Preston Lee

Taking Indoor Pictures: White Balance Explained

preston.lee — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If you've every wondered why some of your photos have a strange yellow or blue color cast to them, read on.. Effects of Poor White Balance When it's dark out, Find a white wall of your house at night which is illuminated by an typical, incandescent light bulb. To the naked eye, the wall should appear to be slightly yellow. Take a picture of the wall in your cameras automatic mode and it should look something like this...

Rails Beats Pants Off Java: A Small Testamonial

preston.lee — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Me and my business partner launched OpenRain.com last month, officially marking our entrance into the trendy world of web 2.0 startups. The entire process of going from an OmniGraffle Professional mock-up to a fully deployed, single-page production site took 12 man-hours, including all code, styling, server setup and deployment scripts. The form submit is done asynchronously via AJAX, where it waits for the ActionController to save the data to a database, email a synopsis to the appropriate people and return the appropriate RJS code to update the page with a message that the submission has been successful. Simple stuff.. in Rails. Granted, this is a very simple which could have been done using Perl, Python, PHP or some other scripting language coupled with custom JavaScript code, however, the long-term benefits of the Rails approach dwarf those of the CGI script approach. Here's what happens when I need to make a change to the site..

Make the change.
Let autotest tell me if there are any errors.
`cap deploy`

Doing OpenRain in Java? Pfft.. yeah right. That would have been a monumental waste of time, and a massive pain in the arse to maintain, especially for such a simple task. Perl, Python of PHP? Perhaps, but with a stock Rails setup I didn't have to write any JavaScript. One controller and one line of RJS. That's it. Most sites, however, are not as trivial. I am actively working on two larger Rails projects which have a significant amount of interactivity via AJAX. The built-in RJS support (for script.aculo.us) has brought me 90% of the way, leaving only a tiny amount of custom JavaScript to write. I'm in the midst of tuning queries at the moment, but haven't had to worry about any complex OR/M configuration. Authorization is a bit of a chore, but that seems to be the case with most systems as the domain model is different in every case. If I was to rewrite any of my larger sites in Java, I'd probably end up gluing together a Spring-based .war using SpringMVC, Maven, Hibernate and various other standard libraries. After a day spent getting everything set up, another day with other team members who invariably want to Do It This Way Instead, Â Spring application using So, in a nutshell, here's the list I give to Java web-app developers who have been too skeptical to give Rails a shot. Pros

Object oriented.
Support for pretty much every typical web-app activity comes standard. (OR/M, email, JavaScript, templates/layout, web services, data migration etc.)
Standardization of structure and components. (Must less fighting/refactoring on how things are organized.)
You get to use Ruby, a simultaneously and practical language.

Why Linux Won't Rule The Desktop Any Time Soon (2 of 2)

preston.lee — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

In Part I I ran through usability-related reasons why Linux won't be king of the desktop any year soon. Today I'll discuss.. Support. The diehard Linux community--being lovers of free things--has a tendency to not want to pay for stuff. This makes it extremely difficult for F/OSS-advocating developers (such as myself) to justify spending time on interesting free projects when I know it won't help pay my mortgage. Many people don't have friends that use it. Community groups are often quick to react negatively to users Having butt ugly websites doesn't make people want to stick around, either.

5 Motivators Of Enterprise Rails Acceptance

preston.lee — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

We're had a lot of great, controversial discussion over my previous article, 5 Roadblocks To Enterprise Rails Acceptance. Now let's focus on some unique quality of Rails which are motivating factors to decision makers. I've used Java as a point-of-reference because I'm very familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of Java as a web-app platform. Also note that Rails is one of many Ruby-based webapp frameworks; it just happens to be the most popular. A Common Language I was first introduced to Ruby years ago when doing a lot of systems administration work. There wasn't a great amount of (English) documentation at the time, but the appeal of a practical, object-oriented language that could be used by both application developers and systems administrators alike was too great to pass up. By consolidating on a single language, you Simplified Deployment Enterprise Java web-app deployment sucks. It's too time intensive to set up and requires too much application knowledge on behalf of the administrator. Fast Development Cycles Real-world Java projects generally take at least several minutes to compile, package and deploy. You can pull tricks like compiling directly to an exploded running directly, but Less "Bloat" Testability

Changing The Subject of Incoming Mail.app Emails via Rules & AppleScript

preston.lee — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

using terms from application "Mail" on perform mail action with messages theMessages for rule theRule tell application "Mail" repeat with eachMessage in theMessages set oldSubject to subject of eachMessage set newSubject to "[WHINEY BITCHES] " & oldSubject set subject of eachMessage to newSubject end repeat end tell end perform mail action with messages end using terms from

Ruby SSL EaSSL v0.1.1643 Fix

preston.lee — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If you're trying to generate certificate signing request via the EaSSL 0.1.1643 gem and getting explosions in SigningRequest

Announcement: Releasing Old Recordings!

preston.lee — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Few people I now hang out with knew me before college, when I was vastly different. I was geeky, sure, but even more so.... musical. It's what I did. I played in bands in and out of school, practiced constantly, and wrote more songs and poetry than I remember. Aside from DOS games and some time on that "Internet" thing, it's what I did on my first PC. I ended up finishing an Associate of Arts degree in college, but eventually myÂ innateÂ creative outlet gave way to the beast that was my Computer Science program.Even without time in recent years to get back to the art, I have hundreds of recorded snippets spanning roughly the last twelve years covering everything from live rock to classical scores to sampled dance. Dare I say, some are even slighty good.Â Starting this weekend, I'll be rummaging through my archives and present an aural slideshow spanning the rest of 2008, around one earful per month.

Apple Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard Dvorak Hacking

preston.lee — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It's very easy to switch around the keys on Apple's current generation of wireless bluetooth keyboard. The first time doing this hack I only had one "close call", but know that I know how to get the keys off safely it's simple, fast and easy. I used a couple razor blades to pop off the keys, but a very small screwdriver would work just as well and be much safer. The keys are best removed by lifting the cap key from the top left or top right corners. The plastic mechanics beneath the key move analogously to a cherry picker, and you interfere with them less by lifting the top corners of the key. Once you're done, the only drawback to your new sleek Dvorak keyboard is the lack of nubs on the U and H keys. Very carefully dab a small drop of superglue on them to fix the problem and enjoy!

Financial Primer For Self-Funded Startups, Part 2

preston.lee — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

In Part 1 we created ExampleTech, discussed 3 important financial reports you'll routinely review--balance sheets, cash flow and income statements--and the criticality of cash flow planning at the early stages of your business. In Part 2 we'll cover additional operational issues you should resolve for ExampleTech to be a proper, functioning company in the eyes of the government; namely insurance, taxes, and how to pay yourself. First, a couple reminders...

The term "you" refers to.. well... you, an individual. The term "ExampleTech" refers to the company at which you work (and happen to own). "You" and "ExampleTech" are different.
I am neither a lawyer nor distinguished expert in the field. Consult a CPA and/or an attorney licensed in your state for the final word.

ExampleTech has been operating for 2 To get more work done, you'll obviously need to hire people. Those people will have certain workplace expectations Hiring Contractors vs. Employees If you're hiring to fill a short-term need, you'll probably want to hire a contractor. ExampleTech If you're hiring You're now Location One or two-man shops often work out of bedrooms, garages, basements, attics, coffee shops and other low-cost locations. While working at home is a novel, practical solution to preventing a premature excess of outbound capital (aka saving money), doing so could, on a Very Bad Day, come back to bite you because your house probably isn't zoned for business use. If you're chillin' in suburbia with a driveway out of a Norman Rockwell painting, it's almost certainly zoned for residential use only. Zoning is regulated at the city level, so you'll need to check with your city to see if starting a business at home is legit. Cities run the full gammut of very general live/work areas, ultra-purpose-specific, or very lenient. Many new start-ups will live in happy ignorance of zoning law, though you periodically here of an unlucky few getting bit. Being in a correct zone could also come up You might get in trouble with the insurance company if Before you opened your doors you'll probably need to pay The Man a handle of

The Positive Power of Influence

preston.lee — Unknown, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

What does it mean to say, "John is a powerful man"? Is he rich? ...intelligent? ...wise? ...confident? ...strong? ...intimidating? ...charismatic? Maybe, maybe not.. In a professional context, power tends to be influence one has over others.

Preston Joins The 21st Century

preston.lee — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 04:37:08 +0000

After an eternity of posting my thoughts, project information and other digital potpourri in a scatter manner across the wire, I've finally begun putting the pieces for my personal website. Apparently this is now a requirement for Software Engineers to age past 25, so I have some serious catching up to do. Hooray me.

Ant Rant

preston.lee — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 04:38:08 +0000

Iâ€™ve come to loath ant. XML is great for a lot of things, but is simply painful for expressing control flow. Now donâ€™t get me wrong, itâ€™s still easier to work with than make; you can use any XML editor or a web-browser to validate the well-formedness of an ant build file. Itâ€™s just that programmatic thought isnâ€™t elegantly represented by a tree structure full of angle brackets. Trees are simplifications computer scientists use to fit information into limited structures that can be easily parsed and manipulated, however, as a user of the system I donâ€™t give a flying flock that it uses a standard SAX parser. I do care about defining basic control-flow operations in a natural way, and not having to create artificial work-arounds to cater to the structure of the tree. Elegance, however, is the least of ants problems. It lacks a fundamental development capability that is missing from other build systems such as make and jam, and even long-established shells such as bash: debuggability. Hereâ€™s the deal, plain and simple: if youâ€™re writing a development tool, you must provide some mechanism for easy debugging. â€œHello, world!â€ does not require troubleshooting. Every other real-world â€œscriptâ€ does. If youâ€™re automating a build process for a large application, it will have bugs, and when you do get them squashed the system will soon be inadequate and require modification. Now, when I say â€œdebuggabilityâ€, Iâ€™m not talking about scattered echo/print elements throughout the code or color-coded syntax. Iâ€™m talking about stepping through the script line by line and examining the inputs and outputs of every step in the process, just like you would with any C++ or Java program, The last item in todayâ€™s rant is support for basic data structures. Variable passing is pukingly awkard in ant, and calling other targets sometimes requires firing up another ant process. Umm.. riiiiight. â€œIf today is Saturday turn debugging support on, run all known unit tests and send a status report to all team membersâ€ is not an unrealistic use of these systems. Debugging this should not be such a chore.

Square Foot Garden Beds

preston.lee — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 05:05:36 +0000

I built a couple of square foot garden beds this weekend. The frame is made of redwood 2x2s, and the sides are redwoord planks normally used for fenching. The bottom of the bed is a thick sheet of plywood with holes drilled through it for drainage. The diagonal supporting pieces connecting the load bearing trusses with the vertical posts helps support the weight of the beds contents.

2x6 Garden Bed

preston.lee — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 05:35:28 +0000

iClock: How To Get The Time.. Apple Style

preston.lee — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 05:52:56 +0000

What the heck do you do with an unsightly Hershey's Kiss shaped Apple Airport? Turn it into a clock! The RJ-45 and power ports have been relocated as dongles on the back of the unit to make room for the clock battery. The mechanical clock hardware is inside the base station.

If A Unit Test Fails In The Woods, Does It Make A Sound?

preston.lee — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 06:28:45 +0000

No, it doesn't. Unit tests that execute a large amount of code but fail to make assertions along the way give you a false sense of confidence in the code. They pass when they should fail. These problems, formally known as type 2 errors, are a huge liability for a development team because the tests are believed to be verifying the intended behavior of the software, but are really doing nothing in a really lengthy way. For a new person maintaining the code under test, the problems worsen. The new maintainer will not understand what the code is supposed to be doing: what it's currently written to do or what is implied by the possibly out-dated and incomplete unit tests. Good luck finding API documentation if the unit tests suck, and have fun with those future API changes when you must attend to the â€œunit testsâ€ that need to be updated to successfully add no value to the project, just as they were originally written. No thanks. Units test exist to prove that software is behaving as intended, not simply "mock" user actions. This means being particular about states of things during a process, and doing mean negative testing by passing nil into that function that clearly requires a non-nil value. The rule of thumb is this: if, for whatever reason, you cannot write, fix, or otherwise finish work for a correct and complete unit test, assert false. You have not proven the software works correctly, so it doesn't work. Period.

Java Development w/The Eclipse IDE: Five Underused Features

preston.lee — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 02:48:35 +0000

Conditional Breakpoints Have you ever wanted to suspend execution only under a certain circumstance while debugging, such as every hundredth loop iteration? You can. Set your breakpoint, right-click it, select â€œPropertiesâ€, check â€œEnable Conditionâ€ and enter a condition in normal Java code that will be evaluated every time the breakpoint is hit to determine whether or not to suspend the JVM. Remote Debugging Sometimes things work on everybodyâ€™s box.. except Bobâ€™s. Youâ€™ve watched him produce the issue and have tried to reproduce it on your development machine, but it just ainâ€™t happeninâ€™ for anybody but him. Itâ€™s time for a remote debugging session. Start up the JVM on Bobâ€™s box like so..


java -Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8000,suspend=n,server=y
-jar YourApplication.jar

Within Eclipse IDE on your development machine, select Run -> Debug... and create a new â€œRemote Java Applicationâ€ configuration. Select the project that contains the source code, enter Bobâ€™s boxes hostname (or IP address) and the port his JVM is listening on (8000 in this case). Click the â€œDebugâ€ button to close the dialog and your â€œDebugâ€ view should now show a new session, connected to Bobâ€™s JVM, and the threads of your application just as if you were debugging it locally. You can set breakpoints and use all the other features described in this article, or impress your mom by starting another instance of your application locally and step through both Bobâ€™s and your own JVM instance simultaneously, side-by-side! Dynamic Variable & Code Replacement If youâ€™re debugging a tricky piece of SQL in a servlet that isnâ€™t working right, itâ€™s tempting to abide by the typical write, compile, deploy, run, debug, repeat cycle every time you need to tweak the String. This is tedious and time consuming. Instead, set a breakpoint someplace after the String is defined but before it is used. When you hit it, right-click the variable in the â€œVariablesâ€ view and select â€œChange Valueâ€¦â€. You can figure it out from there. (Note: This doesnâ€™t seem to work for â€œfinalâ€ variables, and so-so with statically declared things.) If you modify and save a class while you have a debugging connection established, Eclipse will try its best to update the code on the remote JVM without having to restart it. This doesnâ€™t always work (especially if there are stack frames using the changed code), but youâ€™ll be notified if the remote JVM could not be updated. This is especially useful when testing a complex algorithm in a situation that is a pain in the arse to set up. Custom Code Templates Typing â€œfore[autocomplete]â€ in a block in Java code will add a â€œforeachâ€ code template that you can fill in using the TAB key. These are customizable, and you can even add your own. For example, I prefix all generated local variable and Iterator declarations with the â€œfinalâ€ keyword, and have added my own custom templates for inserting my most frequently used Java 5 annotations. Go to Window -> Preferencesâ€¦ -> Java -> Editor -> Template and have some fun. Refactoring Actions All of the refactoring features of Ecilpse IDE are worth learning. I canâ€™t think of one that isnâ€™t. Once you have a method defined and used, there isnâ€™t much reason to manually modify the declaration. â€œMoveâ€, â€œChange Method Signatureâ€¦â€, â€œPull Upâ€¦â€, â€œPush Downâ€¦â€ etc. give you basic, commonly used tools, and actions such as â€œExtract Interfaceâ€¦â€, â€œUser Supertype Where Possibleâ€¦â€ etc. provide support for larger jobs. Understanding what all these do helps relieve some of the pain felt when refactoring heavily used, public APIs, and helps keep you focused on the bigger picture by taking care of the details.

E-Prime For Software Engineers

preston.lee — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 03:15:11 +0000

I recently restarted reading Quantum Psychology by Robert Anton Wilson. (Not the easiest read. If you put it down for to long you may have to start over.) The most practical thing Iâ€™ve gotten from it thus far is the usefulness of E-Prime. You may already use it and not realize it. To attempt to summarize E-Prime with a single example, consider the following two statements..

Aliceâ€™s code is broken.
When I ran the unit tests this morning, all the code last checked in by Alice (according to the logs) failed to pass. Thus, I think her code is broken.

While the first statement is concise, Iâ€™d much rather prefer the second because it conveys information about the observer in addition to the observation.

The means of measuring brokenness are specified ("the unit tests"). The reader otherwise does not know how the conclusion of brokenness is being determined. Without this information, how is Alice supposed to go about reproducing the issue?
A timeframe of failure is specified ("this morning"). Alice may have made the same observation and made fixes shortly after the unit tests were run. The code may have indeed been broken, but only appeared so at the time it was measured.
The observations is attributed to the observer ("[w]hen I ran", "I think"), rather than claiming the an intrinsic state of brokenness about the code.
The scope of the brokenness is described ("all the code last checked in by Alice"). All of Aliceâ€™s code probably isnâ€™t broken.
It is acknoledges that the observation is limited by the means of measurement ("Thus, I think.."). When judged by another means, the code may appear fine.

In short, E-Prime acknoledges that our capabilities or understanding seem to be limited by our instruments of perception (be them eyes, ears, unit tests or ampmeters). Take a looksy at some other examples.

Japanese Tea Garden

preston.lee — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 04:24:32 +0000

Zen And The Art of Software Design

preston.lee — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 19:49:51 +0000

As you sit on a bench with a hot cup of jasmine tea in the middle of the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco Park, you canâ€™t help but be overwhelmed by the tranquil beauty of the garden that surrounds you from every direction. Itâ€™s a great way to spend an afternoon. I arrived at the garden expecting a wonderfully uncomplicated demonstration of Zen-like simplicity in design after seeing some very provocative pictures of Japanese Zen Gardens online. In this respect, I left disappointed. The garden is brilliantly beautiful, but its beauty is achieved by bombardment of the exotic, rather than elegant simplicity. In the attached photo, for example, the frame almost bursts at the boarders with colors and plants. Very pretty, but is all that really necessary? Does each plant in the photo really serve a purpose that would be unfulfilled in its absense? Would the garden be any less beautiful with half as many plants? The tree from the Six Feet Under opening sequence is plenty inspiring on its own, even though it's the only thing in the frame. I liken the gardens design to the conception of many software systems, particularly many F/OSS projects. Doing less, well, seems to often go undervalued in an attempt to appeal to a wider audience and satisfy all the I-would-use-it-only-ifs presented by the potential userbase. Take this screenshot from easytag, for example. Does this look easy to you? To me this looks like an ugly, unusable piece of shit. Granted, the software appears powerful in that it allows you to customize your process to a very fine level of detail, but wait.. isnâ€™t this software supposed to be easy to use? To me this functionality is an example of a speculative generality code smell, combined with a very developer-oriented project culture the equates more features to better software. The vast majority of the important cases trying to be achieved here could probably be accomplished without trying to allow for every single possible permutation of tags that is mathematically possible (at least in the user interface). Less: Itâ€™s the new more.

Avoiding if(DEBUG_ON)

preston.lee — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 06:16:04 +0000

Consider the following Java code..

public class Counter {

	private final static boolean DEBUG_ON = false;

	protected int mCount = 0;

	public int getCount() {
		return mCount;
	}

	public void increment() {
		if(DEBUG_ON) {
			System.out.println(â€œabout to increment! count=â€ + getCount());
		}
		mCount++;
	}
}

}

Some people use "debug" or "test" flags because they can provide a fast way of troubleshooting situations that would otherwise be inconvenient to debug. If increment() was recursive, for example, it may be convenient to simply keep an eye on stdout rather than set breakpoints and have to step through it. (Note: see an earlier post on conditional breakpoints to avoid this entirely.) While the extra DEBUG_ON code is fairly harmless and benign, itâ€™s nevertheless unnecessary code that could potentially break a production system, and even when/if you do remember to comment it out, it distracts the reader from the meaningful, real code youâ€™re trying to express. An alternative solution? Simple. Subclass it. Try this instead..

public class Counter {

	protected int mCount = 0;

	public int getCount() {
		return mCount;
	}

	public void increment() {
		System.out.println(â€œabout to increment! count=â€ + getCount());
		mCount++;
	}

}

public class TestCounter extends Counter{

	public void increment() {
		System.out.println(â€œabout to increment! count=â€ + getCount());
		super.increment();
	}
}

Now you can leave your print statements intact, and just use TestCounter as a drop-in replacement for Counter in your unit tests. Alternatively, you could use one of many design patterns to aggregate or compose the Counter rather than extend it, or use dynamic proxies or aspects if youâ€™re looking to intercept calls that exist in a horizontal manner.

On Brooks

preston.lee — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 21:53:53 +0000

I've written this same basic argument for small teams three or four times now, so to comply with the Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle I though I'd post it. In short, this argument repeats Brooks' Mythical Man-Month concept :) , and asserts that you must restructure the communications dynamics of a team when it changes in size, regardless of whether or not your project is late. To paraphrase one of the points made in Frederick Brooks' The Mythical Man Month, complexity in a system scales with the number of interfaces. Applied to a team communications system of N people, the worst-case number of total communications channels is when everybody talks to everybody else. This can be expressed by N(N-1)/2. In other words, a given person in the team (the Nth person) is communicating with everyone else (N-1 people). A problem with large horizontal teams is that as N increases, the communications overhead of being able to operate potentially increases exponentially. As a member of a 5 person team, for example, communicating with 4 others is not a big deal. You are able to mentally understand what other people are doing and how others communicate with each other (in all 10 different relationships). If this team grows to 15 people, however, communicating is not as simple. In the worst case, not only do you have to communicate with 14 other peers, there are now 105 relationships between people you may have to be aware of to stay "in the loop". The worst part may be that the majority of the information going across those channels may be directly irrelevant to you job, but since itâ€™s relevant to the team as a whole, you spend the time and mental cycles to process it. Now, this is all worst-case abstract theory, but it does highlight the scaling problems of communication in teams of changing size. As your team changes, you need to reevaluate the way it works to keep operating overhead due to excess or insufficient communication down to a minimum.

Back From Baja

preston.lee — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 02:01:44 +0000

We've just returned from our getaway to Baja and California. Brief, self-explanitory electrocolorogram highlights here.

Singletons Cause Cancer

preston.lee — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 03:57:30 +0000

It's been said before. I'll say it again. The singleton pattern sucks. From a pragmatic point of view, it has two primary drawbacks: reuse and testability.

Reuse

A public static getInstance() method is, by definition, statically bound at compile time. Since you can't override static methods, reusing singleton code via inheritance means you'll need to create a new getInstance2() method. No matter how creative you get with this method name, you have to accept that users of your code will periodically call the parent types public getInstance() method instead of your spiffy new getInstance2(). Working off an interface largely becomes a moot point since the developer must know the exact type of singleton they want to use at compile time in order to invoke the correct getInstance() method. How do you configure a singleton without a parameter to getInstance(), which would not be consistent with the intentions of the pattern? Since the instance is constructed internally using a non-publically-accessible constructor, there isn't a convenient way of introducing configuration information before it's created.. unless the singleton is aware of a configuration source at compile time with yet more static binding. This makes the code very inflexible, as developers intending to reuse it will be at the mercy of your pre-chosen configuration mechanism, which may not be appropriate for their circumstances, or even unit testing.

Testability

Unit tests generally require control over the lifecycle of the class under test to fully validate proper state transition and contractual validity. Since you, the master of the known universe, are writing the software, you'll certainly write negative scenarios into your unit tests to assert proper failure handling. If intentionally introducing a negative test results in an irrecoverable state, how do you throw out the singleton and start the next case with a new one? You can't. What if your test case is creating a tricky concurrency scenario emulating multiple systems within the sandbox of a single JVM? You can't (trivially). What happens when you discover you need multiple instances of the singleton within your application? You can't. Time to refactor. Additionally, unit testing of code using static singleton dependencies has a high potential of awkwardness due to an inability to swap out implementations for mock objects. Under the principle of designing for testability, quality and maintainability, hackishness is not a quality to aspire to.

Conclusion

Singletons can be hazardous to your health, seriously jeopardize your family's safety, and have been classified as 'terrorist patterns' by the U.S. government. The fact that an application only needs one instance of something does not mean the object should be designed that way, and there aren't very many scenarios where singletons are appropriate. Do as the Jedi do and use them with consideration and responsibly.

Encryption: Use it, lest ye be thieved.

preston.lee — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 20:00:22 +0000

Each time I go to DEFCON, sniff a network or see an ad for an infosec product, Iâ€™m harshly reawakened to the general publics detachment for security concerns. When using a virus scanner, firewall and pop-up blocker, most users seem comforted enough to go about daily business with a satisfactory feeling of a â€œsecureâ€ experience. A large gap with this frame of thought is of what weâ€™re trying to secure. The most valuable thing on your computerâ€”the stuff you want to secure if nothing else--is your personal data/information, NOT the machine itself. Most white-collar folk, in a worst-case scenario, could cough up the bones to cope with a stolen or broken machine, or re-install the OS after a bad virus attack. The data on that machine, however, may be priceless memories, confidential trade-secrets, or other information which youâ€™d highly prefer to remain private and well backed up. As a resident of Arizona--the new U.S. capital for identity theft (per-capita)--we must recognize that the Bad Guys on the tubes do not have the primary intent to annoy us. Theyâ€™re trying to make money. Compromising your system is merely a means for collecting sellable usage habits, relaying \/i@gr@ ads, stealing/selling your identity etc. We simply need to recognize that we protect system assets largely to protect our information. In that vein, one of the largest commonplace no-nos is sending sensitive information over ordinary email. Weâ€™ve all done it, and most will continue. Emails can pass through systems that are maintained by people you donâ€™t know and most certainly donâ€™t trust, so donâ€™t be a bonehead: encrypt your email, especially if itâ€™s sensitive material. (If your email client is a horrible bitch-goddess that makes encryption a pain to deal with, please poke the vendor with a sharp stick until they make it trivial.) Mail.app and Keychain Access.app (OS X) make it ridiculously simply to manage and use X.509 public/private keys, which you can obtain for free from Thawte. If you use Mail.app, youâ€™re out of excuses. Should your machine be stolen, sold, repaired, or otherwise leave your possession, how do you know your not handing over the keys to the kingdom to a complete stranger? You can wipe the drive, but that isnâ€™t convenient if the machine will be returned to you. A simply way is to use TrueCrypt for Windows, encrypted .dmg files for OS X, or encrypt your entire freaking home directory with FileVault. (OS X). OS X users have no excuse but to encrypt everything. Linux and Windows users may have difficulties, but easy wins are still possible. Encrypt your email. Encrypt your backups. Encrypt your calendar. Encrypt your address book. Encrypt your financials. Encrypt your music. Encrypt your photos. Encrypt your life. Encrypt everything.

Network De-Perimeterization: The Jericho Forum

preston.lee — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 21:52:40 +0000

The presenters from the Jericho Forum at DEFCON 14 this year did an acceptable job of highlighting the principle that border firewalls are much less beneficial that they used to be for security purposes. WiFi, VPNs, MANETs etc. provide constantly changing IT environments which are not realistically plausible for IT to completely control. Our new challenge is to accept that hostile things may exist on the network, and we must solidify the security of individual services despite high-priced blue-colored networking hardware connecting it all. Their DEFCON session was unfortunately unclear on the specifics of how one accomplishes this, but I nevertheless agree with many of their core principles. This Decades Security Challege (good .pdf slides) De-perimeterization is the way to go for network security De-perimeterization: Jericho Forum misses the mark

Must-Have OS X Freebies

preston.lee — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 02:57:29 +0000

As far as Iâ€™m concerned, no Mac is complete without these great freebies.. Cyberduck Great SFTP/FTP rich-client. Colloquy An intuitive, native IRC client VLC Dirt simple media player capable of handling things that QuickTime can't. Handbrake All-in-one DVD ripping and encoding utility. Provides plenty of features for most of us without be overly complicated. Skype Easy-to-use VOIP client. Works with MacBook (Pro)/PowerBook microphones out-of-the-box, and provide free calls to other Skype users. CrossOver Mac Beta Every OS X user I know must operate in a Windows environment on a regular basis. The recent release of Parallels for Intel-based macs (basically VMWare workstation-style guest-OS host virtualization) has made life one tick easier by allowing us to run Windows on our Core Duo systems, and the new CrossOver Beta for Intel Macs provides a great complementary technology. CrossOver Mac, by CodeWeavers of wine fame, allows you to run some Windows applications directly on your Intel Mac, without having to host a full-fledged copy of Windows by implementing the applications APIs dependencies on the Mac. The beta is free. QuickSilver Provides Spotlight-like capabilities, but faster and way, way better. The extremely brisk find-and-launch concept will be new for many users, but will be hard to live without once understood.

Rosarito, Mexico, 2006

preston.lee — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 03:01:20 +0000

Here're some favorite pictures from the trip, for those who haven't seen them already :)

Anaheim, California, 2006

preston.lee — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 03:25:39 +0000

More personal photos from our 2006 trip to Disneyland, California Adventures, and Downtown Disney.

Business Logic Code Generation

preston.lee — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 19:06:11 +0000

On numerous occasions Iâ€™ve seen Java code generated by other Java code as part of a standard build process. Iâ€™m not talking about â€œstubâ€ or â€œboiler-plateâ€ model code produced by tools such as rmic or hibernate, respectively, but logic code produced by a script. Iâ€™ve also seen this done in other languages, but it particularly bothers me when I see it done in an object-oriented language such as Java. Almost invariably it occurs for one of two reasons: an external dependency or structure prevents sane reuse practices, or a lack of modern object-oriented analysis and design skills. (The former case simply implies the latter on someone elseâ€™s part.) Lame Dependencies Some dependencies introduce more liabilities than benefits, yet are nevertheless necessary due to business or technological constraints. Libraries and frameworks that force you to extend specific classes (as opposed to interfaces) lessen your ability to create a flexible, adaptable application on top. When large amounts of boiler-plate code are necessary to satisfy a dependency, it might be reasonable to apply code generate techniques to avoid monotony; however, the generated code should at least adapt or delegate to a separate, reusable implementation. Lame Developers (a.k.a. the people that write Lame Dependencies) The pisser scenario that is often hard to differentiate from the former is a lack of OOA&D skills on behalf of the application designer. In particular, those accustomed to procedural thought may want to introduce "procedure generation" as a sort of clever closure mechanism which is more common in languages other than Java. This translates to large amounts of redundant, unnecessary code that could likely be avoided by applying modern design patterns and generics. Conclusion Classes are more than the place you put data and methods; together they implement a higher-level design which can be expressed in higher-level terms, isolated into components, and tested and maintained as such. If you have a system composed of a mesh of interwoven procedures with many statically bound components, mutual dependencies and generated logic, it may be more procedural than object-oriented.

Tips For CS/CSE/MIS Seniors

preston.lee — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 21:38:20 +0000

As the Spring semester approaches, seniors start attending job fairs and submitting resumes to the Word-parsing, keyword-detecting machines of industry HR giants. In the seemingly few years since I completed my bachelors, Iâ€™ve been through the motions enough to have learned a great deal in the process. Hereâ€™s some advice for seniors trying to land sweet engineering or IT gigs.

Schmooze

The â€œitâ€™s who you know, not what you knowâ€ principle is not bullshit. For better or worse, many things just work this way, and the tech industry is no exception. Almost every job Iâ€™ve had has been landed in part because of inside connections. Building these contacts is difficult for someone without industry experience, but can be overcome by involvement in student clubs, professional organizations, and other social activities. In my experience, involvement in mailing lists and local geek clubs has been the easiest and most beneficial means of networking. All the jobs fairs I've been to were a waste of time; most of the big companies just put your resume in a stack and direct you their HR website for further information.

Infiltrate

One of the best things you can have when approaching a company is a pre-existing positive relationship with an inside contact. The better your relationship with your contact, the more theyâ€™ll sell you up before introductions are done or resumes passed. They will build good vibes for your interview, and generate internal momentum to push the process forward from the inside. A simple, â€œHey, Jim, I just wanted to give you a heads-up that thereâ€™s a really bright guy named Bob thatâ€™ll be submitting a resume todayâ€ can build a valuable pre-conception with the evaluator that gives you an advantage over other applicants, if not land you the job before the interview even starts.

Anthropomorphize

When submitting cover letters and conversing with potential employers, donâ€™t send form letters. Show them youâ€™re genuinely pumped about the job and company, and that youâ€™re human by using real names instead of â€œTo Whom It May Concernâ€. Know your audience and write to their tastes. If you know senior industry people, kindly ask them to review your writing before submission.

Familiarize

Do your research on a companies projects before talking to representatives, and be sure to come up with things youâ€™ve done that could directly bring value to them. They donâ€™t care that you have three dogs and that your catâ€™s name is Mittens, but theyâ€™ll find it intriguing that youâ€™ve completed projects using Spring, Hibernate etc. If youâ€™re talking to a non-tech person, just point out that youâ€™re already familiar with what theyâ€™re doing and youâ€™d love to talk to the project manager to see if you'd be a good fit. Also remember that what you what now and what you can know by your interview are two different sets of knowledge.

Honesty & Confidence

If youâ€™re speaking to a technical interviewer, be honest about what you know. Theyâ€™ll easily see through dodged answers and weak responses. With practice, however, you can easily turn many negatives into positives. For example, if asked â€œ[a]re you familiar with Plajax: the AJAX for plague victimsâ€, donâ€™t say â€œNo.â€ Instead, say â€œIâ€™m familiar with Blajax: the AJAX for blind people, and have lots of experience handling server-side requests.â€ Always emphasise the positive. Practice in your next team meeting by using the word â€œandâ€ instead of â€œhoweverâ€ and â€œbutâ€. Speaking this way is an extremely valuable general-purpose skill, especially when youâ€™re in discussions with people you donâ€™t agree with.

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preston.lee — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 03:55:11 +0000

RAZR v3, Bluetooth, T-Mobile Internet & OS X

preston.lee — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 04:06:56 +0000

Here's the lowdown on setting up your Motorola RAZR to connect to the internet wirelessly via your bluetooth enabled Mac after signing up for T-Mobile internet services. I live in Arizona and have had no issues following these steps on several Macs.

Grab this.
Copy the "Motorola GPRS CID1" file into /Library/Modem Scripts
Go to System Preferences -> Bluetooth -> Devices and click "Set Up New Device..."
After selecting the more obvious options to set up your phone, enter the connection settings as in the following screenshot. (The password is "internet".)
After completing the wizard, select "Connect" from the new icon visible on the menu bar at the top of the screen. (Suggestion: manually "Disconnect" your phone when you're done with the internet connection, as putting the computer to sleep while connected seems to cause issues when the system wakes up.)

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preston.lee — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 05:31:41 +0000

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preston.lee — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 05:32:04 +0000

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preston.lee — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 05:32:12 +0000

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preston.lee — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 05:32:20 +0000

Apple Aperture Features Explained For Non-Photographers

preston.lee — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 05:54:43 +0000

The RAW format pictures produced by my Canon XTi are often in excess of 10MB. Couple this with "continuous shooting" and a fast CompactFlash card, and I can easily fill a 4GB'er in a couple days. I've used Apple's Aperture for about a month now through the holidays and a friends wedding, and have been very pleased with the product. Aperture is more like ACDSee or Picasa than Photoshop. It's about fine-tuning, managing projects, browsing, searching, sorting, packaging and publishing, and does neither layering nor psychedelic effects typically associated with digital picture manipulation. It's iPhoto on crack. Here are a few features which I like.

Full-screen mode. This is similar to iPhoto's full-screen mode, but with much better tools. The "adjustments" overlay provides typical white-balance and exposure controls, as well as a slick RAW-only section and easy-to-use tools for tweaking specific color ranges. All adjustments are non-destructive, so you can freely experiment with tools without worrying about being able to revert to the original. There is literally no "Save" button. The transport at the bottom is nice, too.
Versioning & Stacking. Rather than copy/pasting files to make small adjustments while preserving the original, the versioning mechanism provides a great way to have many different versions of the same file, such as for different cropping ratios and color/sepia prints. Stacking allows you to make good use of continuous shooting on your camera by allowing you to select the best shot from a series and hide all others in the browser. The loop tool (see image) is a pin-point zoom pointer which works in both the browsing and viewing areas.
Management. Understanding the various types of containers admittedly took me a few days to truly "get". Once I did, however, it's nice how Aperture combines typical concepts such as "Folders" and "Projects" with "Albums", "Smart Albums" (search-based albums), "Light Tables", "Books" etc. It's easy to keep things organized while simultaneously being able to find things.
Meta-data. In addition to handling EXIF/IPTC information and allowing changes at import time, making changing to images en mass is easy with the "lift and stamp" tools. Adjustments such as camera settings, tagged keywords and exposure changes are easily "lifted" off a select image and "stamped" onto others. This is especially useful when working with stacks.
Backup. Aperture vaults are basically files on backup volumes (such as removable firewire drives) which can be sync'd to when plugged in, kinda like having rsync built into the application.
Offline. When each photo is 10MB, you can't keep every photo with you. You can, however, store the "master" on an external volume and keep a high-resolution preview and all meta-data with you at a fraction of the data size.

If you're using OS X and are somewhat interested in photography, I'm sorry, but you'll probably want to bite the $279 bullet and buy Aperture, though I got my copy for about half that as a bundle deal with my camera body.

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preston.lee — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 06:06:55 +0000

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preston.lee — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 06:10:53 +0000

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preston.lee — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 06:12:19 +0000

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preston.lee — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 06:13:28 +0000

iClock (Thumbnail)

preston.lee — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 20:48:17 +0000

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preston.lee — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 19:54:38 +0000

The $1K Home Recording Studio Mac Add-on

preston.lee — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 20:06:03 +0000

20 years ago digital home recording wasn't plausible. 10 years ago we started to see its potential, but most hobbyists (read: very cash-limited people) were limited to using still-primitive versions of multi-trackers such as Cakewalk, Cool Edit Pro or Cubase with either COTS Sound Blaster PCI cards or ridiculously over-priced, high-noise, high-latency specialty cards with break-out boxes such as the Lexicon Core 2. Running on Windows 95 or 98, we regularly struggled with the stability of the platform and device drivers. Today, you can have your own personal studio capable of producing DVD-quality recordings by adding a thousand dollars of equipment to your existing computer and music rig. Here's my living room/home theater/recording studio/Mac haven, all driven by a single Mac Mini.. Here's are the core components..

Mac Mini (Intel).
Big 1080p LCD television/monitor. The Mac Mini drives this beast with a DVI-to-HDMI converter cable.
Logic Pro (Apple's recording software). For my needs, it's really either Logic Pro or Pro Tools. For various reasons I've stuck with Logic Pro run in a distributed manner with other Macs in the house using built-in Xgrid functionality over gigabit ethernet.
Headphone amp w/studio headphones. You need at least one good headphone set to properly lay down track on top of track, but when you have people over you can usually get by with three or four. This is too much load to be powered directly by the computer, so the dedicated headphone amp is necessary. I have a Behringer HA4700. (I didn't want to add my Event 20/20 references monitors to the already cluttered layout, so I have them in another room.)
PreSonus FirePod. This is a truly outstanding input device for recording the entire band simultaneously. The unit is rack-mountable, connects via FireWire and optical cables, and has pristine noise-free pre-amps.
Microphones and stands.
Instruments. I have a full-size Yamaha keyboard (pictured), a bunch of vocal mics and guitars, and a rack of mediocre analog schwag. BYOI, whatever 'I' happens to be.

If you've already got a Mac setup and some music equipment, grabbing Logic Express, PreSonus FirePod, decent vocal mic and a bunch of cables for $1K will turn your system into an audio powerhouse which your friends will envy.

The Virus Network

preston.lee — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 19:08:26 +0000

Would You Like To Join The "Virus" Network?

preston.lee — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 19:12:21 +0000

Hmm. I think I'll click "No" on this one..

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preston.lee — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 04:03:56 +0000

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preston.lee — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 04:04:06 +0000

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preston.lee — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 04:04:13 +0000

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preston.lee — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 04:04:45 +0000

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preston.lee — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 04:04:54 +0000

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preston.lee — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 04:05:11 +0000

Arizona Desert: Usery Mountain Regional Park

preston.lee — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 04:21:52 +0000

These are a few of my favorite shots from Usery Mountain Regional Park over the last year. All were taken in color on a Canon XTi using a 28-135mm EF lens, but are presented here with no color saturation to allow for more dramatic contrast adjustments.

ladybug

preston.lee — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 20:53:24 +0000

..But Should You Fix That Bug?

preston.lee — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 21:01:02 +0000

We have a natural desire to fix things. As engineers we find satisfaction in resolving technical problems and, if youâ€™re following test-driven practices, keeping them resolved. These thoughts flow through our minds as the primitive keyboard-wielding code monkeys we evolved from. What distinguishes us from our fecal-flinging counterparts, however, is our ability to question these instincts and wear business, user and developer hats simultaneously. Here are some additional questions we should consider before immediately reacting with technobabble.

What business value could be realized by addressing this issue? It would be ideal to resolve it, yes, but is there any ROI for the time spent?
How risky is this? If cleaning the big red button could potentially fire the nuke, you might want to leave the booger on it.
How critical is this issue? If sufficient workarounds exist or this does not prevent people from working, perhaps you could move it below other todo list items that are.
How does this make users feel? Requiring the user to click OK every two minutes will create desire to stab you with a sharp object. Your death will generate bad vibes around the project.
What is the business impact? If the tree fell, but nobody lives in the woods.. what tree?
What are the dependencies and dependants? Superman requires his tights be dry-cleaned before saving the planet today. You might want to run to the dry-cleaners.
When could a resolution actually be delivered? It may take 2 minutes to fix, but if users canâ€™t get it for two months perhaps the work can be postponed.
Who is be most appropriate person to handle it? Maybe itâ€™s you. Maybe itâ€™s the guy who actually wrote the code.
What actually needs to be fixed? Donâ€™t replace the alternator if you only need a battery.
Where does this fall in the project timeline? If the next deliverable is already late, you might need to rescope by sitting down with the business and reevaluating what is truly necessary.

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preston.lee — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 19:09:25 +0000

DSLR Camera Body vs. Lens: Where To Put Your Money

preston.lee — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 19:49:09 +0000

Absolutely put more of your cash into the lenses. As much as it hurts to think about, you're probably going to trash the body long before an equally priced lens. A good lens will also hold its value relatively well, even when the lens model is updated. (Nicer used Canon EF lenses aren't easy to find deals on since they're quickly bought; I'm constantly searching.)

I'm a Canon man, and I've tried some of the kit lens. They're absolute crap. Images appear soft and with an annoying amount of chromatic aberration. Sigma's lower-end equivalents such as the Sigma 18mm-50mm 3.5-5.6 DC Zoom are similarly poor. This crop of an overhead florescent light in the corner of a much larger frame shows how extreme the chromatic aberration can be with the Sigma model.

While admittedly blown out, there is a very distinct purple color cast in the areas directly above and to the right of the lighted area. This was shot at f/3.5, 1/80s at ISO400 at 18mm (x1.6 sub-frame conversion).

I've been completely satisfied with my Canon XTi and Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM. The 28-135mm is a great general-purpose, budget-friendly image stabilized (IS) walk-around lens. Image stabilization is well worth it, as you can get away with many hand held shots in low light or moving subject conditions which ordinarily aren't possible.

Configuring Rails To Use Gmail's SMTP Server

preston.lee — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 20:31:31 +0000

OpenRain.com uses Google Apps For Your Domain, and all email flows throw Google's servers. Unfortunately, Rails 1.2.2 can't send via smtp.google.com out of the box. As originally pointed out by Anatol Pomozov there is a solution. Here's the simple version tested with Rails 1.2.2.

Save this codeÂ asÂ lib/smtp_tls.rb within your rails app.
AddÂ this codeÂ to config/environment.rb.
Use ActionMailer as normal.

Updated 2008.01.04: The original link was b0rken, so I pastied the code instead.

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preston.lee — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 01:17:06 +0000

Blue Man

preston.lee — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 01:17:20 +0000

Conspiracy Theory: Blue Man Group Recruits Seth Godin

preston.lee — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 01:23:55 +0000

When I saw Blue Man Group at the Venetian I knew one of them looked familiar. It was none-other than entrepreneur Seth Godin! Ok, probably not. But there is a resemblance, no? Seth Godin Blue Man

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preston.lee — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 22:41:23 +0000

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preston.lee — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 22:41:35 +0000

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preston.lee — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 22:42:00 +0000

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preston.lee — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 22:46:47 +0000

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preston.lee — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 22:57:32 +0000

Why Outlook Sucks: Part 1 of 900,000

preston.lee — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 23:02:27 +0000

Let's find an email from Toni regarding her party next weekend. There appears to be a search box in the toolbar. Wait.. that seems to be only for contacts. Nevermind. There's a find button to the left which brings up a toolbar, but it appears to search only the Inbox. Unfortunately I have a bazillion folders and rules and have no idea where the message is located, so I'll go over to the "Options" menu (of all places) and start an "Advanced Find". Uh.. ok. I have no idea why I need "More Choices" or "Advanced", and apparently I'm still searching only the Inbox. Let's "Browse".. Now that we've systematically selected every possible place the email could be--which could apparently be in my Calendar or Contacts--we can click OK and go back to the â€œAdvanced Findâ€ dialog and click 'From..' Great.. the engineers decided to reuse the same old contact finder dialog. There are a lot of people with a 'Toni' in their name, so we'd better embark on a separate sub-find quest to identify the correct contact record. Make sure you click 'Find Now' and not 'New Search' when you're done. When we come back from a coffee break, we see Outlook proudly presenting a result set, sorted by date, most recent first. That'd be great, except that if I'd received it recently, I probably wouldn't need to use an 'Advanced Find' to locate it, would I? The results are also displayed within the dialog for some reason instead of the main window, so I guess I'll have to keep this up on my second LCD, which I'll now repurpose as the "Dedicated Advanced Search Dialog Monitor". Whatever. Just for shiggles, let find an email in Apple's Mail.app. Holy freaking crap. I typed in 'toni party', and it gave me emails from Toni about her party, sorted by likely relevance. It was immediately clear how to search and the results took less than a second to display, despite the fact the PC is apparently faster spec-wise and I have magnitudes more email on my MacBook Pro. Huh. Update: Part 2 of 900,000

Advice For The Telecommuter

preston.lee — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 07:33:24 +0000

If your laptop has a fan on the bottom, don't use it when you're naked. Update: Stop looking at me like that. It's never happened. Honest. :)

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preston.lee — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 21:57:21 +0000

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preston.lee — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:06:42 +0000

Why Outlook Sucks: Part 2 of 900,000

preston.lee — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:10:40 +0000

Note: Yes, this is still on an older version of Outlook because that's what I've had to use. Please feel free to contribute to this series in your own blog via trackback/ping, and I'll post links en mass to the front page when I get enough! Let's delete a folder to which messages are directed via a rule. Outlook does some dependency checking and found that deleting the folder will hork a rule. Good. Unfortunately we get a disgruntled little dialog box entitled "Rules in Error". (Shouldn't this be "Error in Rule"?) The use of a table I surmise would be to support display of a laundry list of errors, but since there's only one in this case and the table won't wrap the error text, we get to scroll all the way over to the right. Not that it really matters, because I don't have a choice on how to proceed. The "Close" button gives me no indication as to what will happen when I click it. I never have this issue in Mail.app, because when I delete a folder related to a rule, the rule automatically becomes disabled and folder reference unselected. Here's what a simple rule looks like after you delete a folder to which it directs email. No annoying dialog, and I can easily rewire the rule since it wasn't deleted. Also, if I create a new folder with the same name, the folder automatically gets wired into the old rule. Makes sense!

Please Stop Saying "Google Simple"

preston.lee — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 23:39:22 +0000

It should be generally assumed that designs should be as simple as possible. So if you're working directly with a competent designer, you need not say so. If your designer does not hold this as a core working principle, get a new one. Client: "We'd like you to design a next-generation car dashboard for our new line of luxury vehicles. The car will feature all the latest gizmos: GPS, iPod integration, satellite radio, automatic environmental controls, you name it. And the interface needs to be simple. Google simple." Me: "Ok.. here's what we'll do. We'll remove the wheel, pedals, and all conventional buttons and displays. Instead, we'll mount an LCD to the dash, and display a single text input box. Voice recognition will fill in this box for the driver, and when (s)he says "Search", the car computer will return the first 5 million commands (s)he most likely meant. The driver can then touch the command which they meant and have it execute. Alternatively, the driver can say "I'm feeling lucky!" to have the car automatically execute the most likely desired command, such as "Turn right", or "OMG STOP NOW BEFORE WE DRIVE OFF THAT CLIFF!!!" If the driver survives long enough, they'll get to enjoy the lumbar support and tunes from their iPod." Client: "..." Me: "We can call it 'Sue-gle'."

Convince Your Manager You Need A Wiki

preston.lee — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 06:33:39 +0000

Sometimes the pointy-haired manager just doesnâ€™t â€œgetâ€ the wiki concept. Hereâ€™s something to email him/her.. The business benefit of a wiki is two-fold. First, project members and team have a single, common platform for managing documents which is easy to reference (in email, IMs etc), cross-platform, accessible, and perhaps most importantly, searchable. Second, it gives the business instant transparency into project state. By standardizing on a wiki as a place for status reports, minutes, project plans, design documents etc., both business and development has a shared, direct place to go for information, reducing expensive request/response cycles incurred when the business requests information.

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preston.lee — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 06:34:24 +0000

Shell Magic: Globally Find/Replace Text Using RegExps Within Many Files

preston.lee — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 07:33:15 +0000

Hereâ€™s one of my favorite Perl-based one-liners which I whip out when I need to find a bunch of files and replace text based on regular expressions at the command line.

find . -iname '*.js' -exec perl -pi.bak -e 's/2006/2007/g' {} \;

This example first finds all JavaScript files (using a case-insensitive file extension) in the current directory. Each file is then parsed. If the string "2006" is found within the file, it is backed up to a file of the same name with a ".bak" extension, after which all occurances of "2006" are replaced with "2007". w00t!

Updated Google Code Prettify Bookmarklet

preston.lee — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:22:14 +0000

My poor blogless friend Henri has made some small updates to the original Google Code Prettify JavaScript Bookmarket.

For Geeks w/Allergies: The Air Purifier To Buy

preston.lee — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:19:10 +0000

I am deathly allergic to the blooms of the Sweet Acacia tree, which happens to be a popular choice of landscapers in Phoenix. I can physical sense the presence of Sweet Acacia from a good 20 meters, and the mere thought gives me a Pavlovian response. The blooms are my kryptonite. My allergies hit so hard this year that I decided to invest in a quality air purification unit. Iâ€™ve had several inexpensive HEPA-type units over the years, but none that have made a significant difference to my nose. I am very attracted to the filterless design of the Sharper Image Ionic Breeze, but various accounts show that not enough air moves through it, and itâ€™s measured effectiveness at removing allergens is comparatively small. The nicest, hospital-quality units still use filters, so youâ€™re likely to have to live with paying for filter replacements if you want a nicer air cleaner. I purchased the Friedrich C-90B (click for picture). Itâ€™s a combination of a powerful fan, reusable pre-filter, replaceable activated carbon filter, and a large washable ionizing section. While not cheap (mine was $425 USD here, though the price has since increased), it moves a significant amount of air for a household model, does both electrostatic precipitation and conventional filtering, and produces relatively little ozone. Itâ€™s also large, hideously ugly and must be placed unobstructed on both ends for optimal air flow, but Iâ€™m more than willing to pay that price to be able to breath again. Now why the heck didn't I buy a decent model years ago? If you have bad allergies, seriously consider ordering one. I've found it well worth it.

Fixing "wrong number of arguments" Error w/Rails 1.2.3 Upgrade

preston.lee — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 04:13:04 +0000

If you've just upgraded your Rails gem from 1.2.2 to 1.2.3 and are getting the following error on database hits.. wrong number of arguments (1 for 0) /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.15.2/lib/active_record/vendor/mysql.rb:566:in `initialize' ..note that updating RAILS_GEM_VERSION in environment.rb appears to be required. Running a 1.2.2 application on 1.2.3 (even when 1.2.2 and all dependencies installed) will yield this error. Whatever.

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preston.lee — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 01:42:56 +0000

Why Linux Won't Rule The Desktop Any Time Soon (1 of 2)

preston.lee — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 01:55:53 +0000

Before the hate mail roles in, let me say that I'm a huge advocate of open standards and general use of F/OSS. I love Linux and use it almost exclusively for all my server side applications. I've used Linux on desktop systems for many years, have developed with it, had jobs supporting it, built custom distributions with it, and hacked on more systems than I can remember. All this, but I still switched to OS X for desktop use several years ago and the thought of switching back makes me nauseated. This is not meant to be a criticism of any single distribution or technology, but why the culture around Linux will not yield a massive exodus of "typical" Windows users any time soon. It's 2007, and decries have been made many times over the last 15 years that "Linux Is Ready For The Desktop". Well, it's 2007, and no, it's not ready for the desktop; at least not for the masses. The people which tend to run desktop Linux systems these days satisfy two of these three criteria:

Have more time than money.
Are looking to run server processes.
Have a natural competency for all things technical and enjoy fixing things.

If you fit two of these categories there's a good chance I'd recommend Linux, and I'll be the first to help with the installation. But since the common user is not looking to run a web server on their desktop, and surely not a 12-hour non-stop let's-fix-all-my-device-drivers session, I don't recommend it often to non-geeks. I've given presentations to businesses on why they should migrate their old Windows servers to Linux, but have not once recommended my parents do so on their old home machine. Why? Two things: usability and support. Today we'll tackle the first half. Usability Many interfaces are built purely for function, not usability. As a culture of programmers, it's somewhat expected that we're producing interfaces with obtuse options, confusing layouts and poorly worded text. Would you like to "Set the SCSI IMMED flag", or perhaps some "ISO9660 options"? Sure, why not. Lot's of tiny parts make for a horrible user experience. The Unix principle that the system be compromised of many small pieces of functionality assembled into a larger system may work at the system level, but not for everyday desktop applications. Obscure or horribly named products makes users more confused. Linux users love reconfiguration/options far more than ordinary users. As a result, many distributions ship with redundant tools, and if not, someone on the other half of the planet creates another distribution with slightly different packages. While the freedom to do so is priceless, the practical value of many spin-off distributions is next to zilch. We, the community of F/OSS advocates, need to more heavily emphasize convention over configuration and use forking only if absolutely necessary. The entire experience is not consistent and fluid. Without a single vendor driving development of the * major * desktop * applications, integration between all the pieces just isn't happening well. Forcing the user to go through installation of optional packages and perform technical manual configuration is a major turn off. Some "frond-end" applications just scrape the output of the command-line version. This is a horribly error prone way to integrate with a lower-level piece of software since there isn't a static way of finding issues. Please stop doing this. It makes things break across upgrades, and just adds more weight to the "just wipe the disk and start from scratch" camp (which I happen to be part of). Let the flames begin, and don't foget to stick around for part 2!

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preston.lee — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 02:01:06 +0000

ReactOS v0.3.1 Parallels Image

preston.lee — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 02:23:49 +0000

I couldn't find a working Parallels image of the ReactOS v0.3.1 release after I had some issues installing it from the official ISO, so I've created one for you. This is a screenshot of me running FireFox on ReactOS within Parallels on a Core Duo-based MacBook Pro. Download the image for your Intel-based Mac here.

Easter Weekend

preston.lee — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:42:53 +0000

Despite waking up slightly drunk from a party the night before, we managed to get down to Tucson for the day to see Karen's family. I got a few fun shots while walking around outside.

RailsConf 2007 (USA) Registration Re-Reopened. New Track & Keynote Announced!

preston.lee — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 22:42:29 +0000

I received this from O'Reilly just a couple minutes ago.. ---- BEGIN EMAIL ---- RailsConf 2007 May 17-20, 2007 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon http://conferences.oreilly.com/rails A fourth technical track has just been added to the RailsConf schedule. That means a limited amount of space has opened up for those folks who didn't get a chance to register before RailsConf first sold out in February. If you haven't yet registered and would like to attend RailsConf 2007, please register now at: http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/railswaitlist/create/reg/ (If you do not already have an O'Reilly user account you will be required to create on in order to register for RailsConf. When prompted for your password, click on "No, I am new to O'Reilly." When you have finished creating an account for yourself you will be taken back to the RailsConf registration page.) Note: We are no longer accepting checks for this event. All registration fees will need to be paid in full by credit card at the time the registration form is completed. RailsConf Keynotes Just Announced Chad Fowler and Ruby Central have put together a stellar program, which now includes four simultaneous tracks. They've also just announced some of the keynote speakers presenting on the main stage this year: Ze Frank, Comedic Digital Savant David Heinemeier Hansson, Creator of Ruby on Rails Dave Thomas, The Pragmatic Programmers Avi Bryant, Creator of Seaside Tim Bray, Co-creator of XML and Atom More speakers are being confirmed every day. Check out the entire list of speakers and sessions on the RailsConf web site: http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/51/speakers.html Remember, seating is limited and likely to sell out very quickly. If you haven't already done so, register right away as this email does not guarantee your seat. We look forward to seeing you in May! The RailsConf 2007 Team ---- END EMAIL ----

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preston.lee — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 04:20:29 +0000

JXTA: Not The Solution To Java Peer Discovery

preston.lee — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 04:41:56 +0000

Only developers with hair should use JXTA, because those with bald or shaven heads wonâ€™t have anything to violently rip from their skulls while they develop with it. I have been, and continue to be excited by, JXTAâ€™s potential, but have been very disappointed at the pace at which a project progresses when using it. JXTAâ€™s capabilities, on the PowerPoint level, are impressive. It facilitates a great deal of networking features necessary for peer-to-peer operation and service discovery. So whatâ€™s my beef? A couple major areas off the top o' me head.. Documentation There isn't exactly a massive community using JXTA. There are limitless possibilities of the platform and a few significant projects that use it, but it's not exactly a common-place technology. That's ok. Communities need time to grow. But to build a better mousetrap, people must understand why yours is better, and how to use it properly. At first I suspected I had jumped into the system at a particularly odd moment, but most of the documentation Iâ€™ve read is either out of date, or, in the case of much of the code itself, completely missing. This may come as a surprise to the good folks at jxta.org who provide many links to JXTA articles, but as a developer new to the platform sitting down and getting started, youâ€™ll find yourself confused by deprecated and changed APIs without a clear understanding of the Right Way to do things. The - popular - books - are - long - outdated. Testing As an advocate of test-driven development, my application unit tests attempt to cover the interactions between multiple peers on the JXTA network. Doing so requires instantiating multiple cores within the same Java unit test process, and being able to reset them to initial states between test cases. Unfortunately, JXTA is designed as a singleton, which as we already know is not a friendly pattern to test-driven development. Couple this unfortunate design with the general difficulties of multi-threaded unit testing, and you'll either be spending vast amount of time with your unit tests, or forgoing the complicated ones completely. Probably the latter. So whatâ€™s the solution? Iâ€™m not exactly sure, but Iâ€™ve started working on one. Journeta Currently code named "Journeta", that goal is to create a greatly simplified, zero-configuration-required peer discovery and communication Java library for "trusted" networks. No configuration files, hefty learning curve or even constructor arguments, but no security or over-the-internet functionality either. (At least at the library level.) While I haven't been actively developing it this year, I started the project last year over at OpenRain, and anticipate releasing a build sometime this summer. Let me know if youâ€™re interested and Iâ€™ll ping you when we release a demo.

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preston.lee — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 07:38:12 +0000

Marvels of the Human Eye

preston.lee — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 07:41:07 +0000

Being creatures limited by our instruments of perception, the behavior of the human eye and related processing systems never ceases to amaze me. Last year was particularly enlightening, as I hadn't previously realized we effectively cannot see color in low light situations. I honestly never noticed until I woke up one morning and realized that I'd used the blue towel instead of the red towel after the previous evenings midnight shower. Getting more heavily into photography has helped me understand the vast exposure corrections we make involuntarily and without consciously noticing. It's simply not plausible to correctly determine proper exposure settings using the human eye alone. We adapt dynamically to different lighting situations, so your halogen lit living room at night--which seems like it'll show well without a flash--will end up tragically underexposed if you "eyeball" the settings. Perhaps my most interesting discovery of late is the checker shadow illusion: a great image demonstrating we often see what we're expecting, rather than what actually exists. But then, "what actually exists" is a different issue entirely.

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preston.lee — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 09:45:20 +0000

5 Roadblocks To Enterprise Rails Acceptance

preston.lee — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 10:35:23 +0000

I love Rails for its pragmatic design and agile culture: two qualities not usually associated with the large, enterprisey systems of Fortune 500 companies. In my last formal position I was part of a small internal movement to drive the Rails train upward through the IT ranks, but the effort was met with limited success. The unfortunately reality is that Rails currently lacks several key qualities to which enterprise project leaders have become accustomed. Here are five reasons of varying significance to start us off. Insane Query Support Most documentation you read about ActiveRecord will take you through tidy, minimalistic examples which are squeaky clean and really fast. Complex queries, however, will be easier to do using Model.find_by_sql, which accepts a raw SQL query. Ordinary dynamic finds with deep loading behavior may require you to hard-code names in the query to avoid issues with the generated SQL. ActiveRecord is way easier to use, but far from Hibernate. I'd say that over 95% of the queries issued by a larger application are of trivial or medium complexity, but a lot of time and your best developers go into that last 5%, and this is where the heavier OR/M frameworks start looking better than ActiveRecord. Distributed Transactions The rise in SOA interest over the last couple years has led to more applications using multiple data sources. While it is possible to nest transactions, "Rails doesn't support distributed two-phase commits (which is the jargon term for the protocol that lets databases synchronize with each other)." (From Agile Development with Rails, 2nd Edition.) In many situations, simply nesting transactions will suffice; however, many situations should really have the safely and reliability of two-phase semantics, and this factor alone could be a deal breaker. Data Integrity Database Designers (DBDs) like FOREIGN KEY constraints, CHECKs, high levels of normalization, and are the natural enemy of null fields. In other words, DBDs don't like Rails. While I'm certainly no Pedantic Data Nazi (PDN?), there should at least be a basic set of built-in mechanisms for generating such simple self-defenses against naughty applications. Frankly I'm surprised that the community isn't pushing harder for solid constraint support within migrations. IDEs This isn't technically an issue with Rails itself, but a roadblock to its adoption nonetheless. Most Rails developers (including myself) appear to be using TextMate. A smaller population use RDT, Emacs, or numerous other packages. But there isn't yet an application which comes close to the basic core feature of the popular Java and .Net IDEs. The currently broken breakpointer is another swift kick in the pants. What I can do with Eclipse on a remote application server isn't in the same universe of functionality as the Rails breakpointer, even when it worked. Top-Down Push For whatever reason, CTOs and CIOs haven't yet become seriously interested in Rails, and without this air of implicit exploratory approval, managers seem reluctant to give in to antsy developers. I would love to see Rails become a flagship of agile enterprise projects, but that's not going to happen until management sees the real ROI of a project done by experienced Rails developers. None of these things are insurmountable, but there are many more challenges to overcome if Rails will ever sit on the same application servers as Java and .Net. What challenges have you faced with Rails at your organization?

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preston.lee — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:11:08 +0000

J2ME Acronym Cheat Sheet

preston.lee — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:19:08 +0000

Sometimes I think we'll eventually run out of TLAs (three letter acronyms) in the Java space. Here's a quick reference for the forgetful..

ABB (Audio Building Block)
API (Application Programming Interface)
BCC (Bluetooth Control Center)
BPWD (W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group)
CBS (Cell Broadcast Service)
CDC (Connect Device Configuration)
CLDC (Connected, Limited Device Configuration)
CSS (Cascading Style Shee)
CSS-MP (Cascading Style Sheet - Mobile Profile)
DDC (Default Delivery Context)
GCF (Generic Connection Framework)
J2ME/JME (Java Micro Edition)
JTWI (Java Technology for the Wireless Industry)
JMF (Java Media Framework)
JSR (Java Specification Request)
JVM (Java Virtual Machine)
MMAPI (Mobile Media API)
OBEX (Object Exchange Protocol)
OMA (Open Mobile Alliance)
PAN (Personal Area Network)
PDA (Personal Digital Assistant)
PDAP (PDA Profile)
PIM (Personal Information Management)
MIDP (Mobile Information Device Profile)
MMS (Multimedia Message Service)
SMS (Short Message Service)
SDD (Service Discovery Database)
UAP (User Agent Profile)
WAP (Wireless Application Protocol)
WCSS (Wireless Cascading Style Sheet)
WMA (Wireless Messaging API)
WML (Wireless Markup Languge)
WTK (The Sun Java Wireless Toolkit/J2ME Wireless Toolkit)
XHTML-MP (XHTML Mobile Profile)

SRP Time-of-Use Plan Hourly Price Change Reminder

preston.lee — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 00:04:19 +0000

To those on SRP's time-of-use plan, reprogram your thermostats! On May 1st we'll be entering into the expensive months.

1pm - 8pm weekdays are "on-peak": 17.83Â¢/kWh.
All other hours and holidays are "off-peak": 4.88Â¢/kWh.

From here. If you live in a hot area and do not have a programmable thermostat, you absolutely must get one. If you live in Phoenix you'll more than recoup the cost in a single summer.

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preston.lee — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:03:39 +0000

Parallels Desktop Coherence Mode Rocks: OS X/Windows XP Screenshot

preston.lee — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:22:39 +0000

I tried Parallels Desktop's Coherence mode today, and was so blown away I had to blog about it immediately. The above image has not been doctored. It's my normal OS X desktop with Windows XP running in coherence mode. When activated, the window around the XP virtualization session vanishes, the XP taskbar integrates into your OS X desktop, and XP application windows are free to float around. With Parallels Tools installed each XP application has a dock item which can be Command-Tabbed to. If you look closely you can see I'm running IE 6 next to Safari, both natively, without the visual distraction of the virtualization window. This is a huge usability landmark. Thank you Parallels! Try it yourself by selecting the View -> Coherence menu option when running Parallels Desktop. (Question: Does VMWare currently have a feature like this?)

OS X Ruby Troubleshooting: "command not found: dot"

preston.lee — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 20:59:39 +0000

If you're trying to run rdoc but are getting errors like.. Generating HTML... Diagrams: ./opt/local/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27: command not found: dot -Tismap dot/f_0.dot ./opt/local/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27: command not found: dot -Tismap dot/f_1.dot ..the package you need to install is called graphviz. You can install it using Darwin Ports on OS X like so.. sudo port install graphviz

RailsConf 2007 Photocast

preston.lee — Fri, 18 May 2007 05:57:15 +0000

Me and a couple thousand other Rails users are chillin' in Portland right now enjoying the wifi. Here's my photocast of things related to RailsConf and Portland, which I'll update each night.

RailsConf 2007 Session Content Download

preston.lee — Mon, 21 May 2007 19:42:28 +0000

Here are all the working RailsConf 2007 presentation slides and additional session materials I could find this morning, packaged in a single .zip file for your convenience. The content is an aggregate of things posted to the wiki, web2expo and a few other places on the web.

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preston.lee — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 08:29:56 +0000

The $1,000 (USD), 2TB OpenSolaris File Server

preston.lee — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 08:35:35 +0000

Here's how to score a sweet OpenSolaris-compatible 2TB file server for $1000 (USD). I'm running Solaris Express Developer Edition on it with a ZFS RAIDZ1 file system.

Motherboard: Asus M2NPV-VM. A great, inexpensive mATX board w/4 SATA ports, 2 IDE, PCI-X, GigE, built-in nVidia graphics w/DVI and VGA outs, FireWire, and tons of USB love. Oh, and the official nVidia driver works like a charm. Sweet! (The only thing that hasn't run out-of-the-box is the built-in audio controller. Oh well.) $100.
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Dual Core Processor. 2.5GHz, 2x512KB, 1GHz Bus. $130.
Memory: 4x1GB via OCZ OCZ2G8002GK DDR2-800 PC2-6400 kits. $175 total (after MIR).
Drives: 4x500GB Western Digital Caviar SE 16 WD5000AAKS 7200RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s for the ZFS data volume. $450. (Old, small, slow and cheap PATA disks reused for the system volume. FMV ~$25.)
Optical Drive: Reused old typical IDE DVD-ROM. FMV ~$20.
Case: Reused typical ATX tower w/450 watt PSU. FMV ~$80.
Peripherals: Reused optical mouse and keyboard. FMV ~$20.

Total: $1,000. Nice!

20 Steps To Xen: A Quick Xen Tutorial For Ubuntu 7.04 x64 Server

preston.lee — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 05:09:04 +0000

This is an abbreviated and simplified version of a more official document. Run these either as root or with the "sudo" command..

apt-get install ubuntu-xen-desktop-amd64 to install a new Xen kernel and various other tools. Apparently we're supposed to use the "server" version instead, but it didn't show up in the repository. Oh well.
apt-get install debootstrap to install the "debootstrap" system bootstraping tool for you.
reboot into the new kernel.
xm list to make sure Domain-0 shows up. Domain-0 represents the host system.
Edit /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp and uncomment "(network-script network-bridge)". Also comment out "(network-script network-dummy)".
xend restart to restart the xen daemon.
mkdir -p /xen/slave1 to create a mountpoint for the slave system disk.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/xen/slave1.ext3 bs=1M count=512 to create a 512MB "disk" as a normal file.
mkfs.ext3 /xen/slave1.ext3 to create a file system in said empty file.
mount -o loop -t ext3 /xen/slave1.ext3 /xen/slave1 to manually mount the new filesystem to its mount point.
debootstrap --arch amd64 edgy /xen/slave1 to install a bare bones edgy system onto the new file system.
cp -a /lib/modules/2.6.19-4-generic-amd64/ /xen/slave1/lib/modules/ to install the hosts kernel modules into the new system.
Edit /xen/slave1/etc/network/interfaces. It should look similar to..auto lo iface lo inet loopbackauto eth0 iface eth0 inet static gateway 192.168.1.110 address 192.168.1.111 netmask 255.255.255.0.. where "gateway" is the host machines IP address, and "address" is a unique IP address for the slave machine.
Update /xen/slave1/etc/hostname with whatever you want its host name to be.
Update /xen/slave1/etc/hosts with all your IP addresses.
Update /xen/slave1/etc/fstab to mount stuff on boot, like so..proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
umount /xen/slave1 to unmount the file system.
Create /etc/xen/edgy-guest.cfg to configure the host to start the guest, like so.. kernel = "/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.19-4-generic-amd64" ramdisk = "/boot/initrd.img-2.6.19-4-generic-amd64" builder='linux' memory = 512 name = "edgy-slave1" vcpus = 1 vif = [ 'bridge=xenbr0' ] disk = [ 'file:/xen/slave1.ext3,ioemu:hda1,w' ] root = "/dev/hda1 ro"
xm create slave1-edgy.cfg to create and start the new domain.
xm console slave1-edgy to establish a console to the new domain. (Hit CTRL+] to exit.)

You should now be able to log in via the xm console as root, and ping the guest on 192.168.1.111 (or whatever its IP address is). w00t!

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preston.lee — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 22:47:16 +0000

Software Engineering Curse Words

preston.lee — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 23:57:31 +0000

Here lie terms frequently used in software development which I don't particularly care for. Programmer Commercial software is as much about programming as building bridges is about installing steel I-beams. Writing actual code is only part of the engineering effort. When I see a job posting entitled "Java Programmer" I usually suspect that this is either (1) a low-level monkey position and/or (2) the person behind the post doesn't really understand the scope of typical developer work. Developers are required--much unlike the mechanical nature of an assembly line worker--to make decisions and assumptions about the external purpose and internal nature of their work, often part of a seemingly ingrokable ecosystem. Unless you have a micro managing boss or a heavy-weight process itemizing every last byte of work, you must personally exercise critical thinking, time management and interpersonal skills to balance your never ending stream of unclear and incompletely stated priorities. Being a successful programmer thus requires much more than programming knowledge. The Point: The term "programmer" in an inaccurate trivialization of the real job. I prefer "Software Engineer" formally and "developer" in colloquial usage. Senior For HR purposes, "Senior" is a nice way of labeling someone as having a bit more knowledge, responsibility, general weight, and more income than a non-senior person. The problem is that both senior and non-senior developers tend to have very similar job duties; so aside from income, the criteria of senior personnel are inherently qualitative, subjective, relative to a particular domain (read: not necessarily guaranteed to transfer being projects), and/or effectively indistinguishable from non-senior status. The effect is that, in a matrix organization, a new project may end up with n00bs who are senior, experts who are junior, and a pay structure which reflects an old project now completely irrelevant to the current situation. Senior and non-senior developers often work together as peers, and everybody quickly figures out who the real leaders are. And that's frequently very different from the formal structure and correlating pay grade. The Point: "Senior" tells me that you're expecting to make more and are probably good at something, which may or may not be relevant to me. It's not a global implication of elevated wisdom. Architect Most "software architects" I've met do far more operational and project management than architectural design work. This isn't to say that they don't or aren't capable of making significant design contributions to the project, but that all the overhead of email and meetings between business/team/customer/whomever members sucks up so much time that lower level engineers have to either make the design decisions for the architect or block indefinitely as the architect plays Inbox-fu. The Point: If you're an "architect" who doesn't have time to sit down with the engineers and talk about design, you're really a technical manager who needs to officially delegate the design work to avoid becoming a bottleneck for the team. Resource I shudder whenever I hear or use this word, usually in a managerial, Mythical Man Monthian context trying to quantize everyone into tiny cube shaped units. I find it so important to account for individual character when planning and estimating that I consciously use the word "people" instead of "resources"; it's a simple trick to force yourself into remembering the undeniable human individuality of the worker bee. The Point: People aren't Legos, so let's not pretend they are.

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preston.lee — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 00:13:30 +0000

Lala.com Review: Legal Web 2.0 Music Trading

preston.lee — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 00:19:35 +0000

Lala.com is an online service for trading physical discs. After entering information on your current CD collection, what CDs you want, and receiving a free shipping kit of envelops and plastic disc carriers via postal mail, you simply start sending discs out as they are requested. Other users do the same, and the system handles the logistics and billing. You may start sending out CDs as soon as you receive the shipping kit to build trading credits, even if you do not yet have discs in your want list. Your credit card is automatically charged a total of $1.75 per CD you receive on a monthly basis. I've been using it for months now and over 20 trades, and am pleased to report near complete success. On one occasion I did not receive a disc, but this was easy to report. I was never billed for the missing disc and never had to deal with the supposed sender personally. Overall I've had a pleasant experience and would recommend it to anyone looking to trade CDs with a minimum of hassle. Props to lala for a great, legal idea!

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preston.lee — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 19:33:16 +0000

Programming Erlang Now Shipping, v1.1 PDF Released

preston.lee — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 19:34:04 +0000

The Pragmattic Programmers are now shipping print copies of Programming Erlang: an outstanding introduction to the interesting new Erlang language for concurrent programming. Peeps who bought the PDF can download v1.1 here.

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preston.lee — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 03:55:40 +0000

OpenSolaris ZFS vs. Linux ext3 RAID5

preston.lee — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 04:12:19 +0000

Preston Says: I asked Dan McClary for a big favor recently: use his general UNIX knowledge and graduate-level statistics voodoo to produce a report highlighting performance characteristic differencess between OpenSolaris ZFS and Linux RAID5 on a common, COTS hardware platform. The following analysis is his work, reformatted to fit your screen. You may download the PDF, HTML, graphs and original TeX source here. A Brief Comparison of I/O Performance for RAIDZ1 and RAID-5 Filesystems Dan McClary June 28, 2007 Introduction The following is a description of results obtained benchmarking I/O performance for two OS/filesystem combinations running identical hardware. The hardware used in the tests is as follows:

Motherboard: Asus M2NPV-VM.
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Dual Core Processor. 2.5GHz, 2?512KB, 1GHz Bus
Memory: 4 x 1GB via OCZ OCZ2G8002GK DDR2-800 PC2-6400
Drives: 4 x 500GB Western Digital Caviar SE 16 WD5000AAKS 7200RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s

The Linux/RAID-5 combination uses a stock Ubuntu Server Edition installation, running kernel 2.6.19-generic, with RAID-5 configured via mdadm and formatted ext3. The Solaris/RAID-Z1 configuration is a stock installation of Solaris Developer Express Edition with zpool managing the zfs-formatted RAID-Z1 drives. Block size for all relevant tests is 4096 bytes. Basic I/O testing is conducted using bonnie++ (version 1.03a), tiobench (version 0.3.3-5), and a series of BASH-scripted operations. Tests focus on I/O throughput and CPU usage for operations either much larger than available memory, and very large numbers of operations on small files. All figures, unless otherwise noted, chart mean performance with 2% deviation for large-file operations and 5% for small-file operations. These bounds well-exceed the 95% confidence interval, implying a range of high significance. Large-File Operations In dealing sequential reads and writes, particularly of large files, the Solaris/RAID-Z1 configuration displays much higher throughput than the Ubuntu/RAID-5 combination. Latency and CPU usage, however, appear to be higher than in the Ubuntu configuration. The reasons for these disparities are not determinable from the tests concluded, though one might venture that the management algorithm used by ZFS and each systems caching policies may play a part. Figures 1, 2, and 3 summarize large-file writing performance in the bonnie++ suite. In large writes, Solaris-ZFS displays marginally higher throughput and occasionally lower CPU usage. However, the disparities are not great enough to make a strict recommendation based solely on large-file writing performance. Figures 4 and 5 illustrate throughput and CPU usage while reading large files in the bonnie++ suite. Generally, results are consistent between platforms, with the Ubuntu configuration showing a slight edge when reading 15,680MB files (though with an associated drop in CPU efficiency). tiobench results for random reads and writes given in Tables 3 and 4 show the Ubuntu/RAID-5 configuration displaying both higher throughput and greater CPU efficiency. However, these results seem somewhat questionable given the results in section Â§3. Small-File Operations In examining the performance of both configurations on small files, both in the bonnie++ suite and from shell-executed commands, the most obvious statement that can be made is that the Solaris configuration displays greater CPU usage. This, though, may not be indicative of poor performance. Instead, it may be the result of an aggressive caching or other kernel-level policies. A more detailed study would be required to determine both the causes and effects of this result. In each test, 102,400 files of either 8 or 4KB were created. Figures 6(a)-6(c) and 7(a)-7(c) illustrate bonnie++ performance for both configurations. In contrast to the tiobench results, the Solaris configuration generally displays slightly higher throughput (on the order of 1-2MB/s) than its counterpart. However, as previously noted, CPU usage is much higher. Finally, Tables 5-6 lists measured times as given by the standard Unix command time when measuring command execution. In these results, there are some surprises. The Ubuntu configuration performs somewhat faster when executing a large write (using the command dd). However, the Solaris configuration is much faster when dealing with 100,000 sequential 8KB files. For reference, all file creation is done via dd, copying by cp and deletion by rm. Conclusions Few overarching conclusions can be drawn from the limited results of this study. Certainly, there are situations in which the Solaris/RAID-Z1 configuration appears to outperform the Ubuntu/RAID-5 configuration. Many questions remain regarding the large discrepancy in CPU usage for small-file operations. Likewise, the Ubuntu/RAID-5 configuration appears to perform slightly better in certain situations, though not overwhelmingly so. At best, under these default configurations, one can say that overall the Solaris configuration performs no worse, and indicates that it might perform better under live operating conditions. The latter, though, is largely speculation. Indeed, from the analyst's point of view, both configurations show reasonable performance. The desire to deploy either configuration in an enterprise setting suggests that significant-factor studies and robust parameter designs be conducted on, if not both candidates, whichever is most likely to be deployed. These studies would provide insight into why the discrepancies in current study exist, and more importantly, achieve optimized performance in the presences of significant uncontrollable factors (e.g. variable request-load). Preston Says: Thanks for the outstanding work, Dan!

Solaris 10 x64: Get Your Sound Card Working

preston.lee — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 22:18:49 +0000

When I built the $1000, 2TB file server, the on-board nVidia HD audio support of the Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard didn't work out of the box. It's a trivial fix using the recently open sourced OSS drivers from 4Front Technologies. (I also tested a Creative Audigy 2 PCI sound card using these drivers under Solaris 10 11/06, and the playback worked just as well.)

Download the Solaris x64 .pkg.
`pkgadd -d oss-solaris-v4.0-1004-i386.pkg`
`osstest`. You should here the sweet sweet sound of.. umm.. sound, and the following printed on the console..

bash-3.00$ osstest Sound subsystem and version: OSS 4.0 (build 1004/200707062145) (0x00040002) Platform: SunOS/i86pc 5.10 Generic_118855-33 *** Scanning sound adapter #-1 *** /dev/oss/hdaudio0/pcm0 (audio engine 0): nVidia HD Audio play-front output Note! Device is in use (by PID 0/VMIX) but will try anyway - Performing audio playback test... OK OK OK /dev/oss/hdaudio0/pcm1 (audio engine 1): nVidia HD Audio play-side output - Performing audio playback test... OK OK OK /dev/oss/hdaudio0/pcm2 (audio engine 2): nVidia HD Audio play-center/LFE output - Performing audio playback test... OK OK OK /dev/oss/hdaudio0/spdout0 (audio engine 3): nVidia HD Audio spdif output - Performing audio playback test... OK OK OK /dev/oss/hdaudio0/pcmin0 (audio engine 4): nVidia HD Audio record input - Skipping input only device *** All tests completed OK ***

Sun Introduces Non-Native (Linux) Zone Support

preston.lee — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 03:02:12 +0000

The "What's New" document for Solaris 10 8/07 states the update "..includes the tools necessary to install a CentOS 3.5 to 3.8 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.5 to 3.8 inside a non-global zone. Machines running the Solaris OS in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode can execute 32-bit Linux applications." Additionally, "DTrace can now be used in a non-global zone.." and ZFS gets even cooler. w00t.

Subversion For SCM Slides

preston.lee — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 18:32:02 +0000

I gave a presentation to Arizona's ASULUG/PLUG yesterday on using subversion for software configuration management. Raw slides: Keynote PDF

Facial Search Service Coming Soon

preston.lee — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 03:58:14 +0000

My company recently entered into a partnership with img surf to develop Mugr.com: a facial identification/search service initially targeted at the mobile market. I'm pleased to announce that we already have the base functionality working, and are planning to deploy Mugr.com for experimentation in an invite-only beta starting in October. We're also planning on providing a developer API and releasing some of the libraries behind the magic of our face search process later this year, which are largely implemented in Ruby. Exciting times. Let me know if you're interested in playing with facial search technology as either a user or developer, and I'll hook you up with an invite code when the time comes.

Dynamically Generating SSL Certificates with Ruby on Rails

preston.lee — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 04:18:25 +0000

OpenRain had a couple projects recently need to programmatically generate private keys and SSL certificates in Ruby. To contribute back to the community, we're releasing several small things today.

SSLsicle.com A simple form which does the OpenSSL grunt work and pop outs an SSL certificate ready to use with Apache (or whatever). SSLsicle uses..
eassl_fix A Rails plugin which patches a small but critical bug in the eassl v0.1.1643 gem which makes OpenSSL object manipulation a bit less dense. I've submitted a patch (included) to the author, but as of today he hasn't applied it. (Also, props to the JumpBox guys.)

If you need to write your own code to generate SSL certificates in Rails..

sudo gem install eassl
Install the eassl_fix plugin

Bust out a view for the user to enter the information that gets baked into the cert and then write a few lines in your controller...

require 'eassl'
key = Key.new
options = {
:country      => params[:csr][:country],
:state        => params[:csr][:state],
:city         => params[:csr][:city],
:organization => params[:csr][:organization],
:department   => params[:csr][:department],
:common_name  => params[:csr][:common_name],
:email        => params[:csr][:email]
}
name = CertificateName.new(options)
csr = SigningRequest.new(:name => name, :key => key)
ca = CertificateAuthority.new(:password => nil)
cert = ca.create_certificate csr
@pem = key.private_key.to_s
@pem += cert.to_pem

@pem.to_s will contain an unencrypted private key as well as a signed certificate suitable for deployment.

Rails attachment_fu/Kropper Scaling Fix: attachment_fu_skip_resize

preston.lee — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 05:01:19 +0000

I recently integrated Kropper into a custom RoR application for OpenRain affiliate img surf. A fundamental flaw in the upload-save-crop-save process used by Kropper is that attachment_fu automatically scales down the image on first save to :resize_to dimensions. After the subsequent crop--which may result in a significant drop in resolution--the image is scaled back up to :resize_to dimensions: an ugly lossy operation. The attachment_fu_skip_resize plugin gives attachment_fu the ability to temporarily bypass resizing of the full-size original image, thus allowing your final cropped photos to be of the highest quality as possible.

Install the plugin.
In your attachment_fu image class, add..
```
attr_accessor :skip_resize
```
Any time you want to save an image without invoking resizing on the original image..
```
image.skip_resize = true
image.save
```
Thumbnails will be generated at their defined resolutions regardless of the skip_resize flag.

Rails Presentation: attachment_fu, Kropper and Mugr.com face-based services preview.

preston.lee — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 23:39:14 +0000

I'm giving a brief talk at tonight's Rails meeting in Chandler at 7:00pm on what we're doing with attachment_fu and Kropper for upcoming face-based search service mugr.com. I'll post the slides afterwards for those who can't make it, but you won't get to see the Über-secret developer build unless you come :) Slides: Keynote PDF

Featured In Rubyology Podcast #48

preston.lee — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:49:28 +0000

The talk I gave at yesterday's Phoenix Rails meeting will be featured in Rubyology Podcast #48, courtesy of Chris Matthieu. Thanks for the effort and kind words! The Mugr.com demo portion at the end got cut out unfortunately, but the meat of the technical discussion is available for your listening pleasure. Slides: Keynote PDF Listen Online or Subscribe on iTunes

In The News

preston.lee — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 06:00:34 +0000

OpenRain affiliate img surf's Mugr facial recognition services have been receiving some press lately. Here's the lowdown of what's been happening..

ReadWriteWeb.com article, by Josh Catone.
AltSearchEngines.com comparison, by Charles Knight.
RoughType.com article, by Nicolas Carr.
Official Mugr blog, by the Mugr team.
Public Mugr developer support Google group.

Mad props to the Mugr team for the thrill ride thus far!

Switching To Dvorak

preston.lee — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 16:00:12 +0000

After years of deliberation, I'm finally taking this Thanksgiving break to switch to the Dvorak keyboard layout. It's been frustrating, yes, but I believe my wrists will be much better off with the change. Within a couple hours of switching I'm probably crawling at ~15 words per minute, which is faster than I expected. Stuff that still throws me off due to being permanently etched in muscle memory..

My name.
`cd` and my custom `ls` aliases.
OpenRain.
. (period)
Common commands such as cut/copy/paste, closing and opening files etc.
The letter 'o' for some reason.

Ohh, and I switched my command and caps lock keys too, so my brain is a tad bit overloaded at the moment :)

Switching To Dvorak: One Week Later

preston.lee — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 02:01:58 +0000

It's been exactly one week since I switched to the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (DSK) layout. Thoughts...

The first couple days are especially frustrating while you memorize key locations and build a small bit of muscle memory for common phrases. Hang in there.. this is the toughest part.
Temporarily relabel your real keyboard with cheap stickers from eBay or physically rearrange the keys on a cheapo USB keyboard while you're learning. Physically mod'ing a QWERTY board kinda sucks, though, because..
- The nubs for the pointer finger keys are in the wrong place. This alone is a deal breaker.
- Keys aren't necessarily manufactured to be of homogeneous shape. Even on my cheapo Memorex, for example, the key tops are sloped differently by row, so rearranging the keys results in what feels like a 3D topology of the Rocky Mountains.
The common typos ("teh", "taht", "nad" etc.) are different, so..
- You'll have to be more accurate in IM conversations. People won't be able to guess what you meant to type.
- Spell-checkers won't work as well.
Make every reasonable attempt to avoid using QWERTY while you're learning.
Be prepared to explain to people WTF you just did to their computer when you use it.. Every. Freakin'. Time.
Looking for an ergonomic, Dvorak Mac keyboard? LOLL3RSKATES!!! Good luck with that, and let me know if you think your new $300+ Kinesis is worth it.

dvorak.png

preston.lee — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 02:05:29 +0000

Bread Bowl

preston.lee — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 01:03:53 +0000

6 Things I'm Thankful For

preston.lee — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 01:08:20 +0000

An awesome first business year for OpenRain. The constant stress of context switching between software projects has become more managable, making weekend relaxation slightly more frequent. Marc has been a geeky Asian version of Superman, and our part-time office manager Gracie has been a godsend. Business has been great, and 2008 should be an exciting growth period. Bread bowls. Especially the kind filled with Cream of Broccoli soup. Not being poor. It's easy to forget all the small luxuries afforded by a modest middle-class suburban family. Indoor plumbing, internet access, telephones, health care, shelter, affordable schooling... these aren't common in many parts of the world. Loads of opportunities. One of the most motivating and simultaneously scary realities of running your own software company today is knowing you hold all the keys to your own future. There are so few barriers (especially economic) to today's start-up that there is little excuse for not taking the risks and giving it your all. This year alone I've gotten to go to L.A., Washington D.C., England, San Francisco, Mendocino (California), Amsterdam, Austin, Baja and Portland off the top of my head. (Note to self: redeem those frequent flier miles!) Cheese. I'm a huge sucker for bree and havarti. The awesome people around me. Support structure is fundamental to success, and I've been fortunate enough to have a great one. Y'all know who you are! It's been a superb 2007. Cheers to an even better 2008!

picture-3.png

preston.lee — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 08:20:00 +0000

full_screen.png

preston.lee — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 08:41:50 +0000

insert_cells.png

preston.lee — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 08:42:05 +0000

spell_check.png

preston.lee — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 08:42:17 +0000

picture-1x.png

preston.lee — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 08:49:51 +0000

What's Better Than Windows Balloon Help?...

preston.lee — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 08:55:54 +0000

Twice as much balloon help! My current testing environment for JumpBox development uses two Windows XP virtual machines on OS X under Parallels coherence mode: one with IE6 (gold taskbar on the bottom), the other IE7 (blue taskbar on the right). While they perform sufficiently with 4GB physical RAM, the constant nurturing required to keep these retards up to date and complaint free is ridiculous, given I only boot them once every couple weeks. Dyslexia also arises when each instance periodically "forgets" I'm using a Dvorak layout and reverts to QWERTY, even when sitting idle. It's the little things that drive one nuts. Office 2004 for OS X, for example, sets the bar really low for usability, quality and elegance. Full-screen mode? ..I guess not. And I won't be inserting any cells into this table, either... Given a choice between A and A, I think I'll choose A. Waaaaay too much of this stupidity plagues Office. Not that Microsoft has much motivation to fix it, but it's still sad to see such crappy software in wide-spread use. preston.rant_mode = false

tides.png

preston.lee — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:14:45 +0000

Invited To The Pentagon

preston.lee — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:43:49 +0000

Mugr.com was recently invited to the Pentagon to demo our facial recognition voodoo as a potential biometric component to TIDES: Transportable Infrastructures for Development and Emergency Support. It was a very last minute trip with very little instruction and direction regarding what to prepare, so we packed up our Mactops and hopped on a plane. The subway ride at 5-something AM local time (3AM at home) after an all-nighter came cold and early, and shuttled a variety of more well-rested military types, who periodically would share a silent glance as if to say "OMG U N00B." (Yes, in all capital letters with no exclamation point.) The guest check-in process was straightforward, and we soon found ourselves inside a small tent-like shelter booting our Macs if for no other reason than to warm our hands. The event itself brought in a diverse mix of (mostly) military, many of whom were happy to engage in our biometrics demo and subsequent discussion. I had many wonderful conversations with Dr. John Francis of the U.N. and many DoD personnel over at least a half pot of coffee. A fabulous experience, this goes to show how huge opportunities can spring up whenever, wherever. Would you risk your time, reputation and money for the opportunity? I know I'm game.

Xserve w/Leopard Server (Mac OS X 10.5), First Impressions

preston.lee — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 05:48:54 +0000

We just picked up a refurbished 2.66GHz quad-core Xeon from Apple, which we'll be using for internal infrastructure. (We're in the process of migrating from a mix of Solaris and Linux). After about 8 hours of learning the ins and outs of Leopard Server over the weekend, we had the box running Open Directory (Kerberos and OpenLDAP), DNS, AFP, SMB, FTP, domain account and machine management, mobile home directories, MySQL, Software Update, Xgrid controller, Wikis, Blogs, iCal and VPN services, all tightly integrated with single sign-on (via Kerberos) into a sexy 1U package.

Xserve (refurbished discount, direct from Apple): ~$3K
3 x 750GB Disks (Newegg): ~$450
2 x Apple Drive Module (direct from Apple): ~$380
2 x 2GB FB-DIMM RAM (Crucial): ~$300
Infrastructural sanity: priceless. (...or ~$4.5K after tax and random small stuff)

That's some serious value considering how much of a PITA setting all this up can be in Linux (or whatever) without vendor support, and far cheaper than paying a Systems Administrator in the long run. The Server Admin and Workgroup Manager tools are pretty freakin' usable, too, relative to the internal complexity of the system. I'm a happy camper for now... let's see if it lasts.

picture-4.png

preston.lee — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 05:49:26 +0000

Rails 2.0: Testing For Well-Formed XML With assert_well_formed

preston.lee — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 08:15:31 +0000

Here's an easy way to validate that you're always rendering well-formed HTML in an ordinary Rails application. I've written and verified this on Rails 2.0.1... First, define the custom assert_well_formed assertion in your test_helper.rb, like so... require 'rexml/document'

class Test::Unit::TestCase

def assert_well_formed

assert_block "HTTP response was not well-formed XML." do

begin

REXML::Document.new(@response.body) true

rescue Exception => e

false

end

end Then, in your functional test case, use it like this...

def test_index

set_basic_authentication get :index assert_well_formed assert_response :success

end That's it!

preston.lee — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 08:28:25 +0000

preston.lee — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 09:44:47 +0000

Ruby Development Consulting

preston.lee — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 09:47:30 +0000

Your business. Online.

At OpenRain, we get web projects done within ridiculously small timeframes and budgets relative to traditional "enterprise" technologies. By using small, highly-qualified teams of technology and business experts, we handle entire project lifecycles, and stick around to support our work after going into production, too.

Let's get something done.

Desk: +1 (623) 691-7869

preston.lee — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 18:19:43 +0000

Penguin Pimp

preston.lee — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 18:24:54 +0000

Karen and I Celebrated our friend Gilraen's birthday by molding figurines out of Sculpey, which turned out to be an excellent party activity. Karen started off with a cute penguin body, but somehow we ended up with a pimp: complete with hat, cane and technicolor dream coat. There are.. hmm.. "other" complementary figurines, but I'll refrain from sharing those pictures in the name of cleanliness. Maybe the wine had something to do with it? Whatever.. good times :)

preston.lee — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 18:58:53 +0000

Mass Effect: Holy Freaking Crap

preston.lee — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 19:02:55 +0000

I figured I'd have some "me" time this weekend, so I picked up a copy of the highly praised Mass Effect. Saying it's good is obvious; awesome is an understatement. Groin-grabbingly enthralling, genre-shattering entertainment is somewhere in the neighborhood. We're talking a contender for best video game ever here. So if you're last minute Christmas shopping for a 360 owner (possibly yourself), I can't recommend Mass Effect highly enough. The gameplay itself is difficult to describe. Take the fun parts of leveling, storyline, voice acting and small squad combat RPG elements from Baldur's Gate, the pace, feel and vehicle action of a FPS squad combat shooter, and drop that into an incredibly rich sci-fi backdrop of a Star Trek episode. Awesome sauce!

Rails 2.0: HTTP Basic Authentication

preston.lee — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 17:04:40 +0000

HTTP Basic authentication support comes bundled with Rails 2.0, alleviating the need for external plugins we used with Rails 1.x. Here's how you can use (and test) this new Rails 2.0 feature.Controller Code before_filter :authenticatedef authenticate

authenticate_or_request_with_http_basic do |username, password|
true # replace with your own custom logic
end

end Functional Test def setup

@controller = AdminController.new@request = ActionController::TestRequest.new@response = ActionController::TestResponse.newset_basic_authentication

end def test_basic_authentication_success

get :indexassert_response :success

end def set_basic_authentication

@request.env['HTTP_AUTHORIZATION'] = 'Basic ' + Base64::b64encode("some_username:some_password")

end For Rails 2.0 internal implementation details, see http_authentication.rb.

Rails 2.0: Validations Without Extending ActiveRecord::Base

preston.lee — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 03:22:47 +0000

In more "enterprisey" web stacks (such as Java with Hibernate and Spring MVC), it's straightforward to design a validatable form whose contents do not correspond directly -- if at all -- to a persistent OR/M class: such as may happen in an ecommerce site where you're collecting payment information but can only store some of it in the database for legal reasons. Just create a MVC-level view object using your framework-specific validation mechanism, and translate to/from the relevant OR/M classes as necessary in the controller. This scenario isn't always straightforward to handle in Rails since the stack layers are smooshed together. In Rails 1.2.x, you could use (some) validations in your non-persistent PORO objects by extending ActiveRecord::Base and overriding the initializer to skip the databases-related stuff. Alas, this hack does not seem to work in Rails 2.0, but I have a solution which, in my brief testing, seems to work better than the aforementioned Rails 1.2 hack. Here's how I used ActiveRecord::Validations in one of my view-only classes in a Rails 2.0.2 application without needing a dummy table in the database or ActiveRecord::Base.


require 'active_record/validations'

class Card

# Define your arbitrary PORO attributes. attr_accessor :number attr_accessor :expiration_month attr_accessor :expiration_year attr_accessor :verification_value # For the ActiveRecord::Errors object. attr_accessor :errors def initialize(opts = {})
# Create an Errors object, which is required by validations and to use some view methods. @errors = ActiveRecord::Errors.new(self)
end # Dummy stub to make validtions happy. def save end # Dummy stub to make validtions happy. def save! end # Dummy stub to make validtions happy. def new_record?
false
end # Dummy stub to make validtions happy. def update_attribute end # Mix in that validation goodness! include ActiveRecord::Validations # Use validations. validates_presence_of :number validates_presence_of :expiration_month validates_presence_of :expiration_year validates_presence_of :verification_value

end

Ruby Troubleshooting: Hpricot On OS X Leopard

preston.lee — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:52:36 +0000

If you upgraded to Leopard, you may be getting this nasty error when trying to install Hpricot, which is required by other popular gems such as mechanize..

preston$ sudo gem install mechanize
Password: ********

Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Install required dependency hpricot? [Yn]
Select which gem to install for your platform (i686-darwin8.10.3)
1. hpricot 0.6 (mswin32)
2. hpricot 0.6 (jruby)
3. hpricot 0.6 (ruby)
4. hpricot 0.5 (ruby)
5. hpricot 0.5 (mswin32)
6. Skip this gem
7. Cancel installation
> 3
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError)
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

ruby extconf.rb install mechanize
checking for main() in -lc... no
creating Makefile

make
gcc -I. -I. -I/opt/local/lib/ruby/1.8/i686-darwin8.10.3 -I. -I/opt/local/include -fno-common -O2 -fno-common -pipe -fno-common -c hpricot_scan.c
cc -dynamic -bundle -undefined suppress -flat_namespace -L/opt/local/lib -L"/opt/local/lib" -o hpricot_scan.bundle hpricot_scan.o -lruby -lpthread -ldl -lobjc
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/gcc/i686-apple-darwin8/4.0.1/../../../libpthread.dylib unknown flags (type) of section 6 (__TEXT,__dof_plockstat) in load command 0
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/gcc/i686-apple-darwin8/4.0.1/../../../libdl.dylib unknown flags (type) of section 6 (__TEXT,__dof_plockstat) in load command 0
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/gcc/i686-apple-darwin8/4.0.1/../../../libobjc.dylib load command 9 unknown cmd field
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/gcc/i686-apple-darwin8/4.0.1/../../../libSystem.dylib unknown flags (type) of section 6 (__TEXT,__dof_plockstat) in load command 0
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib unknown flags (type) of section 6 (__TEXT,__dof_plockstat) in load command 0
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [hpricot_scan.bundle] Error 1

Gem files will remain installed in /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/hpricot-0.6 for inspection.
Results logged to /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/hpricot-0.6/ext/hpricot_scan/gem_make.out

The issue is that Xcode 3 must be upgraded as well; Hpricot's native components cannot be built with the older Tiger development tools on Leopard. After installing Xcode 3 from either your Leopard DVD or Apple Developer Connection, run the install again...

preston$ sudo gem install mechanize

Install required dependency hpricot? [Yn] Y
Select which gem to install for your platform (i686-darwin8.10.3)
1. hpricot 0.6 (mswin32)
2. hpricot 0.6 (jruby)
3. hpricot 0.6 (ruby)
4. hpricot 0.5 (ruby)
5. hpricot 0.5 (mswin32)
6. Skip this gem
7. Cancel installation
> 3
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
Successfully installed mechanize-0.6.11
Successfully installed hpricot-0.6
Installing ri documentation for mechanize-0.6.11...
Installing ri documentation for hpricot-0.6...
Installing RDoc documentation for mechanize-0.6.11...
Installing RDoc documentation for hpricot-0.6...

Success!

preston.lee — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:33:48 +0000

preston.lee — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:34:41 +0000

Small Office VoIP: Skype Pros/Cons

preston.lee — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 05:35:42 +0000

Before the 2007 tax year ended, OpenRain decided to finally solidify a telephony strategy for the next year or so. Key requirements were..

Easy ad-hoc and scheduled conferences.
Mobile flexibility and continuity across physical locations.
Scalability for the next couple years.
Voice mail
Call forwarding.
Little to no management overhead. (I don't want to run a dedicated PBX.)
Usable hardware.
Practical prices for worldwide incoming/outgoing calls.
Less than ~$2K initial investment.

It came down to one of two primary directions..

Hosted VoIP (such as with Vonage or Qwest) with SIP phones such as from Cisco or Avaya.
Skype with 3rd-party hardware and Mac soft-phone.

After some debate, we chose to use Skype exclusively for services, and have been fairly satisfied. I have a few beefs, but at less than $100 per year per person, I can't complain too much. Skype Pros:

Instant gratification. Easy to set yourself up for calls to/from landlines.
Good soft-client with videoconferencing support; Address Book.app integration is present in the latest Mac beta client.
Inexpensive. Less than $100 per seat per year for SkypePro and SkypeIn (an incoming number).
Awesome value when bundled with an IPEVO SOLO.
Extremely simple web interface for distributing company credits.
Concurrent logins from multiple locations. I leave my SOLO on 24/7 and use the soft-client on the road.
Great quality on Skype-to-Skype calls. Good quality to landlines.

Skype Cons:

My biggest gripe: In the U.S., outgoing calls do NOT show your SkypeIn number on the recipients phone.
Vendor lock-in, since Skype uses a proprietary protocol. Since cost of entry for services is so low, however, it may not be a huge deal if your want to switch to a SIP-based provider.
The WiFi-Phones all suck. The IPEVO SOLO is the only desktop model I like.
Possible future screwage of SkypeIn numbers if they ever change.
No 911, which is a general issue with VoIP services.

Rails 2.0: Gmail SMTP With ActionMailer

preston.lee — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 07:39:40 +0000

Marc just checked in a nifty little Rails 2.0 plugin to the OpenRain public subversion repository which encapsulates the voodoo required to use a Gmail SMTP server with an otherwise ordinary ActionMailer configuration. Gmail requires TLS security, which is why this is useful. Grab the plugin for your Gmail-mooching Rails 2.0 site, here. Note: I previously wrote about how to do this for Rails 1.2.x here. Update (2008.06.25): Broken download link fixed!

Xbox 360 RRoD

preston.lee — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 07:27:59 +0000

Welcomed To The RRoD Club

preston.lee — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 07:29:24 +0000

I powered on the ol' Xbox 360 this weekend to finish Mass Effect, a feat which I was especially pumped about since I've been told I'm extremely close. Much to my surprise, Microsoft had left a super special, albeit slightly belated Christmas surprise up in my tubes.Awesome!! Thanks, Redmond!!

preston.lee — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:35:15 +0000

preston.lee — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:35:24 +0000

preston.lee — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:35:32 +0000

preston.lee — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:35:40 +0000

Photos: One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)

preston.lee — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:40:54 +0000

Here's Marc on his new OLPC laptop, which he received for a generous donation. It has a surprising amount of functionality packed inside that adorable green exterior, and found all the local WiFi hotspots immediately. Mega philanthropic props to Marc and all involved. Full resolution shots are available on Flickr.

preston.lee — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 03:57:29 +0000

New OpenRain Homepage / IE Woes

preston.lee — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 04:18:42 +0000

We never spent a ton of time on the OpenRain homepage, so we decided to shake it up today in response to user feedback. I wanted to make our proposition clearer while keeping the existing brief one-page style, and add some awesome sauce yet stay business friendly. Check it. As usual, a significant percentage of the development time was spent figuring out a combination of hacks to make IE6/7 render as close to "normal" as possible. Below is a screenshot of how FireFox, Safari and IE6 (from left to right) lay out the floating divs and images after a couple hours of IE-specific work. Three stupidity points are awarded to IE for the following reasons..

The scrolling film strip at the top is completely disabled for IE because IE6 insists on reloading a CSS background-image if you change its background-position programmatically in JavaScript.
IE also has issues determining float positioning, so the sticky note has a few IE-specific lines to keep it from shooting through the top of the body.
Transparent PNGs have never worked correctly in IE6, and the hack to "fix" the issue severely distorts affected images.

Skype Phone Reviews: IPEVO SOLO, FREE.2

preston.lee — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:49:51 +0000

We've recently started using Skype hardware by little-known vendor IPEVO. SOLO models for the desktop (pictured) and FREE.2 USB handsets for the road. The SOLO plugs straight into your ethernet network, and also functions as a tiny ethernet switch, providing a port for your computer if you only have one RJ-45 jack at your desk. It took me less than 5 minutes to get running with no "Quick Start Guide" crap or drivers required. Since I already had a fully juiced Skype account, the SOLO logged in flawlessly with no hassle. Happiness ensued. The full-color screen is easy to read and the angle can be adjusted. Unlike more "enterprisey" phones, there is no excess buttonage, and the unit in general is very easy to figure out and use. Despite a couple minor nitpicky items (could be easier to access voicemail, not enough speed-dial stuff, needs conferencing built in), the SOLO is a solid practical phone at less than $200 (USD) per seat. I'm less fond of the FREE.2. I suppose it works well for what it is, but I don't like having to think about starting special software to take advantage of all the features. Everything should Just Work without having to worry about additional moving parts. (Oh, and everything should integrate flawlessly with Address Book too.) The hardware itself seems to work well enough, but until the software side is more streamlined and polished I'll likely stick to headphones and the MacBook Pros built-in microphone. IPEVO also offers a dedicated conference unit named XING which we may pick up in the future, but have not played with so far.

preston.lee — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 05:26:35 +0000

preston.lee — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 05:26:50 +0000

Back To Business School

preston.lee — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 05:47:57 +0000

I started MBA 590 tonight; the next stepping stone to my next degree, which I should complete at University of Phoenix early next year. Considering I couldn't even start on the coursework until 9PM, it's going to be a busy year. :|

Request For Invention: Ultimate Skype Conference Phone

preston.lee — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 02:55:12 +0000

Attention IPEVO: Go ahead and bill me for one of these Skype conference phones as soon as you meet this feature set.

Clear voice quality with good range and crosstalk reduction. (Duh.) At least as good as that popular Polycom model everyone uses.
Color LCD and interface like the SOLO, but with a few conferencing features. (Actually, go ahead andÂ add those conferencing features to the solo as well. It needs some! If Skype doesn't allow for this, I'll pay a minimal monthly fee for a 3rd party integration.)
Bluetooth pairable with OS X, with a tolerable amount of latency when used wirelessly. No special drivers must be used for this.
Ethernet port (and LAN pass-through) just like the SOLO for computer-free operation.
USB port for wired laptop operation. Special drivers are OK here, but I don't want to have to run some special app in the forground to use basic features.
Optional: Power-over-ethernet operation. Add $20 for this feature.
Optional: Clustered operation. Add $20 for this feature.
Optional: Network discovery and AirTunes support. Add $20 for this feature.
Optional: Gigabit ethernet with four extra switch ports. Add $40 for this feature.

You may charge me up to $250 for one unit (plus extras), which includes all cables neatly packagable in a box that can be used for transport. Thanks!

Writing Good Error Messages

preston.lee — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 01:18:42 +0000

I received this little note from my Mac today. This made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside despite the interruption of my work because it satisfies my general criteria for displaying error messages to users.

A graphical severity indicator is given so I know whether or not to care.
It provides a succinct, human-readable desciption of the issue. (No "ERROR CODE: 23DD8" crap which is meaningless to the user.)
An immediate, resolvable course of action is given to the user. Providing this makes the user feel empowered and accomplished for acting. Neglecting this makes the user concerned and irritated.
A description of future symptoms is given for when/if the user does not take the suggested course of action. This gives the user reason to do what you're asking.
It shut up about the issue when I clicked OK and let the failure happen like it told me it would. When I noticed my mouse wasn't responding I immediately remembered why.

The dialog is in stark contrast to this nifty gem constantly pooping out of my Solaris kernel.. "Pin widgit 27 is EAPD capable." WTF??? What the heck is a "pin widgit" and why do I care if it's "EAPD capable"? Is this even a bad thing? Do I need to do something here? What happens if I ignore this, which I most definitely will since I have clue what it's talking about? Why does it tell me this every time I start the machine? Criteria failure on all counts. Bad computer!

preston.lee — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:07:24 +0000

Welcomed To The RRoD Club, Part 2

preston.lee — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:13:43 +0000

The RRoD 360 repair process has been straightforward so far. (After all, Microsoft has certainly had an ample volume of opportunities to improve it.) The online repair form was straightforward, and my empty pre-paid shipping box arrived yesterday. Everything needed to package the console for return was included: a plastic bag for the console, padded foam, large strip of packaging tape, shipping label, small form (in English and Spanish) and clearly written photographic instructions. Paying for door pickup would have been nice, but that's not a big deal. I'm off to drop it off at UPS right now.

preston.lee — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:23:40 +0000

Mac Users: Buy This Now

preston.lee — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:28:23 +0000

https://www.macheist.com/buy/invite/94211 The latest MacHeist bundle: $50 for 12 apps, the most notable being Pixelmator, CSSEdit and Snapz Pro X. I picked up the 3-pack bundle for $100 and a total of 36 license key. 4 days left. w00ties!

RailsConf 2008 Registration Now Open

preston.lee — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 20:15:39 +0000

RailsConfMay 29-June 1, 2008Oregon Convention CenterPortland, ORhttp://www.railsconf.comGo! Registration Is Now Open for RailsConf 2008. Register Now, Save up to$100 and Secure Your Place.We're offering up to a $100 discount when you register before April 10,but since last year's conference sold out in less than three weeks, youshouldn't dally if you want to be in Portland, Oregon, May 29-June 1.Take no chances - register now at:http://en.oreilly.com/rails2008/public/registerWhy is this conference so popular? It's "the" event for the growing RailsCommunity--the largest official gathering dedicated to everything Rails.Co-presented by Ruby Central and O'Reilly Media, RailsConf provides aninteractive meeting ground for the most innovative Rails experts andcompanies.Four jam-packed days of expert-led tutorials, enlightening sessions, andinspirational keynotes offer successful business models, developmentparadigms, and design strategies to enable mainstream businesses and newarrivals to the Web and Rails to make the most of this new generation ofservices and opportunities.Who's Going To Be There?Among the more than 1600 folks attending, you'll meet Rails and other webdevelopers--independent, startup, enterprise/corporate; open sourcedevelopers; IT managers; tech-savvy entrepreneurs looking to implementweb-based start-ups quickly; users at every level--new, power,intermediate, advanced, expert; others interested in web technologies andstrategic implementation.Hear, See, and Meet Rail's Most Innovative Developers and SuccessfulPractionersHere's a sample of the sessions you can attend:-"Design Patterns in Ruby" - Neal Ford (ThoughtWorks)-"Multi-Core Hysteria: FUD about CRUD?" - Andrea O.K. Wright (ChariotSolutions)-"10 Things I Hate About Web Apps" - Micah Martin (8th Light, Inc.)-"Advanced Active Record Techniques: Best Practice Refactoring" - ChadPytel (thoughtbot, inc.)-"Advanced RESTful Rails " - Ben Scofield (Viget Labs)-"Assembling Pages Last: Edge Caching, ESI & Rails " - Aaron Batalion(Hungry Machine LLC)-"Asynchronous Processing with Ruby on Rails" - Jonathan Dahl (SlantwiseDesign)-"CRUD Doesn't Have an 'S' in It: Managing Complex Searching in Rails" -Stephen Midgley (Hutz.com)-"Facebook Development and Performance with Rails" - Mike Mangino(Elevated Rails)-"Fast, Sexy, and Svelte: Our Kind of Rails Testing" - Dan Manges and ZakTamsen (ThoughtWorks)-"Surviving the Big Rewrite: Moving YELLOWPAGES.COM to Rails" - John Straw(YELLOWPAGES.COM)-"The Great Test Framework Dance-Off" - John Susser (Pivotal Labs)-"The Launch: Dos and Don'ts of Real Life Deploys" - Chris Wanstrath (ErrFree)-"The Profitable Programmer: Creating Successful Side Projects" - GeoffreyGrosenbach (Topfunky Corporation), Tom Preston-Warner (Powerset), ChrisWanstrath and PJ Hyett (Err Free), and Ben Curtis (Catch the Best)-"Using Git To Manage and Deploy Rails Apps" - Scott Chacon (Reactrix,Inc.)-"What To Do When Mongrel Stops Responding to Your Requests and RubyDoesn't Want To Tell You About It" - Philippe Hanrigou (ThoughtWorks)Tutorials Help You Master the Power of RailsTake advantage of collaborative learning and exploratory participationafforded by three-hour tutorials.-"CI for the Rails Guy (or Gal)" â€“ Chad Wolley (Pivotal Labs)-"Design for Developers: A Hands-On Workshop" - Brian Hogan (NAPCS)-"Developer Testing Tricks" - Brian Takita (Pivotal Labs)-"Meta-Programming Ruby for Fun & Profit" - Neal Ford (ThoughtWorks)-"Powering AIR Applications with Rails" - Tony Hillerson (EffectiveUI)-"Refactoring Yours Rails Application" - Zach Dennis (Atomic Object)-"Hands-On Rapid Rails Development with Hobo" - Tom Locke and JamesGarlick (HoboCentral)Speakers are being confirmed daily, so stay on top of the program as itdevelops by signing up for the conference newsletter, at:http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/nl/home#conferencesThroughout the event, there will be ample opportunity for all participantsto connect, contribute, and collaborate. There's no better place to meetthe core Rails development team and hear about the latest developmentsstraight from the source.We hope to see you in Portland in May,RailsConf 2008 Conference TeamP.S. Register now--before the conference is sold out--and save up to $100,at:http://en.oreilly.com/rails2008/public/register

Rails 2.0: selenium-on-rails routes.rb fix

preston.lee — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:16:27 +0000

When I updated a few projects to Rails 2.0 last year, selenium-on-rails stopped working ... some issue with routing and the lame way selenium-on-rails adds its routes. I didn't spend the time to figure out exactly what the routing problem was, but did manage to hack a quick fix into routes.rb. This feels like the Wrong Way for an ultimate fix but it at least solves the immediate problem. Shove these rules into your routes.rb and the /selenium path should start resolving again...

 ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map|

# other rules # ... # HACK for selenium-on-rails in rails 2.0 if RAILS_ENV == 'test'
map.connect 'selenium/setup', :controller => 'selenium', :action => 'setup' map.connect 'selenium/tests/*testname', :controller => 'selenium', :action => 'test_file' map.connect 'selenium/postResults', :controller => 'selenium', :action => 'record' map.connect 'selenium/postResults/:logFile', :controller => 'selenium', :action => 'record', :requirements => { :logFile => /.*/ } map.connect 'selenium/*filename', :controller => 'selenium', :action => 'support_file'
end

end

Marc Chung on Amazon Web Services

preston.lee — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:13:37 +0000

Mad props to fellow OpenRain'r Marc Chung for an excellent AWS presentation at this months Phoenix Rails meeting. Follow-up links..

Full session audio in Rubyology episode #59, courtesy Chris Matthieu.
Slides.
Marc's blog, recap and company.
Derek's recap.

Great job, Marc!

preston.lee — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:16:24 +0000

preston.lee — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:00:19 +0000

Debugging JavaScript With Safari

preston.lee — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:03:40 +0000

I usually use FireBug and other FireFox-based tools for troubleshooting JavaScript issues, but never found a solid way to approach it in Safari, my primary browser. It turns out that the nightly builds of WebKit (Safari's core) also come with a great utility called Drosera.app, which allows you to attach to a running WebKit process and get funky with a JavaScript console. w00t l00ps!

preston.lee — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 23:26:05 +0000

Review: Why Army of Two (360) Sucks

preston.lee — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 23:28:02 +0000

The overall aiming mechanic is *very* poor. I don't expect PC-level ease, but at least something on par with the Tom Clancy games is necessary to make a console shooter fun. Both me and my buddy commented on this suckage right from the start. AoT also suffers from poor pacing. Remember how in Serious Sam they would spawn an insane amount of identical enemies in a large space and you'd fight them off for, like, 15 minutes? Yeah... expect some of that. On the plus side, after you clear an area you'll be treated with the gong sound ripped straight off the Gears of War disc. (Now that you have your GoW disc out, why not put it in the drive instead?) In single player mode, your AI buddy has a severe learning disability. He doesn't make great decisions on when/where to heal you, or even where to drag you. When told to advance aggressively, he'll pretty much clean house while you check your iPhone email. Using the aggro meter to a planned strategic advantage is pretty much impossible. Update: That's really only true in the easy mode or easier parts. In certain difficult sections--especially in the hardest mode--closely controlling aggro for your AI buddy is necessary and useful. Multi-player campaign co-op fairs only slightly better. All the special BFF moves you saw in the trailer can only be done at specific, pre-defined points along IKEA-like map paths. "Step jump" is a completely useless gimick which contributes nothing to the game except to serve as a trigger to spawn baddies. The team skydiving thing is... retarded. So one person snipes from the air. Cool.. except the other person "steers". That's... great. Co-op sniping on the ground is also worthless. The Max Payne-esque back-to-back mode would be awesome if you could choose when/where to do it, but you can't... sooooo, lamX0r.Overkill, feign death, weapon upgrading and the aggro meter are actually useful strategic elements. The placement of large gun turrets throughout the game was clearly done to force teamwork and render any Leroy Jenkins types useless. Periodic encounters with enemies that can only be damaged from behind also provide a clever way of leveraging the aggro system. Unfortunately, you always use the same basic strategy of "I'll fire at his shield to draw aggro while you walk up to him and shoot him in the butt." The repetition gets old fast. Oh, and I swear if I see one more BFF door opening cutscene I'm eating my controller and letting my stomach acid play the game for me. You opened a door together for the 30th time! YAY TEAM!!! Conclusion: Rent only if you're planning on playing with a friend. Otherwise continue getting your fix with GRAW2, RS: Vegas or Gears of War.

preston.lee — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:28:00 +0000

Redmine w/OS X OpenLDAP, Parallels Server and JumpBox

preston.lee — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:34:21 +0000

OpenRain used a slew of crappy Trac sites for issue tracking until we switched to Redmine several days ago. The decision came because..

Redmine can authenticate off LDAP with trivial configuration.
Redmine has multi-project support out-of-the-box.
Redmine has some nifty Gantt chart and calendaring schwag and is generally better.
Parallels Server (for OS X) is finally available.
JumpBox has a beta Redmine VM image available.

If you've got an existing LDAP infrastructure, the whole shebang shouldn't take more than an hour or two to set up.

Install Parallels Server on your OS X Leopard server.
Download the Redmine JumpBox. Generate a new MAC address and boot it. Do the one-page configuration thingy in your browser.
Log into Redmine and create a new "Authentication Mode" set to LDAP. If you're using the default OpenLDAP schema that ships with Leopard server, enter the attributes like so..
All your users should now be able to log into your Redmine JumpBox using their LDAP credentials! You'll have to set up your projects, ACLs etc. within Redmine, but that's some pretty hot shizzle to get running in such a small timeframe.

Mad props to Redmine, Parallels, JumpBox and Apple for further simplifying my business.

Cool Daily Links

preston.lee — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 04:13:35 +0000

SearchMe.com :: Google search meets Apple's "Cover Flow" for the web. Smells hot to me.Â
iPhone SDK Gets Interface Builder :: Now it's actually fun to learn about native iPhone application development.
Upcoming Free iPhone Development Webcast
Monoprice.com :: You need to buy your random cables from these folks. I started using them last year and couldn't be more pleased with the price and quality of the CAT 6, DVI and FireWire cables. Shipping isn't free, but it's reasonable, and if you wait until you have $100 in needs before placing an order, well worth it.

bug

preston.lee — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 02:00:43 +0000

Sufficiency In Software Testing

preston.lee — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 02:09:12 +0000

When I was finishing up my B.S. I took a class in embedded software testing. The big assignment was to write the software that controls a single elevator, test the software to our satisfaction and deliver the whole shebang at the end of the semester. The critical lesson I learned from the course was not that the elevator software was difficult to write, but that there are an infinite number of odd and unfortunate events that could happen to any component involved, at any time, and there is no way to declare with 100% confidence that you have accounted for all possible defects. So most software is not about perfection, but sufficiency. Everyones wants ultra-high quality, defect free wares, but at some point you must put down the keyboard and declare the product "sufficient" for release. Key problems: "How do you know when you've done enough testing?" And just as important, "When is the right time to test?" This topic has been a open talking point at OpenRain. Marc is a strong proponent of many TDD/BDD principles and goes knife-throwing-freak-show when stuff isn't well covered. (Ed. note: possible slight exaggeration... maybe.) I am also highly concerned with sufficient tests, but prefer a incremental approach and am wary to invest too much effort in automated tests up front for several key reasons.

While development is underway, you incur unnecessary overhead to maintain tests developed before design stabilization. This overhead is inevitable during long-term maintenance, but the last thing I want to do on the project I started yesterday is refactor all my tests because I dropped a single column from the "users" table.
When inexperienced developers write tests too early, they oft end up testing the dummy data and underlying framework, not your design. It is not our job as application-level developers to write test cases for all underlying dependencies, but since that's all you have at the beginning of a project, it's easy to waste time here.
The benefits of writing tests first to flush out design details is diminished in dynamic languages. In Java, writing a quick block of pseudo-code to use your interface is a great way to explore your design from an "external" perspective. Once you've achieved design clarity, you can easily use your compiler errors to create correct interfaces. Dynamic languages such as Ruby, however, do not offer this compile-time help, lowering the benefit of the technique.
There's no freaking way we're checking in code that doesn't compile. Sorry, but if I'm writing a Java unit test, there's no way I'm putting up with 800 compiler errors (and no autocomplete) over the next day while I generate all my stubs. I don't care if TDD says otherwise; it's a stupid practice for statically typed languages.

Granted, if any of our systems crash, we probably aren't going to irreparably harm anything except for my phone that goes flying across the room for ringing at 5AM, but we still have the issue of "sufficiency". For OpenRain's Rails-based applications, I've been using the following philosophies on a personal level.

Models tests should be implemented first and as soon as possible. Validation logic and other constraints should be verified up front, as key bugs here will likely effect other code. Add sample data as necessary.
Only functional/integration tests for core use cases should be done early. Adding too many upfront tests to the yet-to-stabilize design tends to add maintenance liability before it's able to pay itself off.
Tests for non-core features should be tested shortly after a brief "breathing" period, wherein others can comment on the design/code before you're fully committed to it. Don't waste your time with a massive test suite until people stop telling you it sucks.
Avoid complex methods of testing. Multi-threaded and singleton-based designs have inherent testing complexities, and should be designed out if possible.
Aim for 100% coverage in dynamic languages. Otherwise you won't catch retarded bugs like syntax errors.
Have all known, likely and anticipated issues resulting in a significantly negative state covered by an automated case. This is, perhaps, the crux of my "sufficiency" perspective. You must have some mental benchmark that determines when you are "done". This does not imply that all issues are resolved, only that they are tracked and, hopefully, all the significant ones are fixed.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on practical testing philosophy. Please let me know what you think!

_mg_0716-version-2.png

preston.lee — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:31:59 +0000

http://www.prestonlee.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/_mg_0716-version-2.png

_mg_0716-version-2.jpg

preston.lee — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:32:59 +0000

http://www.prestonlee.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/_mg_0716-version-2.jpg

The GD image library is not installed.

preston.lee — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:37:04 +0000

http://www.prestonlee.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/The GD image library is not installed.

_mg_0716-version-21.png

preston.lee — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:41:32 +0000

http://www.prestonlee.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/_mg_0716-version-21.png

blog-banner.gif

preston.lee — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:57:05 +0000

http://www.prestonlee.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/blog-banner.gif

The GD image library is not installed.

preston.lee — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:17:57 +0000

http://www.prestonlee.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/The GD image library is not installed.

tsa_notice_of_bag_inspection

preston.lee — Sat, 03 May 2008 16:47:56 +0000

Dear TSA, Check Out The 4th Amendment. Thanks.

preston.lee — Sat, 03 May 2008 16:56:56 +0000

Just a little food for thought for your next airplane ride. The 4th amendment of the U.S. constitution reads..

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Sounds reasonable to me. And now, the little note from the TSA left in my checked bag, neatly tucked between my clean, folded boxer shorts.. The full text follows below the line..

Transportation Security Administration

NOTICE OF BAGGAGE INSPECTION

To protect you and your fellow passengers, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is required by law* to inspect all checked baggage. As part of the process, some bags are opened and physically inspected. Your bag was among those selected for physical inspection. During the inspection, your bag and its contents may have been searched for prohibited items. At the completion of the inspection, the contents were returned to your bag. If the TSA security officer was unable to open your bag for inspection because it was locked, the officer may have been forced to break the locks on your bag. TSA sincerely regrets having to do this, however TSA is not liable for damage to your locks resulting from this necessary security precaution. For packing tips and suggestions on how to secure your baggage during your next trip, please visit:

http://www.tsa.gov

We appreciate your understanding and cooperation. If you have questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to contact the TSA Contact Center:

Phone:866.289.9673 (toll free) Email:TSA-ContactCenter@dhs.gov

*Section 110(b) of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001, 49 U.S.C. 44901(c)-(e)

Rev. 8-1-2004

Smart Security Saves Time

picture-4

preston.lee — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:21:55 +0000

New MacBook Pro Battery

preston.lee — Mon, 05 May 2008 00:22:55 +0000

The stock battery on my 1st-generation MacBook Pro has only been providing an hour of power as of late. When I hot-swapped in a fully charged new battery from my local Apple store, I was thrilled with the estimated remaining charge.. I highly doubt it will actually last this long, but one can dream. :)

digital_astrophotography

preston.lee — Fri, 23 May 2008 23:37:15 +0000

Book Review: Digital Astrophotography, by Stefan Seip

preston.lee — Fri, 23 May 2008 23:38:28 +0000

Rocky Nook -- a digital photography book publisher in California -- sent me a review copy of Digital Astrophotography: A Guide to Capturing the Cosmos for review, which I read over the last few months. Pros

A good overview of the techniques used in astrophotography.
Well illustrated.
Inexpensive.
Largely easy to follow for the casual reader.
Covers the entire process, from equipment to post-processing. I'm very well oriented with "typical" production and post-production photography methods, but was unaware of the additional complexities and tools involved with astrophotography.

Cons

Casual SLR/DSLR and point-and-shoot users will not be able to suddenly get stunning frames of the night sky. It turns out that the equipment required to get decent shots requires a level of financial commitment to the niche you aren't likely to make unless you have a professional need or really, really, REALLY like looking at celestial bodies. You'll probably need a special mount for your camera, or build a jig yourself. I did not want to invest a significant amount of money, so I have been unable to try many of the techniques described.
If you're bad at math, you may find some of the technical setup difficult to follow.
The tools covered are Windows applications. Bah.

Recommendation Buy if..

You're serious about becoming astrophotography and have the cash to pony up for specialty hardware, or...
You are not planning on trying it for yourself but nevertheless have $20 of curiousity.

_mg_1004

preston.lee — Sat, 24 May 2008 00:21:38 +0000

Pictures: Costa Rican Landscapes

preston.lee — Sat, 24 May 2008 00:28:35 +0000

I recently returned from a week-long trip from Costa Rica. These are best frames from the trip and are intended for large format viewing. Flickr royally sucks at that (everything is shown low-res by default), but you can nab higher-def shots with a few clicks if you have a 24"+ monitor and would like to fill your screen. Contact me privately if you'd like copies of the highest resolution RAW sources. (JPEG == Yucky.) Costa Rica 2008 Flickr Set

atlantic_cod

preston.lee — Sat, 24 May 2008 01:33:52 +0000

apple

preston.lee — Sat, 24 May 2008 02:00:26 +0000

rails

preston.lee — Sat, 24 May 2008 02:33:43 +0000

Pictures: Cape Cod

preston.lee — Sat, 24 May 2008 17:00:02 +0000

I was over in the Boston/Cape Cod area earlier this month. Only got to site see for a couple hours but still thought I'd share the few shots I have. What I learned while visiting..

My grandma once used Jackie O's toilet.
I'm about 2 megadollars short of being able to live there.
Every photo you take would be perfect for a viagra ad.

Five Major Apple Design Irritants

preston.lee — Mon, 26 May 2008 17:00:27 +0000

Apple, My software development firm--OpenRain in Arizona--spends buckets of money on your products. Stuff works pretty well in general, but you really need to address these issues. Really.

PowerBook, MacBook and MacBook Pro power supply cables invariably rip. Not only that, but it's always at the same freaking places. The MackBook/Pro power supplies are better than the PowerBook ones, but still don't last more than a couple years of real-world use. The issue is at the endpoints of the laptop end of the cable that get bent constantly from travel and being wrapped sharply when the electric outlet is on the wrong side of the laptop. I really love the small and agile design, but the cables need to last at least 4 years without tearing.
Laptops still run hot. Phoenix summer get hotter than 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and I have gotten physically burned by the MacBook Pros when wearing shorts. Product such as the iLap are amusing, but should not be necessary. Getting physically hurt by a computer is a problem.
Keyboard are not ergonomic. The latest iteration of post-modern laptop-style bluetooth keyboards are great to look at, but absolutely horrid on the wrists. No one at the office really likes them in practice, and we've had to revert to the Microsoft Natural series of keyboards when have been around f-o-r-e-v-a-r but Apple hasn't responded to. I'm 100% confident you could build a swanky, highly usable bluetooth keyboard that puts the Naturals to shame.
iPhone copy/paste support. It'll be an awesome design accomplishment when we no longer need this, but you haven't gotten there yet, sorry, and everyone else agrees. Add copy/paste support (if only in key areas) to iPhone.
iPhone needs to support dvorak. Yeah yeah.... I know I'm in the minority on this and am sneaking it in, but I spend a lot of money with you guys, and having to use QWERTY just for the iPhone is driving me insane. Add the freaking layout please.

Leopard Server: Bonjour-Based DNS A Performance No-No

preston.lee — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:57:09 +0000

Prior to moving into the new OpenRain office (announcement coming in June), we used OS X's magical .local addressing to find all our servers. This allowed us to keep almost everything on DHCP, which is trivial to set up and administer. Little did we know, however, that this was being the root cause of many internal issues.

General network I/O performance (file server access, OpenLDAP-based logins etc.) sucked. Simply using Server Admin or Workgroup Manager across the network would often take 5+ seconds to log in.
Portable Home Directory (PHD) syncing, VPN and firewall services never seemed to work right, possibly due to nonequivalences between "server.example.com" and "server.local" in SSL and SSH. I'm not completely sure, but stuff broke in more ways than one.

Case in point: do not use bonjour-based DNS for your core network services. Use a proper DNS server from the start. DNS is a cornerstone dependency of all the other services provided by your Leopard server, so any performance issues you introduce at this level will carry through to your entire infrastructure.

Netgear FVS114 - Worst POS SOHO Router Ever

preston.lee — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 00:37:20 +0000

Some of the worst infrastructural issues OpenRain has had since inception has been border hardware. We've been through all typical COTS models you'd find at Best Buy, but all have had issues with at least one of..

Dropping inbound traffic due to some stupid "DDoS Protection" feature we couldn't disable.
Not passing VPN traffic though to an internal server.
Crashing.

But this latest POS--the Netgear FVS114--really takes the cake. Check it..

Log in to http://www.workingwithrails.com
Visit http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/new
Listen for the sound of everyone simultaneously screaming "WTF!? The 'net's down!"

We've reproduced this issue with FireFox and Safari from multiple machines inside the network. Way to go, Netgear! (Might want to get on this one.) I'll be buying some real hardware online in about 15 minutes.

parallels_server

preston.lee — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:51:29 +0000

Parallels Server for Mac Pricing

preston.lee — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:53:00 +0000

Fresh from my inbox..

Parallels Server for Mac will be available soon. As a thank you to all participating Parallels Server for Mac Beta users, Parallels is offering an exclusive discount on a single Parallels Server for Mac license. Purchase this new software for only $700* - a 30% savings.

Hmm... well, the product has been working fairly well for us at OpenRain, but I'm not sure $700 per major version is going to be worth it as opposed to buying another cheap Dell machine and running VMWare Server on Linux for free, which we already do in some of our hosted environments. Here's the kicker in tiny font at the bottom of the email explaining the asterisk after "$700"..

* The limited-time discount offer is limited to a single server from May 30 - June 30, 2008. Annual maintenance is required at the time of purchase, starting at an additional $249.75 per year. For academic pricing and volume licensing, register now or contact Parallels Sales at +1 (425) 282-6400.

So that's $950 for the first year of our first system alone. Hmmmm...

dvorak

preston.lee — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:34:50 +0000

Switching To Dvorak: Seven Months Later

preston.lee — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:40:39 +0000

Today marks exactly seven months from the day I switched to the Dvorak keyboard layout. Key Observations

72, 81 and 77 words per minute, clocked with three different one-minute tests on TypingTest.com.
In home-row-only tests I took several months ago, I was already consistently over 100 WPM. The many common home-row-only words (those spelled with A, O, E, U, I, D, H, T, N and S) are remarkably comfortable and fast to type.
It's all about muscle memory. I can type my thoughts just as well as the next guy without looking at the keyboard, but can't recite you the upper or lower row keys by memory. Interesting, huh?
The pain in my left-hand little finger tendon is gone! More of this is likely due, however, to also switching my Command and Caps Lock keys in software.

Other Conclusions

I'm much, much better at hunt-and pecking in Dvorak--that is, staring at a QWERTY keyboard set to Dvorak in software and "sensing" where the right key are with my pointer finger alone. (Useful when typing a few words on someone else's box.) This is hard because of #3 above, but learnable.
I can now hunt-and-peck suitably on my iPhone (QWERTY only) keyboard.
Typing QWERTY on a Dvorak keyboard is a lost cause. I have to stare at a secondary QWERTY keyboard to do so, because my muscles and mind have totally forgotten. (Again, see #3.)
Typing on a laptop keyboard feels better on your finger tendons, but just as uncomfortable on your wrists.
Sharing windows machines with others is awkward and frustrating. Let me know if you have a good system tray applet for quick-switching the whole system to Dvorak, because team-admining a windows machine requires a hellish amount of clicks to set the system-wide keyboard layout.
Apple is absolutely horrid at designing with ergonomics in mind. (In their defense, they obviously aren't trying.)
I haven't discovered the mental gymnastics that allows you to type in QWERTY when necessary. I can type my name and common passwords in QWERTY, but that's about it, sorry. No hablo QWERTY.
Stuff that now sucks because they are built for a QWERTY layout: emacs, vi, , Aperture, some Java apps. All games now require new key bindings off-the-bat too.

Parallels Server Pricing: Redux

preston.lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:10:15 +0000

After a few grumpy emails between myself and our Account Manager, I'm happy to report that we have purchased the GA release and it's working well. If you are using Parallels Server for internal development purposes and not for hosting, they will extend a more reasonable price per machine: $200 + $50/year maintenance. I think that's a very reasonable price point for our usage, and am happy to pay it. This likely has more to do with meeting end-of-Q2 sales quotas than attracting my dinky business, but regardless, a win is a win! Thanks!

happy_preston

preston.lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:23:51 +0000

happy_preston1

preston.lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:24:47 +0000

Bargain Of The Month: Apple + Adobe + HP + Crucial

preston.lee — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:28:00 +0000

If you qualify for an educator/student discounts from the Apple store and want a new machine, check out this crazy deal which I just did at OpenRain...

MacBook 2.4GHz White: $1300 - $100 .edu discount = $1200.
iPod Touch 8GB: $300 - $300 MIR == $0.
HP Photosmart C4480 All-In-One Scanner/Printer/Copier: $100 - $100 MIR = $0.
Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium: $1600 - $1300 IR = $300. (OMGWTFBYOB!!!)
Crucial 2 x 2GB SODIMM RAM: $100

Total: $1600 + taxes and express shipping ~= $1800. That's one helluva bargain for a great midrange laptop (w/4GB RAM mind you) and the powerhouse of Adobe CS3 alone. The iPod and scanner just add to the sweetness! Rock on!

set_color_profile

preston.lee — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:18:23 +0000

Color Profiles

preston.lee — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:27:26 +0000

ALL PROFILES ON THIS PAGE HAVE BEEN MOVED HERE.

contribute.gif

preston.lee — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:04:20 +0000

contribute.mp3

preston.lee — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:04:21 +0000

contribute.mpg

preston.lee — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:04:24 +0000

hacker_shopping

preston.lee — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:33:09 +0000

Hacker Shopping Cart

preston.lee — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:43:24 +0000

My shopping cart..

Energy drinks.
Energy bars.
Energy backups.

Guess what I do for a living. :)

osx_serial

preston.lee — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:30:53 +0000

osx_admin

preston.lee — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:31:07 +0000

Virtual OS X Server Screenshots

preston.lee — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:05:23 +0000

Apple now allow you to virtualize OS X Server instances. While your virtualization options are limited, it's very easy to set up on your existing OS X Server. This is an virtualized OS X Leopard Server guest running in Parallels Server on a host OS X Leopard Server. You can see that the guest system is treated similarly to other Windows and Linux VMs in the Parallels Management Console. Note that a distinct serial number/license seems to be required. The serial number for the host machine will not validate (I thought Apple was going to allow one VM instance???), so to use the sweet service configuration tools available in Server Admin, it appears you'll need a separate license for now.

iphone_2_upgrade

preston.lee — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:24:38 +0000

My iPhone 2.0 Upgrade Not Reactivating

preston.lee — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:28:17 +0000

It seems like there's some sort of service outages with the iTunes store related to users upgrading to the iPhone 2.0 firmware. The firmware download and upgrade process seems to have upgrade fine, but mine is stuck on the please-connect-to-itunes screen. All I can do right now is view the IMEI and ICCID, and make emergency calls. Update: After 4 continuous hours of having it plugged in, it finally reactivated and synced. PITA, but the new apps are hot!!!

Apple Says Sorry For MobileMe Boo-Boos

preston.lee — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:49:48 +0000

If you're an existing .Mac user, you may have noticed the new MobileMe services sucking a lot since the iPhone 3G launch. Apple will be "..giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge." Full email text..

MobileMe Services Now Available. We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped. Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac, and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the web apps are now up and running. Another snag we have run into is our use of the word "push" in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe "cloud," changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word "push" until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too. We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks. We hope you enjoy your new suite of web applications at me.com, in addition to keeping your iPhone and iPod touch wirelessly in sync with these new web applications and your Mac or PC. Thank you, The MobileMe Team

rss_big

preston.lee — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:39:53 +0000

OpenRain 1.0 Officially Launched w/New Logo & Blog!

preston.lee — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:56:49 +0000

Pretty much all of OpenRain's Q2 internal efforts boil down to tomorrow's open house: a massive milestone date where all our startupy HR, legal and infrastructure tasks are done, and we consider ourselves a properly running software development company under a new brand. OpenRain 1.0 is neither a product nor service, but a state-of-being which represents our transition from a-bunch-of-dudes-hacking-on-web-projects to a-bunch-of-dudes-hacking-on-web-projects-really-freaking-well. We're kicking off this exciting new period with a catered open house tomorrow. We're also launching several new sites today. First is our main landing page, www.openrain.com, updated with our new logo and color scheme. Second is blog.openrain.com, which we'll be using for upcoming public event announcements, non-NDA'd project links and technical resource for our officially supported software. Subscribe to the OpenRain feed using the ridiculously large RSS button on the right.

logo_mysql_sun

preston.lee — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:09:26 +0000

Installing The MySQL Ruby Gem When Using The Official MySQL .dmg

preston.lee — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:10:36 +0000

If you installed MySQL using the official .dmg package provided by MySQL AB/Sun and are trying to install the native MySQL gem, you'll need to pass a bunch of flags to the gem install process to get the thing to compile. Try this..

sudo gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

..if you still have issues (check your /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems//gems/mysql-/mkmf.log file), try this instead..

sudo gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-dir=/usr/local/mysql --with-mysql-include=/usr/local/mysql/include/ --with-mysql-lib=/usr/local/mysql/lib/ --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

Run `sudo gem install mysql` and definitely recheck the log file again as the gem install process sometimes reports false positives even if native components fail to install.

Need Monitor Color Profiles (.ICC Files)

preston.lee — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:23:13 +0000

OpenRain will be launching a simple, online .ICC monitor color profile database shortly, and is looking for .ICC file contributions generated with hardware colorimeters. We're also looking for administrators/moderators to add display models, remove bogus content, seek out .ICCs for missing models and suggest new features. If you work in the computers or graphic design space and would like to get involved for the sake of design professionals everywhere, hit me up!

Identifying Senior Software Engineers: Six Critical Differences

preston.lee — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:38:21 +0000

For HR and legal purposes, most development companies classify Software Engineers into ranks from I to IV (or V). The higher the rank, the higher the responsibilities, expectations, independence and pay grade. To cut it as an interviewer and manager, you'll need to classify people accurately with a minimum amount of direct personal exposure: a non-ideal but practical requirement of most hiring processes. While we don't regularly use titles at OpenRain, we nevertheless have to distinguish senior talent. The core issue is, "How to you objectively identify 'senior' engineering qualities?" Today we'll focus on several key factors always present in quality engineers, independant of language and platform. Instinct He/She has developed extraordinary technical relevance filtering to the point of being able to scroll through a never-before-seen 500 line file in a language they don't know, and tell you..

how complicated the code is.
where potential bugs are.

Even with no formal knowledge of code smells or design patterns, a senior developer can sense ugly code and architecture from a mile away even if they don't yet know exactly why. Foresight Long-term implications are always on the mind of the Senior Software Engineer. They've been through the end-to-end development process (from requirements gathering to product maintenance and end-of-life) numerous times, know what issues are going to arise and will point out a suitable solution long before the symptoms start to appear. (This quality thus becomes most apparent after delivery when work is bombarded with never-before-seen use cases.) The truly elite developer is often hard to identify because they're solving the important issues before anyone else notices the problem. (Ben is a primary example of this extraordinary perceptiveness.) Results Focus Knowledge without application leads to arrogance without insight. Senior developers are always focused on results which stand the test of time and can easily see through posers who fluff their way through status meetings. Communication New developers seldom understand the required differences of communication between different types of stakeholders. Newbies tend to treat all stakeholders as authoritative figures, and are quick to lose direction when exposed to people with differing incentives. The criticality of non-verbal developer communication is also apparent to the senior engineer. For example, a green engineer may see issue tracking as micro-management, automated testing as an ideological obsession, and project planning as administrative overhead, but these are all monumentally important aspects required to keep all developers and stakeholders in a real-time communications loop, since many do not directly interact. A senior engineer will see these concepts as empowering and often get grouchy when not present because NOT having clear priorities and documentation introduces roadblocks to results. Time & Priority Management A senior engineer can more-or-less tell you what their schedule looks like a week out, even if it's not written down, and won't be hesitant to express any issues with workload ahead of time. Estimation New software engineers seem to invariably produce time estimates magnitudes off from reasonable numbers. The issue largely appears to be one of Foresight since accurate estimates are oft best produced by benchmarking current requirements against past similar project experiences: a task more easily accomplished with experience. This issue is an arguing point against the "Customer is Always Available" aspect of eXtreme Programming since a green developer is generally more likely to over-commit a workload than a senior.

Handling Self Doubt

preston.lee — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:51:25 +0000

I'm an engineer. Always have been. I cronically worry about small flaws which could spiral into unsalvagable disaster, and spend a great deal of time focusing on risk mitigation. I can thus completely identify with Riyad's "cronic almost-achievement" issue because I felt like a raging victim of self-imposed mediocrity up until several years ago. I realize I can be harsh in self-judgement, but nevertheless came to several conclusions..

I have tons of great ideas that aren't going anywhere. (..or worse, are getting somewhere but at a pace slower than the end goal is moving.)
I really don't like being told I suck.

Any leader that says they can completely shrug off even the most meaningless criticism is full of crap. Putting yourself on the line by saying, "I did something. Check it out.", dangles your ego over a boiling pot of water. You know the potential for greatest is there--you wouldn't have done it in the first place if you thought it was a bad idea--but your heart still sinks when you're about to demonstrate your competence level to the public at large and have absolutely no guarantees on the outcome. Ego roulette is clearly not an engineers game. ...but then, I decided to change.

If I have a great idea and the time/resources to pull it off well, I'm going to look fear straight in the eyes and tell him to STFU.
I'm done with looking back and saying "I should have done more." Whether it's writing about a controversial opinion or pulling people out of a car wreck, no more inaction. Maybe I'll collect an inbox full of hate mail or painfully burn to death in a firey explosion. So be it. At least I tried to change the world and did my part to the best of my ability. “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” -Mahatma Gandhi.

Now, I still have the same self doubt and self confidence issues at the next guy, but I finally feel like I'm doing something about it. And doing something is an engineers mantra. I've you've really got a great idea, it's infinitely more important than your fragile ego. Here's a couple of thoughts that may help entrepreneurial pessimists like myself..

If you screw up on project XYZ, no one is going to care in 5 years. Take the small wins and build on them. It'll feel good.
What's the worst that can happen? ..people will laugh at you? ...you'll loose your investment? ...you'll have to go back to your day job? Are those the best reasons you can come up with? Really!? *Please* ... If you're reading this you've got food, water, shelter, internet access and probably some good folks to lean on should things get tough. That's more than most of the worlds population, so quit whining on the $10K it'll take to do that new project and take a calculated risk. Even failure can feel good when you know you did all you could. You're going to regret it if you don't.
Criticism is the easiest form of feedback, so there will always be haters and sometimes more negative commentary than positive. Learn to extract the meaning from the negative feedback, remember that those with the loudest voices don't necessarily represent the population, and make it an opportunity to hone your game rather than pity yourself.

Ruby Search Bookmarklet For Ru8y.com

preston.lee — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:12:56 +0000

Marc Chung put up a quick Ruby documentation search site recently: http://ru8y.org. Here a quick little bookmarklet for your Ruby searching needs. (Drag it to your toolbar.) Ru8y Search

ruby

preston.lee — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:11:10 +0000

Presenting At September 2008 Phoenix Ruby Users Group

preston.lee — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:12:54 +0000

I'll be presenting at the September 2008 Phoenix Ruby Users Group on Monday, September 8th, covering development of Ruby peer-to-peer applications using OpenRain's latest gem release, Journeta. Topics will include Ruby's threading model, basic networking review, Journeta usage, and live demos. 6:30PM, here. [Location Details] [PRUG Google Group] See you there!

money

preston.lee — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 01:13:25 +0000

PDF

preston.lee — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:38:03 +0000

Keynote

preston.lee — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:38:37 +0000

Slides: Ruby P2P Development With Journeta

preston.lee — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:59:47 +0000

Here (PDF , Keynote) are the slides from my Phoenix Ruby Users Group presentation yesterday on Ruby P2P Development with Journeta. Thanks a ton for the great audience. I'm extremely pleased that everyone seemed to "get it", and even more so that the suicidal audience-interactive demo went well. Chris Matthieu has recorded the session for the Rubyology podcast, which will be available soon for free on iTunes and the web. While you're on iTunes, you can also grab #68: Marc's Ruby2Ruby presentation, as well as #48 given last year to the Phoenix Rails group on attachement_fu.

Presenting Journeta At RubyConf 2008

preston.lee — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:43:45 +0000

I'm happy to report that my session proposal on the Journeta P2P library has been accepted by the RubyConf 2008 selection committee; I'll be presenting sometime between November 6th-8th in Orlando, Florida. Awesomely also, fellow hardcore OpenRain'r Marc Chung has been accepted to speak on Ruby2Ruby. This ups the pressure for OpenRain and the community to release some mind-warping Journeta applications before the conference. If you're planning on developing a swanky new application with Journeta, please ping me for possible collaboration and/or inclusion into the session. And I thought yesterday's live demo was suicidal... :)

Financial Primer For Self-Funded Startups, Part 1

preston.lee — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:54:18 +0000

You've considered starting your own business--ExampleTech--and have pondered the initial investment, opportunity costs and personal risks. Here's a brief financial primer on what you need to understand before taking the big leap, and key issues you'll need to grok for after ExampleTech begins operations. My big leap is OpenRain, for which I manage financial planning and performance amongst a bagillion other things, so I frequently receive questions on the financial aspects of forming and operating a company. This failure-based example assumes ExampleTech uses accrual accounting as opposed to cash-basis accounting. Understanding Your Initial Investment When you start the company books, the first type of financial statement you'll need to understand is the balance sheet. The balance sheet is a snapshot of the company's finances at a particular moment in time, and aggregates all the company accounts into one single formula which always remains true..

Assets = Liabilities + Equity

Once you invest in the company, that money becomes a company asset, and is no longer yours. You are only given claim to this money by an equivalent amount of equity. The company is a living, breathing entity, and is considered to a be a distinct taxable entity by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) if you have formed an LLC (ExampleTech, LLC), S or C corporation (ExampleTech, Inc.). Even if you choose to do business as a sole proprietor (John Doe "doing business as" ExampleTech), which is not a distinct taxable entity, you should mentally consider your initial personal investment gone forever! Don't event think about mixing personal accounts with business. ExampleTech accounts belong to ExampleTech and are maintained separately from your personal finances. Period. It's company money now, not yours, so get over it. You've invested $10K in ExampleTech to get it off the ground.

$10K Assets (cash) = $0K Liabilities + $10K Equity (ownership)

Since, the company has purchased $6K of equipment using $1K in cash and $5K on a credit card with an $8K limit (this will be important later). The balance sheet now looks like this..

$15K Assets ($9K cash + $6K equipment) = $5K Liabilities (credit card) + $10K Equity (ownership)

Where did these numbers come from? We have $15K in assets because we started with $10K in raw cash, spent $1K of it and received $6K of equipment in return. The difference is on the credit card as a $5K liability. Some interesting observations...

You (John Doe) still have $10K of ownership equity even though the company only has $9K of cash in the bank. It would not be possible to cash out 100% of your initial investment without liquidating (converting to cash, a.k.a. selling) the equipment.
If you bought the equipment out of warrantee and it breaks on day 1, ExampleTech will be down the $6K in equipment assets but would still need to pay off the $5K credit card liabiltity. The loss would come out of cash and leave the balance sheet looking like this: $4K Assets (cash) = $0K Liabilites + $4K Equity (ownership). Oops. On the plus side, you would realize what the term "equity-funded venture" means.
All book equity is held directly by you, the owner. This is a tremendous advantage over private equity venture capital (VC)-based start-ups, because you are the only person who cares about the eventual return on equity (ROE) investment. By using short-term debt instead of long-term equity, your creditors couldn't care less about ROE as long as you're making payments on time, so ExampleTech's decisions remain yours to make.

ExampleTech is now ready to operate, and opens its doors with a slick new job for ClientComm. Understanding Cash Flow & Income After 1 month of operation, ExampleTech has performed and delivered $8K of services to ClientComm. Only $3K in credit card expenditures was need to complete the job. ClientComm has been invoiced and "the check is in the mail", which should arrive and clear within 2 weeks. ExampleTech is now moving on to a much bigger project for MegaComm. Here's your current balance sheet..

$23K Assets ($6K equipment + $9K cash + $8K accounts receivable) = $8K Liabilities (credit card: $5K initial equipment + $3K ClientComm job) + $15K Equity (ownership) Note that you've increase your equity 50%, which is now $15K up from the $10K you started with. Woohoo! Here's the ExampleTech income statement for the previous month..

Income ClientComm: $8K

Expenses Office equipment: $5K ClientComm production expenses: $3K

Net income for period (last month): $8K (income) - $8K (expenses) = $0K

So in your first month you not only purchased reusable office equipment, but broke even! (That's pretty awesome, go grab a beer!) Armed with $23K in assets and a renewed sense of self-confidence, you've signed MegaComm to a new deal worth $40K which will only cost $10K to deliver. You immediately start MegaComm production by writing a check for the $10K in materials and production costs. ..And you're about to realize how you just screwed up. To your surprise, you receive a call several days later that your check has bounced due to "insufficient funds". What you forgot to consider is perhaps the most important aspect of financial management for the start-up phase of a self-funded new business: cash flow. Your cash flow statement for last month defines the raw dollars going in and out of ExampleTech during the given period, and looks something like this..

Cash at period start: $10K Equipment investment: $1K Net cash flow: -$1K Cash at period end: $9K

Remember the $6K of equipment you purchased before you opened your doors? It's only represented as $1K on the cash flow statement because $5K was put on credit, and creditors have not required ExtremeTech to pay out. The $3K shelled out for ClientComm production isn't represented here at all because you chose to finance the entire amount with credit.

Thus, your bank only has $9K of raw cash even though your balance sheet showed you at $23K of assets, which also includes accounts receivable: money that has been counted as income on your income statement but has not yet been collected. Accounts receivable did not contribute to your cash flow statement since no money actually exchanged hands during the period, even though the job is completed! The cash flow statement will not reflect the ClientComm job until you..

Cash the ClientComm check (which you really need), or
Pay the credit card bill.

ExampleTech was cash flow negative last month despite having positive income, a non-intuitive but not infrequent business occurrence. Being cash flow negative isn't in-and-of-itself a problem, but puts you in a short-term pickle because you don't physically have enough cash for the materials, and your credit is already maxed out at $8K. You're looking your next big client square in the face but don't yet have the assets to pull it off, and you'll be scrambling for the extra working capital to push forward rather than getting actual work done.

In Summary Self-funding your company comes with the perks of directional freedom, less time pressure and fewer legal complications at the cost of pressure to stay cash flow positive from day 1. The self-funded company cannot grow--let alone survive--without an early, consistent trend of positive cash flow as we've just demonstrated. ExampleTech won't have much wiggle room for strategic ventures and operational improvements until these numbers provide an ample financial buffer. Next We've glossed over quite a few important details such as taxes, loans, interest, accounts payable and, of course, paying yourself. So if you've found this information helpful and would like to see more content on the practical financial aspects of start-ups, let me know you'd like a Part 2 and the specific topics you'd like to know about!

Personal Business Advisement

preston.lee — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 05:36:13 +0000

Entrepreneurial? Me too. I know how incredibly difficult it is to build a profitable, sustainable business from scratch in today's Internet-enabled global economy. None of my successes would be possible without the brutal, honest guidance of professionals, wisdom of trusted advisors, courage and humility. Self confidence is important, but we all know that a feel-good "Just believe in yourself!" attitude isn't enough. You need the business intellect, financial know-how, marketing genius, communication skills, computer understanding and personal network in addition to your core ideas. I personally provide one-on-one guidance to those start-up entrepreneurs who are in it for the long haul, better or worse. This is neither for those solely interested in the money nor those just wanting to escape the daily grind; only those who are going to change the world are will not take "no" for an answer. Go hardcore or go home. We'll meet face-to-face, in person, regularly over the course of approximately six months. A 100 hour advisement agreement is required before starting. Don't leave it up to chance. Preston Lee

Journeta Podcast Now Available (Rubyology #70)

preston.lee — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:06:27 +0000

Chris Matthieu of Rubyology has posted the audio from my PRUG talk last week on building Ruby P2P apps with Journeta. Chris did an excellent editing job and the final product turned out very well! [iTunes] [Web] Running Time: ~1:04

joe_developer

preston.lee — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:01:37 +0000

Speaking At Joe Developer: Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

preston.lee — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:02:44 +0000

This Wednesday evening, OpenRain will be hosting and providing food for Phoenix's East-valley Joe Developer group. I'll be giving a getting-started-with-ruby-on-rails type demo, after which I'm sure there'll be good conversation and fun. Attendance and food are free. Food will be hot at 6PM. [Venue] [Google Group]

ableconf

preston.lee — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:11:39 +0000

Speaking Twice At ABLEconf: Saturday, September 20th, 2008

preston.lee — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:15:34 +0000

I'll be giving two sessions this Saturday, September 20th, 2008 at ABLEconf: Arizona Business and Liberty Experience hosted at the University of Advancing Technology. The first will be a ~50 minute getting-started-with-ruby-on-rails type session aimed at developers similar to the one I'm giving this Wednesday for Joe Developer. The second will be a plug-heavy talk over how OpenRain does F/OSS-friendly web development in the commercial space using F/OSS software and tools, targeted for a business-minded crowd. ABLEconf is a new event so I'm not sure what to expect, though I'd put my money on a lot of systems-level event content since much of the participation seems to be from local Linux groups.

The Poorest Cities

preston.lee — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 17:18:41 +0000

I don't fit in well with either of the major U.S. political parties. I certainly have opinions which favor one side or the other, but overall consider myself somewhat middle-leaning with a tendency towards libertarianism. I nevertheless found this editorial observation by Glenn Beck interesting on the top ten poorest American cities. On a related note, I'm reminded of a former Soviet teacher I had in college who shared many thought provoking stories, including the observation, "In the Soviet Union we were all equal...ly poor."

iPhone Developers May Now Speak... Almost

preston.lee — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:53:54 +0000

Apple announced this morning that the NDA preventing developers from holding open development discussions will be lifted. While details of the new agreement are not yet available, we are already beginning to see changes in the iPhone development landscape. Details on the first Phoenix iPhone Developer Group meeting will be announced tomorrow morning on the OpenRain blog! Publishers are also rejoicing, as many have been effectively sitting on completed books in anticipation of today. iPhone SDK Development by The Pragmatic Programmers is already available for immediate electronic download, and an O'Reilly representative has informed me that O'Reilly Media has just released iPhone Forensics. It begins.

Last Day For Voter Registration!

preston.lee — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:20:03 +0000

"Arizonans who want to vote in the Nov. 4 general election must register before Tuesday", reports 12 News. So don't be a chump. Register online now.

_mg_2016-1

preston.lee — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:03:22 +0000

_mg_1983

preston.lee — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:03:54 +0000

Photography Is A Lie: Creating Compelling Event Photos

preston.lee — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 04:17:50 +0000

When it comes to "good" event photography, it's a misconception that a given photo is representative of the entire event condensed down to a few well-framed shots. My process is both equal and opposite: to mislead the viewer into believing a few highly manipulated fleeting moments reflect the larger context by pleasing the eye with consciously undetectable lies. Flat-out, bold-faced, deception. Photography is about contorting perceptions of reality. We want to believe the handful of infinitesimally small glorious moments at our weddings, birthdays and holidays represent the way people felt the entire time, when they really only capture less than 1% of the entire event. Don't believe me? Watch a wedding video. The whole thing. Booooooring. No one really cares about the 45 minute toast or 15 minute car processional out of the parking lot. We do care, however, about the idea of the toast and vehicle processional and enjoy remembering the initial excitement, just not the long tail of boredom. You, as a photographer, thus have tremendous power to influence others perception of events if you teach your camera to lie.

For example, take this photo..

Yuck. It's your typical crap run-of-the-mill shot you'd see on flickr, and I don't feel anything special when I view it. It's true to reality, which isn't interesting. Now take this next shot...

Not fine art, but much better: not because the situation or environment changed, but because we've lied about several things.. Movement. Look closely for "lines" formed by different objects in the first shot. It's a chaotic mesh wherein the eye does know what to focus on. I don't know what I should be looking at so my eyes are jumping all over the place. Am I supposed to be looking at the water jug? ..the dog? I have no idea. But in the second shot, notice how the diagonal line formed by the bottom of the house and the ground is mimicked by the step up to the door; by the dogs front feet; by the direction the dog is looking and moving; by the orientation of the two dogs. The movement of the entire shot eminates from the top right corner and radiates outward towards the other three. I know what I should be looking at and feel like something is happening because we're created artificial movement. White balance. The first photo is fairly accurate in terms of of the ambient light quality. The light was slightly bluish, which also happened to match the physical temperature of being very cold. But I don't want you to feel cold. I want you to feel warm and fuzzy and giddy about the purdy doggy. The second shot feels warm, like a bright, sunny summer day, even though it was nearly freezing and about to rain. Color. We're pushed the saturation levels in the second shot to the extreme, but not quite so far as to detect our fib. Skies are not this blue, grass not this yellow/green, and adobe not this orange. Notice how every object has a distinct complementary color theme which is not intruded upon, as well as the exclusion of purple and red in the central theme. Framing and cropping. By removing unnecessary distractions, we're left with only the photos core concept to dwell upon. The negative space of the barren wall, sky and ground have distinct textures but are mostly devoid of objects which would steal our focus from the subject. We've tried to frame the dogs according to the rule of thirds, and all unnecessary concepts which could have been removed in the moment, have been. Conclusion Good photos are in the eye, not the technology, so you should strive to get great images straight out of the camera rather than rely on post-processing as a crutch. All of these concepts can be executed on a modern SLR and often only require post-processing for fine tuning. Extra Credit Update! Spot the lie in this photo. (Hint: there's an object in the room which shouldn't be there!)

_mg_2016

preston.lee — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:32:31 +0000

_mg_1983

preston.lee — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:33:06 +0000

_mg_2016-1

preston.lee — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:46:18 +0000

2922368500_289bd5e204

preston.lee — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:57:33 +0000

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preston.lee — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:58:49 +0000

Sustainable Living

preston.lee — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 07:06:09 +0000

One purpose of my visit to New Mexico last weekend was to see what a self-sustaining single-family habitat in the Southwestern United States would.. or at least could.. look like. Several observations of which those of the region should already be keenly aware...

We use entirely too much water. Luxuries such as golf courses in 110 degree (Fahrenheit) heat consume an absurd amount of resources. The Governator officially declared California to be in a drought earlier this year, and Arizona... well... it's a desert. Maybe we should lay off on the palm trees and grass, hmm? Fighting this hard against the Earth's ecological tendencies for the sake of luxury is bound to produce the highly inefficient modes of living to which we've become accustomed.
Solar water heaters and photovoltaic collectors will be huge. Output effecientcy levels are increasing, they are approaching blue-colar affordability due to technological improvements and rebate programs, and fall in line with the ideal of consuming local resources.
We eat poorly, and also consume a tremendous volume of costly non-native food. Foods simply lend themselves better to certain regions and we need to be more explorative of regional food options.
Gas sucks. We all know it so I won't go into it :(

This is a snapshot of my own macro-economic sustainability opinions, which change rapidly with the times and fall somewhere between ecological conservatism and hard-nosed financial feasibility. Sustainable American living activists need to focus on three primary goals: (1) significant cultural change in all socioecominic classes, (2) improving sustainability technologies to produce incentives for #1, and (3) figuring out how to reduce the human footprint in economic context to make #1 and #2 plausible. Specific ideas I would like to see pursued..

Focus aggrocultural subsidies away from small rural farms and onto medium-sized, community-run suburban farming initiatives which share equipment and resources. The notion of the independent, middle-American mom 'n' pop farm in Smallville will always be romantic, but you cannot ignore the economies of scale. We need to look at the production possibilities curve of farm size vs. output, factor in waste of transportation costs and pesticidal effects, and find a compromise which will allow significantly-sized local farms to produce native or near-native vegitation within a 20-mile radius of urban areas, while not requiring the populous to return to an aggregarian state or douse everything in chemicals. (Not that chemicals are inherently bad: just unnecessary and wasteful in many cases.)
Incentivize large-scale adoption of solar water heaters by artificially raising the cost of traditional indoor tank water heaters and using the difference for solar subsidies. It's ridiculous to spend energy heating a tank full of water in an empty air conditioned home when you could just put a damn tank outside in the sun for 10 minutes and have magnitudes more hot water for free. Sense make that does.
Incentivize large-scale adoption of household solar arrays by using artificial energy costs to subsidize payments to households selling energy back to the grid via bi-directional meters.
Plausible sustainability change requires working with the existing system. You can blame The Man all you want, but the world is not going to abruptly adopt better principles overnight. Changes need to come gradually--in a way people can slowly accept and adapt to--in incentives facilitated by the government, demand from the people, and interest of the industry.
Ceteris paribus, chose local products and services to keep money in the region and reduce waste.
Recycling costs cities too much. Trashing stuff costs citizens too little. Residents should force the issue with their municipality and compost the sanitary organic waste.
The food industry needs to stop wrapping every last item in a silly little shrink-wrapped cardboard box and sell everything OEM-hard-drive-style. That is, make one box for the display, but sell the product in an extremely minimalist biodegradable packaging. This will be (1) easier on consumers since there's less trash to deal with, (2) better for the environment, and (3) cheaper for everyone. You can put as many bright colors and wacky content on the display as you want, as well as print on the biodegradable packaging.

img_0118

preston.lee — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 03:26:57 +0000

img_0119

preston.lee — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 03:27:33 +0000

img_0120

preston.lee — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 03:28:08 +0000

Welcomed To The RRoD Club, Part 3

preston.lee — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 03:33:11 +0000

I sat down 30 minutes ago to enjoy a final quiet hour of gaming before starting my next class tomorrow, and Microsoft kindly reminded me why I no longer use their other computing products.. yet again. First, the damn console insisted on crashing 3 times in about 5 minutes while playing Fable off of Xbox Live Arcade. The 360 just does that sometimes. Yeah. But then... Microsoft FAIL. Is there a Frequent RRoD Club or something? I feel like I should be accumulating RRoD miles.

bbb

preston.lee — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:54:16 +0000

Better Business Bureau Racketeering

preston.lee — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:56:57 +0000

I received a cold-call this week from a glowing BBB saleswoman representative excited to inform me that not only has OpenRain been invited to join the BBB, but the 45 second Q&A at the beginning of our call qualified us for membership. And we can have the blessing and support of the BBB for the low low price of only $445. Let's think about this for a moment. The BBB is supposedly a not-for-profit organization formed to protect and inform consumers on the ethical status of businesses. BBB funding, however, comes directly from the businesses they "investigate" in the form of membership fees. This means the BBB has a direct conflict of interest. An operational company with a clean record and good references (such as OpenRain) has no need of the BBB except as a promotional novelty, and a company with a dirty record has no reason to pay to the BBB save for "cleaning up" their business record. There's a name for this type of scheme; it's called protection racketeering and is the same type of "business" performed by mobs. No thanks. Complete follow-up email below, though contact information changed to protect the mobsters representatives identity. Please do your own research on the BBB and help spread the word to prevent other startups from falling prey to this scam. ---- Dear Preston, I enjoyed speaking with you regarding our invitation to become an Accredited Business with your BBB . You will be part of an elite group of businesses who have undergone a review process and adhere to the highest standards of business. I have enclosed our benefit package for you to review and a link to our website. Your annual BBB dues are $445. (This includes the BBB OnLine Logo!) We accept credit card or check by phone for your convenience. Please call me later at XXX-XXX-XXXX and we can take a few minutes to complete the accreditation information. We are the leader in marketplace trust and we look forward to having your company recognized as "BBB Accredited." Thanks again and have a great day. Xxxxx Xxxx | Business Relations Representative

silas_2162_small

preston.lee — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:15:16 +0000

Baby Pictures To Make You Smile

preston.lee — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:17:04 +0000

I shot my nephews first birthday party this weekend. If these shots don't make you smile, you may have a degenerative muscular facial disorder all up in the smilin' region. Seriously... see a doctor. [flickr slideshow]

Free Cross-Browser Testing

preston.lee — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:53:20 +0000

If you're a web designer or developer, definitely check out browsershots.org. It's a free, easy tool for grabbing screenshots across browsers and platforms. Let's hope the site stays supported!

2008 Year-End OpenRain Reflections

preston.lee — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 20:27:36 +0000

A couple weeks ago OpenRain had a private dinner party for staff and significant others to get to know each other better. Amidst each new wine bottle we talked about friends, family, etc... and discovered that our graphic designer becomes exceedingly funny with each glass of Pino. Beforehand, though, we had an internal meeting to note the goals we achieved/missed for 2008, and our high-level goals for 2009. I won't go into the details, but the message is clear.. 2008 exceeded expectation, and 2009 will be huge. We'll be growing.. a lot. Actually, we'll most likely need to move again before summer. That'll be an exciting time, but moving is always a massive pain. I do, however, look forward to hosting larger events without needing to borrow space from other suites in the building. Issues with our current lease notwithstanding, there should be plenty of options. We actually already have our eyes on a space, but it's too early to speculate on. I'm feeling great about the team and our opportunities in the new year. We *do* have capacity in January we're needing to fill (December is not a great time to be signing new web development projects), and have a new business development manager (John De Santiago) to own most of the new relationship development process, freeing my time for things which I'm better suited. With layoffs in Fortune 500 companies continuing to occur on a regular basis, I personally expect education enrollment and new small business start-up numbers to rise. Apollo Group (University of Phoenix) apparently just had it's best quarter *ever*. American budgets in general, however, are being cut. It's hard to say what this means for OpenRain's web development business, but I think we'll be fine by increasing attention towards marketing and sales activities. It's funny to think I felt the same nervous excitement this time last year, but seeing as 2008 went so well, that's a good sign of things to come.

What If Ruby Had Final Variables Like Java Or Erlang?

preston.lee — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:13:01 +0000

After a long confusing Ruby debate today at OpenRain on the merits of functional, Erlang-esque write-once-read-many variables, I'm going to step onto the podium and just say it... Ruby should get "final" or "const" variables in a similar semantic style to Java, except at runtime. Rather than ramble on for 12 paragraphs explaining exactly how this might work, read this fictitious Ruby code snippet instead. (Optional: Also check out the chapter on "final" in Hardcore Java.) Final variables like this are really just an inline TDD mechanism. Allowing local stack data to be constant provides no functional enhancements to the software, but alleviates the need for certain types of tests by using the compiler and/or runtime to assert certain memory is immutable. The "friend_best" method variant in the code snippet would obviously break most existing Ruby programs, but ups the bar for defensive programming by preventing many common bugs out-of-the-box while still providing support for traditional Ruby variables. At the very least we should have something like "friend_better". Adding this information to the parse tree will also make it easier for IDEs to provide features more easily implemented for static languages. TDD/BDD is in--no qualms about it--but we can make our code safer, cleaner and more concise by applying some of the lessons learned by our statically-typed language cousins over the last few decades.

img_0167

preston.lee — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 20:50:38 +0000

Ben The Snowman Picture

preston.lee — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 20:52:30 +0000

OpenRain's heater when out recently, and it got cold. Property management figured out how to hack the unit into a working state again, but only after some badgering. Ben dropped some not-so-subtle hints :)

How To Make Original iPhone Sim Work In iPhone 3G

preston.lee — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:04:51 +0000

I live in the U.S. and upgraded from the original iPhone to an iPhone 3G. If you simply put your old SIM into the 3G, however, you will only be able to use EDGE, and the phone will not use the 3G network. When purchasing a 3G model, multiple Apple sales representatives advised me that I would need to either keep each SIM in the phone with which it shipped and call AT&T to swap the phone numbers, or order a new SIM card for my existing number. Problem: AT&T won't switch the phone numbers since each phone is still obligated to its own, separate 2-year contract, and ordering a new SIM will cost you $25. Solution: I physically went to an AT&T store and explained the issue. The sales rep just had to perform some voodoo in his computer system to enable 3G for the original iPhone SIM so it could be used in the new model and access 3G services. This allows AT&T to avoid having to modify any contracts while allowing you to upgrade to an iPhone 3G and use 3G services. Done!

asset_tracker

preston.lee — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:54:53 +0000

Asset Tracking Webapp Written In Ruby On Rails

preston.lee — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:03:33 +0000

Keeping track of company assets is important for insurance, warrantee and general informational purposes for purchased software licenses and hardware. I wanted a dirt-simple webapp written in Ruby on Rails, so I wrote one the other night and put the code on github. It's a really simple Rails 2.2.2 app ... no frills but does the job. If anyone would like to add some frills such as searching, sorting, pagination etc. I'd be happy to pull them back in. OpenRain would be very thankful :)

asset_tracker

"A simple web-based asset tracking system for small businesses written in Ruby on Rails (RoR). New equipment is assigned to a specific location and the responsible person is notified of the assignment. You may optionally add serial numbers and an arbitrary amount of notes to each asset. Configured to run on top of PostgreSQL and sendmail by default, though both are reconfigurable."

drive_fail

preston.lee — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 05:19:50 +0000

Major Seagate/Maxtor Fail

preston.lee — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 05:22:22 +0000

It's Friday, 10pm, and I'm not a happy camper. This picture is me holding a pile of ordinary hard drives I keep on my home desk. They are cycling backup drives and are not in any way frequently used. Four are Seagate Barracudas--one of which I've already had replaced--and the fifth a Maxtor DiamondMax. The oldest of the bunch appears to be from 2002 and all are PATA 200-250GB models. I'm unhappy because I picked them up tonight to run a very infrequent backup of all my household data: over a TiB worth while requiring the use of all of them for a complete home backup. Much too my dismay, I won't be running any backups this weekend. Failure rate: 100%. (5 out of 5 failures.) I haven't been this unhappy with a manufacturer since the last of my IBM DeathStars failed around 2003. Fortunately all the Seagate models are still under warrantee, but such performance is still disheartening and frustrating. What's happened to quality drive manufacturing in the 21st century? Some of the ~10MB hard drives in my 486-era machines easily lasted 10+ years, but a single drive these days lasting over 3 seems ever more scarce. Sigh.

The Three Types of Start-Ups

preston.lee — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:11:56 +0000

At OpenRain Elite Web Software we've seen all the popular combinations of startup business models when evaluating new projects. Here is a breakdown of the three most common startup models based on financial structure, the pros and cons of each, and recommendations on which one to choose for your new venture. 1) The Pop-Start The pop-start--short for "popular startup"--is the stereotypical venture capital (VC) or Angel backed venture wherein an initial product prototype is created with a small angel fund, pitched to investors once (barely) operational, and subsequently funded for $1M+ in a second, third etc. round to fund growth to a profitable status. As each round is collected, additional personnel are generally hired immediately to kick off additional production development in a (hopefully correct) high-velocity direction. Pros

Should you raise enough in your initial rounds and find the right people, you'll be able to keep the company operational in the early growth stages without incessant worry on keeping positive cash flow, which, depending on the idea, may not be possible.
Fast growth once the big investment dollars roll in.
A minimum of personal risk since only the initial angel round will likely come from close ties.

Cons

Tons of investor pitches and marketing/sales-speak on vaporware which will drive technical people insane.
Legal issues from the get-go. Expect difficult negotiations with second round investors and costly legal fees.
You'll have to put up cash for airfare, lodging, marketing materials, legal fees etc. up front for possibly dozens of remote meetings. The costs add up fast.
Large amounts of constant pressure from investors.

This is for you if...

Your idea requires a substantial capital investment to get off the ground, such as $100K in federal licensing costs or $500K in manufacturing equipment for a first line of production product. You legitimately need this funding to get off the ground, and the amount is too large to put up yourself.
Your exit strategy is getting bought out by Google for $100B.
You can afford the risk of working on this full time, with little (or no) compensation up front and no gaurantees on a second round of funding.

2) The Weekend Warrior The proliferation of online services for company creation has allowed many dreamers to create legitimate legal business shells in free time for hundreds of dollars. The weekend warrior start-ups are those who believe in the idea, but cannot financially afford to quit day jobs. Pros

Low risk. If the company fails, you still have your day job.
Low cost. You still have the income from your day job, so eating small operational costs should be easy. If you're supporting a large family on a single income, this may be your best option.

Cons

Making progress is painfully slow since it's an "in my spare time" project.
People will not take your business as seriously since you are not committing your livelihood to it.
The logistics of getting things done off-hours can be challenging, such as finding the time for calls during business hours without interfering with your day job.

This is for you if...

You can only commit yourself to working nights and weekends.
You cannot accept large financial risk.
You do not require large capital investments to reach financially sustainable operation.
You can accept the fact that progress and growth will be slow.

3) The Self Serve Self Serve businesses are full-time owner operated organizations which grow based on their own performance, rather than external investment. They are self-funded, full-time ventures which put the responsibility of success squarely on the owner(s) since there is often no formal governing board. OpenRain's web development business started this way, and continues to be entirely self funded. Pros

No pressure from investors.
Full-time personal investment gives you time to put operations in order.
Will be taken seriously by potential clients/customers.

Cons

Self-funded. This can be mitigated by limiting personal credit exposure, but there's no getting around the fact that initial operating costs will need to come out-of-pocket, and losses may personally bite you regardless of the precautions you take.
Personal pressure to constantly generate income since your personal income will be determined by the performance of the company.

This is for you if...

External funding is not appropriate or necessary for your idea.
You (and you business partners) are comfortable operating the entirety of a business amongst yourselves, our are able to invest in quality people to fill in the holes as soon as possible. Technical work, finances, marketing, sales, human resources, operations and 8000 other miscellaneous tasks will crop up needing someone's attention. And that someone is you.

slideology

preston.lee — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:44:52 +0000

Book Review: slide:ology

preston.lee — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:00:46 +0000

I recently received a review copy of slide:ology - The art and science of creating great presentations by Nancy Duarte, published by O'Reilly Media. I'm consciously making an effort to increase my frequency of speaking engagements, so I was thrilled to see a modern text on visual aids from a heavy usability-oriented angle. I've read the first two chapters so far and skimmed the majority of the remainder. slide:ology is cleverly designed to read and flow like a presentation itself, although the content is far more in depth than an ordinary slide deck. Each of the 275 pages is a pleasure to look at, and the individual page designs themselves provide a great deal of inspiration. I'm particularly thrilled to see such creative use of negative space and negative geometry in many of the designs. Many texts on marketing effectively use the exact opposite approach. Pros

Visually inspirational. Tons of great ideal for your next keynote.
Useful outside of the speaking domain. Many of the design ideas can be applied to print media and web design as well.
Good copy which is brief and easy to follow.
Reasonably priced.
A great coffee table/break room book.

Cons

You may have to implement many of these designs yourself. I'd easily pay an extra $5 for an optional download of Keynote templates ready to go, as well as the raw graphics files used in production.
A slightly awkward print format. I understand why, but it doesn't fit as well on the shelf as I'd life.

Overall, slide:ology is a great little piece of speaking inspiration by Nancy Duarte. Great job! (I expect more like this.) Buy slide:ology here.

permalink_redirect

preston.lee — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 05:24:42 +0000

How To Change A WordPress Permalink Structure While Preserving SEO

preston.lee — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 05:28:50 +0000

I've been putting off changing my blog permalink structure for about 2 years for fear of getting SEO-smacked by Google. No joke. WordPress allows you to easy change the permalink structure with a few clicks, but doesn't generate permanent redirect (HTTP 301) responses for visitors using the old link structure. Non-redirection link changes for established blogs extremely unwise since you lose all the SEO goodness with search engines such as Google, so I sat down tonight to figure out how to safely make the change. The easiest solution is to use the Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin by Scott Yang. This creates a "Permalink Redirect" page under "Settings" in the WordPress admin area where you may specify the old permalink structure from which to redirect. Incoming visitors to the old URLs will automatically 301 permanent redirect to the new URL structure as expected. Thanks, Scott! I also tried the redirection features of the Platinum SEO and Advanced Permalinks plugins. Platinum SEO can handle post-specific permalink changes, but not site-wide permalink changes. Advanced Permalinks is no longer maintained and did not work for me within WordPress 2.7.

Everyone Should Grow Up Poor

preston.lee — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:42:12 +0000

There are only two relatives I've ever known to whom I've felt a strong biological connection. One of them died last month. This is a tribute to her... I spent the majority of my early childhood growing up with my mother in a single-room add-on attached to the side of my grandmothers house in a Northern suburb of Chicago. My mother never went to college and worked very hard to keep us financially safe doing jobs such as data entry. She is a very hard worker that gains personal satisfaction from a job well done and was always gainfully employed, so we were never poor in the hungry, homeless or other romantic sense, but firmly lower class, yes. My mom still loves to tell the story of how I didn't understand you could purchase food without a coupon clipped from the Sunday paper. She didn't have a lot of free personal time due to being a single parent, but made it work. I don't think I would handle that lifestyle well, and have a tremendous respect for single parents trying to make ends meet while "being there" for the kid(s). I was even fortunate enough to get a hand-me-down obsoleted Macintosh computer from my mother's coworker on which I typed school papers from elementary school until high school. The land and house I grew up in had been established by my grandparents some years after World War II. My grandma grew up on a farm and filled the house walls with rural-feeling nick-nacks and small-town artifacts. The surrounding neighborhood became caught in urban sprawl and began to transform into luxurious mansions settled comfortably on 1-acre lots. My father is a South Korean immigrant who came to America for a better life, and eventually found his place in California. The balls it takes to pack a suitcase and move to a foreign country with a pocket full of dreams continues to astound me. I recall listening to him confidently lay out his plans to run his own successful businesses as so many other Asian immigrants did in Los Angeles. Looking back on the first 18 years of my life, I now realize... Having less in an environment of opportunity can be empowering. When you have less, you feel like you must improve yourself to be noticed amongst peers. No one can fix a situation with a magic wand should you fail, so you must dedicate yourself to tasks because success will not otherwise come. And if you succeed, you're not stuck with a convoluted sense of entitlement to a world full of subordinate peons. You know exactly how hard it is to make it in life because you've seen the sacrifices and tears from your family and friends. You chose your fate, and made it come true. I enjoy the niceties in life just as much as the next guy (who doesn't?), but I feel good that I don't feel entitled to them. I know that if I get a nice dinner or fun new toy, I earned it, and I'm going to be more proud and protective of it than if you just handed it to me. It's not just another disposable object; it's mine because I consciously caused a chain of meaningful events resulting in a reward. Push the button, get a treat. So here's the deal. If you win the next Powerball jackpot, you get to keep a few million to secure your home, family and reasonable lifestyle, and have some fun while you're at it. Go for it. Take a vacation on the International Space Station or something. I'd do the same. But you don't get to blow $5 million in Vegas or $50 million on a toy. You hire a financial management team and get to work doing something meaningful with your fortune (and your life) by sheltering homeless children, curing cancer, something. Make the world a better place. And if you're investing wisely, you'll feed off the inherent greed of the system and use the profits to further your own philanthropy. Keep the compassion, dreams and simple contentment of being poor, and use the power of being rich to change the world. The fated rich have not such empathy for the masses. Do not strive to be rich. Do not strive to possess. Do not strive to control. Do not seek admiration of the world. Do not seek approval of authority. Do not strive to be popular. Do not be a pessimist. Do not dwell on the past. Strive to be wise. Strive to be kind. Strive to be selfless. Strive to be loving. Strive to be more. Strive to do more. Strive to use less. Strive to be an example. Strive to leave the world a better place than you found it. Strive to redefine humanity.

Presenting At Phoenix Ruby Monday, February 9th

preston.lee — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:42:06 +0000

I'll be giving a technical presentation to the Phoenix Ruby User Group on Monday, February 9th at 6:30pm. The topic will be using logical programming Prolog concepts within the object-oriented Ruby programming language using the ruby_prolog gem. Attendance is free and open!

Hiring For IT: What We're Doing Wrong & How To Fix It

preston.lee — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:42:13 +0000

HR departments for many technology firms tend to be a bit backwards in the way they evaluate potential hires. An HR member or technical recruiter will typically contribute to the never ending stream of listings posted to the popular online job sites. The subsequent flood of applicants is then filtered by HR before passing on candidates to the geeks. The key issue is that HR cannot realistically be expected to hold all the technical knowledge necessary to appropriately evaluate and filter applicants based on technical criteria. Many resumes are thus evaluated off keywords alone, or ridiculous automated online exams that supposedly quantify a candidates abilities based off asinine declarative factoids. My personal hiring strategy, while admittedly skewed towards finding only top tier entrepreneurial people, follows these steps..

Go to the core of The Right Persons culture. Forget about the "Java" checkbox on Dice.com. Figure out what The Right Person does online, and go there directly. Post a Java job to the local JUG mailing list, or a Ruby job to the Ruby talk group, for example. Only people genuinely into these topics sign up for mailing lists and forums, so by going straight to the cultural center of the ideal candidates interests you've already filtered out the dingbats who would apply just for the sake of applying. The Right Person is probably already employeed and thus would not be checking monster.com anyway. Allow HR to apply their own filters after you've identified the right culture.
Evaluate their communication skills via email and phone. When was the last time you read an uber-competent technologist who ended every sentence with three exclamation points and a smiley face!!! :) Yeah.. me neither. The subtleties of written language reveal how in touch one is with technical culture. They might have extensive experience with 16 different databases on their resume, but if they can't explain--in laymans terms--what a database driver does, I can't see him/her being able to produce well-documented results or be terribly useful in business meetings. Ar-tic-u-la-tion of one's thoughts in both written and spoken word is critical to effectiveness.
Talk about technology in general. I don't expect you to know the internals of the JVM to be qualified for a Java developer position. I do expect you to keep current on general technology trends and always have your ears open. I expect you to constantly learn and get your hands dirty, and I expect you've done some of it on your own time.
Ask the right questions. "What type of Exception does Socket.close() throw?" would be the wrong question. Phrase your technical inquires such that they are open ended, recognize that He/She Is Not Google, and allow the respondent to give an intelligent response even if they do not know the answer. Example: "How would you describe the lifecycle of a network connection?" The question is specific enough such that a knowledgeable person can immediately give a thorough answer, but not overly so such that it is a miniscule factoid you'd see on Jeopardy. Also ask questions which are subjective or provide incomplete information, such as, "Which Java OR/M technology would you use in a new web application?". You're not looking for a "correct" response, but to gauge how'll they'll react when prompted with incomplete, unclear or clearly stupid business requests. Just like the real world. Arrogance and stubbornness can often show through with a definitive answer to such questions, whereas a more pragmatic person might say "It depends." followed by a diatribe on the pros and cons of various options.
Invest the time. Many large companies outsource recruitment because they see it as a secondary distraction to the organizations primary tasks. But the thing is... putting the right people in the right roles is as core to your business as it gets. And for the prices charged by technical recruiters, the $20K+ per head can easily be spent on competent geek personnel dedicated to networking in the correct communities for purposes of recruitment.

But don't fret: there are companies trying to change the system. For the time being, however, keep this mind next time you hear an interview going on down the hall... Organization and role-specific cultural requirements come first; HR policy requirements come second.

The Truth About Integrating Rails In The Enterprise

preston.lee — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:42:57 +0000

Ruby on Rails is a great RAD framework. We use it all the time. But one place Rails loses its magic--while not the fault of the framework itself--is with external integrations to legacy systems. First of all, soap4r sucks. Everyone I've seen try to pick it up has gotten frustrated and angry at how awkward it is to write a SOAP client in Ruby compared to Java and .Net tools, which can do the same thing in a matter of minutes. Since RoR IDEs aren't exactly 1337 yet, we need to put some serious love here as a community to prevent larger companies with heavy SOA leanings from running away screaming. For some reason, many people seem to think that pouring t3h Rails int3rn3ts into an infrastructure will suddenly trim 75%+ off all development and maintenance costs, complete with rounded corners and shrink-wrapped buttons. Wrong. Many of the development tasks will take significantly shorter times to develop under timeframe expectations relative to Java and .Net, yes, but you can't avoid costs associated with migrating legacy data and integrating with retarded external systems such as your ghetto-ass SOAP services. Nor should you avoid design activities such as usability analysis or proper testing practices. So if you have a web project that lives in complete isolation and does not have any legacy issues with which to deal, OpenRain can bust out that web project in a heartbeat. But if you have unresolved data management and integration issues, there is no acts_as_silver_bullet plugin which can save you the burden of having to actually think about and address those problems. Rails isn't the cold bucket of water for your data nightmares.

logical-programming-with-ruby-prolog

preston.lee — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 04:36:56 +0000

PDF

preston.lee — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 04:38:19 +0000

Logical Programming With ruby-prolog Slides

preston.lee — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 02:28:29 +0000

I gave a ~1 hour talk last night to the Phoenix Ruby developers group on how to implement logical programming concepts in Ruby using the ruby-prolog gem recently released by OpenRain. Enjoy! [Keynote] [PDF] [Slideshare] [Code] [Releases]

Offering Developers Startup Equity, A Dialog

preston.lee — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:40:42 +0000

I have this conversation about once a month, generally by a well-intentioned dreamer new to the software space who doesn't understand why OpenRain can't accept projects for equity. I may be exaggerating slightly, but it sure feels this way... :) Preston: Hi Bill, nice to meet you. How can OpenRain help you develop your online venture? Bill: I have a unique web startup opportunity worth $4B and am accepting HTML experts to implement it. Preston: [immediately suspicious of the phrase "HTML expert"] Ok, you have my attention. What's the business plan? Bill: It's essentially a combination of eBay, Facebook... Preston: [senses where this is going] Bill: ...Slashdot and TheSuperficial. Preston: It's a news and auction site for celebrity social networks? Bill: No no no, it's more like Google meets MySpace. Preston: Like.. Orkut? Bill: Kinda, but simpler. Preston: [completely confused] Back to the business plan part for a minute. Could you tell me about the nature of the business? Is this an ad-based site? Bill: No. Preston: Ahh, ok. Some sort of subscription thing then like Salon or TheOnion? Bill: No way. Users hate paying for stuff. It'll affect our bottom line. We're going to keep it free for everybody. And green. We should probably add a database of sites using ecological products. And videos, of course. Preston: [now confident of where this is going] Let me restate the question. Where did that $4B figure come from? Bill: YouTube was bought out for $18B. Google will be all over this after we capture 10% market share. Preston: [completely ignores the issues with those two sentences] I see. To be completely honest, I should share a couple general thoughts. [brings up telephone script #4 from personal wiki] We haven't talked about budgets at all, but I assume this is an equity-share idea, and I'm really honored you thought of us. There are a lot of development shops out there, and I'm happy and thankful we stood out to you. Unfortunately, we're not accepting equity-based projects at this time for two primary reasons. First--and again all in frank honesty--we have the technical, business and other resources to implement these things on our own without external partners. We have a lot of great ideas, and it makes the most sense for us to pursue them internally. Secondly, it's our goal to treat employees the way we all want to be treated: with respect, recognition and great benefits. That comes with cash flow requirements we just can't meet with equity-heavy relationships. I'm going to email you some contact information for other resources you may want to follow up with directly, and I think you'll find that reputable software engineering shops will share these two sentiments in common as a matter of prudence. We look forward to working with you in the future, however, and we'll keep in touch periodically to check up on you! [exchange of pleasantries]

The Financial State of Arizona

preston.lee — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:40:23 +0000

The Arizona Joint Legistlative Budget Committee (JLBC) released two documents yesterday quantifying the effects of U.S. economic fear, uncertainty and doubt as it applies to Arizona's 2009 budget, and proposals for 2010. The big question on U.S. minds is, "How will all this affect my business?" By most accounts the answer is not positive. The JLBC's February 12, 2009 budget update puts "January revenues 21.5%...below [fiscal year] 2008", for a cumulative 2-year decline of 35.9%. "January results [are] significantly worse than expected", says slide 4 of the report. These numbers directly translate to additional lump-sum budget cuts for state-funded programs, including the Arizona University System. Layoffs in the private sector worsen the situation via a direct reduction in state sales and employment taxes. In a 2010 appropriations hearing presentation also released yesterday, the committee discussed specific cuts to a page-long list of Arizona institutions. A 2010 option for reducing the Arizona University System budget calls for a $160.6 million lump-sum reduction. "ABOR and university system received a combined $141.5 million lump sum reduction [in 2009]." Such changes would affect Arizona's Arizona State University, University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University despite higher projected enrollment numbers and tuition increases across the board. Arizona State leads in projected enrollment increases at 4% in 2010, with 15% at the East campus. Arizona University System tuition prices have increase an average of 8.5% annually since 2004. The effect? All employees and families of the state of Arizona are nervous to find out, as "[c]urrent forecasts can indicate the direction of the economy, not its precise landing point", to quote the 2009 update report. The nightly news will likely continue to cover layoffs, salary cuts and sob stories for Arizona not-for-profits for the foreseeable future, and it seems unlikely that a "quick fix" will restore budgets to previous levels as existing layoffs and budget decisions cannot be quickly recovered. Please tell me I'm wrong.

10 Woes Of Small Business Ownership

preston.lee — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:13:31 +0000

You work more than anyone else.
You cannot take time off at leisure.
You carry constant stress.
You get paid less.
You get paid last.
You pay for other peoples taxes and benefits.
You always deal with the "problem" cases, not the fun ones.
You are asked for more-more-more, often by those who already have more than you.
Your sacrifices will not be recognized, and rarely noticed.
You will not be thanked for all of the above.

10 Joys Of Small Business Ownership

preston.lee — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 19:49:04 +0000

Don't fret about those woes! For on a daily basis...

You are building something greater than the sum of its parts.
You set the mission, vision and values.
You define the right people, right roles, and right rules.
You will push constantly to explore and learn to think outside your comfort zone.
You will often fall, but consistently stand up stronger... usually.
You will grow leaps and bounds professionally and personally.
You will come to understand the wisdom of those you admire, and fear.
You are pursuing your dreams and will pity those that lack the courage to pursue theirs.
You have no limit to your possible successes.
You are the driver of your destiny.

I'd also like to emphasise that none of these items are directly focusued on the immense financial wealth of which we all hope. Over time wealth may or may not come, but the common factor amongst all great entrepreneurs is the primary importance of personal satisfaction regardless of monetary riches. At times--and during all stages of business--progress can require a certain amount of financial masochism and sacrifice, yes, but always should you be proud of what you've done, where you're headed, and excited for the treasures of the next day.

Handling Fuzzy Requirements

preston.lee — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:01:21 +0000

I had a great conversation with remi Taylor of OpenRain Software today on how to handle fuzzy requirements when the customer isn't available. You've been there... you get an issue tracking ticket like "Add Foozle Support" only to find no explanation of what this means other than the issue title. The customer/decision maker decided to add this ticket as your number one priority 2 minutes before getting on a space shuttle to Jupiter and is unavailable for clarification clear through next month. The customer says it's the top priority, though, so you've got to do something. The problem is an unaddressed gap in requirements between concept and action. In the customers mind, the concept may be clear. They may have a mental concept of what a Foozle is, what it means to the business, and how it will interact with the rest of the system. They may even have a GUI mockup laid out in mental Photoshop securely filed into the right hemisphere of their gray matter. As the developer, however, you don't know any of this, and cannot act until you've figured out what the fooz you're supposed to do. The temptation in this situation is to pick up the keyboard and start coding according to your best guess of what the customer should have explicitly specified, since it's not possible to reach him/her and you have to deliver something before they return. So you add a "foozles" table to the database, create some forms, tie it into the search algorithm and write a robust suite of regression tests. You are now the de facto project expert on Foozle and Foozle-related issues, and are pretty freakin' proud of your work. The milestones completes, Foozle support hits production and it's all good. The customer returns from Jupiter delighted to find their feature request ticket resolved as successfully completed. They check out the work, and gaze wide-eyed upon the screen. Squinty eyes and an emoticon-like frowny face ensue, and all hell breaks loose. Sound familiar? Yes: there has been a clear and obvious failure in process and communication. You--the developer--probably even muttered this when the issue hit your inbox, but let's just assume that this particular real-world situation meant that the "proper" process wasn't followed for legitimate reasons and you certainly weren't about to twiddle your thumbs for two months waiting to meet with the customer upon return. Fail? Yes. The customers fault for hit-and-run management? Probably. But could you have handled the situation better? Yes! Let's look at what could have happened to make an unfortunate situation a little sunnier... When you first started thinking about the issue, you made the same mistake as the customer: you jumped from concept to a mental action plan without communicating the assumptions under which you made it. You formed your own mental concept of what a Foozle is, what it means to the business, how it will interact with the rest of the system, and created your own mental mockup. Unfortunately, all your concepts and conclusions ended up being completely different from the customers (since you couldn't discuss them), and none of these discrepancies were discovered until delivery. For our purposes, the interesting part about the situation is not that the lack of clear requirements prevented delivery of the "correct" system (according to the customer), but that you did not state your mental assumptions about Foozles because your instincts told you it was a pointless exercise. The customer was on Jupiter and couldn't possibly respond on time, so why bother? ...right? Quite the contrary! It is critically important to document assumptions on unclear requirement--especially when the customer is absent--because it places accountability of correct feature development back on the customer. What if your first reaction to the situation was to add a comment to the issue like this?...

I'm going to accept and attempt this issue, but I can't find any detailed information on what needs to happen and REALLY need some customer time (~1-2 hours) so I know I'm going in the right direction. Not having this information leaves me with a LOT of fuzziness on what the expectation are, so here's what I'm going to do... [Explanation of your approach to the problem, explicitly making and stating assumptions as necessary in lieu of clear customer requirements. If you need a definitive answer that you can't get, explicitly define one as an assumption so the reader knows how you're getting from high-level concepts to lower-level action.] If any of this is incorrect, PLEASE ping me IMMEDIATELY. I'm going to start development soon and want to definitively understand the intent of this ticket to avoid wasting time!

Your assumptions could be wrong. Really wrong. They could be so wrong that you've wasted 100% of your time because the customer made a typo and meant "Woozle", not "Foozle". The key difference is that you've been proactive in specifying missing requirements and gave the customer a non-confrontational opportunity to clarify their intention so you can Get It Done Right. Your clear, wrong assumption statements on Foozle concepts should--if the client was fulfilling their obligation--have triggered an immediately phone call from the customer. It didn't, and that sucks, but given a tricky situation you've done pretty much everything you can do to assure the system is correct (short of a high-speed intergalactic chase to flag down the customer), and of that you can be proud. In the best case, someone familiar with Foolze semantics will chime in to represent the customer until they return. In the worst case, the angry customer call will at least go much better since you can point to your desperate pleas for clarification on specific items, timestamped in a timeline manner before any of the "wrong" work was done.

name_entry

preston.lee — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 05:22:53 +0000

Captain Preston McAwesome Lee

preston.lee — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 05:26:31 +0000

Right now, in an alternate quantum reality, I'm laughing my ass off...

My FonWallet Story: Making It All Public

preston.lee — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:18:15 +0000

Update: April 26th, 2009. I've had a few brief conversations with Todd over telephone and IM, and have offered to cease pursuing both judgments and remove this post from this website provided a prompt, reasonable payment schedule for the personal judgement against Todd. He has committed to proposing me a payment settlement plan by the end of April, 2009. I am currently awaiting this documentation. There are several areas of this post in which he has taken issue. Since many people have already read this post I am hesitant to silently change copy, so for readability purposes I have highlighted that original copy in bold, followed it with additional personal commentary in square brackets, and Todd's verbatim remarks in curly braces. ---- I've avoided writing on this for a year and a half now, but have been pushed to do so by several inquiring minds over the past year and a half not affiliated with the company. Some documentation on this can be found in public record, and some not. I will note the points on which I'm speculating. None of this information is covered by any NDA I am under. The company under discussion is generally known as "FonWallet", though the official legal entity has changed numerous times and is fairly tangled in the personal affairs of one of its owners, Todd Coulter. {Todd, April 16th, 2009: "This is totally false, inaccurate and easily proven"} [Preston: April 26th, 2009: When I first became involved in the project, most important assets at the time seemed to have direct ties to Todd, personally, rather than the company: such as bank accounts, server assets, and vendor accounts. At the time, at least, there were a handful of different entities that all centered around Todd... A few I recall were FonWallet Payment Solutions, Inc., FonWallet Payment Solutions, Ltd., MBXIP, SipCellNet... possibly other I do not remember. I do NOT have detailed knowledge of the activities of those additional entities, nor do I make ANY claims as to how--if at all--they currently relate back to FonWallet. Also note that I still have the original stock certificate log books for FPS, Inc. and FPS, Ltd.] I have neither vindictive nor harmful wishes against anyone affiliated with the company: only to be compensated for my work. I personally performed a significant amount of work for FonWallet, at the time know as FonWallet Payment Solutions, Inc. and now known as FonWallet Transactions, Inc., largely in the first half of 2007. It is a startup operated largely in Phoenix. {Todd, April 16th, 2009: "This is again totally false, inaccurate and easily proven"} [Preston: April 26th, 2009: I personally know more than a few people of current and former involvement with the project that are local to the Phoenix area. Whether or not Phoenix represents a majority of the projects cumulative efforts, I do not know: simply that there is a significant amount of work being done in Phoenix. With regards to the entity primarily associated with the project, all current documentation I can find--including the FonWallet.com website itself--leads me to believe that "FonWallet Transactions" is now the preferred nomenclature. This could be wrong, but from the perspective of a reasonable outside observer, this definitely seems to be the case.] Employees/Contractors of the company were initially paid as promised, however, dollars dried up around summer and most of the concurrent staff stopped received compensation. The only reason some of us stayed on as long as we did was due to a personal guarantee made by Todd Coulter to personally cover the staff debts if the company was not able. Soon thereafter I moved on. Others stayed. As far as I know, none of the compensation owed across that period has ever been paid, even though the company has been in operation under a new name. I am aware of at least 2 others people owned money by Todd Coulter, personally. Mr. Coulter eventually became completely unresponsive to inquiries on the matter, which prompted me to file suit. (AFAIK I'm the only that did so.) Mr. Coulter did not respond to the suit. A motion for judgment was made on 12/12/2007, and ruled upon in my favor shortly thereafter. Two suits were actually filed, with myself (Preston Lee) as the plaintiff for both. The first names FonWallet Payment Solutions, Inc. as the defendant with a ruling of $71,324.32. The second names Todd Russell Coulter personally as the defendant, with a ruling of $24,044.32. The sum total is $95,368.64. I suspect that the company name change was made, at least in part, to avoid having to pay these debts. {Todd, April 16th, 2009: "This is totally false, inaccurate and easily proven"} [Preston: April 26th, 2009: This is purely speculation on my part, and to be honest, I hope is completely wrong. I do not have insight as to the specific reasons for the creation of a new entity (FT, Inc.), except for the knowledge that the old one (FPS, Inc.) was out of money, had a ruling against it for $71K., and the stock books were were in the possession of the guy (me) who filled suit. Again, I hope I'm wrong about this, but I haven't been provided with any reasons to believe otherwise.] To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Coulter was properly served on both accounts but neither notified the other owners of the company nor made attempt to respond to the suit. Regardless, the latter ruling still stands, and I have tried numerous times over the past several years to settle the matter and collect compensation for the months of work that I am personally owed. I wish all those affiliated with the company the best of luck, however, this matter is certainly not "closed". There are some interesting and challenging concepts involved and I wish the staff the best of luck. I write this note as a friendly, public attempt to settle this matter once and for all. Relevant public legal documents should be available from the County of Maricopa, Arizona. If anyone--specifically Todd Coulter--would like to the discuss the issue with me directly, you can reach me direct via email or my cell.

Running A Small Business, In Three Words

preston.lee — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:38:45 +0000

Relentless.
Dehabilitating.
Stress.

xplogo

preston.lee — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:20:24 +0000

kittens_hugging

preston.lee — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:28:47 +0000

origami_cube

preston.lee — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:34:00 +0000

Preston's Business Razor: A Stakeholder Perspective On Pair Programming

preston.lee — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:49:35 +0000

Pair programming is an activity of eXtreme Programming (XP) wherein two developers work in conjunction--often physically seated next to each other with a single keyboard and mouse--to solve the same development tasks as a single mind. Having developer pairs tackle complex tasks can go a long way towards...

Increasing personal productivity.
Reducing defects.
Minimizing misinterpretation of requirements.
Improving designs.
(Many other benefits.)

As a developer, pairing make mountains of sense. Most tasks in the development world can be improved in a direct, obvious way. The business perspective, however, is somewhat different. While any give client or manager will say "yes" if they want to see the above occur, a pragmatic developer presenting pro-pairing arguments must, more importantly, provide evidence that stakeholder--not developer--outcomes improve. Let's look at a few different stakeholder perspectives individually... Return on investment. The common pro-pair argument of "increasing personal productivity" is, unfortunately, a deceptively irrelevant point when it comes to ROI. Business stakeholders will always want to increase productivity, but only if it improve project value per dollar, ceteris paribus. Individual productivity and overall ROI and not always proportional... but we'll get back to this in a minute. To play devil's advocate, let's create a extreme, cynical analogy by playing stakeholder to a small project that can be run in one of two ways...

Two expert developers arduously working for 2 man-months to complete a small project for a total business cost of $20K.
One hundred college interns assigned into 20 5-man teams, each trying to create a solution equal to or better than the above team could, estimated at 100 cumulative man-months (50x the development effort, but free because they get college credit) plus one man-month of project management and a half-man-month of additional overhead to simply identify the best developed solution. Total cost: $15K.

Now, this latter case is clearly an extreme fabrication of how real-world projects run, but does highlight a Occam's Razor-like rule for business types... If presented with two approaches with equal outcomes and equal risk, chose the cheapest. (Aside: This is not argument for crowdsourcing.) In the latter case, overall productivity, code quality of a random line, design quality and other factors from a random intern will be horrendous. We'll probable end of throwing out at least 95% of the code. But here's the kicker... it doesn't matter. From a business perspective we don't care about the 95 interns that can't tell a hard drive from an iPhone. (It's a problem for another day, at least.) We do care about the 5 brilliant interns that teamed up, overcame the mediocrity of their peers, created something truly magnificent, and saved the company $5K. Despite bad individual productivity, the overall outcome is positive and at an overall lower cost. If we had to apply Preston's Business Razor to this scenario, there is a clear winner, and it's not the "ideal" one. Why is "two" the ideal number? It's not... except when it is. In economics, there are a series of concepts related to production possibilities, allocative efficiency, Paredo efficiency etc. that can be applied to engineering: using a group of individuals to maximize the production of various outcomes with limited resources. Here's a simple empirical experiment that you can run using a group of 15 people and a good 30 minutes that touches on some of these concepts.

Print out instructions on how to make an origami cube, give them to each person, and make sure everyone can make a box on their own. Instruct everyone to make as many fully-assembled, respectable boxes as possible in 5 minutes. Some will be great at it, others less so, and maybe a few that just can't do it. Don't count the crappy-looking cubes. Figure out the average time to build a box across the group. This is our "baseline" number that we're going to try to beat.
Break the 15 people into 5 groups of 3. Each team of 3 will now produce boxes assembly-line style, requiring each member to master specific parts of the process. Measure the production capabilities of each team in 5 minutes and again find the average time to create a box across the entire group.
Reform everyone into 3 groups of 5. The assembly lines will be longer, requiring everyone to become even more specialized in their responsibilities. Again let the groups run for 5 minutes and compute your output.
Lastly, form the entire group into a single, massive assembly pipeline of 15 people. Time the group and compute your output.

We now have 4 data points in how to maximize the production of the group, as well as some interesting observations. First, in all likelihood, the best overall production probably came in one of the middle two trials. People were forced to specialize, but not overly so to the point of awkwardness. Second, having 15 people do a task with less than 15 significant steps is really awkward. People specialized to the point of meaninglessness; issues in the pipeline blocked way too many people; the shear overhead of literally moving paper around defeated the point of specialization. Third, each group had its own characteristics. Some may have been so productive that they blew away the baseline quota, while other in similar sized teams simply could not work together due to process issues, personality conflicts etc. Each group probably also adapted within those five minutes to maximize the groups output based on who was faster/slowest, and best/worst at folding. Some groups may have created a "manager" role to correct critical pipeline issues, pitch in a few folds when someone gets behind, or fix the "broken" boxes. When in a massive 15-person pipeline, some may have gotten frustrated and wanted to split back into smaller groups. Let's put it into a real-world perspective by taking an arbitrary task from an issue tracking system: "refactor foo to support bar." This task has it's own optimal number of concurrent developers that will be unique to the team. For a group of interns, maybe it's 5.5; for a team of superheros, 1.2; for my team, maybe 2.4. This specific task and specific team has its own distinct production characteristics (even though the task only needs to be done once), and only in very rare cases will the optimal number of people assigned to it be exactly equal to 2.0. The point is this... Asserting that a "pair" of people is always optimal is just as absurd as asserting groups of 1, 3 or 4 are always optimal. The number is unique per task, per project, per team, and understood outside of computer science when looked at from a businessy economic perspective. So from a stakeholder viewpoint, use of pair programming is absolutely acceptable (and even preferred) when optimal over other options. Experienced engineers inherently understand that some tasks require multiple minds to collectively discuss difficult challenges, debug complex code etc., and don't hesitate to seek additional eyes when it feels right. What we should not do is cling to the notion that "2" is a magic number that should be used without contextual consideration. Maybe it's 3... or 1... or 7... there is no universal constant that can predict this number, and it's ok that it varies per task. So for now, let's put aside this arbitrary "2", and instead rely on our experience, higher-level intuition, business strategy, basic metrics and strong understanding of our peers strengths and weaknesses when deciding when to pair. Preston

Desert Code Camp 2009 Session Materials

preston.lee — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:18:05 +0000

Thanks for the love this past weekend at Desert Code Camp! Here are the presentation materials used in both my sessions...

Concurrency Using Threads - [slides] [sample code] (Many thanks to Jim Weirich for the original Keynote slides and example code.)
3D GUI Development With ruby-processing - [slides] [starfield] [twiverse]

OpenRain's First Commercial Product In Production

preston.lee — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:22:50 +0000

I feel like I've come to know you quite well over the last few years. It was a rocky relationship at first, what with you not paying attention to me and hanging out with your friends too much and all. But ever since you started taking better care of yourself and dressing up a bit before reading me, we've become closer than ever. You see, you and I -- me and you -- are sharing an intimate connection right now through the Internet. We're two bits in a byte. Open and close braces surrounding an "<3". Venerable electronic soul mates. And because of my undying love for you, Ms. (Mr.? :( ) random person on the internet, I'm going to share something with you that I've never shown anyone publicly before... My company's first commercially available product: The Online Business Platform from OpenRain. OpenRain's managing superwoman may have had a small stroke when I told her she had to produce and post-produce this video, but I think I made her feel better by offering to take all the credit if it turned out well. I'm disappointed that the stunt scenes and Clive Owen guest appearance didn't come through, but... recession and all that... or at least that's what I inferred from her half-paralized drooling. So without further ado, please enjoy this awesome video demo of the Online Business Platform that I did all by myself... or not.

Three Beers, Three Originals Live Originals

preston.lee — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:52:19 +0000

Here's three original songs from a small set I played a few weeks ago with some friends. If you've ever wondered if there is a connection between alcohol consumption and complete loss of control over your vocal chords, behold: undeniable scientific proof. Soooooo, let's just ignore the crappy parts, mmkay? :( Lies (Preston Lee, 2009) In Times Of Trouble (Preston Lee, ~2008) With Whatever Time Remains (Preston Lee, 2009)

flip_minohd

preston.lee — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:19:49 +0000

MinoHD 720p Digital Camcorder Review

preston.lee — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:26:55 +0000

While no one wants to see your entire 180-minute reenactment of Hamlet, it's nevertheless nice to have a camcorder handy once in a while. Usually I'll bust out a pocket-sized Canon SD750 when I need a couple minutes of motion capture, but the SD750--as well as most other low-end digital cameras--aren't fabulous at video, and can have issues recording single streams over a couple minutes. I'd love something in the prosumer class, but I simply don't need video recording enough to justify the cost. And even if I did, I wouldn't be able to fit it in with my normal photography equipment. The MinoHD is a 720p, 30fps, all digital video recorder roughly volume equivalent to an iPhone: thicker but narrower. Video is encoded in variable bit rate H.264 with AAC audio. (Perfect for use on a Mac.) 4GB of internal flash memory holds about 60 minutes of video, but the storage is neither removable nor interchangeable. The battery is also internal, and charges from the USB connection automatically. A tiny color LCD screen allows for playback and deletion of recorded videos, and provides no special recording effects such as useless cheesy color filter nonsense typically present on consumer camcorders. Costco retail pricing is $179. Recording a movie is as simple as turning it on and pressing the big red button. Hit the big red button again to stop. It took me approximately 10 seconds to master the process. (An intelligent dog could be trained to do the same if the buttons were bigger.) Use of the "FlipShare" software is not required to transfer video off the device. Just plug it in to a USB port and move the files off. If you choose to use FlipShare, it provides basic video management and editing capabilities, and appears to be necessary to update the MinoHD's firmware. I'm using FlipShare for now, but like the option of not using it. Pros

H.264/AAC.
720p.
USB connector built in. (No need to carry a cable.)
Inexpensive.
Rediculously usable.
PC/MAC friendly.
Solid-state.
Light and small.
No special software required for day-to-day use.

Cons

Less than 1080p.
No built-in light.
Cannot upgrade flash storage.
Battery cannot be changed.

Verdict Highly recommended for those wanting a cost-effective HD camcorder for light, periodic use.

ignite_phoenix

preston.lee — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:22:53 +0000

How To Prepare For Ignite

preston.lee — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:44:12 +0000

I recently had the pleasure of speaking at Ignite Phoenix 4, and thought I'd share my perspective to those presenting in the future. See, all my life I've been in performing musical groups--rock bands, solos with larger concert bands, marching bands etc.--so despite being introverted to a fault, I'm not easily intimidated by anything in the "performing arts" category, and am usually up for giving things the old college try. Within the past couple years I've become accustomed to speaking regularly at various city events, local tech groups, conferences etc., so I initially shrugged off the preparation as something I could bust out in an hour or two over a Heineken... or two. I was wrong. Now, I'm not dumping this information on you because you need to know my life history, but to strongly emphasize that even if you took Public Speaking in college, have performed literally hundreds of times in public, and have plenty of real-world speaking experience... Preparing for Ignite is different. It's a wonderfully unique and fun experience, but I put more effort into my five minutes of Sun Tzu: The Art of...Business? than I usually do for 30-45 minutes of less creative informational content. Let's look at why...

(1) Delivery timing is your biggest risk of failure.

Ignite fully automates the progression of slides; you cannot control advancement to give yourself even +/- 1 second. Also, for Phoenix at least, there's neither a warning for how much time remains on the current slide, nor a preview of the next slide. If you're accustomed to board-room style speaking with a forgiving remote, secondary screen full of notes/widgets, and 5-10 minutes of "padding" at the end, the Ignite format is a cold glass of water to the nether regions. With a remote, keeping your verbal momentum lined up with slide advancement is relatively easy. You know exactly when your verbal punchline is going to come, and just hit the remote a split second before you say it. But in Ignite, the only way to get your voice and slides anywhere even remotely in the same synchronization ballpark is to practice the bloody hell out of it way ahead of time. And when you're done practicing, take a break and practice some more. Practice going slower and having to catch up. Practice going too fast and having to ad lib a few extra sentences here and there to fill "dead air". Practice without any "next slide" or timing aids. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. This is not to say that you should script the entire thing. Scripting sounds unnatural and dull. You should, however, know the subject matter inside and out, and know the outline and "story arc" of the presentation so that when you stumble on words or get out of sync, you'll be able to recover. For the audiences standpoint, your level of preparation will be abundantly clear. It's obvious who didn't have a verbal outline prepared; who didn't practice for pacing; who did prepare but can't handle being over/under time; how generally hard it is to time yourself versus a computer. And much of this practicing should occur before your slides are due.

(2) Your slides need to be completed waaaay in advance.

Ignite isn't the only event that requires final decks to be submitted in advance, but I know that many of you are in the habit of staying up 'til 4am day-of putting the (hopefully) finishing touches on slides. You can't do that. The Ignite superheros need your slides early to prepare their technical voodoo, and asking them to update a few slides at the last minute would be very, very lame of you. Getting your slides prepared and finalized early is critical since you can't practice delivery without them, and once they're submitted you should assume that you can't change them. Get peer feedback before you submit your slides. My thanks goes out to Erica, Ben and Marc at OpenRain for providing the "you're trying to say way too freakin' much" feedback ... it made the end result much better than it would have otherwise been. Peer review is always difficult to do, but discovering why you're epically fail-sucking is the only gateway to improvement.

(3) You don't get to rehearse in the venue.

The Ignite (Phoenix) folks want to keep your delivery fresh, natural, and full of adrenaline to showcase your passion. This is a good thing. Just be aware that you probably can't walk out on stage beforehand for a quick run-through by yourself.

(4) Your bar is high.

In general public speaking, the audiences wants you to succeed. And when you're speaking to an audience that is present for your message--such as Ignite--they've already built expectations of how awesome your message and delivery will be. If the message(s) couldn't sell, there wouldn't be an audience. You are expected to be awesome. I've yet to meet anyone that says "Ignite sucks", but have heard plenty of "Oh, it was awesome, but remember that one guy/gal? He/She was horrible." Don't be that guy/gal whose idea of originality is to do zero preparation and just "wing it" or divert from the slides in a otherwise distracting, unprofessional mess. People come to see great ideas from passionate, knowledgeable people, and it's going to take some work to get that across in Ignite's concise format.

Ignite preparation checklist. (Sorted by due date.)

Well thought out proposal submitted.
Talk accepted.
Slide draft and verbal outline complete.
Peer rehearsal and feedback.
Adjust.
Final sanity check.
Submit final slides.
Practice.
Sit in parking lot for 15 minutes before event practicing by yourself. (Strange looks from passers by expected!)
Be excellent.

You have the idea and the passion. Now go show us! (Just keep it brief.)

iCal Domain Account Errors For New Events

preston.lee — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:14:42 +0000

Over the past couple weeks I've had issues getting my OSX 10.5 iCal client to continue working properly with our centralized CalDav server. I stopped being able to invite other domain users to my events as well as reserve "locations", despite all my personal (non-domain) calendars continuing to work properly. I noted these iCal errors in Console.app...

*** -[NSConcreteTextStorage attributesAtIndex:longestEffectiveRange:inRange:]: Range or index out of bounds

CalDAVOperationQueue tried to dequeue operation but it was not at the front of the queue.

When I tried to delete my domain account within iCal's preferences, the application hung. When restarted I could no longer bring up the preference dialog and saw this error repeated in Console...

*** -[NSURL initWithString:relativeToURL:]: nil string parameter

Apparently deleting everything in ~/Library/Calendars and starting fresh is one solution. I have years worth of notes and interesting tidbits that I need to keep, however, so simply deleting all my data was not an option. With some educated guesswork, trial and error, I discovered that the following steps seems to make everything work without apparent data loss or corruption..

Quit iCal.

Go to ~/Library/Calendars and backup the entire directory, just in case.

Delete all "Calendar Cache" files as well as any directory ending in ".caldav"

Start iCal. It may give you a progress dialog about "Upgrading Calendars". I think this means it's rebuilding the cache file.

Go to "iCal -> Preferences..." and delete/readd your domain account.

Wait for the domain account to resync and you should be go to go.

Hope this helps!

*** -[NSConcreteTextStorage attributesAtIndex:longestEffectiveRange:inRange:]: Range or index out of bounds CalDAVOperationQueue tried to dequeue operation but it was not at the front of the queue.

When I tried to delete my domain account within iCal's preferences, the application hung. When restarted, I could no longer bring up the preference dialog and saw this error repeated in Console...

*** -[NSURL initWithString:relativeToURL:]: nil string parameter

Apparently deleting everything in ~/Library/Calendars and starting fresh is the easiest solution. I have years worth of notes and interesting tidbits that I need to keep, however, so simply deleting all my data was not an option. With some educated guesswork, trial and error, I discovered that the following steps seems to make everything work again without apparent data loss or corruption..

Quit iCal.
Go to ~/Library/Calendars and backup the entire directory, just in case.
Delete all "Calendar Cache" files as well as any directory ending in ".caldav".
Start iCal.
It may give you a progress dialog about "Upgrading Calendars". I think this means it's rebuilding the cache file.
Go to "iCal -> Preferences..." and delete/readd your domain account.
Wait for the domain account to resync and you should be go to go.

Hope this helps!

Recovering A Corrupt OpenLDAP Database On OSX Server

preston.lee — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:57:38 +0000

Recovering A Corrupt OpenLDAP Database On OSX Server

Last night we noticed some services provided by an OSX Leopard Server instance were not working correctly. The iChat, AFP and Web services were not authenticating. In Server Admin.app, the "Overview" tab of the Open Directory service reported...

LDAP Server is: Not Running

Password Server is: Running

Kerberos is: Not Running

Looking at the server error logs through Console.app, the following was occuring every 10 seconds..

com.apple.launchd[1] (org.openldap.slapd[27382]) Exited with exit code: 1

com.apple.launchd[1] (org.openldap.slapd) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

The slapd daemon appeared not to be starting. Jumping to the command line, I tested the configuration using the `slapd -Tt` command.

core:openldap admin$ sudo /usr/libexec/slapd -Tt

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

bdb(dc=openrain,dc=com): PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery

bdb_db_open: Database cannot be opened, err -30978. Restore from backup!

bdb(dc=openrain,dc=com): DB_ENV->lock_id_free interface requires an environment configured for the locking subsystem

backend_startup_one: bi_db_open failed! (-30978)

slap_startup failed (test would succeed using the -u switch)

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9548971

With a little research, I concluded that..

The OpenLDAP database had been corrupted, and..

The `slapd_db_recover` tool (as present on some Linux installations) is instead named `db_recover`. Ah!

After carefully backing up the /var/db/openldap folder, I ran the recovery tool and re-tested the configuration..

core:openldap admin$ sudo db_recover -h /var/db/openldap/openldap-data/

core:openldap admin$ sudo /usr/libexec/slapd -Tt

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

config file testing succeeded

The errors in Console.app stopped, and the Server Admin.app panel started reporting..

LDAP Server is: Not Running

Password Server is: Running

Kerberos is: Not Running

I had to restart the AFP, iChat and Web services on the machine to get everything working again, but all seems well now.

LDAP Server is: Not Running

Password Server is: Running

Kerberos is: Not Running

Looking at the server error logs through Console.app, the following was occuring every 10 seconds..

com.apple.launchd[1] (org.openldap.slapd[27382]) Exited with exit code: 1

com.apple.launchd[1] (org.openldap.slapd) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

The slapd daemon appeared not to be starting. Jumping to the command line, I tested the configuration using the `slapd -Tt` command.

core:openldap admin$ sudo /usr/libexec/slapd -Tt

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

bdb(dc=openrain,dc=com): PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery

bdb_db_open: Database cannot be opened, err -30978. Restore from backup!

bdb(dc=openrain,dc=com): DB_ENV->lock_id_free interface requires an environment configured for the locking subsystem

backend_startup_one: bi_db_open failed! (-30978)

slap_startup failed (test would succeed using the -u switch)

With a little research, I concluded that..

The OpenLDAP database had been corrupted, and..
The `slapd_db_recover` tool (as present on some Linux installations) is instead named `db_recover`. Ah!

After carefully backing up the /var/db/openldap folder, I ran the recovery tool and re-tested the configuration..

core:openldap admin$ sudo db_recover -h /var/db/openldap/openldap-data/

core:openldap admin$ sudo /usr/libexec/slapd -Tt

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

config file testing succeeded

The errors in Console.app stopped, and the Server Admin.app panel started reporting..

LDAP Server is: Running

Password Server is: Running

Kerberos is: Running

I had to restart the AFP, iChat and Web services on the machine to get everything working again, but all seems well now.

Guest Spot On "Career Launch"

preston.lee — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:52:13 +0000

On Monday, July 13th at 8am I'll be doing a guest spot on the "Career Launch with Jane and Al" internet radio show. I'll be present to discuss the role of social networking and social media tools in the career advancement process: specifically LinkedIn and Twitter. Compass Consulting Team (run by Jane and Al) is an OpenRain client, and they are insanely positive and fun people with which to converse. I'm highly looking forward to it! [episode permalink] Show some love and try to catch the show live!

career_launch

preston.lee — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:11:29 +0000

Radio Spot: Are you Social? The Social Media/Job Search Connection

preston.lee — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:15:15 +0000

This morning I had the pleasure of doing a guest spot on Career Launch with Jane & Al: a VoiceAmerica Variety show airing live every Monday from 8-9am. Today's discussion was on the role of social networking tools in the employment process. Lots of capable people are finding themselves particularly hard pressed to find jobs right now, being in the midst of a recession and all, so if you're interested in learning how social networking tools (LinkedIn specifically) can be incredibly beneficial for your career, check it out! [Stream on the web.] [iTunes podcast.] [Direct MP3 download.] Full disclosure: Jane & Al--the hosts of the show--are clients and friends. OpenRain developed the Compass Consulting Team website.

Google AdWords Account Access: A Cacophony Of Stupid

preston.lee — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:42:07 +0000

If I haven't blabbed your ear off already, OpenRain has a small business web presence product called the Online Business Platform. It's a big deal as it's fairly unique in many different ways.

Anyway, the the upper service level options include consulting and advisement on advertising with Google AdWords, which means we generally need access to the clients AdWords account to monitor progress and such.

The problem is that AdWords accounts have the idiotic restriction of allowing a given email address to be tied to only one AdWords account. In other words, preston.lee@example.com can be granted access to OpenRain's Adwords account, but not client accounts nor other side-project accounts. Google Analytics, on the other hand, allows for a single email address to manage multiple Analytics accounts in a much saner manner. Considering the amount of revenue Google generates from paid Internet marketing, accessing multiple AdWords accounts is a 7-layer stupidburger with extra retard sauce. I'm sure there's a wonderful technical rationale that generates rainbows of technical applause, but as a user I couldn't care less.

To answer the "How do I manage multiple AdWords accounts?" question, Google created My Client Center (MCC): essentially an AdWords account management aggregator. The kicker? To create an MCC account--and yes, it's a separate account--you can't use the email address for the account(s) you're trying to aggregate. We ended creating a silly AdWordsIsStupid@example.com email group and use that email address to create the MCC, which is turn gets granted access to your different AdWords accounts that are, again, all tied to different email addresses.

So when I say AdWords account access is a cacophony of stupid, I mean it. N+1 email addresses required-level stupid.

If I haven't blabbed your ear off about it already, OpenRain has a small business web presence product called the Online Business Platform. It's a big deal as it's fairly unique in many different ways. Anyway, the upper service-level options include consulting and guidance on advertising with Google AdWords, which means we generally need access to the clients AdWords account to monitor progress and such. The problem is that AdWords accounts have the idiotic restriction of allowing a given email address to be tied to only one AdWords account. In other words, preston.lee@example.com can be granted access to OpenRain's Adwords account, but not client accounts nor other personal side-project accounts. (Google Analytics, on the other hand, allows for a single email address to manage multiple Analytics accounts in a much saner manner.) Considering the amount of revenue Google generates from paid Internet marketing, maintaining access to multiple AdWords accounts is a 7-layer stupidburger. I'm sure there's a wonderful technical rationale that generates rainbows of technical applause, but as a user I couldn't care less. To answer the "How do I manage multiple AdWords accounts?" question, Google created My Client Center (MCC): essentially an AdWords account management aggregator part of an optional "Google Advertising Professionals" program. The kicker? To create an MCC account--and yes, it's a separate account--you can't use the email address for the account(s) you're trying to aggregate. We ended creating a silly AdWordsIsStupid@example.com email group, and used that email address to access the MCC dashboard, which is turn gets granted access to your different AdWords accounts that are, again, all tied to different email addresses. So when I say AdWords account access is a cacophony of stupid, I mean it. N+1 email addresses required-level stupid. Bad Google!

Deconstructing Fate

preston.lee — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 08:02:37 +0000

Whiskey Three - Deconstructing Fate Preview

preston.lee — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 08:05:50 +0000

My alt. rock band--currently going by Vic Lee And The Whiskey Three--is rehearsing to put together an EP-length studio demo. We practiced in my living room today and decided to let GarageBand run during a few song run-throughs. This is a raw-off-the-fretboard, completely unedited practice take of one of them... hope you enjoy the sneak preview! Deconstructing Fate

Will You Be My BFF?

preston.lee — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:14:15 +0000

For those of you riding the social media train, let's connect!

Personal Links

Twitter http://twitter.com/prestonism

Blog http://prestonlee.com

LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonvictorlee

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/prestonism

Professional Links

OpenRain Blog http://blog.openrain.com

OpenRain Twitter http://twitter.com/openrain

For those of you riding the social media train, let's connect! Personal

Professional

Top 3 Things That Tastes Good Cold The Next MorningPizz

preston.lee — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:31:45 +0000

Pizza.
Pancakes.
Lo mein.

drawing_basics_week_2-1

preston.lee — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 06:24:57 +0000

drawing_basics_week_2-2

preston.lee — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 06:25:05 +0000

drawing_basics_week_2-2

preston.lee — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 06:25:38 +0000

Drawing Basics - Week 2

preston.lee — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 06:54:04 +0000

I recently started a novice-level drawing class with the goal of sucking less. Note the subtle distinction here; I'm not trying to get good at drawing, just less horrible. This allows me to preserve my self-esteem despite everything looking like the Fail Whale... that ironically I can't draw, either.

I'm taking this class with Erica, who decided to cheat by taking four years to preemptively get a BACHELORS in freaking ART. Good thing, too, because it would have been much harder for her to be an art TEACHER without that background. Whatever. It basically goes like this**:

Erica: Good job, Preston! Preston: (Proudly) Thanks! What's...that. Erica: Oh this? It's supposed to be a 19th-century steel teapot on a French patio in January. But it looks more like February. Preston: ... Erica: ... Preston: I hate you.

(**May not have actually happened.)

Anyway, here are my second attempts at drawing bottles.. and stuff. I'm happy to report that these suck less than week one! Mission accomplished.

It's Alright

preston.lee — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:42:54 +0000

Apple MacBook/GarageBand/Logic Pro demonstration track.

Why Amateur Musicians Use Macs

preston.lee — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:52:24 +0000

While discussing tonights U2 concert in Phoenix, I got into a HUGE argument with a Linux user over why amateur musician/producers would have to be mentally challenged for *not* making a Mac their first investment over Linux and Windows. Since the proof is in the ear pudding, I wrote, recorded and mixed this U2-inspired acoustic/vocal jam (aka "rip off") in 4 hours using only a 2.4GHz MacBook w/4GB RAM, OSX Snow Leopard, GarageBand, *built-in laptop microphone*, iPod earbuds, ghetto-fabulous Fender acoustic guitar and 2 vodka tonics. (In other words no fancy microphones, A/D converters or other hardware.) The noise at the beginning and end is the sound of the MacBooks fan running at full speed, but other than that (and some really sloppy pitch correction patchwork) I'm not aware of any software that ships with Vista, 7, or any modern Linux distribution that can do anything REMOTELY close out of the box in more-or-less the same amount of time. If you think otherwise, prove me wrong! Download "It's Alright" MP3. (Truthiness: I cheated *slightly* by jumping into Logic Pro 9 for the pitch correction part since I was lazy and didn't want production to take more than 30 minutes, but that wasn't technically necessary!)

Preston Lee

Taking Indoor Pictures: White Balance Explained

Rails Beats Pants Off Java: A Small Testamonial

Why Linux Won't Rule The Desktop Any Time Soon (2 of 2)

5 Motivators Of Enterprise Rails Acceptance

Changing The Subject of Incoming Mail.app Emails via Rules & AppleScript

Ruby SSL EaSSL v0.1.1643 Fix

Announcement: Releasing Old Recordings!

Apple Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard Dvorak Hacking

Financial Primer For Self-Funded Startups, Part 2

The Positive Power of Influence

Preston Joins The 21st Century

Ant Rant

Square Foot Garden Beds

2x6 Garden Bed

iClock: How To Get The Time.. Apple Style

If A Unit Test Fails In The Woods, Does It Make A Sound?

Java Development w/The Eclipse IDE: Five Underused Features

E-Prime For Software Engineers

Japanese Tea Garden

Zen And The Art of Software Design

Avoiding if(DEBUG_ON)

On Brooks

Back From Baja

Singletons Cause Cancer

Reuse

Testability

Conclusion

Encryption: Use it, lest ye be thieved.

Network De-Perimeterization: The Jericho Forum

Must-Have OS X Freebies

Rosarito, Mexico, 2006

Anaheim, California, 2006

Business Logic Code Generation

Tips For CS/CSE/MIS Seniors

Schmooze

Infiltrate

Anthropomorphize

Familiarize

Honesty & Confidence

internet-setup.png

RAZR v3, Bluetooth, T-Mobile Internet & OS X

picture-1.png

picture-7.png

picture-6.png

picture-5.png

Apple Aperture Features Explained For Non-Photographers

connect.png

full.png

browse.png

metadata.png

iClock (Thumbnail)

home-studio-thumb.jpg

The $1K Home Recording Studio Mac Add-on

The Virus Network

Would You Like To Join The "Virus" Network?

usery-mountain-1.jpg

usery-mountain-2.jpg

usery-mountain-3.jpg

usery-mountain-4.jpg

usery-mountain-5.jpg

usery-mountain-6.jpg

Arizona Desert: Usery Mountain Regional Park

ladybug

..But *Should* You Fix That Bug?

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DSLR Camera Body vs. Lens: Where To Put Your Money

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