Here’s an idea I had the other day. I am putting it out to the world because I’d love to see it realized. While I could do it myself, I already have enough on my plate - and knowing myself,…
I totally forgot to mention this when it actually went live a few weeks back. At Børn i byen we’ve been busy redesigning and changing things around, and the result is now live at bornibyen.dk…
Read the full entry, Projects, Technology, Webdesign , 0 comments
Roughly one week ago I posted a blog post and a single, innocent tweet announcing the launch of Progress Wars. The morning after I fired up Google Analytics to see if anyone had visited the site, expecting perhaps 100 visits…
Today, I am stoked to bring you Progress Wars - the ultimate game of progression. If you enjoy spending time on Facebook “games” like Mafia/Pirate/Ninja/Viking Wars/Clan/whatever you’ll most certainly be thrilled by Progress Wars! Unique gameplay experience Unlimited amount of…
Every so often I have the need to execute a command line application from a Ruby application/script. And every single time I fail to remember what the different command-executing methods Ruby provides us with do. This post is primarily a…
I pulled the plug on a project today. The project was the first Rails project I ever built, and my first, feeble attempt at getting some of all those free money I’ve heard is floating around the internet. 4 years…
Whenever I launch a Terminal window, it starts up in a very important folder on my harddrive; my Projects folder. This is where I store the projects I work on - both for clients, but also internal projects and experiments…
Fab:IT, a small hosting company in Copenhagen, Denmark, has long been my standard go-to-guys when I need a VPS hosted locally. They wanted to put more focus on their VPS hosting products, and asked me to build them a dedicated…
I use Redmine to keep track of most of Substance Labs projects. It’s a nifty, open source project management/issue tracking system, and I am quite happy with it. I also use Git for most my source control management needs, and…
Back when Yahoo! released their YSlow add-on for Firebug, I took it for a spin and optimized biq.dk using it. Google recently released their variant of YSlow called Page Speed. Like YSlow, it’s an add-on for Firebug and it provides…
Read the full entry, Browsers, Programming, Projects, Software, Usability, Webdesign , 3 comments
It’s not like this has been a secret until now, but Lokalebasen, the most recent client work built by me (in collaboration with Casper Fabricius) has launched. Lokalebasen allows realtors and other providers of offices, warehouses and production facilities to…
Jakob looks at how to use Rails and Litmus to make sure your HTML emails look great to all your users.
Read the full entry, Projects, Software, Webdesign , 1 comments
I have been moonlighting as a freelance webdeveloper for the last couple of years. The first year, I was using my spare evenings and weekends until I began having trouble finding enough time to dedicate to new projects. My reaction…
Business, Life, Programming, Projects, Software, Usability, Webdesign , 7 comments
Take 12 attendees (one from Italy, way to go, Fransesco!), 11 Apple laptops (and one Windows one, I believe), 1 wifi hotspot, mix it all together in “a cottage”:http://flickr.com/photos/wa7son/2981895522/ in “the middle of nowhere”:http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=langegyde+75,+denmark&sll=55.056251,10.453148&sspn=0.061353,0.129089&ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=55.045618,10.462825&spn=0.007302,0.016952&z=16&iwloc=addr, sprinkle it with a tad of “Ruby”:httpL//ruby-lang.org, “Git”:http://git.or.cz/, and “*jour”:http://drnicwilliams.com/2008/06/18/what-is-gitjour-gemjour-starjour/ and let is stew for 2 days and 2 nights.
Rails Rumble 2008 is in full effect. Rails Rumble is a 48 hour Rails development contest, and I and two others from the Copenhagen Ruby Brigade have decided to enter the fray. 2 hours to go The time is getting…
On one of my projects the specs are now taking a full 10 minutes to run on my machine. Needless to say, it’s mightily annoying seeing a spec failure in the output knowing you’ll have to wait for 10 minutes…
My longest running client, change:healthcare, has been featured on the CNN website and is scheduled to appear on air this weekend - what a great achievement. I’ve worked with Christopher, one of the founders, and the rest of the team…
This is probably one of those posts, that I ought to in Danish, oh well… The recent weekend marked the launch of Børn i byen (that’s “Children in the city” for you danishly-challenged readers) - a user-driven guide to Copenhagen…
Over the last few days I have been moving the BiQ application to Rails 2.0 PR. I’ve so far run into a fair deal of issues; one annoying one that I figured I’d share. The gist of the matter is…
You know we’re sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn’t it? After launching the rewritten and redesigned BiQ I…
BiQ on Rails, Browsers, Programming, Projects, Software, Technology , 5 comments
After 6 months of evangelizing and advocating, followed by 6 more months of rewriting, and then 3 more months of building new features and enhancing existing ones, we have finally launched the new version of BiQ. Going from ASP/VBScript on…
BiQ on Rails, Programming, Projects, Software, Technology, Webdesign , 3 comments
This is a followup to my previous rant about the state of accepting online subscriptions. A few things happened after my post. Most importantly the client met with a focus group of potential users, and - among other things -…
It’s a new year, and of course, this calls for looking back at the year that passed. The short version: 2006 has been a great year for me on several levels. Professionally Career wise 2006 has been coloured primarily by…
BiQ on Rails, Blogging, Copenhagen.rb, Life, Mentalized.net, Projects , 1 comments
Around 6 months ago I started the actual progress of rewriting our existing, customer facing application at BiQ. A week or two before christmas the rewrite went feature complete. That is; all the features we want and need in the…
BiQ on Rails, Programming, Projects, Technology , 2 comments
MedBillManager makes dealing with medical bills easier and allows you to compare what you’re paying with what others are paying. MedBillManager is a little (well not quite that small) something that I’ve been working on over the last couple of…
Payment gateways, merchant accounts, transaction fees, statements, grraaaah, it’s driving me bonkers. Here’s the deal: I have a client wanting to sell subscriptions for his web application. Nothing fancy, everyone’s doing it. It should be easy finding a payment gateway…
Considering I am a World of Warcraft player and previously pondered applying for a webmaster position at Blizzard Europe but decided against it due to not feeling like moving to Paris, it’s pretty cool to notice that a small part…
It’s been pretty quiet around these parts lately - if you ignore the posts about Copenhagen.rb meetings at least. That’s primarily because I am having tons of fun at work, which for some reason doesn’t leave me much time for…
BiQ on Rails, Blogging, Business, Copenhagen.rb, Life, Mentalized.net, Projects , 0 comments
The next meeting of the Copenhagen Ruby Brigade will be on Tuesday 19th, at 17:30. Kraftvaerk is hosting the event at their offices at Vesterbrogade 74, 4. sal, 1620 København. For more details head on over to our sparkling. new…
I have published my report and findings on this subject . In his most recent Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen dived into screen resolution and page layout. His summarized findings are: Optimize Web pages for 1024×768, but use a liquid layout that…
I am now well over a week into putting BiQ on Rails, and I’ve been having so much fun. The fact that I actually getting paid for writing code that’s pretty and well tested means so much to the enjoyment…
At long last! I got the final commitment from my boss. We’ll be moving down the path of rebuilding BiQ using Ruby on Rails. Goodbye stupid ASP, hello sweet Ruby. Our preliminary tests shows that nothing we are currently doing…
So I am getting this error in my Windows Application Event Log: The log file for database ‘tempdb’ is full. Back up the transaction log for the database to free up some log space. Fair enough, it happens. But when…
This weekend Pluggd launched. Pluggd is a podcasting directory/community combining podcast listening with social networking and recommendations built on the belief that many people listen to podcasts online when at work or school, and not just offline while commuting. Through…
After 24 hours of insane, non-stop coding, designing, talking, and general tom-foolery, Rails Day 2006 is over. Nearly 200 teams competed, committing over 5000 total changesets to the official SVN server. My team Even though I got a team fairly…
I’ve received my first Google AdSense payment. Woo, I’m a filthy rich pro-blogger! Flickr is no longer beta! It’s gamma! AjaxLoad is doing cool things with “my” AJAX activity indicator collection. mentalized.net started appearing on kinja. I have no…
Thursday marked a major step on the path to exploring Rails as an alternative for BiQ. As I’ve mentioned earlier I’ve been looking for someone to come and present Rails for us. We found Scott Raymond of Blinksale and IconBuffet…
Read the full entry, BiQ on Rails, Business, Programming, Projects, Technology , 2 comments
At the recent Canada on Rails conference Robby Russel introduced his upcoming plugin, Acts as legacy. Facing a 60+ table legacy system, I will definitely be watching that space. Acts_as_legacy would allow me to not worry about our existing scripts…
I carry a Moleskine notebook with me pretty much wherever I go. I use it to jot down ideas and thoughts, usually for websites and -services. At the time of writing I have 10-12 different ideas floating around in my…
At the day job I’m the sole developer and maintainer of a legacy ASP/VBScript system. Yes, ASP/VBScript. No, not .NET. And yes, it’s driving me insane. The code contains around 42000 lines of VBSCript drivel and 30000 lines of supporting…
BiQ on Rails, Business, Programming, Projects, Technology , 2 comments
Cool, Someone built Notetagger. Seems like someone either took my tutorial and ran with it, or had the same idea and came up with the same name, which isn’t unlikely at all. I have no reason to believe one way…
Progress indicators, activity indicators, spinners, throbbers. Call them what you want, but giving some away for free sure seems to have been a good idea. Thanks to those of you who let me know you appreciated the images, and especially…
WoW Snitch is a small application of mine that eases the pain of uploading data from your World of Warcraft AddOns to multiple websites. If you know what Matt Millers fine UniUploader is and does, you can think of WoW…
An important design element that’s part of the whole AJAX business is somehow letting your user know that stuff is actually happening while the server crunches away. A common way to do so, is to add a little animated GIF…
My first Ruby on Rails project is currently being tested by some friends. Today one of them told me that it was running REAL slow for him; around 15 seconds per request! Needless to say, that’s bad (and weird, since…
Whoa, the Ruby on Rails site got featured on Stylegala. That’s pretty cool and the first site of mine (getting ever harder to call it mine, though, read on for more on that) to get featured on any site-gallery. The…
My recent experiment with live comment previews by virtue of AJAX didn’t fly terribly well and I ended up removing them again. They’re back, thanks to a comment by Nick, which led me to a post by Phil Wilson, which…
… Well, not really. The guy behind RailFrog emailed and asked if I was cool with him using the Ruby on Rails design. For a project like Ruby on Rails it makes a whole lot of sense letting users of…
Update: Ah well, it was a fun experiment, but I’ve decided to scrap it again, possible in favor of something pure Javascript’ish. The AJAX preview is either too unresponsive to be worthwhile or I send way too many requests against…
Cool, I’ve gotten 3 search plug-ins in the Mycroft project: 2 for EverQuest database Lucy, and one for BiQ ….
Time to take Notetagger up a notch and add support for multiple users. And being the always creative and innovative person I am, I’ll naturally be doing what the cool kids are doing; using subdomains as account keys. You might…
How the … do people come up with names for companies and projects. I don’t get it. It seems that I can come up with a name in two ways: Grab the first that comes into my mind and go…
The previous installments cover roughly 4 hours of development, research and taking notes for these posts. That is 4 hours from doing the initial rails notetagger to having an application that works. It’s not perfect in any way, but it…
Finally I can get around to one of the reasons I started creating Notetagger: Playing with Ajax. In this installment I’ll take you through adding simple Ajax functionality to an application. You might want to read the previous installment before…
Onwards to implementing tagging, taking advantage of a whole bunch of Ruby on Rails features: Helpers, assocations, partials, and filters. I wasn’t entirely sure how to go about the whole tagging business, and I initially went for keeping all the…
In this installment of Project Notetagger I dig into the gritty, technical details and start writing real code. The database and model is created, the first HTML output and I even get around to adding Ajax. All in a few…
I want to get into using Ajax. I want to get more Ruby on Rails experience. I want an online place to post my thoughts and notes since my memory isn’t quite reliable. If you think the above sounds like…
If you’re seeing this, something must’ve gone right. I’ve moved Mentalized.net to a new host and upgraded my Movable Type installation from v2.661 to the newest v3.14. I am now away from IIS and crummy ASP/VBScript and onto FreeBSD, Apache…
Read the full entry, Blogging, Mentalized.net, Projects , 0 comments
It’s been a long time since I’ve added anything to my portfolio. But just before leaving the online world for christmas, I worked with David (and indirectly Marten Veldthuis and Jon Hicks - kudos for coming up with initial ideas…
I recently found/invented a need for a PNG icon for Borlands Delphi 6 to put in a dock so I went ahead and made one. Feel free to use it for personal use, or mock me for my graphical (in)abilities….
Messed around with the new layout a bit today, fixing some issues and likely creating some new ones: The sidebar has been given a background color to seperate it a bit more from the main content. The main navigation links…
Yesterdays redesign post was a bit short since I was lazy and in a hurry. Today I bring you a bit more details about the new layout. Easy now, try to control your excitement….
Read the full entry, Mentalized.net, Projects, Webdesign , 2 comments
For a long time I have been contemplating redesigning this website. Not because it really needed it (I actually quite liked the old look), however I had to redesign something. So I did. There are still a few quirks to…
A few weeks ago we finally launched the new design of danish gaming portal, Daily Rush. We had been living with the old design for a couple of years, and everybody on the crew were getting tired of it. Furthermore…
The first steps I take when I start implementing a new layout are always the same: Create a basic, empty XHTML structure Try to remember how I create that 3 column, semi-liquid layout with a footer and the columns extending…
Well, I wanted to try some things out designwise and ended up creating a new look’n’feel for Mentalized, oops. Vastly inspired by Binary Bonsai and Stopdesign and an old layout I had laying about on my HD. As always, please…
aspTuneTracker enables you to show to other people what music you are listening to at the moment in Winamp and other players….
Inspired by a post at A Whole Lotta Nothing I decided to create my own version of his Movable Type “hack”, using ASP/VBScript (yuck) instead of Movable Type….
For some time now, I have been using Steven’s JavaScript to track referrers to my site. This wasn’t exactly what I wanted as it didn’t give me an overview over what pages actually got linked, so I decided to create…
For some time now, I have been using Steven’s JavaScript to track referrers to my site. This wasn’t exactly what I wanted as it didn’t give me an overview over what pages actually got linked, so I decided to create…