Blackberry freedom

April 1st, 2007

Despite the incessant glances every 30 seconds to see if there’s new mail, getting a Blackberry has seriously eased up my life. Pre-blackberry I would typically return from a morning out of the office to find nearing 50 emails to get through. Being able to

The device (I’ve got a Perl) is also a beauty. The UI is built with emailing and text in general in mind. When composing or viewing an email there are no margins wasting your space, every nook and cranny is filled with the information you’re after. Compared to UIQ it’s much faster at rendering windows and scrolling through documents. The Perl also has this unique 5×4 keyboard layout I wasn’t sure of at first. The key arrangement is still qwerty, but with typically two characters per key. The SureType input method does a near perfect job of predicting what character you’re after, and event does nifty stuff like read all your email and add the words as options. After a few hours to get used to the new layout I’ve found it even faster than the qwerty on my E61, mainly because your fingers have less distance to travel. The keys also have a nice light but noticeable action.

Unlike some other mobile mail services, RIM allows you add up to 10 email address which are supposed to work via POP3 or IMAP. Unfortunately I later discovered that Textdrive’s (although we’d never use them for hosting) IMAP setup (and I imagine many other Courier installs) isn’t supported. Thankfully Vodaphone give you a complimentary @mobileemail.vodafone.net address. I thought this might be a problem having to forward everything through, but the Blackberry supports proper reply-to, so everything seems to come from my @new-bamboo.co.uk address. After setting this all up I found delay receiving mails to be minimal. I have Mail.app to check every 5 minutes, and my Blackberry beats it every time.

I have however found Vodafone’s order process a tad inefficient. When you receive your phone they include no form of details or instructions apart from a receipt in the package. I had to call them twice, once to ask how long it takes a number to transfer and a second time to ask them how to get mail working. They could have saved themselves 20 minutes of call center time my simply including these obvious details.

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Twitter withdrawl

March 31st, 2007

I suspect there's a inverse correlation between Twitter uptime and number of blogs posts being made. Twitter certainly doesn't do much good for my blog. You do get a feeling of disconnection when it's down though, no longer do I know if a friend is in a coffee shop round the corner or there's an earthquake.

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Sunday evening harvest

March 11th, 2007

It’s sunday night and our new week is on the way. The week’s news has had a surprisingly high proportion of news worth news. Most of these links are in the News I’m reading feed but largely worth mentioning here as well.

I’ve decided to keep the Ruby ones for the Bamboo blog.

• Guy Kawasaki recommends reading Founders at work. It’s next in line after the Ryanair book I’m reading right now (which is an exciting read). Must get myself some of those little post-its Guy uses.

• Ambient Intimacy – Some real thinking about Twitter.

• Demo Day: Y Combinator’s Spring Chicks – Some seriously interesting apps coming out from the Y.

• Wallstrip – Lindsay makes stocks hot.

• Opencoffee shows no signs of slowing down.

• ClickBits – Nice clean icons (I seem to be stealing a fair few links from Al3x now ;) )

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Tube Twitter updates

March 6th, 2007

By word of Aral: Twitter updates for Tube delays is rocking. Might have to create a new account with phone updates turned on for these.

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Bamboo Blog: Growl notifications for Twitter updates

March 2nd, 2007

It all happens at the Bamboo Blog these days kids. Well… at least the ruby side of things. Subscribe now or you’ll be missing out on further instalments of award winning articles such as Jonathan’s – Defining interfaces through mocking (it really is a good article ;) )

Oh and checkout Squawk – Twitter Growl notifications too!

Twitter down - the cats are hiding

March 2nd, 2007

Just when I’m having some fun with the twitter api, it goes down… and even the cats are hiding. It’s something serious when the cats are no where to be found.

Oh wait, phew, the kitten is on the job.

OpenCoffee morning

March 1st, 2007

I went along to first OpenCoffee morning this… morning (proof)! Good chance too catch up with everyone and get acquainted with some new faces. I see a great future for these meetings, I mean where else do you get to demo your app to several great VCs over coffee

See you there next week!

A return to the blog'n

February 27th, 2007

It sure has been a hectic exciting last month or so. Not long after returning from India it became clear to me that working and studying simultaneously would always result in one or the other suffering to some degree. When I do something I like to completely commit and immerse myself in it. Long story short I dropped out out study at Imperial, and for the last month and indefinite future I’m working full time at our fabulous company. Merging with Agile Evolved has also given us the great opportunity to create a unique company run by amazing, passionate people.

New Bamboo is about creating an enthusiastic and nurturing environment for developers and designers. Through this we are able to provide our clients with services brimming with cutting edge technology and innovation. And in the future we intend to deliver some exciting products. It’s not all about services either, we have a spare corner with desks where others can share our space, giving them a hand where possible. In fact, any Ruby programmers in London looking for a desk?

Returned from India

January 13th, 2007

This week I managed to escape for Puna to some pleasant surprises on my return home including the iPhone announcement and a Wii. If you even get a chance, visiting India is a must. There are two tips I would give. One: night buses suck, the train is much nicer. Two: if you visit Puna, going to the Osho Meditation Resort is unmissable even if it’s only for the architecture.

Whilst there I also found the time to read The Long Tail. I’d put off buying this because of the high price tag and its deceptively small amount of content. But even if you’re well versed in the concept it’s worth reading if just to put some numbers to the theory.

Also of note: I’ll be speaking at the Skillsmatter RoR eXchange 2007 on Feb 9th. Look forward to seeing you there.

Interesting things this week

December 15th, 2006

Busy as always. About to start some fun work with more startups.

• Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta – Yay, just in time for my designs due this week.
• Microsoft Rips Off Apple??????s Workgroup Manager Icon – Typical.
• Finished reading Seth Godin’s Purple Cow this week. It was a satisfyingly brief read. Some might say its all been said before, but every other page is a solid example of Seth’s thinking. If you’re starting a new venture it’s well worth the read for some motivation, and reminding that being unique is so important today.
• And I’ve been twitterized now…

Finally migrated to Mephisto

December 10th, 2006

After supposedly fixing typo I discovered the xml controller had disappeared from trunk. That was the last straw. I managed to steal some time this weekend to work up a simple theme for Mephisto and get it setup on the server. Everything's running a hell of a lot smoother now, plus the admin has a funky design.

This theme is all about emptiness. I'm not totally sure it's finished - the top feels a bit heavy. The idea is to further convey myself through what books I'm reading, music I'm listening too and events I'm attending. Consider the media links at the top my top recommendations.

Feed diversification

December 3rd, 2006

Typo kept dying, upgraded, and now I have to update my theme sometime... although I do like Scribbish somewhat.

I've diversified a bit now and there are three new feeds I invite everyone to subscribe too!

• I've switched to Google Reader for my reading and haven't found a nice reblogging method. But please do subscribe to my starred items to get a drift of things I'm reading (usually a mix of Ruby, business and environmental matters): News I'm reading
• Again due to lack of software in this wonderful world, I've turned to Blogger to collect thoughts on the road I'm ever increasingly riding these days (Blogger has email blogging). Be wary of pretentious inspirational quotes from podcasts though ;): Thoughts on the road
• Finally, whenever I start a new book or listen to a great album I just hope everyone who might enjoy it, knows about it. All Consuming is a great service to track your media consumption. If you're after some book suggestions do subscribe to my consumption list, and please send my any recommendations of you own! Media Consumption

What I've been up too

October 8th, 2006

Things have been a little quiet as of late. Why? I've been damn busy :)

For the past several month I've been working on several Rails application for our clients at New Bamboo, which are now also in our portfolio page. The most challenging project has been the Scholastic Teacher's Shop which involved integrating with legacy systems at points. We teamed up with Clearleft for the project which was an enjoyable experience.

Secondly, on a much smaller scale I redesigned Todd Sieling's (Magnolia's product manager) consulting company site: CorvusConsulting. He posts some intriguing articles there so it's well worth subscribing.

Then finally I've been working with the great folks at Quality Humans on the design for Engine Yard's website and control panel. Now Engine Yard is really worth looking into. They're providing fully clustered and managed hosting exclusively for Rails. I can safely say we're going to be recommending/using them for a large proportion of our future clients. It's serious hosting.

I've also just moved up to London this weekend, ready to start Biology at Imperial College London(!) Expect to see me at many more events as well...

Democracy video player

October 8th, 2006

The latest version Democracy video player is really worth checking out. Took far too long too find the Diggnation feed though, and it’s a pain not being able to have stuff in your iTunes playlist (without adding it manually). But the quality of video casts is really improving. Also checkout the music video for Thom Yorke’s Harrowdown Hill which has a load of rocking tilt-shift film.

More links... but this time they're generated :P

September 23rd, 2006

More links? Well this time there a bit more fancy, with thumbnails an all!

But there is something more this time… if you too want to degrade the quality of your blog and easily post fancy link lists, I’ve hacked up a ruby script to grab your latest links from Ma.gnolia and spit out some xhtml. We wouldn’t want everyone doing this, but if you’re interested grab the script and paste it as a new command in Textmate. You’ll also need to input your username and Ma.gnolia api key at the bottom of the script.

Behold the wonders it produces:

• Widescreen Plugin for Mail.app
  The latest version seems a bit more usable now, but I’m still waiting for 2 line rows like cough Office has.
• Ma.gnolia Blog: Introducing Ma.gnolia Roots
  Magnolia’s new Roots bookmarklet allows you to views the Magnolia metadata for a bookmark without leaving the page. I can already see its use in discovering other people who have bookmarked the page and any comments they’ve left. Almost a hoodwink.d for…less cryptic people.
• Jay Fields Thoughts: A Ruby DSL for generating SQL
  Some more DSL fun from Jay. But has he taken it a little bit too far this time, with an SQL DSL?
• Exploring Amazon EC2
  There were several passing discussions of EC2onRails at Railsconf Europe… now it begins :)
• Octoblog: Managing mephisto with svk
  Maintain a local version of the mephisto (or any other) repository with svk.
• the { buckblogs :here }: Writing Domain Specific Languages
  Jamis gives some tips for starting your DSL journey with Ruby.
• Truphone – Mobile VoIP has arrived
  Truphone are providing an easy to use VoIP solution akin to Skype, for mobile phones. Until the end of the year they’re offering free calls to UK landlines.
• Typographica. A Journal of Typography.
  A daily journal of typography featuring news, observations, and open commentary on fonts and typographic design.
• ActiveSpec – Ruby Specification Library
  New specing lib by Luke Redpath. It gives some slick methods for specing out your Rails models, and I’m sure there’s much more to come (Hopefully he doesn’t mind me teasing the world with this).
• Mind Petals: Young Entrepreneur Network
  A rocking design(!)