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If you’ve been keeping up with the blog, it’s probably not hard to figure out that I really, really like git and capistrano. They’ve made my development and deployment better and much less painful. I’ve also been using github quite a bit lately (as well as pondering here on the ranch how we need to redesign our set of development and deployment tools in order to gain some consistency over our php, java and rails development as well as make them as painless and easy as possible).

Just pointed out to me that the latest Skype beta includes a iChat-like screensharing feature for users so that collaboration between OSX users is possible. Very cool. Haven’t had a chance to test it yet, and probably not as polished at iChat’s but still have to say this will be a killer feature when it works between OSX, Windows and Linux. It is definitely needed.

Apparently video and audio quality are also improved (great for my parents to worry about how I’m not taking care of myself).

I recently reinstalled mysql on my Macbook under OSX 10.5 Leopard and used the 64 bit MySQL (hey, Leopard is 64 bit! Why not?).

Anyhow, when I went to using rails again, mongrel_rails start kept throwing a whine on the fact that the old mysql gem (2.7) was 32 bit.

Found this after removing the old gem to get it working with 64 bit. Definitely not trivial to figure out:

There are a lot of things to really love about Rails apps. One of them is not deployment. Rails boffins, regardless of what they say, do look with longing envy over at those php kids with their simple copy of files up to a server and having it run on apache.

Admittedly, I’d rather deploy via capistrano anyway (cause even php boffins should be doing it that way) since it is fabulous and does deployment like it should be done, but there is something to be said for the wonderful mod_php under apache. Configuring proxying and mongrels under either apache or nginx is simply not fun. It feels like work.

I’m pondering whether I could pull off National Novel Writing Month this year and pen a novel in the month of November as the nights get longer and the days colder.

50k words by the end of the month ? That does seem a little daunting. Say 2000 words a day over 25 days ?

Ok, maybe it wouldn’t be a good novel, but…

One of the (few) things I actually do always admire about the US around election time, is the incredible number of people and creativity willing to work on getting people out to vote. Considering the Canadian election that sadly has Harper and the Conservatives back in a minority, had historically low turnout, I do think when I get back that I need to work on something like this.

And you have to respect moveon.org . Consistently, these guys are amazing with their ability to leverage web actions to get fundraising and mobilize support.

OK, as more than casual readers know, I’m a huge fan of Warren Buffet. Not only do I try and invest like him, but I think he’s very sharp beyond being an astute and wiley investor. Great, but very long interview with him here on the Warren Buffett CNBC Interview :

“… you only find out who’s been swimming naked when the tide goes out. Well, we found out that Wall Street has been kind of a nudist beach.”

Mike Cohn basically invented the idea of Agile User Stories which is what we’ve started using at Amnesty on specific projects for our Agile development. It’s definitely paid dividends though, like any new introduced technique, has had a few growing pains as we’ve learned new things.

We do have some of the issues he mentions in Prioritizing Your Product Backlog in our agile development, and I’d have to say we don’t spend enough time “grooming the product backlog.” We do spend a good week between iterations, thinking of the focus of the design goals of the next iteration and writing new user stories.

Meant to this a while back from an email that went round at work.

Love the idea. Simply… Offer to bring in a whack of business for one day to one business if they’ll pay for environmental improvements to their business with the proceeds.

Seems like the first run went well (and you have to love the Lil Wayne video spoof). Have to see whether it’s sustainable, but it is an interesting idea in crowdsourcing.

Silicon Valley VC firm Sequoia Capital has a fabulous presentation to scare the bejesus out of their startups on what the current financial crisis means for their fledglings.

While I don’t agree with all of it, it’s got some excellent economic analysis in it of the real reasons there is a very real and serious problem at the moment and why it’s going to be hard for new companies to borrow and in general why we’ve all had perverse economic incentives to take on debt rather than save (I notice it missed deregulation in there, but hey, no one’s perfect).