have found have been what we were after. They weren't even close enough to be a base we could modify, without a LOT of work. Yours was just... perfect. :)

Thank you!

Comment on Pepper - a Redmine theme

2011-09-21T19:59:37Z

Thanks, I appreciate that :) I'd also appreciate any patches and improvements that you might come up with.

Comment on Routing requests to local development environment

2011-10-19T19:24:36Z

You might want to check out this Gist:
https://gist.github.com/1299379

It's a rake-task that you can put in your rails project, which will let you fire off a simple command:
rake network:tunnel:start
which will contact the server you have sepcified in a network.yml-file and open up a reverse proxy to your local computer.

It requires only a public server with root SSH access and doesn't require you to do any kind of setup or configuration on the server.

Comment on Import MTS video clips to iMovie

2011-12-06T09:04:30Z

i know a step by step guide on how to import MTS to imovie at bigasoft.com/articles/how-to-import-avchd-to-imovie.html
This guide is applied for:

Import AVCHD files in MTS to iMovie
Import AVCHD files in M2TS to iMovie
Import AVCHD files in MPG under MPEG-2 compression to iMovie
Import AVCHD files in MOV with MJPEG video format to iMovie
Import AVCHD files in DV to iMovie
Import AVCHD files in MOD to iMovie
Import AVCHD files in TOD to iMovie
Import 1080/60p video from Panasonic HDC-TM700 camcorder, Panasonic HDC-SD9/HDC-HS9, Panasonic AG-HMC150, Canon HF S21, Sony HDR-AX2000, Sony HXR-NX5U and more
Import AVCHD to iMovie for iPhone, iPhone 4, iMovie iPad, iMovie iPad 2, iMovie iPod touch
Import AVCHD to Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express

Comment on Challenge the deadline

2011-12-10T20:30:57Z

I am inclined to disagree. There are Four factors to take into consideration. First is that it might be more important to reach the deadline than having all functionality or testing done. I.e. it is a matter of focusing on the needs to have. Second is the developers themselves. There might be a number of reasons they are not 100% committed to the deadline. By asking everyone to focus on this deadline you can ensure that less important work from other places are downprioritized. Third is the matter of coordination. There might be a number of people, departments, other project, etc. who have build their plans around you reaching your deadline. There is a lot of communication effort involved when a deadline isn't reached. In a typical project you can have hundreds of those deadlines. Last it is wellknown in project management literature that adding resources doesn't make the project a success. Adding energy is the keyfactor in a projects success. And my experience is that there's a lot of positive energy in projects in the last week up to a deadline.

Comment on Challenge the deadline

2011-12-12T05:34:07Z

Kasper, I disagree with some if not all if your points.

If it is more important to ship soon, rather than finish everything, you need to prioritize an work on the highest priority stuff. You should be doing that anyway. The deadline does nothing to help if you're already aware of priorities.

External motivators, like deadlines or bonuses, may boost people's motivation briefly but most psychological research says that it spoils peoples joy in doing a job for its own sake which leads to more frustration and less motivation long term.

Comment on Challenge the deadline

2011-12-12T18:48:16Z

Christian, hmmm.. ja - så må vi hellere slå over i dansk. Jeg føler min tankegang bliver meget begrænset når jeg skal formulere mig på engelsk.

Lige præcis du var faktisk i mine tanker, da jeg skreve om, at det var vigtigt at fokusere op mod en deadline. For du har selv fortalt, at da du arbejde i google i Århus, så var det meget frit, hvad i lavede indtil i nærmede jer en deadline. Så var det huhej at få fokus på de rigtige ting og få dem til at fungere sammen. Hvordan var det gået uden deadlines?

Igen - jeg mener ikke, at deadlines skal bruges for at presse medarbejderne. De skal bruges for at fokusere energien på de rigtige opgaver. Så de skal sættes i god tid med respekt for den opgave, der skal løses. Og husk, at mange andre kan være afhængige af, at du bliver færdig til tiden.

Comment on Challenge the deadline

2011-12-17T11:34:28Z

Deadlines are used for many purposes. Using deadlines to motivate employees or to apply pressure are two of them.

I like to see (and use) deadlines as means of coordination between separate teams. I see the coordinating factor as motivation itself: you make a delivery on time and you can proceed with your planed work when others deliver to you on time.

The necesity of reducing functionality, quality, testing or other things in the project has nothing to do with deadlines - it's bad project planing.

For me deadlines are means of securing progress, coordination and quality in an otherwise well planed project.