Wow! It’s been over a year since I last updated my blog. How sad. To help jump start my blogging again I’ve signed up for Skribit. You can use the suggestions link on the right to propose blog posts you’d like me to write. By the way, if you haven’t been following Paul Stamatiou’s blog which covers the development of Skribit, I recommend it.
Nov 25
There’s a meme that continues to amuse our development team. It originated at SRA long ago and was brought through several other companies before reaching my current employer. When I found it on our internal wiki, I assumed it was akin to the April Fools’ Day RFCs, so I Googled for ‘Feltz’ and actually found a Fernand Feltz at the Centre de Recherche Public-Gabriel Lippmann in Luxembourg. Unfortunately, this is not the Feltz for which the software quality metrics below are named. These were invented in the nineties by an engineer at SRA whose last name was Feltz.
Sometimes perfection seems too much to ask. Don’t despair; rejoice at all the milestones you have already met.
The following Feltz levels are defined:
- Sits in the editor without harm.
- Correctly syntax-highlighted
- Successfully saves to disk
- In CM
- Compiles
- Links
- Execution reaches main()
- Produces discernable output
- Does something arguably correct before crashing
- Runs to completion.
Aug 08
Last weekend (Friday and Saturday), I attended RubyNation 2008, the first regional Ruby conference in my area. The speakers were excellent and it was great to meet up with folks from the Ruby community who I haven’t seen in awhile. As always, I left feeling energized and excited about my Ruby projects.
There were two main themes of the conference: the ‘official’ one was Ceremony vs. Essence, while the ‘unofficial’ one was Test all the fucking time. The first theme was the subject of the opening and closing keynotes. The second came from Bryan Liles lighting talk on the first day and kept coming up afterwards (audience ‘hecklers’ would ask presenters how often they should test).
Aug 06
Over on TechCrunch they have a great overview of the first nine startups to come out of LaunchBox Digital, a local early stage investment firm. One of the founders of ShareMeme, Luc Castera, from the Ruby Users’ Group (and local conferences). I’m excited to dig-in and start using these new services. Here’s a brief overview:
- BuzzHubb: A Better College Social Network. Next generation group management for colleges and universities (it is similar to Facebook in that regard &emdash only students can join).
- Heekya: The Wikipedia For Stories. Social story telling using multiple forms of media (text, photos, video).
- JamLegend: Guitar Hero Goes Social. A free online music gaming experience.
- Koofers: Crib Notes For Picking College Classes. A tool to help students build their class schedules with insight into the classes, teachers, and styles as reported by other students. It also provides access to study guides, past exams, etc. to assist students.
- MyGameMug: Match.com For Gamers. A personality test for gamers &emdash find others who like the kinds of games that you do.
- Razume: Resume 2.0. A tool for young (21-35) job seekers. This looks really interesting to me because I had a similar idea several years ago but never executed on it. I’m curious to see how its features overlap with my detailed plan.
- ShareMeme: Evite Meets Twitter. This service is addressing a real issue that is affecting me: being (inadvertently) spammed by my friends as they sign up for social networks and other services. If it succeeds it can be the go to point for distributing information out to your friends and family through the best channels.
- Zadby: Web Video Product Placement. Zadby wants to be the market maker for product placement in web video, through its network of independent web video producers.
Mpowerplayer: Marketing Mobile Games On Facebook. Play mobile versions of games on your computer, to try before you buy.
Jul 18
NPR’s All Things Considered had a nice story on Dr. Horrible tonight. This enjoyable, currently web-only, musical was produced during the writers’ strike last year by Joss Whedon. I highly recommend catching it while you still can.
Jul 11
Autoweek reports that a company called MyGallons allows folks to pre-purchase gallons of gasoline at a predetermined average price for the area where they live. According to the article, the gallons are loaded onto a debit card that the company says is accepted at more than 95% of the nation’s fueling stations. To take part in their service, MyGallons charges an annual fee starting at $29.95.
Jul 11
After bricking my iPhone this morning by getting caught in the iTunes server onslaught, I was able to complete the upgrade successfully this evening. The upgrade breathes new life into the EDGE iPhone — when I’m on a WiFi network it’s almost equivalent to the iPhone 3G. So far I’ve downloaded twelve free apps from the App Store and paid for one (Bejeweled 2). Even though I balked at paying $9.99 for an iPhone game, my friend Dave convinced me that 1) it’s a reasonable price and 2) it’s a small price to pay for something that I’ll use nearly every day. I can already tell that care must be taken with the lure of the App Store lest I go broke.
In related news, I finally received approval from Apple for my iPhone developer cert, so now I can try out my audio application on my iPhone and potentially sell it via the App Store.
Jun 23
If you’re looking for startup companies in your area, there’s a great new resource: Startup Warrior. It’s incredibly useful to drill-down into your region on the map and see all of the amazing work going on nearby.
Jun 12
Tonight the first CocoaHeads Reston meeting was held at Near Infinity Corporation. Jason Harwig gave an excellent presentation on WebKit, starting with a simple browser created completely in Interface Builder (it consisted of a text field linked to a web view). I’ve recreated it and included a snapshot below.
Jun 05
ErinGary has NEXRAD images and commentary of yesterday’s storm here in Northern, VA. For about half-an-hour yestersay, the folks at work milled around in interior offices, hallways, and the stairwell while my family at home hid out in the basement. Thankfully there were not much damage in my neighborhood, though I saw several fallen trees on homes during my commute home.
