Jay McGavren's Journal

Totally Acts Like…

jay — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:15:47 +0000

If THESE guys can’t make money…

jay — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:53:53 +0000

So, looking up Dr. Horrible last night led me to find a whole slew of great web video series:

The Guild
Retarded Policeman
Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show (haven’t fully watched this yet, but it seems promising)

I’ll be keeping an eye on these to see if they monetize themselves successfully. If even they can’t, I’m declaring internet video still not ready for prime time.

jay — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:42:09 +0000

Lenny saw a multi-exposure photo on Flickr and thought it was pretty cool, so I gave him a quick demonstration of how to duplicate the effect in Photoshop:

jay — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 23:43:13 +0000

jay@MIDORI:D:\applications\InstantRails-2.0-win\rails_apps\test
$ ruby script/generate scaffold Recipe title:string instructions:string

Man, you miss out on a lot if you’re following Rails 1.0 tutorials. In fact, I tried setting up on Heroku and gave up, tried setting up on DreamHost and gave up, and was about to give up on InstantRails as well. Wonder how much of that was due to 1.0/2.0 incompatibilities?

jay — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:39:17 +0000

NerdsOfAFeather.com is taken by a squatter. How %$#@ing clever do I have to be to get a cool domain name?!

Maybe I just need to get rid of this fixation on getting a .com… Surely laymen know about .org, .net, and .us by now…

jay — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:50:19 +0000

Was gonna do a fake book cover for Speaking LOL, published by O’RLY, but in Googling for materials found that someone had automated the whole process (and that a LOLcats cover was one of their examples). So I did this instead:

Zyps: Game Development the Lazy Way

The real book, less sarcastically titled, will be coming out as soon as someone gets me an O’Reilly editor’s contact info. :)

They make ‘em better than they used to…

jay — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:50:42 +0000

Sitting here looking at the Civic’s odometer - 100,004 miles. It made it (no thanks to me), and is probably good for another 100,000.

The Batch Updater demands a sacrifice!!

jay — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:23:56 +0000

This appeared in the business case for document for a new automated process…

Today [product] data is entered manually, input individually to [two separate systems], consuming a minimum of four full-time employees per work day.

“My God, it ate Phil! He’s barely completed training!”

jay — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:22:44 +0000

Got a recommendation to read Kent Beck’s Extreme Programming Explained, and while I’m not ready to endorse it yet, there’s definitely a few quotes I like:

“Courage is effective action in the face of fear.”

“The cost of the redundancy is more than paid for by the savings from not having the disaster.”

“If you’re having trouble succeeding, fail. Don’t know which of three ways to implement a story? Try it all three ways. Even if they all fail, you’ll certainly learn something valuable.”

“Often, software development doesn’t meet human needs, acknowledge human frailty, and leverage human strength.”

“I write automated tests that help me design and implement better today. I leave these tests for future programmers to use as well. This practice benefits me now and maintainers down the road.” This is as opposed to written documentation, which only benefits future maintainers (and is therefore going to receive short shrift in the real world).

“There are legitimate reasons for having multiple versions of the source code active at one time. Sometimes, though, all that is at work is simple expedience, a micro-optimization taken without a view to the macro-consequences.”

“With pay-per-use systems, you charge for every time the system is used. Money is the ultimate feedback. Not only is it concrete, you can also spend it.”

Man, I’d use them even if they were a mediocre time travel service…

jay — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:46:04 +0000

Sweet Time Travel Service
16518 Norwood Dr
Tampa, FL 33624-1165
Phone: (813) 962-1211