Author: Alasdair

Work planning

Posted on by Alasdair

So, having thought about Mr Coates definition of social software a bit, and had it clatter about in my head with another project, I spent some of the weekend getting started on the resultant idea. Which would be fine, but I seem to be setting myself up for a staggering amount of work.

So, naturally, this seems like a good time to get stuck into a new language. I’m going to build the thing in Ruby, and specifically with this Rails framework all the cool kids are talking about, so I’m just making a note of a few good tutorials for when I get stuck in – Rolling with Rails part 1 and part 2 look like a good place to start. I’ll add the Rails/Ajax tutorial, too.

Oh, and Really Getting Started With Rails, as well. That should give me enough to be going on with…

This entry was originally published at my workblog.

Shutting Down

Posted on by Alasdair

Despite having had a very chilled out weekend, I am shattered. I spent yesterday walking all over town, and then today, I have spent time continuting the Programming Project That Will Not Die (I’ve now got the point where I had to spend an hour this morning writing a rough spec, despite the fact that I’m the one making the requirements up, just so’s I can keep track of my own thoughts), going through yesterday’s photos (and continuing with the job of photoshopping some of my older ones into shape, and god, doesn’t photoshop make this sort of thing so much easier), visiting family, and seeing a flat that sounded better on paper than it did in the flesh. Moral of the story: if it sounds too good to be true…

But all that means that I’ve basically been wearing myself out. And now, I am tired.

And so to bed.

API reference

Posted on by Alasdair

The Programmable Web – a quick and dirty listing of the various sites with public APIs out there. What’d make it really handy, of course, is a corresponding list of links to code libraries for interacting with them, but it’s a start.

This entry was originally published at my workblog.

Post-intprop business

Posted on by Alasdair

Here’s an interesting one, that’s going to merit a bit more thought. Via lesscode, an interview with Alan Cooper, the big VB fella, in which he talks about the idea that “code is not an asset”, suggesting instead that the asset is actually “experience and knowledge that the people who have built your code have gathered during the construction of that code”.

I’ve been wondering about how one might apply economic value to knowledge, skills and talent in a post-copyright world, and this sounds like it might be a starting place. Perhaps more interestingly: can it be made to apply to other creative endeavour that coding?

Like I say, one to come back to.

This entry was originally published at my workblog.

Finally…

Posted on by Alasdair

At long last, I have a working copy of a current version photoshop! Exciting new vistas of RAW photograpy, and being able to attempt to fix barrel distortion are available to me! Blindness caused by being hunched over, staring at the screen awaits!

Web dev malaise

Posted on by Alasdair

So, I’m sitting here in the office, bored out of my mind, attempting to upgrade someone else’s stinkingly poor spaghetti-logic code, to make it do something it was explictly designed not to do, and really, just wishing I had the sort of job where I was developing interesting shit, rather than crap for a company that’s too scared to do anything interesting with the internet, despite being perfectly placed to try to do cutting-edge things. And then I run across the summary for next year’s O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and frankly, I just get more depressed at what I’m missing.

This entry was originally published at my workblog.