Recent Posts - Page 25

…back in Portland after being in London and New York City for the past two weeks. It’s nice to be home. :-)

I came across this interview with Matz earlier today. It was published almost three years ago (pre-Rails)… I’m quite intrigued by what he is advocating here…

Bill Venners: You also mentioned in your ten top tips: “Be nice to others. Consider interface first: man-to-man, man-to-machine, and machine-to-machine. And again remember the human factor is important.” What do you mean by, “consider interface first?”

Yukihiro Matsumoto: Interface is everything that we see as a user. If my computer is doing very complex things inside, but that complexity doesn’t show up on the surface, I don’t care. I don’t care if the computer works hard on the inside or not. I just want the right result presented in a good manner. So that means the interface is everything, for a plain computer user at least, when they are using a computer. That’s why we need to focus on interface.

Some software people—like weather forecasters, the number crunchers—feel that the inside matters most, but they are a very limited field of computer science. Most programmers need to focus on the surface, the interface, because that’s the most important thing.

Bill Venners: You also mentioned machine-to-machine interfaces, so are you just talking about interfaces for users or also for machines?

Yukihiro Matsumoto: It’s not just user interfaces. When machines are talking to each other via a protocol, they don’t care how the other is implemented on the inside. The important thing is the proper output getting passed correctly via the proper protocol. That’s what matters.

If you have a good interface on your system, and a budget of money and time, you can work on your system. If your system has bugs or is too slow, you can improve it. But if your system has a bad interface, you basically have nothing. It won’t matter if it is a work of the highest craftsmanship on the inside. If your system has a bad interface, no one will use it. So the interface or surface of the system, whether to users or other machines, is very important.

One of things that we’re really advocating with Dialogue-Driven Development is artifact generation. Wireframes and lightweight prototypes are great for generating constructive dialogue between clients, users, and our team. We should make sure that we understand why and how users will use an interface before we worry about the code that will drive it. Too often we fall into a pattern of thinking where we’re convinced that we can build an agnostic application that has various interfaces to a central repository of business logic and data. While we strive for this during development, it really should be focused on after some initial interaction design has been planned. Of course, this is my opinion.

So, I must ask you. When you’re working with on a new project, do you focus on interface or code implementation first?

I’m in New York City this week working with one of our clients… and a little birdie told me that the PLANET ARGON team in Portland is preparing a formal announcement in the coming week(s)…

..the informal announcement?

Dedicated servers for hosting your Rails applications! …yeah it’s about time. ;-)

Contact us for more details. Tell them that Luigi sent you.

Arrived in London yesterday after ~13 hours of flying from Portland to Chicago to London. It seems that sleeping on planes (or trains) is not something that my body does well… so I am pretty tired. That mixed with general jet lag due to an eight hour time zone change… my body is feeling pretty confused. In fact, I am typing this from my hotel lobby at 5am.

Yesterday, I was wandering around London, seeking a new UK/US power adapter (thought I blew the one that I brought… long story) and was taking a picture, when I heard a familiar voice say, “Robby?” Go figure… travel across the world and some Canadian (david goodlad) spots you in downtown London. He was walking with Luke Redpath and Jarkko Laine to PizzaOnRails. It’s a good thing that I bumped into them because I thought it was in the complete opposite direction!

Here are a few pictures that I snapped…

The pictures that I took at the pizza & beer party didn’t come out so well… but here is one of James Adam. I was really looking forward to getting to spend some time with him again. We’re both speaking at the Ruby on Rails Seminar in California in a few weeks as well. That’ll make four conferences in six months that we’ve both been to together. :-)

Thanks again to everyone who has sent me links to veggie-friendly places to eat at in London.

Quotes from RailsConf Europe

The only one worth mentioning so far was…

“This is definitely the first time that I have eaten pizza while walking in the rain.” -drblack

Buzz in the Rails community

• The RadRails guys are up to no good. Kyle

Shank gave us a quick overview of a Rails project that they are
working on called HedgeHog. The project is definitely something that
I'll be looking forward to trying when it's available. :-)
```text
-   Everybody is extremely *busy* with client work. By the way, [we are
```text
hiring](http://www.planetargon.com/jobs.html).
```text
-   A Dublin Ruby User Group is in the works... would they be called
```text
DRUG? ;-)
```text
-   Everybody is really excited about
```text
[BDD](http://behaviour-driven.org/)!

I’ll try to post entries throughout the day and will be taking lots of notes today.

If you’re in London for RailsConf Europe, stop by #railsconf on freenode.

Cheers!

In the past few days… a few people have asked how people include their picture when they post their comment.

The answer? They are using Gravatar, which many blogs will automatically try to find your avatar for and display next to your comments.

I’m also looking to modify typo to try look your icon up from flickr too.

In the essay, Dialogue and Organizational Transformation, Glenna Gerard and Linda Teurfs outline the the building blocks of THE TECHNOLOGY OF DIALOGUE, which they suggests consists of:

• Suspension of Judgment
• Identification of Assumptions
• Listening
• Inquiry and Reflection

What makes dialogue different than conversation? According to David Gurteen, “dialogue is a disciplined form of conversation.”

Gurteen says that within dialogue[^1^](#fn1){#fnref1 .footnote-ref role=”doc-noteref”}:

• You prefer a certain position but do not cling to it.
• You are ready to listen to others.
• Your mindset is not one of ‘convincing others that your way is

right' but of asking what you can learn from them.
```text
-   It is recognizing that other people's input will help you refine
```text
your own ideas or reveal your misconceptions.
```text
-   It is not argument or debate. It is not win-lose. In dialogue all
```text
sides win by coming up with a more appropriate solution than a
single person could ever have. It is win-win.
```ruby
When we first introduced Dialogue-Driven Development, Ryan Allen
[responded with a brief
overview](http://www.robbyonrails.com/articles/2006/08/02/dialogue-driven-development#comment-21737)
of how you might go about defining a *failed project*. His first bullet
was, *"Miscommunication can lead to the implementation of the wrong
solutions."*

It is our opinion that many of the problems that lead to *failed
projects* can be solved through consistent and cooperative discourse.
Much of this relies on each of us taking ownership of our commitment to
encouraging healthy collaboration between developers, clients, and
users.

Wikipedia [currently describes
dialogue](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogue) as, *"a reciprocal
conversation between two or more persons."*

### Question

What are some of the obstacles that you face when interacting with a
diverse set of developers, clients, and users?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.  ::: {#fn1}
```yaml
[The Discipline of Dialogue by David
Gurteen](http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/km-dialogue)[↩︎](#fnref1){.footnote-back
role="doc-backlink"}
:::

Figured that I might as well follow in the footsteps of Luke Redpath and show you my new business cards.

Our Creative Direcrtor, Allison Beckwith felt that it was time for a redesign. I should try to snap a shot of all the past PLANET ARGON cards. We have them up on a wall in chronological order… dating back four years ago this month.

Since we were doing double-sided this time I wanted to be sure that there was enough space for writing on the back… which helps with writing down a note, giving someone a coupon code for hosting, or my cell phone number if they are special enough. :-)

I’m leaving for London tomorrow. Thank you all for your responses to my travel security questions. I really appreciate it. :-)

I’m going to be getting in on Wednesday afternoon and am going to try to meet up with people at PizzaOnRails.

Thurs-Fri is RailsConf fun… but I haven’t figured out what I will be doing over the weekend. I’m leaving for New York on Tuesday.

Does anybody know of any good vegetarian places that I should go out of my way to try in London? Interested in hanging out and talking shop? Email me! :-)

Travel restrictions?

When I purchased my tickets for my trip to London for RailsConf Europe through travelocity.com, it showed me the following warning (after I paid).

Traveling in the UK:

• If you are traveling within the UK, you will have to check ALL of

your belongings. Wallets, IDs, and necessary medications are the
exceptions, and must be carried in a plastic bag (clear bags are
recommended).
```text
-   Laptops, mobile phones and iPods are among the electronic items
```text
banned in carry-on luggage on British flights.
```bash
-   Liquids, gels, and pastes are no longer permitted in carry-on
```text
luggage on board any aircraft within the U.S. and UK (This includes
toothpaste, sunblock, and perfume.)
```text
-   [Please check our website for updates and the latest
```text
information.](http://travelocity.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/travelocity.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1678)

So, I follow that link and come across this page, which doesn’t mention laptops, mobile phones, or iPods.

Does anybody know what the current restrictions are for flights to and from the US and UK?

Oveheard in #caboose.

Wow… this is awesome!

The sd.rb group is following up on our concept for The Argon Express. People are heading to RubyConf 2006 from San Diego, California to Denver, Colorado on the RubyConf Express.

We had a blast on our two-day trip across the country… check out our photos on flickr.

It’s great to see the tradition continue!

Have fun! :-)

A few weeks ago, I started using FeedBurner and posted a blog entry about how I configured Lighttpd to handle that so it didn’t disrupt everyone that subscribes to my RSS feed. This was working great… until the other day.. when I upgraded to Typo trunk. When I did this, I decided to start using mongrel::cluster and pound. Two days later… I’m noticing that my subscriber count has dropped over thousand people in a day… was it something that I said?

A ha! I was handling the redirect with Lighttpd and had replaced it with Pound.

So, I am now delegating this to Apache.

# Redirect typo feeds to FeedBurner
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^FeedBurner.*$
RewriteRule /xml/(atom|rss|rss20)/feed.xml$ http://feeds.feedburner.com/RobbyOnRails [R=temp,L]

…and all was well again.

UPDATE

The rewrite condition should be !^FeedBurner.*$ not !^FeedBurner$.

Many of you know that I have an unhealthy obsession with databases… in particular legacy databases. I’m not the only one it seems. :-)

I’m hoping to compile a few stories of how Rails enthusiasts have been able to take advantage of the Ruby on Rails framework within a Legacy environment, whether that be to talk with legacy databases, web services, or a piece of cauliflower. If you have a story (good or bad) of how you used Rails with a legacy system, please email me and let’s talk. :-)

Also, I would like to announce that I have started a new google group that focuses on the topic of using Rails with legacy environments. Check out the new Rails and Legacy group.

If you’re down in California, you can see my talk, “Rails meets the Legacy World” at the Ruby on Rails Seminar, which is being hosted at the AJAXWorld Conference & Expo.