Archive for the ‘web development’ Category

Talking about “Advanced RESTful Rails”

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

So I know one of the ongoing concerns with conferences in general (and Railsconf in particular) is that people often don’t know what to expect from the presentations - they go in expecting an in-depth study of a subject they know well, and end up seeing an quick and dirty introduction to the stuff they’ve been working with for months. In an attempt to avoid that for my session, I thought I’d go into a bit more depth here so people can make an informed decision.

There are two main parts to the talk. The first deals with RESTful domain modeling - in particular, how you identify resources that don’t map onto your models. I think the most common instance of this across applications is search, with the possible exception of some aspects of authentication.

The second part is specifically aimed at problems with the implementation of REST in Rails. For instance, I’ll be talking about some issues that arise from the _method hack, and possible solutions for them.

What I’d really like to do, however, is make this session useful for as many people as possible. If you have any questions about modeling complicated domains with resources, or about REST support in Rails specifically, please leave a comment here or email me at rest@turrean.com. I’ll answer questions as they come in, so you won’t have to wait to Railsconf.

Also, if there’s anything else you’d like to know about the session, please ask - I think we all (as both speakers and attendees) have a vested interest in being as informed as possible about the various talks, so I’m happy to clarify anything that needs it.

Getting back to the fun

Sunday, January 20th, 2008

You know that feeling where you’re working on things you love so much that it becomes kind of tiresome? Where you still enjoy what you’re doing, but it’s just on the edge of feeling like work? I’ve been there for a little while, but I’m happy to say that I had an experience a few days ago that recentered me.

A friend and I were discussing mashups over breakfast - sites like Flickrvision, ChicagoCrime, and the like - and somehow, we also started talking about LOLcats. Jokingly, we started talking about a site that would translate your friends’ tweets from Twitter into LOLspeak and insert them into appropriate images from Flickr automatically. I didn’t think much more of it until I got back to my hotel room that evening, but in a fit of … something, I decided to give it a try. Without further ado, then, here are the fruits of my labor. I give you … LOLTwitter!

LOLTwitter #1

LOLTwitter #2

The Parable of Brewster’s Millions

Friday, November 23rd, 2007

Ah, nostalgia. It’s different for everyone, but my nostalgiac tendencies lean towards the movies of my youth. Embarassingly enough, that includes such classics as Brewster’s Millions. For those not familiar with this film, let me summarize the plot: a minor-league pitcher (Brewster, played by Richard Pryor) inherits $300 million from a previously-unknown wealthy relative. The catch is that to receive the full fortune, Brewster must first spend a full $30 million in 30 days, with a variety of restrictions on how it can be spent (he can’t give it away, for instance, and he can’t end up owning anything new purchased with that money after the 30 days expire).

There are two things of interest to me related to this movie. The first is that the Richard Pryor version I just decribed was actually the seventh film incarnation of the story, all of which are essentially retellings of a novel written in 1902 (amounts change as the times pass - the original inheritances were one million spent to earn seven million). Since the Pryor version, the story has been filmed twice more (both times in Bollywood).

The second thing that interests me is the parallel between many of the dot-coms in both of the bubbles. I’m sure this isn’t the case in most companies, but sometimes it almost seems like people think of their venture capital as if it were the first part of the inheritance in Brewster’s story - they fritter it away on anything and everything, with nothing to show for it at the end. Aeron chairs, personal chefs (Google doesn’t count here), elaborate office space, presences at international trade shows before a product is built, and the like just aren’t necessary, and it appears to be all too easy to fall into thinking that they are when you’re flush with cash. You might say that when you actually do have money to burn, you’re vastly more likely to start burning it.

The moral of all this is: don’t rush so fast to get gobs of money for your startup. You might very well be better off with some financial constraints.

Check it out

Saturday, September 3rd, 2005

One work-ish post and I disappear for weeks on end. Sorry about that - and for my non-responsiveness to the comments that’ve been coming in while I’ve been gone. I was a little down in the dumps for a while there, and work’s picked up in a major way.

So here’s the latest State of the Ben report. I’ve dropped out of the marathon training - I haven’t had a good run since my first week of training, I can’t figure out why, and I couldn’t finish a long run to save my life. After my 11-instead-of-13 run, I couldn’t even get through a simple 8 miler the following week. In short, I stopped having fun when I was running. In light of that, I decided to back off for a little while to reevaluate what I was doing, and I came to the conclusion that I was just doing too much too fast. Today, I’m going for my first run in the last two weeks. I don’t know how long or how far I’ll go; I’m just out to have a good time again. I also just finished signing up for a 5k next week that some of my friends are running in, so that should help reenergize me, too. I still want to run a marathon, but I’m pushing it off until at least next year.

As for work - I’ve been swamped (in a good way) for the last two weeks; we picked up a super-secret new project that I’m serving as tech lead for, so I’ve been working on getting the first iteration of that out the door. At the same time, I’m still putting in substantial time on my last project, trying to finish it up for launch this week. It’s rough, but I’m really enjoying the time I spend on the new project. I’m writing it in PHP5, and I’m using a lot of ideas from Ruby on Rails in making it work.

And now, off to run - have a great long weekend, everyone!

A work post? Here???

Tuesday, August 16th, 2005

That’s right, folks, I’m finally talking about work. I know you’ve all been waiting eagerly, so here it is:

I’m dealing with podcasting at the moment. We’re trying to create a podcast that individual users can subscribe to (each via a custom url) and download their purchased products.

I’ve got everything humming along happily, with one minor exception: I can’t get my authentication check to work when someone goes to download their file. In other words, I can make the list of downloads show up in the podcatching client (iTunes, iPodder, whatever), but I can’t get it to download the actual file, since I have to redirect the download request through a PHP script to make sure that they’re allowed to download it.

Sigh. Just wanted to vent a bit, so I guess I’m done. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled life, already in progress.