Dear Open Source Software I don’t think I have ever written you before, but there is something I wanted to get off my chest. I just wanted to let you know, that you rock! Just the other day, you saved…
There are basically two kinds of deadlines: Real, and Arbitrary. Real deadlines are those necessitated by some external, unchangeable event. For example legislation, the company running out of money, the CEO having to get up in front of the world…
Just because I can never remember how to do this: psql my_database -c "COPY (SELECT stuff FROM my_table) TO STDOUT CSV" > my_file.csv Works in at least PostgreSQL 8.4….
Some third party systems needs to send requests to your web application in order to work. Facebook fetches the actual application, Chargify notifies you of subscription changes, payment gateways tell you the transaction has been accepted. That’s fine in production…
My parents have a digital camcorder. A week long vacation with said camcorder, my parents, and their only grandchild produces a fair amount of raw footage. Before we headed back home after the vacation I wisely snapped up all the…
Read the full entry, Life, Movies, Software, Technology , 1 comments
If you have ever tried to integrate with e-conomic you’ll likely recognize that their API comes out pretty high on the How to make a crappy API checklist. Luckily, if you’re using Ruby, you can now use the r-conomic gem…
Read the full entry, Programming, Projects, Software , 1 comments
I don’t get Apples insistence on getting rid of scrollbars in OS X. What have they got against them? They take up screen estate, sure, but seeing how the smallest Mac display has a resolution of 1280 by 800 (on…
When building a new software project, you should focus on building your core functionality - usually the magic sauce that makes your company money. This might seem obvious, but many people don’t realize just how much extra work is needed…
Read the full entry, Business, Projects, Software , 0 comments
There is an old saying; “You never miss the water till the well runs dry”. The meaning is that it’s easy to not realize what you have until it is no longer there. The opposite is also true - possibly…
When I previously wrote about the tyranny of software updates, one of the takeaways were that it would be nice if someone were to create a centralized, out of band, update mechanism for installed applications. Lo and behold, with the…
Staying on top of errors that happen in your production Rails applications is a must. Unfortunately trawling through log files get old really fast, and getting enough information about where the error happened can be hard. That’s what services like…
Some months ago, the people I share offices with had an exhibition showing off their works. They are all visual designers and artist, so their works are fairly easy to exhibit. I turned down being part of the exhibition, primarily…
Read the full entry, Life, Programming, Software , 0 comments
Adium has moved one step closer to the approach I’ve suggested applications take for software updates: “Install on Quit” is a great option and sure beats the “install now and interrupt what I wanted to do”. I would prefer that…
We Mac users have been blessed with self-contained applications that (for the most part) don’t require an installation/setup. This means trying out a new application is a simple matter of downloading and double clicking and the app is running. However,…
One of the many things I try to make my customers realize, is that their web application is never done. There is always something that can be made easier to use, pages that can be made to load faster, new…
When I founded Substance Lab I knew I wanted to build a virtual business - or at least as much as it could be. Why should petty details like physical locations decide whether I can help my clients? From the…
There you are, sitting at your desk. Your thoughts are coming alive on the glowing display in front of you, brought into existence by your fingers effortlessly running across the keyboard. The outside world has become a distant memory -…
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
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
Windows is confusing and all about nothing - just like any episode of the Seinfeld show. Microsoft needs to piggyback on Apples creativity. Even though everyone and their brother use Windows, group pressure isn’t going to make me switch…
My rant about how Stikipad founders has screwed their customers attracted this comment from reader Verity, which I figure warrants a proper reply, not just a comment: It proves that it will be a long time before we dispense with…
For a long time I have been using a wiki service called Stikipad to jot down things I wanted to save for later; like business ideas, drafts for blog posts and presentations, stuff like that. Unfortunately Stikipad has looked like…
Mental note to self (and everyone reading here): If using FreeTDS on OS X and you cannot connect to your MS SQL Server using iodbctest , but you can con using tsql, and your TDSDUMP logfile contains tds_iconv_info_init: client charset…
2 hours down the drain, and all I had to do: sudo port install ImageMagick sudo port install rb-rmagick…
As you’ve undoubtedly noticed, assuming you follow at least a few blogs, listen to podcasts, or otherwise read the press, Apples iPhone has been released. Ever since Steve Jobs non-announcement of 3rd party iPhone applications really being web sites, there…
Imagine this: I’m at work when someone tells me: “Hey, you need to check out this podcast”. “Sure”, I say, “I’d love to”. So I fire up my iTunes, add the podcast to my subscriptions, and forget all about it….
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
Last week I took a quick executive decision to deploy BiQ on Debian Etch instead of Sarge as initially planned. Mainly so we could take advantage of Ruby 1.8.5 (let me hear you scream “Mongrel”) and Subversion 1.4.something. Today, yet…
Podcast syncing in my iTunes Jukebox (or whatever the name Apple wants us to use for it) is broken. I’ve it set to “Sync all unplayed episodes of all podcasts”. iTunes reports that I currently have 11 unplayed podcasts in…