Java programmer == ‘maintenance’

January 29, 2008

“Pragmatic Dave on Passion, Skill and ‘Having A Blast'”:http://www.infoq.com/interviews/dave-thomas-agile-passion:

bq. … you should be investigating your tools set and you should be trying different techniques and different ways of doing things. And maybe then, more and more it looks back into practices. And that’s not just to make you better at your job, it’s also to make you safer in your job. Because, at the speed things are changing, *in 10 years the job description for Java programmer is going to be “maintenance.”* And that’s just the case, just the way things work in this industry.

So, what are you waiting for? Get moving. Learn a new language. Today.

In Uncategorized
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RailsConf 2008 Europe Announced

January 21, 2008

David “just announced”:http://weblog.rubyonrails.com/2008/1/20/railsconf-europe-08-get-your-proposals-in “RailsConf Europe ’08”:http://www.railsconfeurope.com/:

bq. The conference is returning to Berlin and the conference will happen between the 2nd and 4th of September.

Registration will open in May 2008. Hope to see you there.

In RailsConf, Ruby on Rails
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RailsConf 2008: Submit Your Proposals

October 30, 2007

We were there

You can now “submit your proposal”:http://en.oreilly.com/rails2008/public/cfp/6 for “RailsConf 2008”:http://en.oreilly.com/rails2008/ taking place May 29-June 1, in Portland.

With that off my chest, I can move on to the real purpose for this post: The photo, taken at RailsConf 2007 and featured on the frontpage of the RailsConf 2008 site, has yours truly and “Morten Christensen”:http://www.mortench.net/ smack in the center!

In Narcissism, RailsConf
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Sanitize your database inputs

October 11, 2007

*Exploits of a Mom*
Exploits of a Mom

Now why didn’t I think of that? Naming your kids Magnus and Frida suddenly seems very unoriginal. From “xkcd”:http://xkcd.com.

In Funny
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At RailsConf Europe in Berlin

September 17, 2007

Just got in. Looking forward to lots of fun in the coming days. I’ll be tumbling my notes at “railsconf07.productive.dk”:http://railsconf07.productive.dk/.

*If you need a freelancer for your (next) project, come find me and lets talk*. If you don’t need a freelancer, come have a chat anyway 😉

In RailsConf, Ruby on Rails
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It’s Official: Vista Blows

August 20, 2007

Or as “Joel Spolsky puts it”:http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/08/18.html:

bq. I’ve been using Vista on my home laptop since it shipped, and can say with some conviction that nobody should be using it as their primary operating system — it simply has no redeeming merits to overcome the compatibility headaches it causes. Whenever anyone asks, my advice is to stay with Windows XP (and to purchase new systems with XP preinstalled).

and “Fake Steve comments on outgoing PC Magazine editor Jim Louderback’s “Vista sucks” farewell column”:http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/08/more-raves-for-vista.html:

bq. … Jim Louderback, the newly departed editor of PC Magazine, who uses his farewell column to do something I suppose he has wanted to do for ages — tell the truth about Vista. “Why, nine months after launch, am I so frustrated? The litany of what doesn’t work and what still frustrates me stretches on endlessly.”
… “I could go on and on about the lack of drivers, the bizarre wake-up rituals, the strange and nonreproducible system quirks, and more. But I won’t bore you with the details. The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain’t cutting it. I definitely gave Microsoft too much of a free pass on this operating system.”

(via “Daring Fireball”:http://daringfireball.net/)

In Vista
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Making TextMate and sqlplus play nice

August 17, 2007 — 1 Comment

As described in the “Calling TextMate from Other Applications”:http://macromates.com/textmate/manual/using_textmate_from_terminal chapter in the “TextMate Manual”:http://macromates.com/textmate/manual/

bq. There is one command which does not support giving arguments in the EDITOR variable, it is crontab (which is sort of obsoleted by launchd). If you need to use it, you can create a symbolic link to mate with a _wait suffix which implies -w.

Well, as I found out a while ago, there’s another command that has the same problem: *sqlplus*. But if you follow Allan’s instructions, you can make TextMate work with sqlplus:

ln -s mate ~/bin/mate_wait   # run this once to create the link
export EDITOR='mate_wait'    # use in your ~/.bash_profile

Assuming you’ve already created a symlink to mate and that ~/bin exists (you could also use /usr/local/bin or some other preferred location). Now, in sqlplus simply type ed or edit as usual, and your commandline will open up in TextMate. Yay, one less reason to ever edit any text outside of TextMate.

In Oracle, TextMate
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Apple Updates Today

August 7, 2007

Apple released a bunch of new and updated products today:
* “New iMacs”:http://www.apple.com/imac/. I would buy one today if I had the slightest use for it. It looks absolutely gorgeous.
* “Updated Mac minis”:http://www.apple.com/macmini/. Yay! We can still get cheap Mac servers.
* “New wired and wireless keyboards”:http://www.apple.com/keyboard/. I love the wireless without the numeric keypad. This way you can have your mouse closer to the keyboard, and I never use the keypad anyway (now if they could just get rid of the silly caps lock key as well). I’ve been wanting a keyboard like this ever since getting a Mac, so I ordered one immediately–the English (Int’l) version of course, the Danish layout is completely useless for writing code.
* “iLife ’08”:http://www.apple.com/ilife/. iMovie seems to be worth the upgrade alone. I ordered a family pack.
* “iWork ’08”:http://www.apple.com/iwork/. I love Keynote, so upgrading was an easy choice. The new spreadsheet, Numbers, looks like a nice addition. One more family pack in the shopping basket.
* “Updated .Mac”:http://www.apple.com/dotmac/. The new web gallery with photo and movie sharing looks like it’s worth the price alone, but I’ll wait for the reviews before deciding whether I’m going to be a .Mac user. I’d also like to see if they are going to support photo sharing from “Aperture”:http://www.apple.com/aperture/.
* “Updated AirPort Extreme”:http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/. Looks like it gained gigabit ethernet, so there’s one less reason not to buy one now.

p=. !http://productive.dk/pub/uploads/2007/08/apple-updates.jpg(Shopping spree)!
_Todays shopping spree comes out at just DKK 2097,-. That’s five copies a lot of software for very little money if you ask me–and a new keyboard too._

*Update*: There’s a “30-day trial of iWork ’08”:http://www.apple.com/iwork/trial/ available and a bunch of “tutorials”:http://www.apple.com/iwork/tutorials/ (via “MacUser”:http://www.macuser.com/software/comprehensive_overview_and_imp.php).

In Apple, Mac
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New Theme

August 6, 2007

As you and my two other visitors (including Googlebot) might have noticed, I changed the look of the site. The old “Blix”:http://www.kingcosmonaut.de/blix/ theme I’ve been using for the past two years was beginning to look a little dated, and I also seemed to bump into blogs using it more and more frequently, so it was time to go looking for a new WordPress theme.

I began digging through the gazillion free themes available, but the good looking themes are also very popular (duh!) and I wanted something a little less common, so I ended up buying a “semi-unique” theme from “Template Monster”:http://www.templatemonster.com/ that looked nice on their demo site, but when installed on my blog didn’t work very well. In fact I doubt they’ve ever run it on a WordPress installation with some real data. So I spent a couple of evenings fixing the CSS and PHP, before deciding to cut my losses (it was only $50 anyways) and find another theme.

I ended up deciding on the “ScribbishWP Theme”:http://pittcrew.net/geekblog/scribbishwp, which all the cools kids seem to be using these days. It’s a port of Scribbish for “Typo”:http://typosphere.org/, a blogging engine built with Ruby on Rails–so it smells a little like Rails, without the pain of installing and running Typo. I happen to like green, so I changed the original reddish colors to green. That’s how far my design skills go.

In Announcements
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Synacor Files for IPO

August 4, 2007

Synacor

p. Seems good ol’ “Synacor(Synacor, Inc.)”:http://www.synacor.com/ finally “decided to go public(Synacor Files for IPO: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance)”:http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070802/synacor_ipo.html:

bq. NEW YORK (AP) — Synacor Inc., an Internet platform provider, filed for an initial public offering of its shares of common stock.
The Buffalo, N.Y.-based company plans to use the proceeds from the offering for working capital and other general corporate purposes. A portion of the proceeds may also be used to acquire other businesses, products or technologies.
In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday, Synacor did not disclose the number or expected price range of shares to be offered, but indicated that the proposed maximum offering price would be roughly $86.3 million.

p. If you have no idea why I’m writing about Synacor: They are the result of the merger between Chek.com and *MyPersonal* (still clueless? See my “resumé”:http://productive.dk/resume).

*Update*: _The company plans to raise $86 million through the sale of nearly 11.6 million shares_ (via “Business First of Buffalo”:http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2007/08/06/daily27.html). That’s roughly $7.5 per share–it’s going to be interesting to see if they can raise that.

In Narcissism
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