Robby on Rails

Martin Fowler has written a piece on his bliki titled, TravelClothing

He goes on to describe some best practices for choosing travel-friendly clothing. While reading this… I was instantly reminded of a trip that Jeremy and I made in November.

This is how Jeremy Voorhis packs for a business trip.

How about you?

I saw the following article posted on O’Reilly Radar.

Oregon city builds a reputation as a hub for software revolution

We have tons of Open Source stuff in this town… from OSCON… OSL to OSDL (where Linus himself works)... to tons of local user groups. Starting a business in Portland, Oregon that focuses on Open Source technology is so common place that it’d be nuts to even attempt to list all the companies that I am aware of.

PLANET ARGON was started in Portland, Oregon and as we are slowly moving our way into other regions of the country with some of our extended developers, we are so excited to be part of the Portland scene.

We’re looking forward to meeting so many of you next summer at OSCON 2006!

If you’re a reader of this blog and in the Portland area… leave me a comment!

I wonder how many readers are located in the Portland area. :-)

I <3 Portland.

I was interviewed by CRN regarding my personal thoughts on how the release of Oracle Express might compete with MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Read the short article…

Oracle Express… {yawn}

The landscape around us is quickly changing-really, it has been changing for some time now-we’ve come a point where we admit that it’s okay to want more for less. We want more features, in less time. We want more control, for less money. Why? When did we collectively decide that huge monolithic systems could be completed in a fraction of the time it should take?

After years of working in .NET, PHP, Perl, and even a little Python, I have gone down the road of simplicity. I want simple looking code (thank you Ruby). Code that I can hand off to another developer and for them to simply get it—which helps to keep things moving. It’s about getting the project done.

Scenario: The client wants delivery in X days, so you aim for Y days early. Shortcuts get made, tests are forgotten, code is blemished, and deadlines still manage to sneak by unmet. Why do we do this to ourselves?

I say, no more!

Sacrifices Are Okay

What? You mean I can choose to leave something out? I can-dare, I say-tell my client no? Yes! Well, maybe. It’s time to re-think how you view your projects. Have you asked your client, “What is the single-most-important feature of this project?” Every project has one. Your customer will likely be relieved to hear that you care about the purpose of the project. And it gives you an idea as to where not to make sacrifices, which in turn helps to identify the areas where you can.

So, if you haven’t asked them yet… ask them now.

The Big Picture

If things change, how will it impact your timeframe? When your schedule is threatened, it becomes easier to see what isn’t necessary, or perhaps, not necessary right now.

All features in a project are part of the big pictures. If you ask your client what is required they will almost always respond with the all to easy, “everything.” Simply accepting this as fact often leads to shoddy workmanship in favor of giving your client “everything.” To the client it may seem like you aced the test, but that’s because they don’t know you’ve cheated. I’m sure a lot of you know what it’s like to inherit the code of someone who has done this, and you know you’ve probably been on the other end as well.

A Neverending Story

Projects aren’t just instantly created, they evolve. They need to be fine-tuned, maintained and should most certainly be refactored when necessary. Most projects require ongoing work… because requirements do change.

It’s time to stop and really consider how you approach both your clients and their projects. Can the next project be built in an evolutionary fashion? Can you focus on one new feature at a time, maintaining your tests, and avoiding bloat?

“Big fleas have little fleas Upon their backs to bite ‘em: Little fleas have lesser fleas And so ad infinitum.”

I found this in a book that I picked up at the local Library booksale for something like 20 cents. The book, The New Utopians by, Robert Boguslaw was written in 1965 and has some insightful thoughts on systems as organisms.

We finally found a way to sneak in some extra time to finish up the first phase of our new website. Allison and I are excited to announce the launch of new PLANET ARGON website, www.planetargon.com.

What Powers It?

Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL!

What Has Changed?

For starters, we have a new design. Hopefully the information that you are seeking is easier to navigate to and the order process is a bit easier too. Aside from that, we’ve made just minor changes to our hosting offerings to reflect the needs of our customers. I’ll touch on that shortly.

ReEmphasize The Small Stuff

We first started offering Rails hosting to the public at the beginning of February. In just a week we’ll have nine full months of experience under our belts. Our customers have been a huge influence on the type of services we offer, and the level of support that comes with it. It was out of my own desire to have a web host that allowed for bleeding-edge technology that lead me to start my own hosting company… so that I could turn around and offer other developers, like myself, the same service, without the time commitment of managing your own server and the price tag that goes along with it.

Our Customers are Awesome!

No really, they are. We recently setup an RSS aggregator of some of our hosting customers that run blogs (many of them are running Typo). We call this site, Inhabitants of PLANET ARGON. (inhabitants.planetargon.com) Check it out!

More Space!

We’ve spent some time really looking over our hosting plans and wanted to give them a make-over that reflects the requests of our customers and potential customers. We’ve increased the disk space on the first three of our shared-hosting plans, and lowered the price on the fourth. Take a peek.

Some of our prices have gone up (with the increase in disk space), but our Level 1 plan still starts as low as $11.25/month. This can get you rolling on Rails using PostgreSQL and/or MySQL! :-)

Typo Hosting

We started offering affordable blog hosting last year. Then Typo took off, and none of the other blog software packages were being requested! We have dropped all the PHP blogging applications from our offerings and are now offering Typo Hosting exclusively. For $3/month, you can have your own pre-installed Typo blog!

FREE RAILS HOSTING!

Well, sort of. If you sign up by midnight (PST) on October 31st, you will receive 1 FREE Month for every 6 month account and 2* FREE Months* for every year! (Blogs too)

We’re Not Just a Hosting Company

PLANET ARGON was started as a web development and consulting company, and it still is!

Who Is Allison?

Allison is the Creative Director here at PLANET ARGON. Existing customers of ours know about her… but she’s kept a low profile up until now. She is a ninja in the ways of project management, clean design, and has been known to have a tab open in her browser to the Ruby on Rails API. Expect to hear more from (and about) her in the near future.

For more information, see: http://www.planetargon.com

I am sorry. I am so sorry. I helped spread the wink and what happened… the wink has a problem with ajax.

That’s right.

AJAX and WINK do not like each other. It’s a battle between good and evil, but we don’t know which one is good.

Rumor has it that _why is working on breaking up the cat fight, but until that happens, my lovely blog and other lovely typo blogs are going to be wink less.

I also heard that he is blaming someone named json parser for the trouble.

UPDATE as it stands right now. There are TWO winks on this blog… and until the _why overlord fixes the problems created by our new enemy json parser we will be forced to sit on our hands and wait for new wink-compliance relases.

I have also heard rumors that three small animals in Jerey were wink’d and never returned home. In Boise, a woman by the name of Ruby has filed a lawsuit against the wink overlord.