A Hill of Beans

My @AnDevCon slides: Git for the Android Devloper

2011-11-07T13:48:00.001-08:00

Git for Android Developers

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Steve Jobs' Legacy

2011-10-05T18:11:00.001-07:00

Steve Jobs' legacy is one of continually, relentlessly building beautiful, useful things that anyone could use and love to use.

Because of his efforts, the tools that I use every day are the best possible tools. Celebrities can't buy a substantively better computer than the one I use every day. Heads of State can't own a better smartphone than than the one I use every day. That egalitarianism of technology is a wonderful legacy. It may have been the case without Steve Jobs' hand in it, but what he also brought was a craftsman's perspective. He didn't want to build adequate things. He wanted to build beautiful things.

I hope he continues to be an inspiration, because we'll not see his like for a long time.

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Git for Android Developers

2011-09-30T15:01:00.001-07:00

In a month or so in the November 6 to 9 range I'll be speaking at AnDevCon on Git for Android Developers.

I gave this same talk back in the spring, and people seemed to enjoy it. When the conference organizers approached to see if I was interested in speaking again, I said I'd love to speak, but this time on an Android topic.

I really like working with RoboGuice, so I said I'd like to talk about that. They were into it, but said that the Git topic was popular, so could I do both? Since my talk on Git is pretty much ready to go I figured that'd be fine.

Then the RoboGuice creator, Michael Burton, decided to speak on RoboGuice. I couldn't convince the AnDevCon guys that I had any more credibility than Michael on that topic, so now I'm back to just speaking on Git again!

No big deal, I think it's a worthy topic.

If you're interested in hearing how Git can help you save time, be more efficient, help you work better with teams, and be more confident about experementing on your Android project, then get thee to AnDevCon in November. If you sign up soon here you can get $200 off if you use the code 'Hillerson'.

Keep in mind that the last one sold out, so sign up soon. See you there!

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Untitled

2011-09-25T16:29:00.001-07:00

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Forkly Embedding!

2011-09-08T08:29:00.001-07:00

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Happy birfday Lincoln!

2011-08-25T18:03:00.001-07:00

Taken at LOLA

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AnDevCon Discount Code

2011-08-10T09:49:00.001-07:00

Want a $200 off a 3-day Passport or Workshop Passport to @AnDevCon? Sign up at http://www.andevcon.com/AnDevCon_II/registration.html and use 'Hillerson' as the discount code.

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Git: In Theory and in Practice

2011-07-30T10:55:00.001-07:00

I've just published a new course over at Udemy: Git In Theory and in Practice.

I've been using source control systems for 10 years or so, and Git for over three years now. It's amazing how some of the fundamental differences in how Git accomplishes the same goal as most other SCMs lead to a much better developer experience and open up unexpected, new, powerful ways of working.

Take branching, for instance. Branching is a fairly straightforward idea, but the cognitive load placed on you by other SCM tools like Subversion, which make branching such a high ceremony process, make it almost certain that you won't use branches except in very important situations where branching is absolutely necessary. Git makes branching so easy because a branch is really nothing more than 40 characters written in a file that points to a commit. It's painless to make a new branch, merge a branch into another, and with a little more study you can learn how to re-parent a branch, change the commit order on a branch, and so on.

Git has at least two extra layers of "staging" - the Index, for staging commits, and the fact that it needs no remote server to commit changes to the repository. Consider commit order. Because Git is distributed, it makes it much easier to make your branches look the way you want before you share them with others. That power and safety allow you to work the way you want to work, and then take the time later to think about how to make the repository look the way you want.

I learned Git in large part thanks to Peepcode's screencast and Scott Chacon's awesome Git internals PDF, also from Peepcode. To a large extent, Git is a known technology. Lots of people use it. Why would I want to create a new screencast to teach people a fairly common technology? Well, I still think Git is not as prevalent as it could be, and I think even when it is, I've observed people that use it either only scratching the surface, or applying patterns learned from other SCMs. That's why I wanted to make a course that taught not only how Git works, but how it does what it does and to show examples of situations where developers can easily take advantage of some of the power Git affords them.

Enjoy!

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[Spoilers] Review: A Dance with Dragons

2011-07-25T20:32:00.001-07:00

Luckily I didn't have to wait six years; only three. It was a long wait, though, with more waiting to come. Was it worth it? Be warned: Spoilers.

I think A Dance With Dragons is a mixed bag. Don't take that to mean that I didn't love it, devour it, and plan on reading it again soon. No, It's a great book, and a great addition to a great series - my favorite series, excepting The Lord of the Rings of course.

The reason it's a mixed bag for me is that even 1k+ pages isn't enough to provide enough payoff for all the threads that GRRM is spinning. A lot of people didn't like the previous A Feast For Crows because it didn't have favorite characters and didn't advance all the threads far enough. ADWD is the other side of the same coin. It goes further than AFFC and starts to tie together some of the threads from that novel, but there's still not a lot of resolution to too many of the threads. I don't want full resolution, of course. I just want some. Instead there's a lot of piece-moving. Martin has yet to open his full game. Far from it, in fact, he's still introducing new pieces!

I think ADWD will be great reading when part of the full series, but I can't be satisfied with it now. Of course it's good for Martin that I want more, but he still hasn't stopped raising the stakes. I think he can pull it off, but it will need to be a really big payout the way he's playing it, and we're not going to get it for at least another four or five years! Hurry up GRRM!

So, let me just break things down by region and then character:

Accross the Narrow Sea

Tyrion - Our favorite little guy is back. He has a lot of POVs in this book, so we get plenty of Tyrion. Tyrion is stuck wrestling with demons though, and I was (only slightly) a little dissapointed by that. He get to see him cleaning up a bit, going cold turkey, and maybe dealing a little bit with his issues, but he doesn't really progress that far in his personal journey. That's really fine, given that we'll see plenty more of him, I'm sure, but the Tyrion I liked best was the one that, dispite all that had been thrown at him, meant to serve the realm Justice. To be sure, this was sure to spite his sister, which is a win for him, but his talents were put to a good use for the most part.

Here, though, we see his talents wasted a bit on scheming and throwing a wrench into other people's plans instead of us getting a clear insight into Tyrion's own plans. We know he has them, it's just that here we see the wit wasted on being a gadfly. I think Tyrion has some big plans, to be sure, I'm just left wanting a lot more of what Tyrion is good at. Can't wait for the next one.

Griff (Jon Connington) - A suprise blast from the past. We hear a few things about Jon Connington, but never really enough to prepare us for his arrival on the scene. He's a late arrival, and shows GRRM opening up a new front in the battle for the Iron Throne, even at this late date.

I tend to like honorable characters, and Jon is one. He's got some demons in his past, and some rough times in his future too, with the Greyscale moving up his arm. He's cool, and I hope we get to know him better because of his late introduction.

Young Griff (Aegon Targaryen) - Whoa. Suprises. Aegon wasn't killed when The Mountain smashed his head against a wall, that infant turns out to be a peasant's son. At least as far as we know. He sounds like good people, but it's hard to say. It's also hard to say how he's going to play things re: Daenarys. I think I like him so far, though. Varys definitely has some good words to say about him, once we find out the double game he and Illyrio seem to be playing. Wheels within wheels. Again, not enough to be satisfying, just enough to set the stage for things to come.

Jorah Mormont - I still like Jorah. He's a little pissy these days though. He's gone through being a slave now, though, so he's had a little karmic payback during his exile. We don't really get a lot out of him during this book, though. He's a piece that's now moved into place for an important part of the game still to come.

Quentyn Martell - Well, Quentyn wasn't quite what I was suspecting, but he turned out to be a good character. Good in that he wasn't some heroic 007 guy on a secret mission, he's a kid forced into a situation well beyond what he can handle, due to Dorne's great need. True to GRRM's style, reality is served by Quentyn making bad choices and ultimately failing and getting his ass good and burned. I felt a great sense of loss and sorrow at his passing. Quentyn's story was a classic GRRM move. I wonder what Quentyn's death and Aegon appearance mean for Dorne now. Hurry up GRRM!

Mereen

Daenarys - Dany, just like Tyrion, feel lik they're in a holding pattern in ADWD. Mostly by design, I'm sure, but it just makes it worse that we waited so long to get as little forward movement as we got. Dany is conflicted now between trying to do right by her adopted people and trying to please herself with Daario. And the WHOLE TIME the dragons sit there brooding. GAH!

I will say, however, that Dany has the biggest payoff in this book. When she tames Drogon and shoots off into the sky (who but GRRM would write a dragon ride like an orgasm?) it was like FINALLY! Of course, then she's gone for almost the rest of the book. SO FRUSTRATING!

I feel confident that she's finally going to get her head on straight, though. Tame Drogon, use Drogon to get herself an army, get a handle on the other dragons and whomever's going to ride them, .... profit. I wonder how tough of a time she's going to have with Victarion though. AND WHO/WHAT ARE THE OTHER HEADS OF THE DRAGON??? HURRY UP GRRM!

Ser Barristan - I love this guy. I do get the sense that he's outgrown his epithet though, but that's fine, it doesn't make me like him less. He's got his own demons in his past, and age is against him, but he's in the right place and he's going to make some stuff happen, one way or another. He does more heavy lifting his this book than most of the other characters. Thanks, Barry.

Kings Landing

Cersei - Interesting changes to Cersei. Did the walk of shame unseat her mind? Has she lost her nerve? Now that she's about to get thrown back into the thick of the game, can she handle it? She's a grudgingly more sympathetic character for me. Not a lot, not as much as Jaime, and I still hate her and her style, but at least she's gotten a little of what she's had coming. Robert Strong, though - what's going to happen there?

The West

Jaime - I like Jaime now. Most of us do, of course, but he's proving to have as good a weapon in his mind as he used to have in his sword, and that's fun to watch. GRRM's just teasing us by putting him in ADWD, though. WTH, all of a sudden Brienne rides up? Not even any mention of rope marks on her neck? What's her game now? Is she selling Jamie out to The Silent Sister (my favorite of undead Catelyn's names)? GRRM, you're a tease and no doubt.

Dorne

Doran Martell - The ever-cautious Doran is finally opening his game. He's managing to weasel out of the problems that Arriene and the Queenmakers caused for him, getting the Sandsnakes on his side, and even sitting one of them on the Small Council. Little does he know, though, that the board is set differently than he expected, and one of the pieces he was counting on ended up on the wrong end of a Dragonmaw. Again, Doran is just being moved into place by GRRM here. HURRY UP GRRM!

Braavos

Arya - I wasn't expecting much from Arya this time around, but I was pleasantly suprised. We all probably guessed that the blindness was just part of her training, and it was great to read about that process. Especially the payoff when Arya smacks the master on the fingers and says "Come at me bro!".

It remains to be seen how her underdeveloped and only half ackowledged skinchanger abilities are going to affect her time at the temple, and how she's going to use them, and whether she'll start to realize what she has. I'm always hoping that she doesn't end up morally ambiguous. She hides it better and better, but she's still driven by hate and revenge. Still, even though she's really just being moved into place a bit more, it was one of the more satisfying parts of the story to watch it happen. Maybe just because it was unsuspected.

The North

Theon - Theon's a selfish punk, and caused a lot of trouble for people we really care about, but GRRM has succeeded in making us feel like he's gotten the worst of the deal. The Boltons are classic GRRM villains, but The Bastard of Bolton makes Roose look like kind of a stand up guy. Shudders. Theon's story had some treading water in it, but finally opened up and he got a chance to finally make the right choice. His redemption arc may end up being at the apex, but at least he's been part of moving some things forward in an interesting way.

Asha - Asha's just along for the ride for most of the book. The only thing we really get from her is a POV. That's ok, because we see first hand how brutal Autumn is. How bad must Winter be? Winter is almost a character in ASOIAF, so Asha's POVs start to introduce us to that character.

Stannis - Stannis is stuck in the snow. We're not sure how much to believe of Ramsey's letter to Jon Snow. I bet Ramsey got Mance, but I'm not sure if he's really killed Stannis. HURRY UP GRRM.

Beyond The Wall

Bran - We just get a little bit of a glimpse of Bran, but at least he makes it to the Greenseer. WHO TURNS OUT TO BE FREAKING BLOODRAVEN. Now we need more from the Dunk and Egg novels. How did Rivers get to the Wall? Why was he sent there? What happened to bring him north of the wall when he was the Lord Commander? What are his real powers?

Now I'm wondering about Mormont's ravens. Are they some of Bloodraven's 1000 eyes? Maybe even more Ravens than that? How much of a hand does Bloodraven have in all of the events in the Seven Kingdoms? What does he have in store for Bran? Will Bran end up part of a tree, but plugged into the Westeros Matrix?

The Wall

Jon Snow - The big one, at least for this book. Jon's story was frustrating because there was so much treading water here too. We get it - he sees the greater threat, and it's not the Wildlings. He has to convince the rest of the Watch, and it's an uphill battle.

He's on a mission to save and harness as many of the Wildlings as he can, and he does a fairly good job, but makes, slowly but surely, enemies in the Watch because of it. The best thing that happens to Jon is lopping off Janos Slynt's head. That was a nice payoff. But after that his story was kind of boring.

Until the end of course. I'm not sure if GRRM expected us to take Jon's apparent death as a Red Wedding moment, but I'm more confused than distraught. Confused at why all of a sudden Jon decides to break his Vows and get involved, confused at what he thought he could gain, and confused at Bowen Marsh et al deciding that stabbing Jon was the right move. I wonder if Allister Thorne has a hand in this.

In any case, I don't buy the fact of Jon's death. There's too much else that can happen. For instance, since he's a latent skinchanger, will he end up in Ghost the way Varmyr Sixskins ends up in the wolf in the Prologue? What else was the Prologue for, unless to hint at a protagonist within the Wildlings still in the north that we won't see till The Winds of Winter? Will we have a Ghost POV to look forward to? Also, Mellisandre could raise him up Barric Dondarrion style, right? Also, maybe he just doesn't die - we're not sure. Or maybe he's dead.

There's too many questions surrounding Jon's stabbing for it to be a classic GRRM beloved character killing - it feels more like a season finale cliffhanger death.

Wrapping up - I love the series. I want more, soon. ADWD is a great part of the series, but it's got more questions than answers, more gamepieces moving around than decisive moves, and ultimately just makes it very hard to be alive during the writing of this series. Hurry up GRRM! At least I didn't have to go through this with The Lord Of The Rings.

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Untitled

2011-07-13T19:28:00.001-07:00

Taken at Flatiron Crossing Mall

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Rails on HBase

2011-05-23T10:26:00.001-07:00

Last Thursday at RailsConf, the irrepressible Zachary Pinter and I were privileged to talk about Rails and HBase. We hope (and fear) to have a video of the talk soon, but here are the slides.

The TL;DR:

HBase is a great option for when you need to store and quickly access lots and lots of data. As long as you build your schema to fit web request access patterns, Rails can easily pull data from HBase. We liked Massive Record the most. It's likely, though, that you will not be building a web application solely on HBase, so consider what you really when trying to pair Rails and HBase.

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RailsConf 2011 Recap

2011-05-23T10:01:00.001-07:00

I spent last week at RailsConf, my favorite conference.

The unofficial theme this year was definitely Javascript. Some great changes coming to Rails 3.1 (c.f. DHH's keynote) show that Javascript and CSS are becoming first class citizens, but there was also plenty of sessions dealing with Javascript as well. SproutCore, Backbone, Sprockets, and CoffeeScript were big, but there were at least a few sessions on testing Javascript too.

There are two directions that web applications with Javascript and Rails can go: The MVC model and the Rich Client model. DHH seems to be behind the MVC model, which is why Rails has supported it from the start. The Rich Client model where one or more clients of any type consume data from a Rails-built API is becoming more common with the advent of Javascript frameworks like SpoutCore and Backbone.js, not to mention the many mobile applications out there.

When Rails supported REST, that was a huge step to supporting great, flexible APIs, but it didn't bring a lot of its signature convention to how to deal with Rails APIs. That was a subject of Yehuda Katz's talk; how can the Rails community center around the correct conventions for APIs so Rails can start to support them. That talk and one about FlexibleAPI have me thinking that this type of thing will be a major theme for Rails to come.

Also, as always, RailsConf did a worked to feed back the history of programming into the community. It came in the form of a crazy performance art Keynote by Guy Steele and Richard Gabriel

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A tall ship

2011-05-17T14:50:00.001-07:00

Taken at Baltimore Inner Harbor

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¡JUANA'S ADICCION! #io2011

2011-05-10T20:11:00.001-07:00

movie.mov Watch on Posterous

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Futuristic car from the future.

2011-05-10T19:22:00.001-07:00

movie.mov Watch on Posterous

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Rob'ts. #io2011

2011-05-10T19:09:00.001-07:00

movie.mov Watch on Posterous

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Spheros. Boulder company I think. #io2011

2011-05-10T19:06:00.001-07:00

movie.mov Watch on Posterous

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More Wood

2011-04-15T14:56:00.001-07:00

Progress continues, slowly but surely, on my Trey Gunn Signature Warr Guitar, and Mark's working on the neck now. Mark convinced me of all the woods to use except the one for the fingerboard.

We talked about either wenge or goncalo alves.

Here's the Wenge:

And here's the Goncalo:

I had to go with the Goncalo. It looks awesome paired with the top.

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The good ol' BSOD.

2011-03-18T18:53:00.001-07:00

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AnDevCon

2011-01-25T14:01:00.001-08:00

I'll be at AnDevCon speaking about Git for Android developers March 7 - 9.

Click here to download:

ATT00001.c (0 KB)

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Titus snowshoeing today.

2011-01-22T17:54:00.001-08:00

Download now or watch on posterous

movie.mov (6015 KB)

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Current Status:

2011-01-19T15:12:00.001-08:00

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Untitled

2010-12-25T12:19:00.001-08:00

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Titus' sweet new hat.

2010-12-03T17:43:00.001-08:00

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Awwww yeeee.

2010-11-30T11:29:00.001-08:00

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Zappos email

2010-10-29T12:28:00.001-07:00

Thanks Zappos!

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Wood!

2010-10-15T09:14:00.001-07:00

So, after many years of holding out, I'm going to get a Warr Guitar
(http://warrguitars.com). There sure are a lot of strings on there,
but that versatility is going to be great. I'm going with the Treg
Gunn Signature model with 12 strings, 12 piezo pickups and 6 MIDI
pickups (which are on the guitar/melody side). The ability to blend
between piezo pickups (which pick up acoustic, physical vibrations as
opposed to magnetic pickups which pick up the string's disturbance of
their magnetic field) and control a MIDI instrument, play melody or
bass with two hands or melody and bass at the same time is going to
give me so much capability. I won't be proficient for a long time, but
I'll be able to do small thing soon. I can't wait.

Not only are there lots of options on the Trey Gunn (and Warr's in
general), the construction is top notch. Warr Guitars are heirlooms.
Mark Warr really gives personalized service helping to figure out
which woods, construction, tuning, and options make the instrument the
customer wants. It's been great to talk with him over email and on the
phone so quickly after my first contact. He works hard to make sure
that he educates the customer on the process such that they can get
the best savings by helping him be as efficient as possible.

When I starting thinking about the construction and materials I
wanted, I really liked this picture:

The top wood on that Phalanx model is really interesting and a break
away from the standard Quilted Maple high end look. Mark let me know
that the wood would cost extra, but as long as everything else works
out, I think it's worth it. It looks awesome.

Have a look at the picture of the Buckeye burl below. That's the wood
Mark found for the top of my and a few other guitars. He thinks he may
be able to get three tops out of it, so that gives you an idea of how
big it is. I'll put more progress updates on here as things get going.
The construction is going to take 4-5 months, so I have plenty of time
to get psyched up to finally play this thing.

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Titus' new friends.

2010-09-13T19:30:00.001-07:00

Download now or watch on posterous

movie.mov (25061 KB)

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First time trying Tej. http://j.mp/cfbBEt

2010-09-04T17:09:00.001-07:00

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So deep, man.

2010-08-04T10:22:00.001-07:00

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Cranky Old Men Cranking Away

2010-06-01T08:39:00.001-07:00

I'm sure you've all seen this:
http://jnd.org/dn.mss/gestural_interfaces_a_step_backwards_in_usability_1.html.
Of course there are good points, but someone has to help split the
difference in the UI problems they want to fix, because just like
every time Nielson has problems, I have no problems.

Of course they pick on real issues, such as the discoverability of
long-presses and swipes, but they don't mention that there is usually
more than one way to do the things that those gestures are meant to do
(in a well designed app). There should be. That's a real solution, but
Nielson usually brings up problems, not solutions.

There are useful comments in the document. The comments on the
Android/Blackberry back button and menu buttons are useful. All in
all, it's a useful document to read, but as usual, not a lot of the
objections resonate with me, a power user. That's really the problem,
as I see it - helping the user grow into more powerful interactions
with the interface, not solving these problems in a way that
hamstrings more fluid, although less discoverable, interactions.

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Lori dressed Lincoln up as a leprachaun. Poor kid.

2010-03-17T10:40:00.001-07:00

via tweetie

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It's 2010, people. Can we have babies that don't take one leg out of their pants while you put the other one in?

2010-03-12T17:27:00.001-08:00

via tweetie

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Avatar - saved by the World

2010-02-20T22:37:00.001-08:00

Lori and I just saw Avatar, despite our five month old's apparent
wishes. Even though I had to watch standing on the ramp out of the
theater trying to get our crying kid to sleep, I enjoyed the whole
thing.

Granted, there was a lot that I expected not to like and didn't.
Worn-out tropes and ham-handed, overplayed stereotypes (The
Tank-Brained Soldier, Soulless Big Business, The Noble Savage, Saving
the Earth-Mother, and so on...) are all there at the forefront of most
of the show. And oh my gosh the terrible lines from the soldiers,
especially Michelle Rodriguez. "You're not the only one with guns,
bitch!". What is that?

And sure, 3D, and awesome models and all that. No one will argue that
it didn't look amazing. It's not enough to carry a movie though, and
doesn't have any stamina the better technology gets.

I think Avatar had something more than that: Pandora. Here's why - I
like world building (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldbuilding). I
like an extremely well crafted world like Pandora with a people like
the Na'vi as much as a good story, and considering the short amount of
time a movie has to tell a story sometimes I prefer the world over the
story.

Of course the Na'vi are there to help someone preach about being in
tune with the environment and all that. But the details that went into
making the Na'vi seem real, *especially* the language
(http://www.learnnavi.org/), were extremely satisfying to me and I
loved exploring the world that we were able to see before the Space
Marines started shooting it up.

I think World Building is an important element to good story telling,
not central perhaps, but often overlooked or poorly done just to get
to the story. I believe a well crafted otherworld holds up a mirror to
our own, and is the part of a story that has the most power to engage
our imagination.

Anyhow, that's why I liked Avatar.

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Current Status

2010-02-19T12:03:00.001-08:00

Current Status:

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Want to learn how to make an Android app?

2010-01-25T18:45:00.001-08:00

I'll be hosting a series of online workshops through CreativeTechs and O'Reilly Training from February 9th through March 16th. More information here:http://training.oreilly.com/androidapps-java/

It'll be a real good time, and you'll get a solid understanding a of a lot of useful features of the Android SDK.

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Funk Up Your Bass in Record

2010-01-22T23:35:00.001-08:00

How to create an auto-wah envelope follower effect in Record

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Cloning a git repo over ssh on Snow Leopard

2009-12-23T19:08:00.001-08:00

I had trouble cloning a git repo between my home iMac and work MacBook Pro, both running Snow Leopard.

It should be as easy as (porkchop-sandwiches is my work machine name. That's right.):

git clone ssh://tony@porkchop-sandwiches.local/~/work/repo

But that was failing with:

bash: git-upload-pack: command not found
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

It sounded like the problem was that when logging into ssh I wasn't getting my work machine's user's path, which had all the git stuff in it. This is what I googled: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/225291/git-upload-pack-command-not-found-how-to-fix-this-correctly, and sure enough this command showed that my PATH wasn't what I expected:

ssh tony@porkchop-sandwiches.local echo \$PATH

I tried the solution at stackoverflow, by symlinking .profile to .bashrc but it didn't work even though the PATH was now correct. I don't know what was going on, but one of the other possible solutions on the stackoverflow lead me to this: http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2008/6/18/2159464, which I then did, and it then did work. It basically forces SSH logins to execute that custom script as the command, which figures out whether to load .profile or not based on if there was a command passed, and then executes the original command if there was one.

I'm off to the races now!

Posted via email from Tony Hillerson's Posterous

The Teavana Perfect Tea Maker is Awesome.

2009-12-22T10:01:00.001-08:00

It makes one cup of loose-leaf tea and it's so clean and easy to use. Much better than a tea ball and quicker and cleaner than a tea pot.

Here's a link: (http://bit.ly/3umdSF)

Posted via web from Tony Hillerson's Posterous

Record

2009-12-18T22:32:00.001-08:00

This is an awesome way to spend a Friday night

Posted via web from Tony Hillerson's Posterous

Bacon and eggs.

2009-12-18T18:08:00.001-08:00

Bacon and Eggs O's style: a slab of bacon and couscous with bacon with a 140 degree egg.

Posted via web from Tony Hillerson's Posterous

Usability is a clementine.

2009-12-18T15:39:00.001-08:00

Usability is a nebulous word that we hear a lot about in my industry. I'm not sure what it is, but I know what it looks like - that kind of thing, you know? It's something we're supposed to make more of, though, that's for sure. In so far as we can be objective about it, it's sort of a utilitarian view (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism) of devices and software and the things that we interact with every day.

When I was at Web2.0 San Francisco last spring I heard a good definition of usability. John Maeda (http://www.maedastudio.com/index.php) said that usability is a Forever Stamp. I like that. A Forever Stamp increases usability by getting more things out of the "user's" way. When someone wants to mail something they want to mail something, not check to see if they have to attach a stamp and a half or paste a quarter on their envelope. They don't have to worry the whole time the thing is in the mail. They just put on the stamp and send it. It's goal oriented; it doesn't expose more of the inner workings of the system (e.g. stamp price changes) than it needs to.

Here's another take. Usability is a clementine. Who doesn't like oranges? Oranges taste great. At least the juicy part does. The pulpy stuff that sticks to the orange as you peel it isn't that great. Oh, and peeling is a pain. They even make special tools for it. And by the time you get done you're up to your elbows in sticky orange juice and half of the orange is crushed.

Clementines are not that way. There's nothing left behind from the skin. It's small enough that you can just zip it open and eat it. If you're really hungry, have two. Peeling is super easy too. I routinely peel one open one-handed as I drive to work.

Oranges were designed by a big corporation. They wanted to make them big, so they look like more of a deal. They wanted to seal in the good stuff so they really stuck that skin on there. They wanted to put seeds in there so there could be more oranges all over the land. Oranges are there for oranges' sake.

Not clementines. They're just for eating.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Tony Hillerson's Posterous

Moving, but not far

2009-12-18T14:56:00.000-08:00

Hey, to anyone who still reads this thing, I'm moving my blog to my Posterous. I'll probably have similar things to say there, but luckly Posterous will post to blogger, so if you do end up here, all the posts at the new blog will show up here.

I'm Back!!

2009-12-18T14:55:00.001-08:00

Wow. This is going to look weird alongside the last post, but hey - it's my own fault for not posting more often.

Anyhow - yea, I'm back at EffectiveUI. I've learned a lot and grown some (like an inch), and I'm happy to be back with my friends. It feels like coming home.

Good times.

thillerson checked in at Brightkite HQ

2009-05-19T12:23:00.000-07:00

I'm now a mobile developer for Brightkite. I'm going to be working on the existing mobile apps that we have, specifically for iPhone, and also getting a few new ones out to the peoples.

It's going to be awesome. If you're not already on Brightkite, you should be, and once you are, friend me as thillerson

Number 8

2009-05-15T13:36:00.000-07:00

I'm number 8.

That's an important number to me, and has been for three years now. I was the 8th person to join on to a small, merry band of nerds and put my own desk together at 18th and Grant in May of 2006. It's been a great ride and it's taken me places I never thought I would go.

Today is my last day at EffectiveUI. I'm not leaving because I've grown tired of working with these guys or because I don't believe in EffectiveUI anymore, because I haven't and I still do. If I could still work with the people I've worked with the last three or so years forever, I would.

I'm leaving because I'm burnt out dealing with client work, that's all. I'm going to another company (which I'll blog about later) which will let me focus on a product I believe in and continue to make it better iteration after iteration - not just until the budget runs out. It's always tough when you want to do more and take a project to the next step and the next step after that, but business realities get in the way. I know that the product world has as many problems as a service company, but I'm ready to meet them head on now.

It's tough, but it's a good choice for me. I'm glad that I'll only be 5 blocks away from EUI, so I'll be stopping in regularly and making sure I don't lose touch. I hope that my new company can continue to be a client of EffectiveUI too.

I was number 8!

RailsConf 09: Flex on Rails with RubyAMF

2009-05-05T13:25:00.000-07:00

RailsConf has been a fun time so far. It's halfway through the second day, which is the first of regular sessions. I went to the tutorial sessions on Chef and Sinatra yesterday and caught up on some things I've been behind on, like Rack.

On Thursday I'll be talking at 10:45 on Flex and Rails using RubyAMF. I'll describe how things fit together, workflow, and all the basics that people may have heard before, but also spend a little time on the future and begging for help.

Here are links to the slides and code
http://www.slideshare.net/thillerson/flex-with-rubyamf
http://github.com/thillerson/preso_code/

Web 2.0 version 3 (for me)

2009-03-29T18:08:00.000-07:00

I'm fine tuning (read: writing) my examples for my Tuesday session at Web 2.0 "Building Your First Android Experience". Pretty soon I may even getting around to packing.

I can't believe it's been two years since my first Web 2.0. And now I get to talk about Android! Last year I ran a panel, which was a lot of fun, but I'm better at geeking out with codez.

For anyone who's looking ahead to the session, you can find the slides here: http://www.slideshare.net/thillerson/first-android-experience and the code here: http://github.com/thillerson/first_android_experience.

If you're going, whether you get a chance to see my session or not, make sure you drop by booth 715. Anthony Franco will also be speaking along with Michael Clark of Photobucket, which you can read about at Anthony's blog.

See you there.

Slides and Codes from my 360|iDev Talk

2009-03-04T13:48:00.000-08:00

Thanks for everyone who made it to my talk on Persistence for the iPhone. 360 Conferences are always great, and I had a great time and learned a lot. Hopefully my session helped out a few people. Again, you can get the code here: http://github.com/thillerson/grocery_getter/ And here are the slides:

iPhone Persistence For Mere Mortals

View more presentations from thillerson. (tags: iphone sqlite)

At 360|iDev

2009-03-02T10:41:00.000-08:00

I've been remiss in blogging about 360|iDev, but here I am. I'm really stoked about learning more about the platform and confirming suspicions about the right way to do things. So far it's looking good.

A bit about my session on Wednesday at 10:00. I'll be talking about NSUserDefaults, Settings bundles, and the "naked" SQLite3 C API. Then I'll go on to talk about FMDB which makes things a bit easier and also supports Rails-style migrations with FMDB-migration-manager. Then we'll see how ActiveRecord for iPhone works to make persistence dead simple. I hope this dovetails nicely with the talk Jeff LaMarche's talk on Tuesday, covering SQLitePersistentObjects.

More to come.

Dear Flex, Aesthetics Matter

2009-02-11T07:53:00.000-08:00

So, as you may or may not have noticed, there's a little bit of a flap in the Flex community. You can read more here, but the short story is that to make Flex 4 compatible with Flex 3 code, since they may need to be used alongside eachother, Adobe's plan is to prefix Flex 4 classes with Fx to avoid namespace collisions with Flex 3 classes.

For instance: Flex 3 -> <mx:Button>, and Flex 4 -> ~~<mx:FxButton>~~ <FxButton>

I understand the problem a bit - most of it has to do with difficulties matching classes with CSS definitions to map to the classes, as I understand it. I appreciate how this could be a problem, but my position is simple. It's a slippery slope. Please, Adobe, don't ruin the good thing you have going, especially as you start to think about other places the Flex language could be used.

Here's what I mean. Look at this mess:


<LinearLayout
  android:orientation="horizontal"
  android:layout_width="fill_parent"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  android:layout_alignParentCenter=”true”
  android:gravity="center">
  <TextView
  android:layout_width="wrap_content"
  android:layout_height="wrap_content"
  android:textAppearance="@style/small_grey_bold"
  android:text="@string/button_one_title"
  />
  <Button
    android:id="@+id/button_one"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:text="@string/button_one_label"
    />
</LinearLayout>

That's a simple, centered, horizontal container with two components: a label and a button, in Android's layout markup. It centers its children and is aligned center in its parent. In a lot of ways, it looks similar to Flex. The tag names correspond to Android framework classes. As far as that goes, it’s simple to see what’s going on here as you read and try to find your place. But look at the android: namespace AT THE ATTRIBUTE LEVEL. Ugly. I’d go so far as Fugly. Also, are attributes camelCased or snake_cased or both? Each one is different. There’s even a android:layout_gravity and an android:gravity. I love Android, but its layout is a mess.

For contrast, here’s a similar layout in Flex:


<mx:HBox
  width="100%"
  horizontalCenter="0"
  verticalAlign="middle"
  horizontalAlign="center">
  <mx:Label styleName="small_grey_bold" />
  <mx:Button id="button_one" label="{button_one_label}" />
</mx:HBox>

See how much more clean that is? There are a few magical incantations (from a n00b’s perspective) like horizontalCenter=”0” - they’ll have to remember how some of the layout rules go, but the rest is pretty intuitive, and there’s way less boilerplate. In 99% of the cases in Android you HAVE to specify layout_width and layout_height or the precompiler complains at you. Why? No sensible defaults is one mark of a bad framework.

Someone once told me a heuristic for recognizing a good framework: When writing code, if you don’t remember what you need to write then guess. If you’re right, it’s a good framework. If you need documentation until you have it by rote, it’s not a good framework. Flex is a good framework. You’re generally rewarded by being able to intuitively guess what the right attributes are.

I chose Android’s layout language to compare because it’s particularly nasty, I think. If I knew enough HTML/CSS, I’d compare that too, because I think it’s way too overwrought. And anyway, two languages where positioning is in one language and the containers are in another? How dumb is that?

My point is that Flex, for any other faults people can pick out about it, has layout DOWN. It’s the best declarative layout language I’ve had experience with. Bruce Eckle agrees, and says “Flex is a DSL for building UIs” (paraphrased).

Now, does Adobe ruin this whole thing when they add Fx prefixes? No, not catastrophically, but like I said, it’s a slippery slope. Every concession that clutters the language puts a dent in the area where Flex really shines. As a developer that matters to me. We can look forward to a time where Flex is available as a layout language on more than just the web, and if I had the choice, I’d use Flex over Android’s layout language if I could, because I have to speak this language day after day, and I’d rather get my point across as quickly as possible, because that impacts my efficiency, my peace of mind, and ultimately how hard I have to work to build good user experiences, which is the goal we all share.

It’s been said before, so look around for it on the web: Aesthetics matter. (here's one quick let-me-google-that-for-you) Adobe, please keep in mind what makes Flex the best layout language, and don’t ruin it, even a little. Stay strong.

Flex and Rails: The Book is Here!

2008-12-22T09:43:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time coming, and a lot of hard work, and it's finally happening. Flex on Rails, Building Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex 3 and Rails 2 is up in final form on Safari and due to be released in paper form soon.

Daniel and I spent a lot of weekends and nights and cajoled and prodded each other for just slightly less than a year, and we're both proud of the results. I hope to hear some feedback soon so we can tell how it's being received, but we've been glad to do our part to bring these two communities together.

Setting Indeterminate Progress Bar in ListActivity

2008-12-19T14:26:00.000-08:00

In Android it's fairly easy to set the indeterminate progress indicator of the current window spinning from an Activity while a thread is working or something. This code outlines it how to do it.

I figured it was that easy when I went to do it for a ListActivity, but it turns out there's a twist. For that feature request to work, you need to call setContentView, but ListActivities come with a default view already set, so setContentView never gets called. That means the indicator never gets requested and doesn't show up.

To get around that problem one way, just set a custom list view, as described here, and in onCreate call setContentView.

Just a quick PSA incase you thought I forgot about this blog.

Welcome John Wilker!

2008-08-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

My company, EffectiveUI, made a really cool hire - one that I'm pretty excited about. John Wilker will be coming on board as our first Community Evangelist.

It's the first time we've attempted something like this, so we're making it up as we go, but I think it will benefit us by letting us take the time to show the work we've been doing, have a better vehicle for recruitment and collaboration, and encourage and give something back to the community.

One thing that we all want to make clear is that EffectiveUI isn't buying 360|Conferences, nor are we buying our way into free sponsorships or easy speaking opportunities. Tom and John will continue to run that venture separately, and we all have an interest in keeping them an objective third party. The value of 360|Flex, built on community, would go down if any one company in the community took over.

In any case, everyone's excited, and now we get to see what John can help us do.

See the Data, Be the Data at 360|Flex

2008-08-20T14:45:00.000-07:00

Juan Sanchez and I just got done with what turned out to be a really fun presentation on Data Visualization at 360|Flex. We had code samples that we didn't get to, but hearing feedback it seems like people were fine with that and enjoyed the chat about theory a bit.

Here's the presentation:

See the Data, Be the Data

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: juan sanchez)

The code samples are up here - if you're not using git, you can still click the download link and get a tarball of the source code. Thanks to everyone who came to see the talk.

UPDATE:

I noticed that this preso is up on AMP now, and as I watched it I noticed how I failed to answer the question about the 2D picture for 1D data in the olympics example. I talked about lying and all that stuff, but what I didn't get was that as long as the *area* of the circles showing the gold medals was in proportion, then the graph was true to the data. Sorry for being misleading, there, I was a little thrown by the question, but I should have be able to get it.

Flex on Rails at 360|Flex

2008-08-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

My Flex and Rails presentation at 360 went really well, and thanks to everyone who came that early in the morning.

All the code can be found at Git-hub here

And the presentation can be found up here, or embedded right here:

Flex And Rails

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: flex 360)

Luckily the 360 Guys also had a sweet video set up which you can watch through Adobe Media Player. Ted Patrick has more here, since I'm not sure how to include the badge that links directly in just yet:

http://www.onflex.org/ted/2008/08/360flex-15-sessions-posted.php
http://www.onflex.org/ted/2008/08/360flex-sessions-media-rss-feed.php

Again, thanks a lot for showing up and I hope the presentation was helpful.

DHH on the UIRC

2008-08-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate to be able to take part in an interview with David Heinemeier Hansson on the User Interface Resource Center.

As always, David was on point about the ingredients of good software, both from a framework and an interface perspective.

Process is on my mind a lot these days: process for building great software, process for dealing with clients and features, and it's great to have a public figure like DHH to be able to point to, who's made the arguments again and again, and just has the rap down.

Great read, and some nice audio clips too.

Use blank fixtures for Bj tables when testing with Bj

2008-07-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

I have an integration test where I need to test a web process that starts a background process with Ara T Howard's awesomely named Bj plugin (Background Job - but never has overhearing talk about Rails testing cause so many funny looks and stifled laughs).

I found some great notes here: http://robsanheim.com/2008/07/10/notes-on-testing-bj-background-job/ which show how to wait for a job to finish during a test.

One problem I ran into, though, was that I somehow had a bad job that got stuck in the testing database table, and that was messing up testing results because Bj would wake up during the test, see the old bad job, and resubmit it. It took a while to track that down.

I fixed it by simply putting blank fixtures in test/fixtures for each of the Bj tables: bj_config, bj_job, and bj_job_archive. That way Bj starts from a blank slate when each test starts. There's a Bj protip for you. Another one is to watch the Bj logs for the test environment.

360's coming, did you bring your coat?

2008-07-14T18:55:00.000-07:00

So Tom and John have really been putting on the pressure to blog, so here I am! Finally blogging!

I'm going to be at 360 Flex in San Jose on August 17th (register at http://360flex.eventbrite.com/), and if you're new to that conference, you should definitely think about going. 360 is more fun than a lot of other conferences I've been to in the past because of the close-knit community and the effort that Tom and John put into making the event work smoothly and fun for everyone.

I'm going to be speaking about my perennial topic, Flex and Rails, this time with more focus on RubyAMF and getting things connected. I'm also lucky enough to be presenting on Data Visualization with Juan Sanchez of ScaleNine.com fame, a friend and colleague. We're going to try to put on a good show for you guys, so, we'll see you there right?

UIRC scores Iron Man Interview

2008-07-13T22:52:00.000-07:00

Ok, maybe not with Iron Man himself, but close. The User Interface Resource Center, (UIRC) which is sponsored by my company EffectiveUI, has a great interview up with Kent Seki, the designer in charge of visualizations and HUDs for the Iron Man movie.

Not only is this a great interview, but I like the way the UIRC is approaching talking about UIs. This interview and another one a little bird told me is coming up are some great cross-cutting looks into people who think hard about designing innovative interfaces.

Flex Needs Some New Thinking

2008-06-25T09:47:00.000-07:00

Anyone who's used Ruby or another dynamic language (I suppose Python is good, but I can't stand the syntax and whitespace-nazism) and started to really grok it and what you can do with a dynamic language with a friendly syntax generally feels a resistance from deep down in their soul-area when they have to go back to Java-land or worse.

I feel less of that resistance when I switch from Ruby to ActionScript via Flex, but it's still there. Especially since I know that a lot of dynamic capabilities are available, but bad for performance and confusing to other developers expecting the more common approaches.

I happen to like Cairngorm just fine, although a lot of people complain about its red tape and preponderance of boilerplate code and I would be happy to use something less bloaty. I like PureMVC as well, but I don't find it to be any better than Cairngorm at what people usually complain about Cairngorm for. There's nothing wrong with Cairngorm that a code generator and Prana won't fix for me, but I'm a little set in my ways, nothing against PureMVC at all.

In fact any of the other frameworks that are popping up as alternatives to Cairngorm, PureMVC, or Roll-your-own, like Mate and Swiz are mostly just cutting down on clutter, but using the same ideas. There's merit to that, but I want to see what thinking like a Rubyist could do for us.

I'd like to try to learn from the dynamic language community and try some new thinking and new approaches to solving framework issues, and it's good to see others thinking about it too:

Jay Fields has got a lot of experience from the Rails and Rails testing world and has some great thoughts on testing in Flex and on Flex in general that resonate with me. I'm excited to see some favorable views on Flex from the Rails community and I hope it continues so we can get some new thinking, new techniques, and get that stuff recognized and incorporated in the Flex community.

I <3 Rails

2008-05-31T14:09:00.000-07:00

AS3 Git Library

2008-05-30T14:43:00.000-07:00

Scott Chacon, author of the Peepcode Git Internals pdf and of gitcasts.com, has released an Actionscript library for traversing local Git trees. A very cool starting point to being able to build Git visualizations at least... and maybe if someone's crazy enough to do the transport stuff a whole Git client - we'll see.

Very cool - check it out.

UPDATE:
How the heck did I not include a link? http://github.com/schacon/asgit/

AIR with Rails @ RailsConf

2008-05-30T00:06:00.000-07:00

Thank you! to everyone that came to our talk today. It's a very hard balance to cover people who haven't heard of a technology to people who just want to hear one or two tips or tricks that get them to the next level all in a 4 hour talk with hands on code.

I think we did a fairly good job of covering the bases, and if you didn't hear something you were wanting to hear, let us know, here or over the channels we presented in the talk.

Once again, the slides and presentation examples are up on github at http://github.com/danielwanja/railsconf2008/

Thanks also to everyone who stayed a little bit extra to hear about RubyAMF as well. You guys are awesome!

RailsConf

2008-05-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

RailsConf is coming up fast - next week in fact. If you're coming to the hands on tutorial part on Thursday (29th) come and see Daniel Wanja and I talk about Powering AIR Applications with Rails. We'll have information on the APIs, strategies for using AIR, and lots of sample code integrating Rails with AIR.

If you're not going to make the hands on portion, at least say hi if you run into me (my picture's on the session topic link above).

FlexManiacs Presentation

2008-05-21T09:37:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone that attended my FlexManiacs talk on Flex and Rails. It went well I think, if a little rushed - there was a lot of material to get through.

I'm trying something out to see how it works, and putting all the presentation files and code up on my personal googlecode site.

Thanks again! Next? AIR at RailsConf, baby.

The Clash of the Devices

2008-05-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

Look, in 8-10 years I want to be spending less time in front of the computer. "As we know it", I should have added. I hope it doesn't take that long either.

I want a small network of devices that are specialized for certain situations, with form factors to match and knowledge of each other. Maybe that means a lot of my data is in the cloud, maybe it doesn't - I don't care about that.

What I do care about is that a laptop costs a lot and is fragile, and a desktop ties me to my desk. Sometimes I need to sit at a desk, but the rest of the time I'd rather be pacing around thinking, collaborating with friends or co-workers on code or music or writing, or playing games that make me more active, but give me an immersive experience only a computer can provide (think of an FPS that's somehow tied to the geometry of your office or something like that - I don't know yet).

Anyhow, back in the now I want to see the shift starting, and I see it with iPhone and Android. Which should I throw my puny, insignificant weight behind?

The iPhone has a lot going for it. That's an understatement. The device is beautiful, the experience is something only Apple could devise, and the SDK sucks. I mean it. It's going to get a lot of app developers where they want to go - iPhonesville, but the ride won't be a fun one.

I'll never get excited about using Cocoa. It's an ugly, crufty language. Only that sweet, juicy iPhone carrot at the end of that uglystick is enough to even get me to try.

Not only does the language suck, the platform is locked down tight as a drum (admittedly only by the software agreement, AFAIK). Can I daemonize a task from my app? No. Can I wake my app up on a location or time based API event? No. Can I share data between different apps? No. Can I replace any of the default software with software I like better? No.

Android says yes to all of those things. It even says "yes, please can I help you with that would you like anything else, sir?".

And as someone who prefers dynamic, readable languages like Ruby, far be it from me to cry up the merits of Java, but compared to Cocoa it's freaking poetry. Not only that, but Android has A DECLARATIVE LAYOUT LANGUAGE!

That means I can build interfaces in a way that makes sense, not in programmatic code, and not in a silly drag and drop interface builder. I don't want to drag and drop. I want to say what I want in a human readable format. That's what Flex has right. It's a language for describing interfaces. It's the best language for describing interfaces. Android's is subpar. But it's better than interface builder, that's for sure.

Android has one thing against it, and it's big. It's not going to run on the iPhone. It may relegate it to the scrappy underdog ghetto smartphone SDK for a long time. It will probably stay the platform of geeks and hackers and open source advocates and people who wear suspenders and sport long santy clause beards. Unless some visionary device maker frees it and lets it soar. We're all counting on you, device makers.

What kind of apps will people make for these platforms? Well, Apple will force the experience into a very rigid, consistently good, calming, happy, user experience. That's mostly good.

Android will sport a bunch of crazy, ugly, hacky apps, just like Linux does. The user experience will be a mixed bag, because any old geek that comes 'long and cranks out a sweet app won't take the time to make it as clean as the iPhone SDK will force apps to be.

The big deal, and here's what gets me, is there will be way more innovation on the Android platform. Why? The open API, for one. The fact that Third Party Apps are first class citizens. The fact that I can publish and share data between apps - even apps that I didn't mean to publish and share with - by describing my data in a conducive manner. The fact that the software that ships with the Android platform is only a suggestion and I can tout my app as a replacement for it and have the other apps on the phone work with my software as if it were the original.

iPhone software quality will be compressed and consistently good. What you can do with third party apps will feel good, but be limited. With Android the lows will be lower and the highs will be higher. Hackers will discover new ways to do innovative things, and I want in on that.

*Sigh* I'll still be in line in June/July/Whenever for my iPhone 2.0 and try to make cool iPhone apps, though, just like the rest of you. You can't make me like it though. At least not as much as Android.

User Interface Resource Center Goes Live

2008-05-10T12:01:00.000-07:00

If you're interested in discussion and learning about better User Interfaces, you should check out the User Interface Resource Center, an initiative by EffectiveUI with some help from partners Adobe and Microsoft to build a community around UIs.

There are already some great articles up about the design and development of the eBay Desktop and discussion about designers and developers working together.

Read up, and then get involved!

Come see a great panel at the Web 2.0 Expo

2008-04-04T21:40:00.000-07:00

Well, tomorrow, the wife and kid and I are off to Italy, and while I'm not looking forward to the day spanning, multi leg, long flight with a 1.5 year old, I know I'll dig it when I get there.

Right after I get back I'm off to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. I'm going to be hosting an all star panel that I know you're going to want to see, titled "Failing Fast: Get Your App out of the Lab and Into the Arena". Sitting on the panel is Randy Reiland from the Discovery Channel, Scott Green from Google's SketchUp, Ryan Stewart from Adobe, ZDNet, and The Internet, and last but not least, Alan Lewis from eBay, of eBay Desktop fame.

We've got some great topics to discuss in the general area of how to actually pull off an open process where users are involved in the direction of software you build. What does that mean for brand? How can you sell that process externally and internally? and more. Come see them in action and bring your questions. It's going to be a great panel.

EffectiveUI Releases Discovery Earth Live

2008-02-15T10:15:00.000-08:00

Last week Discovery Earth Live, built by co-workers and friends at EffectiveUI. There's a better write up at http://rjria.blogspot.com/.

Anyhow aside from being fun to play with - this is the funnest globe experience I've seen online - this application has the potential to be a nice little educational application. Here's a 'story' I created showing the all the man-made lights on the globe overlayed with yesterday's Nitrogen Dioxide emissions. Of course coincidence doesn't indicate correlation, I just thought they looked cool together. However that fun little exploration experience could trigger some interesting questions and, I'm sure, fuel some heated discussions. Paging Mr. Gore....

Here's the story I created:

You must have the Adobe Flash player installed to see this app. Please download flash here.

Of course, the widget embedded there is fun to play with, but all the 3D gee gaws don't mean a thing if you don't have something useful backing it up. The data is the king here. This is an object lesson to anyone who builds interfaces and experiences. Make things as flashy as you like, but if you don't offer my anything besides a quick deversion, I have no reason to keep using your application.

Hopefully Discovery will keep feeding this application with the data that allows us to explore and discover relationships between events, not just an excuse to play a quick game of "As the world turns".

RailsConf Baby!

2008-01-29T15:09:00.000-08:00

I have the official word, Daniel Wanja and I are presenting a tutorial at RailsConf 2008. This is as exciting for me as speaking at MAX - two great technologies that I love to work with, and I get to help cross pollinate them. I'm really grateful for the privilege.

Here's the information: http://en.oreilly.com/rails2008/public/schedule/detail/1213

Watch here for more information.

ScaleNine's Juan Sanchez joins the EffectiveUI team

2008-01-28T12:44:00.000-08:00

I'm really excited to say that Juan Sanchez, whom you may know from ScaleNine.com, has joined the EffectiveUI team.

Not only does he bring a great design sensibility to the team, but he's also one of the Prime Movers behind Degrafa, which is a really exciting project.

I don't know what the heck posessed him to move to Denver, but it's going to be great to have him around the office and he'll a valuable addition to the EffectiveUI User Experience team.

Speaking at WebManiacs in DC

2008-01-22T09:01:00.000-08:00

I was invited to speak at the WebManiacs conference in May. I'll be speaking on Flex with Rails, similar to my talk at MAX, but with more meat and more RubyAMF.

Here are some details from the site:

The WebManiacs 2008 conference schedule has been finalized and registration is open. Early bird pricing ends Jan 31. Consisting of a two-day ColdFusion conference ("CFManiacs") coupled with a three-day Flex conference (FlexManiacs), hosting over 70 speakers and 130 distinct topics (some of which are hands-on), WebManiacs promises to have the most comprehensive coverage of Flex, AIR, and ColdFusion at the lowest price. Seating is limited, so folks should register early in order to get into the more popular sessions.

SEO with Flash

2008-01-21T19:07:00.000-08:00

One of the classic protests to Flash on the web is SEO. Some of that new content I was talking about on InsideRIA is already here, an example of which is a great rundown of SEO with Flash using Adobe's SDK by Andre Charland.

Have a look at it here, and have your answer ready next time the Slashdotters start hatein'

O'Reilly's new RIA Destination

2008-01-21T18:48:00.001-08:00

O'Reilly has released a new site devoted to all aspects of RIA design and development at InsideRIA. The site is centered around blog posts and articles from a panel of experts, headed by Rich Tretola and Andre Charland.

The first content up today is mostly hello world and introductory messages, but make sure you RSS it, because there should be some great stuff up there consistently.

Of course I have an interest in mentioning it since for the next while a forthcoming O'Reilly Shortcut I've authored is going to be serialized there. Here's the first installment. I believe there are 20 installments, so watch that space, and this one, for more updates.

Woot!

2007-12-07T08:11:00.001-08:00

http://dev.rubyonrails.org/changeset/8328

Usability Rule: A feature doesn't have real existence unless it's easy to use

2007-11-15T15:45:00.000-08:00

I know someone has probably said something like this before, but it hit me today while using Git (well, git-svn) on a project.

A feature isn't really available until it's easy to use.

I have to ship off some skinning work to a remote team, but at the same time, I'm reacting to a fundamental change in the data model that I didn't expect. I don't want to be dancing around the skinning changes, so I made a branch for myself with git.

There's nothing exciting about any of that because that's exactly what I should be doing. The difference with svn is that I'd never think to do that. I may think of it in a "lab environment" or suggest it as a solution to someone else, but I'd probably never think "Oh, I should branch this guy and avoid pain later" in the situation I related above.

It's not because svn doesn't have an answer to branching, it's that branching isn't the first answer when it should be. I probably would have just tried to dance around the remote team's changes if I wasn't using git-svn.

You could argue that branching is a complex concept, but implicit in the story is that in svn branching is harder than in git. Since branching is hard enough for me to avoid it, svn is penalizing me for doing the right thing.

Of course, you could call me dumb or lazy, and I'll accept that. But not so dumb that I won't use git-svn or just git from now on.

Adding some generators to RubyAMF

2007-11-14T20:57:00.000-08:00

I'm having fun adding some generators to RubyAMF. They should help get your RubyAMF project kicked off a little fast and in the Rails style. More over at RubyAMF.org

Yer all Jeenyusis.

2007-11-14T13:03:00.001-08:00

I just wanted everyone to know that reading this blog makes u smrt.

Get a Cash Advance

CFUnited Express Presentation: Offline/Online with AIR

2007-11-11T08:48:00.000-08:00

This last Friday (11/9) I was able to stand in for Simon Horwith and speak at CFUnited Express Bay Area, a mini conference by TeraTech. I spoke on the features of AIR that enable developers to build Occasionally Connected Clients.

I had a good time and I was surprised by the diversity of the topics and the way ColdFusion development is going these days.

I worked with ColdFusion for 5 years or so 4 years ago, but spent a lot of energy trying to get some different languages under my belt, and so landed where I am today doing Flex and Rails and Java and so on. I'm happy working with what I'm working with, but it's good to see that the CF community is keeping up with the times and even enjoying some new features that make other dynamic language frameworks like Rails so fun to work with, as mentioned by speakers like Sean Corfield

Here's a link to my presentation from Friday, which has links to the code samples I showed.

Google's Looking Out for Me.

2007-11-02T12:25:00.000-07:00

It's not often I get excited about a User Interface feature as small as this, but I found this one pretty special.

I hopped into my Gmail and staring back at me was this:

That's Google, there, telling me without me having to track it down, that I may have a problem with my experience in Gmail due to third party software.

That's awesome. That is a good user experience.

They had to first decide that there was a problem affecting a good chunk of users (which means they are tracking that sort of thing meaningfully, not just to have the data around). Then they made a help topic on how to get around the issue. They didn't stop there. Not Google. They figured out how to tell that I was running Firebug and then told *me* that there may be a problem instead of waiting for me to figure it out the hard way.

It's nice to see that kind of user experience in action in something I use every day, not just being talked about.

Delegate Factories with Prana

2007-10-15T13:24:00.000-07:00

I've been having fun with Prana lately. Prana is an IoC container framework for Flex under development by Christophe Herreman. Prana is sort of built with Cairngorm in mind, but it could work for any configuration and injection you wanted to do at runtime.

One of the benefits I can see is for rapidly prototyping an application with little to no knowledge of the service you may need to connect to for your data needs. If you can define the data model well enough, you could build your application with Cairngorm in such a way that all you'd need to do is change one file (or type of file): the Delegate.

That's the reason for the business delegate: to keep the application isolated from the implementation of the service layer.

I've written up an example of how I'm currently using this on a project and posted it at http://labs.effectiveui.com/examples/prana/delegates/. It's a pretty lame sample, but if you right click and select "View Source", it shows how I have created a DelegateFactory that gives my commands a Delegate that conforms to a certain interface. Then, using Prana, I can configure the DelegateFactory to build whichever implementation of the Delegate I wanted, without recompiling the application.

The benefit is that I can drive the application's data from dummy xml data, but the application doesn't care where that data comes from. As long as I'm write about the way the data looks, my Commands don't need to change once I switch over to a production ready Delegate.

First, look at the DelegateFactory. Notice that it contains a string, _delegateClassName which will contain the qualified name of the class I want the DelegateFactory to make. There's some type-checking in there once that string is set to make sure that points to a class that conforms to the interface. One last thing to notice is that I need to have the class of the delegate referenced at least once in the code so that it's compiled in. That happens on the line that says


private static var compileTheseClasses:Array = [DevDelegate]

So DevDelegate is the delegate I want to use at development time. That Delegate acts like a regular delegate that calls an HTTPService to get some xml. Instead of doing that, though, it just loads xml local to the swf and sends a ResultEvent to the LoadPeopleCommand as if a result had just returned from the HTTPService.

Once last thing to notice is the applicationConfig.xml which drives Prana. It's loaded by the InitializeCommand. In that first block there:


 <object id="delegateFactory" class="com.effectiveui.examples.business.DelegateFactory" factory-method="getInstance">
  <property name="delegateClassName" value="com.effectiveui.examples.business.DevDelegate" />
 </object>

I tell Prana to configure my DelegateFactory with the delegate class I want to use. I can change this xml file at runtime, so as long as I make sure the Delegate is compiled in, I can change delegates whenever I need.

Of course that's just one of the uses of Prana, but I really like the ability to get up and running easily by making a development time delegate.

Flex needs a Custom Metadata Class

2007-10-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

At MAX, I was really surprised to find out a sekret Flex compiler feature: You can keep custom metadata around in your Flex app. There's a tutorial with a really sweet proposed application for that feature at Christophe Coenraets' Blog.

The only thing about that example is that the entityManager needs to know to read the objects passed into its save() method for metadata. That's not a problem for that use case. BTW, you can read metadata with describeType()

What if I wanted to copy more of the JPA with Flex? Then I'd need the FPA (a mythical Flex Persistence API) to manage the instantiation of the EntityManager and pass in a reference at runtime. I'd need to inject the right EntityManager into any code that wanted it. Right now to do something like that we'd need to read every class, or intelligently read certain classes, to figure out if there were annotations to deal with.

It'd be nicer if we had a first-class Metadata class that got instantiated by the framework at runtime and knew about the class it decorated. That way it could do things like negotiating with the "FPA" to get the right EntityManager at runtime based on configuration data. It could then modify the object that had the metadata with no developer intervention. It'd look something like this, following Christophe's example:


[PersistenceContext(id='applicationPersistenceContext')]
public var entityManager:EntityManager;

That would mean that at runtime, the 'applicationPersistenceContext' persistence context, which could contain data about which database in SQLLite to use, maybe usernames and passwords or something like that... in short: configuration you don't want compiled into your code. That PersistenceContext object would know to inject the correct EntityManager into the variable 'entityManager'.

I think it'd be a great addition to the framework which would allow a lot more use of the "Dependency Injection Pattern" to help make easy to use frameworks for specific needs on top of Flex.

I've created an enhancement issue here: https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-13002 If you agree, make sure you vote on the issue.

A Haiku for Jaiku

2007-10-09T14:51:00.000-07:00

So I don't know if Jaiku is pronounced hai-ku or yai-ku, but here's a haiku anyway:

Google bought Jaiku
I really envy those guys
With all that money

RubyAMF makes me happy

2007-10-09T13:56:00.000-07:00

I've been excited about RubyAMF for a while, and I finally got a chance to try it out after I worked it into my MAX presentation last week.

Aaron Smith was there at MAX too, and once we met and talked I weaseled my way onto the project. Score!

Anyhow, I've got a lot to figure out about how things work, but I really love these two technologies, Flex/Actionscript and Rails, and I'm really excited about what Aaron has already accomplished getting a very easy integration path between the two.

So, hopefully I can contribute to the stability and longevity of RubyAMF, and people will love it and it will achieve world peace or something.

eBay Wins!!

2007-10-02T15:56:00.000-07:00

eBay Desktop, created by EffectiveUI and product managed by Alan Lewis of eBay, has just won a MAX award! Nice work!

Wait... this just in.. we won a MAX People's Choice award too!

Awesome!

MAX Day Thermo

2007-10-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

We've been hearing about Thermo for a while now, and yup, it's pretty sweet :)

Basically it's the best "design view" ever made, and it works for Flex. Designers can import Photoshop files (!!!!) and turn graphic assets into skinned Flex components using metaphors that they're used to, like layers and graphics tools.

Have a look at Aral's blog, where he's just uploaded 3 videos of the keynote today - it's a better explanation than I could give.

MAX Day One

2007-10-02T13:17:00.000-07:00

Internet connection is a bit spotty, and I was running all over the place yesterday, so I'm a day off, sorry.

Best session yesterday was "Flash Internals" by some guys from the Flash Player team. Those guys were geek's geeks. Good information about the pieces of the player and how separate the renderer is from the part that runs the code.

My talk on Flex with Rails went fairly well except RIGHT as I was about to show the fruits of my labor during the code walkthrough, my COMPUTER... my fancy MAC BOOK PRO CRASHED. So that was pretty annoying, but I have another shot at it on Wednesday. Hopefully that one goes better, but still, I think I was able to spread some good word about Flex with Rails and why Rails has the best development experience of the available back end languages.

Got to meet Aaron Smith of RubyAMF fame, who graciously came to my talk. Got to introduce him to a appreciative crowd. We talked about a few things afterwards, a few ideas and Rails performance. Really great guy.

After that some of the EffectiveUI crew hit the streets with some of the Flex team till late. Made it hard to make the Keynote this morning. I'll have a post about Thermo soon :)

Flex and Rails resources

2007-10-01T07:43:00.001-07:00

Thanks for coming to my talk at MAX on Flex with Rails. I really wish my computer wouldn't have crashed right before the last part of my presentation, so I'm glad you actually found this post since I never got to show it up on the big screen.

Here are some of the resources that can point you in the right place when you're starting on integrating Flex with Rails:

Books:
Pragmatic Programmers has the definitive word on Rails.
Flexible Rails was the first book to start talking about Flex with Rails and what a great match they make.

Interweb:
Peter Armstrong - author of Flexible Rails.
Aaron Smith - RubyAMF is an AMF implementation for Ruby
Derek Wischusen - flexonrails.net
Daniel Wanja - onrails.org
The Midnight Coders - Creators of WebOrb for Rails.

Let the MAX announcements begin...

2007-10-01T06:26:00.000-07:00

Adobe acquired Virtual Ubiquity! Grats to the Buzzword Peeps, grats to Adobe...

Now, what other big office suite names are out there? Hm.....

Off to MAX

2007-09-29T11:54:00.000-07:00

Packed and ready to run to the airport for MAX to spread the good word about Flex with Rails and why the development story there is the best of all the alternatives.

EffectiveUI is going to be there in force. It's going to be off the chain, the hook, the charts, AND the wagon.

"Rails", "Fails", and other controversial words that rhyme

2007-09-27T09:37:00.001-07:00

I'd like to welcome a new member to the EffectiveUI team. Simon Horwith is a great addition, and he's going to be working on some great enterprise and government projects with us, as well as helping with training. I'm glad to have him around.

But, I couldn't let one of his latest blog post pass. He titled his post 'Rails Fails' for no reason that I can see. The original post about which his post was written is called '7 Reasons I switched back to PHP', and has made the rounds lately. I see nothing in that post about Rails failing qua Rails, so I can only assume that 'Rails Fails' was a title to stir the pot a little bit.

Here's my take on the original article: Derek's post boils down to two points that I can see:

CD Baby had an existing data model and a lot of php code already in place.
What CD Baby really needed was some solid refactoring, not a change of tools.

Rails is best when you're building from the ground up, because then you get to enjoy the benefits of the opinions of the creators instead of shoehorning a pre-defined structure into a Rails wrapper. Trying to migrate to Rails to get Rails benefits without having access to fundamentally change the processes and structure involved is scary to me. I'm not quite sure if that was what was happening with CD Baby, but it sounds like it.

It's never a good sign when someone says "All of our problems will be solved if we just change tools". That's never the case. It's a corollary to the old saw "If all you have a is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

Derek is completely right to say that there's nothing Rails can do that PHP can't. That's the whole point to get from his article, not that Rails failed in any way. I'm glad he said at the end that if he were building a project from the ground up, he'd give Rails another go, because that's the place for it.

Rails isn't a tool to make your existing application easier to develop, nor is it just an ORM to throw on top of an existing data structure. Rails is a framework, a platform, and a set of opinions on how to apply those tools to a problem domain. No matter what the language (for the most part) those opinions can be applied to make development better in whatever environment you choose, and I think that's what Derek took away from his foray into Rails. I hope that's what everyone else takes away from it, too, and not some sort sense that Rails failed CD Baby, and could fail you too.

My 360 Flex Video

2007-09-20T20:55:00.000-07:00

My 360 Flex video is up now over at cruxy. The video snippet at the beginning isn't indicative of how stunning the whole video is, though, since I fumble a bit trying to figure out why the heck my Mac remote isn't working (line of sight problem). Anyhow... check it out.

The presentation was on getting more expressive user gestures into Flex applications.

I have to mention that it costs $3.60, which I think I split a third of with the A/V guy and the 360 Flex guys.

export instead of checkout in Capistrano 2

2007-09-06T22:52:00.000-07:00

A quick PSA: In capistrano 2 there's a change to the way you get svn to export instead of checkout during a deploy.

Old way:


set :checkout, 'export'

New way:


set :deploy_via, :export

Flex and Rails Dates

2007-08-25T16:39:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure how I didn't run into this before, but I had some trouble parsing and dealing with dates coming from Rails' to_xml rendering of an object in Flex.

The dates were coming back looking like this: 2007-08-29T23:18:07-06:00, which I'd never seen before. I've found out since that it's in the W3C date time format.

Luckly for me, I found that the as3corelib has just what I needed: a DateUtil.parseW3CDT and DateUtil.toW3CDTF method.

If you're passing dates back and forth between Flex and Rails, at least with xml, you may want to check the corelib out, but make sure you look at it anyway.

FXWidget

2007-08-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

Ted Patrick has been integrating SWFObject with some other tricks to get a good Flex widget embedding solution called FXWidget. I've been using it for my AIR derby project, and it's nice. A lot cleaner.

Give it a look and watch for updates.

Help David Coletta speak at MAX

2007-08-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

Did you have a Flex app that was optimally challenged? Did you beat it? How? David Coletta from Buzzword is interested to know how. Check it out .http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif. I can tell you from a first hand perspective, a David Coletta presentation is an experience.

360|Flex Day 2

2007-08-15T10:35:00.000-07:00

Pretty tired after hanging out with some of the Adobe guys late last night. Got to meet David Zuckerman, who put refactoring in the upcoming Flex Builder 3. I had to restrain myself from hugging him. Real nice guy, too.

Buzzword. The best session I'd seen so far, in terms of really useful content about how a very complex and well architected Flex application. When I saw a demo of Buzzword at Web 2.0 I thought "Sweet, it looks better than Word, I hope I can check it out soon". They're still not done, and now I know why. They've got a very solid application and it's a lot more complicated than just a big text input area. They're focusing intently on stability and performance. They even have a testing application built in to the app which lets them record a macro of some actions and save them as a repeatable test that can be performed in a suite inside the application by QA. They do this by having each command (they have their own framework - they hadn't heard of Cairngorm when they started) know how to reproduce itself in Actionscript, and that Actionscript is run later by the test runner. Very good stuff.

360|Flex Slides

2007-08-14T16:56:00.000-07:00

Here are my updated slides, as promised, on the Jest google code site: http://jest-for-flex.googlecode.com/files/gestures.pdf.zip

360|Flex Day One

2007-08-14T08:38:00.001-07:00

Good times at 360 Flex. I didn't get a chance to see too many other sessions since I was practicing my own talk and getting that in shape.

Thanks to everyone that came to my talk on alternative gestures and getting them into Flex apps. Watch this space for updated slides and the sample application.

Some of the EffectiveUI crew got together with Ted Patrick, Matt Chotin, Deepa Subramaniam and a few more of the Flex Dev team. Fun discussions about when to use Cairngorm, preferences about using inheritance. The kind of stuff drunk geeks talk about.