I had a little wordpress problem this morning. Wordpress kept redirecting to the install.php script. Wordpress does this when it doesn’t find the options table.

I found that the options table was corrupt. Ran a repair and everything worked as normal. Sorry for the downtime.

As requested, I’ve implemented a category search filter for hellaphone. Neither the keyword, nor the category is required, but both will filter the results. It’s up in github

search with category

I’m a little biased here, being a ruby on rails user, although not professionally anymore. This still makes a great point that most programming purists fail to see.

The point is that the cost per request is plummeting, but the cost of programming is not. Thus, we have to find ways to trade efficiency in the runtime for efficiency in the “thought time” in order to make the development of applications cheaper. I believed we’ve long since entered an age where simplicity of development and maintenance is where the real value lies.
David Heinemeier Hansson
Tuesday, July 12, 2005

I like programming and doing it well, but I really enjoy what it enables us to do. I think it’s just the means to the end, not the end itself.

Sorry about that. I got a little over zealous and moved my website without enabling mod_rewrite. Everything should be back to normal now. Maybe a little quicker.

Isn’t it funny how everyone has a good idea for a website/service that will make money?

Does this ever happen to you?

Every now and then one of my friends or colleagues gives me a call with a new idea for a website or service to offer. They call with excitement and a tone of voice that sounds like they believe they’ll be rich soon. They never do any due diligence to see if the same exact service or niche is already being filled. Even when their idea is unique that seems to be all they want to do, tell me the idea. Tell me the idea and collect some sort of paycheck for basically doing nothing but talking to me like a lush would to a buddy during a long night out.

It’s a real shame too, some of these ideas are genuinely good. Unfortunately, I only have so much time. I usually require them to do some leg work.

• Something like research what other services are out there that compete or are related. Make a list. 
• Define an initial feature set.
• Brainstorm our business model.
• Define costs
• Brainstorm marketing ideas

Most people never get past step one. This weeds out the majority. Some will actually define a feature set, but then tend to drop off past the business model. Defining costs almost always loses everyone else.

I may start giving quotes to these people with the ideas, but that would require more questions that they probably wouldn’t ever get back to me on.

I started using git full time for my personal or side projects. Git is so much easier to get running than svn, but still doesn’t have a way to easily sync sandboxes (branches in git speak) after getting up and running like svn. I needed to setup a remote repo to push and pull from. It’s very easy.

Here is the code to do it.

If you don’t have git, then get it.

• Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install git
• OS X: http://code.google.com/p/git-osx-installer/

 

• ssh your_remote_server.com
• cd /var
• mkdir git && mkdir git/your_repo_name.git
• cd git/your_repo_name.git
• git –bare init

On your local machine:

• cd your_local_git_repo
• git remote add origin ssh://your_remote_server.com/var/git/your_repo_name.git
• git push origin master

Can a coder have too high of standards?

I overheard someone say they dislike someone with too high of coding standards. As if this is a major problem!

The reasoning behind this thought process was this: They usually aren’t pragmatic enough to be goal oriented to meet deadlines and are more concerned with technology.

I say, “Bullshit”! These are not mutually exclusive.

• Well written code can help meet deadlines.
• Code that is easier to read always takes less time to add features to.
• Code that is well designed saves time modifying and/or adding features
• Fixing bugs is always easier in well designed code

I’ll concede that the first time something is developed, writing it to be modular and not one off takes a good programmer a little longer. The second time around though that time is made up and then some. Of course this is not an issue if you never have any changes, scope creep, or a boss/client that knows exactly what he wants and specs it out perfectly the first time.

I’ve been in many projects that are rushed and shortcuts were taken. The code is unbearable by all but the original coder. Even he takes awhile to get things done. Not that it’s ever my job, but I always spend the time rewriting reusable, elegant code then documenting it. I always spend more time than I would have if I had just patched it, but I save time for me next time and anyone who must maintain it.

Sometimes the rewriting is pieces at a time. This means making everything backward compatible with what is currently written and being used at the time of being written. As I replace parts of the code, I go back and remove the code that was made backward compatible for the pieces being replaced. Eventually the old unmaintainable code is replaced by lean, easy to read, documented code.

Almost as soon as I announce that I was going to stop working on Hellaphone, I start using newsgroups again and start on the project. Partly because I keep getting emailed how to set it up. I didn’t spend any time creating an installer when I released it. In fact I hacked it up real quick to be a single user system.

I always planned on releasing it as a service, but became dis-interested and open sourced it. So now I’m concentrating on bringing the service up again. The project is still open and located at http://code.google.com/p/hellaphone . Check it out, contribute, or just use it.

(Update) There is a newer git repository at http://github.com/buck2769/hellaphone/. This is being actively developed.

We start a project, without the complete specs for it (of course). We make choices based on an incomplete view of the project. The choices could be whether or not to re-use existing software, which framework to use, or whether a custom framework should be written. Of course somewhere in the middle of the project we start to receive more functionality requirements. We start to patch the software to make it work. We do it again and again. Then we start to reflect on better ways we could have done the project. Better choices that could have been made along the way. We start to wonder how long it would take to rebuild it with our knowledge and the full spec.

Have you ever been in this situation? Depending on the size of the project, it can sometimes be doable and advantageous. The trick of it is sneaking the work past your boss. They never see reducing future work, just that you’re stopping the forward progress to re-code something that was already done.

This is the coding equivalent of cutting your losses and re-investing.

I’m currently in the middle of a large project that would require so much re-tooling it would just not be possible to switch to a more suited framework or methodology. However, had someone six months ago said,  ”go ahead and scrap the current design and do what is right”, it would probably be done now.

In all fairness, it seemed as though the project would be done any day now. With that in mind, what manager would approve even a partial rewrite?

I dug this old post up from a blogspot blog that I have and never use anymore. This was from circa 2004, but still holds true.

I can’t tell you how annoying it is to have advertisements that play any kind of sound when the page loads. These are usually flash advertisements. This is very rude, this is like talking to someone while they are trying to read the newspaper. This gets even worse when the noise coming from the advertisement is some voice over speaking. Please, I did not come to the page to view all the ads, so only speak when asked to. Mute the damn thing by default. Let me un-mute it if I’m interested.
This is a new form of popup, and if your not careful, you’re advertisements, like pop-ups will be disabled with browser plugins or extensions that are already available but not widely used… yet. If such ads were to become annoying enough and numerous enough then you might see browsers including flash and/or ad blocking technology built in. Be cautious with the annoyingness factor of your ads. Be courteous of how you’re perceived or you may be shut off altogether. This goes beyond sound at startup, this advice should be taken for all annoying assuming aspects of the ads. Please don’t pop up floating divs, or expanded flash viewports that must be closed manually. These are other annoying aspects that may be turned off if it persists further. This would mean a shut down of valid browser features for webmasters that deliver wanted content.

In your face sales is annoying. No one likes it.

Webmasters - Demand that your ads adhere to a set of non-annoying guidelines to avoid people leaving your site or blocking your ads altogether.

Marketing guys behind the ads - Adhere to the same guidelines, else you may find yourselves getting blocked completely.