Robby on Rails: Category Off-Topic

Was away on vacation

Robby Russell — Sun, 11 May 2008 17:33:00 -0500

It’s been quiet here the past several weeks and that’s because for the first time since I started Planet Argon, I was able to take an extended vacation.

My partner and I headed to France (Paris, Nice, Lascaux II, and Bordeaux) for a few weeks. It was a first time for both of us. I’ve posted some photos on my flickr (vacation set).

I’d like to thank my amazing team for helping make it easy for me to take off for that much time. :-)

In any event, I wanted to post a few non-technical links…

Veggie Tastespotting (tastespotting without the meat)
Robby’s Muxtape
Robby’s Grabb.it
Robby on twitter
Robby’s feedflix (netflix queue/stats)

Link yours up!

In the coming weeks… I’ll be posting some more thoughts on Project Management, time management, and anything else that seems to come up. If there is anything you’d like me to write about, feel free to drop me a line with a request.

Rolling up my Sleeves, continued

Robby Russell — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:33:00 -0600

It’s been about a year and a half since I wrote about my wrist pains that would often occur at work, which was being caused by something I bet many of us deal with from time to time… Repetitive Strain Injury. So, I’ve been wearing these gloves when I’m at work on my normal Apple keyboard. I knew that they helped to some degree because on the days that I forgot them, my wrists would begin to hurt after a hour or two of coding/writing emails. Not much fun.

A few months ago, I attempted to start typing with Dvorak, which started off with requiring myself to do it for about three hours each morning to start the day and then switching back. After about a week and a half, I forgot to continue doing it. The Dvorak keyboard sits next to my desk… whispering to me, “play with me”... but I haven’t had time to get back into it.

So, the strain continues from time to time. Over the course of a few months, I began to notice that most of the strain seemed to be in my right wrist and I started to wonder if the mouse movements were a bigger culprit than the keyboard itself. So, I spoke to a guy at Macforce (a cool and local Apple dealer) about the mouse pad that he was using. He said that it really helped him out and so I bought myself one.

It’s a Belkin WaveRest™ Gel Mouse Pad and cost me less than $30 USD. It’s been a few weeks and I’ve noticed that I can go almost the entire day without the gloves that I wore before. So, I think that there is still some strain occurring, but a lot less than before. So, I’m hoping to give Dvorak another shot and hope that combo helps alleviate a lot of pain that I’ve been experiencing at work.

If you’re experiencing wrist pains and it’s focused on the hand that you use your mouse with, you might consider something like this to help out.

I’m sure that I’m not the only one that has/is experienced motion strain at the computer.. so, what has been your experience and have you had any success making improvements to your work space to help?

Chad Fowler's Dirty Little Secret?

Robby Russell — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 15:00:00 -0500

I saw this photo of the Microsoft team from 1978 on Anselm’s flickr and thought, “Hmm, that looks like Chad Fowler!”

Could this be Chad Fowler’s dirty little secret?..

Happy Saturday!

89 gmail invites available!

Robby Russell — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 16:10:00 -0500

While everyone else is trading their pownce and skitch invites, I wanted to let everyone know that I still have 89 gmail invites available.

Post a comment on my blog and I’ll hook you up!

Happy Friday! ;-)

update: only 12 left!

To think that tumblin' was a thing of the past

Robby Russell — Wed, 02 May 2007 13:18:00 -0500

I’m digging the new friends feature on tumblr. If you’re tumblin’... consider adding me as a friend.

my tumblr: Robby See, Robby Share

Also, you should check out the #caboose tumblr, which court3nay setup the other day with a friendly IRC bot.

Terrific?

Robby Russell — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:00:00 -0500

Don’t get me wrong, I really like it when a site takes some initiative and let’s me know as soon as they can if my username is already taken in their system… but I didn’t think that PublicSquare’s approach to letting me know that my username was available… was the sort of feedback that I was looking for.

There is a slight difference between being an available username and being a terrific choice.

Perhaps they are trying to make me feel good about myself? Shrug… I’ll take the compliment (this time).

Okay, now they’re just trying to kiss my…

Working in Portland Coffee Shops and Cafes Reviews, part 2

Robby Russell — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 15:02:00 -0600

During the summer of 2005, I wrote a post that listed several coffee shops in Portland, Oregon that I found to be really good places to work on your laptop at. I’ve gotten bored with my regulars and have recently begun to look for new places to venture to.

Pier Coffee is in a weird part of Portland that is somewhat isolated due to the train tracks that will block you in when a long train is moving through town. It’s a very short walk from Allison’s place and they have Oregon Chai, which has become my replacement for drinking coffee. The chairs in Pier Coffee are very comfortable and they have an electrical outlet at most of their tables. When you get bored, you can walk over and play darts, or get a glass of wine. The wireless works really well and when it’s not raining, you can sit out front and overlook the train tracks and downtown, while hacking on your laptop. Pier Coffee is what I would consider an easy place for me to feel productive. There usually isn’t too many people here and I believe most of the customers are from the two condo complexes next to it. The staff is very friendly and their music tastes aren’t annoying.

Backspace is about a half block from the PLANET ARGON office. They don’t serve Oregon Chai, so I usually only get a tea, a viso, or a hot cocoa while there. They have a few tables and couches and I haven’t found this a good place to be productive. It’s a good place to have a short meeting with a coworker though. Music tastes are better here than most places, and they have a food menu now that caters to my vegetarian diet. There are a few electrical outlets, but the seats near them are often occupied.

Three Lions Bakery is about a block from the PLANET ARGON office. They do have Oregon Chai, so I stop by here often in the morning to get my fix. Not many electrical outlets, so your visits are usually not very long. They have a few sandwiches that are quite good. This is a good place to stop by if you’re in the mood to work for about a hour and have some chai and an excellent (and freshly baked) cookie.

If you’re in Portland and have some recommendations, please do share. I’m looking for a few places that are open later in the evening.

Question: Scouting new mobile service

Robby Russell — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 23:57:00 -0500

During my recent trip to London, I plugged my mobile phone charger into my UK power adapter and it blew the charger… leaving me across the world with no charger for my phone. It didn’t matter much because I couldn’t get coverage with my service with Verizon Wireless. My second two-year contract with them came up a few months ago… so I am now considering leaving them for something else. After four years… I would grade them a B+. I’ve always liked their web tools and since all of my close family and girlfriends family has used Verizon… the in-network calls have always been free. The coverage is generally good within the states… however, lack of international plans doesn’t work out well with my recent and upcoming travel plans for work. Also, I need to sneak my way over to the Nokia phones as one of our projects requires that it work with opera mini and the mobile version of mozilla. So… I’d like to test the application first hand. ;-)

Since you have all been so helpful in the past with open questions… who do you have mobile service through?

I would like to get the following:

java-enabled for mini opera, ssh client!, etc…
camera-not-so-important but useful
bluetooth for getting an internet connection and sharing to my laptop while on the road
lots of text messaging/email (server notices…)
ability to use phone internationally
wifi?

Who do you use and why do you like them (or not)?

Thanks!

Meeting up in London

Robby Russell — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 21:09:00 -0500

I’m leaving for London tomorrow. Thank you all for your responses to my travel security questions. I really appreciate it. :-)

I’m going to be getting in on Wednesday afternoon and am going to try to meet up with people at PizzaOnRails.

Thurs-Fri is RailsConf fun… but I haven’t figured out what I will be doing over the weekend. I’m leaving for New York on Tuesday.

Does anybody know of any good vegetarian places that I should go out of my way to try in London? Interested in hanging out and talking shop? Email me! :-)

Science != Technology

Robby Russell — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 13:12:00 -0500

My fiance keeps pointing out how annoying it is to see science grouped with technology on the Google News site. (see Sci/Tech)

Why is this annoying? Well… take a look at the following screenshot.

What doesn’t seem like it belongs in this list?

If you guessed, “Dwarf dinosaur fossil found in Germany”... you guessed right!

I wish that they had just a Science category as I hardly see how this needs to be grouped with news about Nintendo or new voip phone applications.

Small Is Beautiful

Robby Russell — Mon, 22 May 2006 06:20:00 -0500

Some people have habits that are hard to break. Mine is that I tend to pick up books off of our bookshelf…okay…90% of the books are my fiances… but I’ll take one and just open it and start reading. The problem with this is that I really don’t make (or find) enough time to start at the beginning and finish each book. I often end up just opening up to a random section and reading a few pages until I realize that I’m totally lost or until I find something interesting to think more about. Occasionally… I finish the book.

One such book that I am reading is Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher, which was written in 1973. The topic of the book? “Economics as if People Mattered.”

The other day I read a section about developing nations, which has always been a topic of interest to me. I’m going to take a step away from the topic of the book and extract something that the author said that caught my interest.

“We tend to think of development, not in terms of evolution, but in terms of creation.”

When I read this… I know that this isn’t referencing application development but development of third-world nations… however it got me thinking. Is it our tendency to try and plan things the whole way through so that we can follow through and create the definitive and ideal solution in one try? This is exactly how some development processes work. Gather requirements, develop one monolithic plan, and implement it. This process can take a half of a year to several… depending on the size of the company. Perhaps there is very little difference between the three year project and the three month, except the smaller team and lapse of time. Could it be that when we admit that we know that requirements will change over time and if we take an iterative approach that we will be better prepared and more open to change?

...and perhaps the following quote could be applied to the topic of good usability...

“An entirely new system of thought is needed, a system based on attention to people, and not primarily attention to goods. . . .” - E.F. Schumacher

Development should be an evolutionary process… and real people should be where we focus our attention to.

...what are your thoughts?

Announcement: Peat Bakke joins PLANET ARGON as Project Director

Robby Russell — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 13:24:00 -0500

And now for a long overdue announcement! Peat Bakke officially joined the PLANET ARGON core team back in February as our Project Director, and started working with us as a satellite developer in late 2005. As a growing development company, we quickly learned the value of having a dedicated project director. Not only does it help keep the intermingling of projects organized here at PLANET ARGON HQ, but-~~and maybe more importantly~~-it also gives our clients a single point of contact. We may be a small team, but that doesn’t mean that all of us get the chance to be intimate with each and every project. That’s Peat’s job, and we sure are glad to have him on board. Be sure to check out his blog at peat dot org to keep up on his thoughts regarding Rails, project management, business development, and his devotion to index cards.

Learn more about the PLANET ARGON core team.

Fowler, Voorhis and Travel Clothing

Robby Russell — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 20:22:00 -0600

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?

Portland a hub for Open Source?

Robby Russell — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 20:28:00 -0600

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.

Interviewed by CRN regarding Oracle, MySQL, and PostgreSQL

Robby Russell — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:49:00 -0600

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}

Keeping the Code Organic

Robby Russell — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 20:30:00 -0500

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.

Keep it Organic

Pesticides are not necesary to produce quality produce. They are a cheap shortcut that can cause other problems in the longrun, and are generally not a healthy addition to the lifecycle of the fruit or vegetable (or to those who harvest it and consume it).

Test-Driven Development allows you to constantly monitor the behavior of your application. Feature-Driven Development keeps your team focused on what is currently the most important piece of your project. Don’t rely on pesticide, let the project flow the way it wants to.

Keep it Flexible

Business Rules should not be flexible… but they should. That sounds confusing, but it’s not. Know where to make that distinction. Add your rules first… build your tests… then code. Maintain flexibility through your rules.

Test First. Code Second. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Be Proud of Your Code, But Not Blinded By It

You’re biased. Your code is biased. The opinion that you have about your code is biased. You are proud of your code… but you can do it better and some people are better at somethings than you are. Don’t dwell on it, embrace it.

How many of you are making the mistake of being the only programmer on a project? I’m not a big fan of big teams, but I know that small and focused teams are extremly productive and better positioned for the big projects of tomorrow. Find someone that you trust and trade peer-review time. Not sure where to start? Pick up a copy of Refactoring. It’s time that you RE-think how you are doing things.

Embrace Heuristics

It’s time to challenge yourself. A new year is almost upon us and we’re all behind on our goals… because things change. This is the time to explore your possibilities. Learn something new. Don’t be afraid to break things. Just learn why the thing broke. Learn to be a good tester. Learn to write cleaner code. Learn to refactor your code. Learn to make it readable.

Learn to learn… and remember to buy organic. ;-)

PLANET ARGON 2.0 Release Candidate

Robby Russell — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 13:10:00 -0500

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

Ajax versus Wink, the battle begins

Robby Russell — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 17:50:00 -0500

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.

Figuring out all the OSXisms

Robby Russell — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 19:04:00 -0500

I have been sick since I got back from Los Angeles. I’m finally hoping that this is the tail end of that. (coughs)

This afternoon, I decided to start dialing in my new PowerBook. The last one that I had, I didn’t do too much development on, as it was primarily for some simple Rails testing and working on my book. However, after spending the past few months on it, I might as well start using my new laptop for more development work.

So, I’m kicking osx and trying to figure it all out. GCC? Where do I find that? Oh, XCode, Darwin Ports, Fink… so many options.. what is the best setup in your opinion? I’d also like to figure out how to get Open Office installed on this machine.

My girlfriend got a new iBook two days before I got my new PowerBook. So, these are really our first Apple machines. (the one that I had prior to this one didn’t count… I just dealt with it being a cheap laptop that had Word on it… I’d prefer to just pretend that my annoyances with the screen be forgotten… yes, I was the guy in the cafe hitting the screen to get it to display right) heh

I got PostgreSQL installed, but the postgres and postgres-pr adapters are not working. So, I am working through that. So, I find myself working over SSH to a remote PostgreSQL server. (not as efficient for being mobile)

Okay, XCode is finished installing… wish me luck

Rails from LAX to PDX

Robby Russell — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 18:25:00 -0500

I was sitting in a LAX terminal this morning on my new laptop, playing with some Rails code, and working on my book as my girlfriend read an article on String Theory next to me.

Out of nowhere, some guy walks up to me with a big grin and says, “Hi Robby!” and sits down next to me. It’s Mr. Derek Sivers, of CDBaby. He was heading to Portland… and I was heading home from my long weekend in Los Angeles. We chatted a bit, he showed me some of his fun PostgreSQL functions and how they were doing the multi-language stuff there. Pretty cool stuff.

Derek was pretty much one of the main reasons why I opted to really give Rails a full attempt. He and I met a few times last winter and during our meetings we talked about programming, postgresql, php, etc.. He made great book suggestions and talked about his cabin trip when he learned Ruby. This was before he decided to redo CDBaby in Rails. When he made the decision, I just had to know what all the fuss was about. Without Derek, there might not be a robby on rails. ;-)

On the flight home, I know that there were at least 2 passengers on the plane who were working on Rails in mid-flight. :-)

Aside from that, I am back home now and have piles of emails to respond to and things to get done. It was great to get a few days away. :-D

Don't tell my Linux friends, but I got a new Powerbook

Robby Russell — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 20:45:00 -0500

Seriously, don’t let them know. They will hurt me. :-)

New 15” PowerBook G4. I need something to work with each day. So, I got a new laptop.

Now, to get copy stuff to it and get ready for my trip to Los Angeles.

Laptop screen... dead

Robby Russell — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 17:34:00 -0500

My used powerbook finally decided to go out on me. The screen… which was already fairly screwy, decided to go awaol on me last night. I am heading to Los Angeles tomorrow, so I don’t have a lot of time to figure out what to do in replacement. Might just head to the mac store and buy an iBook and use that for a while until I can get that nicer pbook that I want. :-)

David wins Oreilly-Google award

Robby Russell — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 20:35:00 -0500

David Heinemeier Hansson won an award at OSCON tonight for his leadership of the Ruby on Rails project.

Congrats David!

Hot OSCON Nights

Robby Russell — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 21:55:00 -0500

I am heading to Los Angeles later this week to go to a wedding, Magic Mountain, and a meeting with a client. As my plans were being focused on whether my girlfriend would drive from Portland to L.A. or fly, I wasn’t prepared to make the commitment to sign up for OSCON sessions. We finally bought tickets as I reminded myself that I don’t enjoy sitting in the car for 18-22 hours in the hot summer.

So, aside from the exhibit halls and possibly helping out PDXLUG with the booth that we arranged, I’m not going to be doing much with OSCON. I am however hoping to head over to FOSCON on Wednesday evening. It will be nice to meet some more of the local Rubyists ( I still haven’t made it to a meeting yet…) and people like Matz, DHH, and other Ruby & Rails superstars will be there.

It’s currently pretty hot in Portland. I’m not a huge fan of heat (one of the main reasons why I opted to move out of California 5+ years ago in the first place). If you’re in Portland for the week and want to meet up with me for coffee, a beer, or some good vegetarian food… send me an email. :-)

Welcome to Portland!

Working in Portland coffee shops and cafes reviews, part 1

Robby Russell — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 16:10:00 -0500

Since I have found myself sitting in cafes and coffee shops a lot, I thought that I would give a quick and dirty review of a few that I frequent.

Costellos Travel Caffe – My first trip here was to meet Rael Dornfest of O’Reilly for lunch. I had a vegan tomato soup that day and have been in love with that place since. Free wifi + good food = Costellos. They have a nice, short menu, with soups, sandwiches, and salads. In regards to the coffee, they have the best soy mochas out of this list of cafes. You can also enjoy a good foreign beer or glass of wine. They always run videos on the 2 large widescreens on the walls, of photographs and videos from different places around the world. It’s usually soundtracked to some instrumental music… for example, the last time I was in there, I heard Sigur Ros and Lemon Jelly while video showed. It’s a pretty cool place and I need to thank Rael for inviting me there. :-)

My only problem with working there is that it does attract a lot of traffic and finding a good seat isn’t always realistic. You can get lucky… but finding a spot with a power outlet isn’t always guaranteed…infact, you’d best charge up before getting there… as I’d be the guy in the corner with the plug in use already. ;-)

Urban Grind (NE) – This is my morning-to-noon place. They do serve food, but I haven’t actually tried their sandwiches or soups yet. I enjoy their coffee and go here the most. The place is in a big warehouse and it has many tables that are perfect for working at. My girlfriend often comes with me and we sit side by side on our laptops and have enough space to spread out a bit. Free wifi as well and tons of extension cords for people to plug in. There is more of a regulars atmosphere there. The same people show up each day and it’s very calm. My only wish is that they stayed open later than 4 PM. The one in NW has later hours, but that would require me to drive or bus to the other corner of town. I also prefer the laid back nature of NE/SE in contrast to the NW area. Music typically heard include, bjork, interpol… just to name a few. I usually have my headphones on anyways.

Fireside Coffee Lodge – Located in SE Portland, this is the farthest regular spot that I go to. Why would I go so far? They are open 24 hours. Yep, 24 hours of free wifi and coffee… how can you pass that up? When and if I get the urge to work at 2 AM, I can head there and have a good and quiet time. It has several outlets for juicing your laptop and has some tastey coffee drinks. (might I suggest the Almond Joy…) I have been going there for several years with PDXLUG, which is where we hold our monthly meetings. The seats aren’t as comfortable and the tables aren’t either.. but that doesn’t matter when you need that 3:15 AM coding fix and you want to get out of the house for a bit. I spent a lot of time there this last spring when my girlfriend was finishing up here semester in college doing homework. Music doesn’t really play here too often and if so, it’s usually one of the girls at the counter playing NPR.

Redwing Coffee & Baking – Honestly, sitting here.. this is my first time here. What provoked this entry was that I felt that someone should provide a quick and dirty list of places in Portland to work on. So maybe I will work on a site for that in the future and such… as opposed to just how good the food/coffee is… how easy is it to spend 6+ hours in it? Laptop batteries don’t last that long.. and as there seems to be only one power outlet..and I got lucky to snag it. So, I don’t know if this place is ideal for working more than a few hours in. They are currently playing Neil Young… and I’d guess that older stuff like Young, Dylan, and maybe some other 60s/70s stuff would be common here. It’s quite warm in here too as they are baking food in the back. It makes for a nice smell, but when it’s 90~ degrees F outside, it doesn’t cool you down much. They’re open to 8 PM and look like they have a good menu for vegetarians, (like me).

UPDATE: They have free iced tea refills… that’s great!

On a side note, it just started to sprinkle. My day just got a little better. :-)

So, there is my list of a few common places that I go to. I will post more in the near future, but thought that I would start off with the last 4 places that I have been to. I intend on trying more and will continue working on this list.

back to writing… and to my hummus plate.

Portlanders… do you have any places to suggest for working at? I’d like to continue my search for the perfect away-from-the-office cafe.

I got invited to Foo Camp 2005

Robby Russell — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 17:34:00 -0500

On Saturday, I found myself reading an invitation to Foo Camp 2005.

It’s basically a SUPER SECRET invitation-only (150 ppl) 3 day camp out near O’Reillys headquarters in Sebastapol, California.

I am most definitely going to try my best to make it down for this. Camping + Free Wifi + Cool Geeks = Foo Camp!

Thanks O’Reilly!

I added it to my 43Places. :-)

Testing Typo on Lighttpd

Robby Russell — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 13:54:00 -0500

did my xml stop working? doesn’t seem to be updating…

edit: no, apparently with lighttpd, I needed to add a few rewrites. It looks like Typo made some changes to their rss paths a while ago (after planet rubyonrails and other places started using my rss feed for syndication). So, I added the following to my lighttpd.conf to allow those to still work.


url.rewrite = (
    "^/xml/rss/feed.xml$" => "/xml/rss/feed",
    "^/xml/atom/feed.xml$" => "/xml/atom/feed" )

Okay, after taking a minute to test this. I have now simplified this to:


url.rewrite = (
    "^/xml/(.*)/feed.xml$" => "/xml/$1/feed")

My Typo powered blog running on PostgreSQL and Lighttpd (now)

Robby Russell — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 08:05:00 -0500

Finally, was able to take a few minutes and got my blog running on lighttpd. Testing out a few configuration options before moving a few clients to it.

Apache w/fastcgi has been pretty stable for the most part. Initially through lighttpd, I’m not noticing a huge difference in speed. I haven’t tried to run any benchmarks yet… perhaps later.

In other news, I have been busy working on a few client projects, writing, and my gf and I finally got a dog. His name is Nigel. We adopted him a few days ago. :-)

3180 miles later..

Robby Russell — Mon, 30 May 2005 09:31:02 -0500

I left for Colorado last Monday morning and got home last night. On the way back, we drove through Wyoming up to Yellowstone National Park (map), where we spent all day Saturday driving around and taking photos. Was the first time there… and saw my first live Bison (Buffalo), Moose, and many other neat things.

Long story short, I haven’t touched too much code lately and today I play catch up and purchase the beta book that released while I was away. :-)

It’s good to be home.

Heading to Denver

Robby Russell — Sun, 22 May 2005 18:27:35 -0500

Totally off-topic, but not…

My Grandfather, who was the first in my family to work in the technical world (recenly retiring from HP…and worked at Atari during their prime)... passed away last night. I am driving to Denver, Colorado tomorrow and will not be posting too much this week as I will be visiting my family.

I went and purchased an iPod for my road trip and will take the time to work on more of my book.

oops, didn't mean to rake that

Robby Russell — Sun, 15 May 2005 10:14:39 -0500

I accidental caused typo to delete everything. I switched to production and it wasn’t working, ran rake and (had used the same db name) and goodbye 63 entries.

A backup! Woo… untar my pg_dump file… nothing there. Apparently, I was running the wrong version of pg_dump against the postgresql version for my typo blog. Never noticed that til now.

oh well…

but wait! What about my RSS feed? Well, my RSS reader has a cache of all comments and entries! So, I am working on a script to import everything back into typo. It’s almost working for all the entries. Trying to do SQL inserts, is being quirky… I might try to add them one-by-one through the script via the typo web service.

It’s the next day and I have imported all of my entries from my RSS reader cache file… and all my comments! What I did lose were all the email/links associated to comment posters… and they’re displaying in reverse order in the comments section… but it’s all there (from what I can tell).

Now, to fix that postgresql backup script to use the right version of pg_dump. :-)

In the end, I learned a lot about regular expressions in ruby and it’s been a fun experience…despite almost losing all my entries to date here.

Instiki hosting

Robby Russell — Fri, 06 May 2005 16:11:55 -0500

Due to popular request, PLANET ARGON is now offering hosting for Instiki (and mediawiki) for as low as $3/month.

Check out our wiki hosting page for more information.

Lunch with Rael and Lucas

Robby Russell — Thu, 05 May 2005 21:01:21 -0500

Today, I went and met Rael Dornfest of O’Reilly for lunch… and as he is a veggie like I am, he suggested the soup at this place about 30 blocks from here. (which was a delicious Vegan Tomato…yum…)

We discussed Typo (O’Reilly might use it…), some of his personal projects (which were pretty cool sounding), etc… and of course the book.

Lucas Carlson came about a hour later as they were going to meet up as well, so I got to meet him finally and talk to them both.

Contrary to what everyone else says about them, I found them to be very nice and friendly guys. ;-)

I hope to get to talk more with them in the future… on that note, I am heading out to another meeting and take the afternoon off to play some music.

The Pragmatic Programmer

Robby Russell — Mon, 02 May 2005 18:34:34 -0500

This weekend, I purchased The Pragmatic Programmer online. I have been meaning to pick this one up for a while and finally managed to head to over to the site to order it.

I have been trying to get myself away from looking at just programming in a specific language books and trying to expose myself to books that discuss real-world scenarios… rather than the typical programming language book. Looking forward to catching up on a lot of books that I have yet to read.

Suggestions are always welcome!

taskthis! for postgresql

Robby Russell — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 17:28:00 -0500

I downloaded the lastest version of taskthis! and noticed the same thing that I noticed the first time that I downloaded Typo... no PostgreSQL schema! What is going through everyones heads? heh. So, being the PostgreSQL-fanboy that I am, I have created a PostgreSQL schema for taskthis. I am going to send it to Matt and hope that he adds it into his source tree for other people. :-)

Update: Matt has taken my PostgreSQL schema file and said that he would add it to the package for taskthis!.

I am writing a Ruby on Rails book!

Robby Russell — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 20:59:00 -0500

Okay, I was given the go-ahead by my editor to make some sort of announcement.

I have just started working on a Ruby on Rails book for your favorite publisher, O’Reilly.

...more details at eleven.

UPDATE I have started collecting your information here at http://www.programmingrails.com

Be notified when the book is coming out!

Modifying the joe ruby syntax colors

Robby Russell — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 18:43:24 -0500

Okay, as I haven’t quite figured out how to change the background colors of the osx terminal and I was attempting to use the syntax highlighting file that I posted earlier (some of the text in .rb files was not showing as the colors matched the background).

So, what I did was edit the ruby syntax file and add a few changes (color and new configurations). I decided to use the emacs rb highlighting as a base for what I wanted the joe highlighting to look like.

In the end, here is a side-by-side comparison of emacs and joe on my development server.

(click to view larger version)

If anybody wants my ruby syntax file, email me and I will send it over. I will probably continue to make some changes to it until I get the ideal color schema and will post a link to the file later on.

A sucker for joe

Robby Russell — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 17:38:13 -0500

Now that I am spending more time outside of the office and away from my local development network, I find myself struggling with working remotely and continuing to be efficient. I have been trying to work with TextMate, but it’s really not doing it for me as an efficient editor. I prefer KDevelop to it by a long shot (integrated CVS, Subversion, debugging, documentation, etc). However, for small tasks I still end up doing a lot of work in joe. Yes, joe, that silly wordstar-like editor. It has syntax highlighting (as of last year) and I think that my liking of it started when a previous employer showed it to me and got me out of my vim-hell. I can work my way around vim… but when it comes down to it, I just don’t care for modes. Emacs is a nice editor, but I just haven’t taken the time to learn all the commands and when I am working remotely, I don’t have the time to look up the shortcuts. (in due time). Joe doesn’t have cvs or svn integration but I have it on all my servers… but it hasn’t had ruby syntax highlighting!

Well, I just stumbled across this. I will be adding this to all my servers now. :-)

In other news, I am hoping to announce some good news in the coming days… but need to wait for the official approval to make an announcement.

Eventually, I need to learn to use emacs more as it does have cvs integration.

Attempting to work with OSX..much to learn

Robby Russell — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 19:59:04 -0500

I’m playing around with my powerbook at a coffee shop with my girlfriend who is doing homework on her Linux laptop. I am trying to give OSX an honest attempt but I am finding it to be a bit a bit unix-but-not-so-unix like. Another weird thing is programs. There are some beautiful programs, but they all seem to be using the native OSX theme, so it’s nothing exceptionally special. A blog posting program is what I need right now (trying Ecto) but it’s a free trial. This is something that I haven’t had to deal with much in the Linux world. BloGTK does pretty much the same thing..and is open source.

Perhaps I don’t know where to look.

I also tried out TextMate earlier today, was able to connect to my development server through samba and it worked alright. In the end, it’s just another editor and I didn’t see it as such a remarkable improvement from using the programs that I develop with in Linux. A few things that I didn’t check where to see if it had native subversion and cvs support. I’ve gotten used to right clicking and committing files to my repositories from programs like KDevelop and this is also available in emacs (and many other free programs).

So, I don’t forsee myself leaving my comfortable Linux world anytime soon in favor of paying for programs that might look prettier..but I don’t feel any more efficient in them. However, I haven’t spent a lot of time with this yet and will continue to give it a try…but at the moment, it will be my coffee shop and testing box.

next day

So, I am back at the coffee shop again. I wasn’t able to post the above entry with Ecto for some reason. MarsEdit worked however. It kept complaining about not being able to parse the response from the web service. (perhaps a typo bug?)

I have found fugu for sftp/scp transfers and I am playing with TextMate. I don’t see yet what all the excitement is about yet. I will keep playing around with it though on my current project and use fugu to test on my development server as I haven’t had a chance to get rails running on osx yet.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has coffee with PDXLUG

Robby Russell — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:19:53 -0500

As many of you may or may not know, I helped start up PDXLUG over two years ago and it’s always been a very informal group. We have a mailing list, monthly meetings, a media sharing library (people lend books to each other at meetings and reserve books), have had a booth at OSCON (where we handed out tons of customized PDXLUG Knoppix discs), and it’s always been a fairly small group (in terms of people that show up to meetings). I don’t make it to most of the meetings as things like band rehersal come first.

Last night, we had our first ever speaker. However, the agreement was that he would just show up and sit around the coffee tables at our coffee shop meeting place and answer questions. Greg Kroah-Hartman co-wrote O’Reilly’s Linux Device Drivers, 3rd Ed..

Greg Kroah-Hartman has been writing Linux kernel drivers since 1999, and is currently the maintainer for the USB, PCI, I2C, driver core, and sysfs kernel subsystems. He is also the maintainer of the udev and hotplug userspace programs, as well as being a Gentoo kernel maintainer, ensuring that his email inbox is never empty. He is a contributing editor to Linux Journal Magazine, and works for IBM’s Linux Technology Center, doing various Linux kernel related tasks.

He was very friendly and fielded many different types of questions and gave honest feedback on peoples questions. It’s cool to know that so many great contributors to the Open Source community..live in Portland.

Typo on PostgreSQL

Robby Russell — Sun, 13 Mar 2005 15:02:23 -0600

As Typo only supported SQLite and MySQL so far, I submitted a PostgreSQL schema file for the project. This new blog is running on PostgreSQL 8.0 and Rails!

I am going to use this blog to follow my Rails-related projects..and post tips and tricks!

Cheers