26 Miles

The Rubynator

// August 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // Technology

My friend Geof has for years attempted to persuade of me of the pure awesomeness of Ruby on Rails, and the many ways that it excels over any other language/framework. So in honor of his efforts to constantly evangelize me with the “Oh is much easier in Rails” (and of Dr. Doofenshmirtz, one of my cartoon heroes), I think I’ll start calling him The Rubynator.

I’m no neo-luddite, and I’m generally an early adopter, but have approached Ruby and Rails with only an arms-length interest. But having spent some time this summer doing my own research, I’ve become convinced to embrace it on a couple of big projects at work that are separate platforms from our core product. I’m looking forward to it. One thing I’ve noticed (how can you miss it, they practically yell it), is how much I enjoy and appreciate the culture that’s developed alongside Ruby on Rails in terms of making applications and code elegant, concise, readable, and easy to maintain. The Rails framework seems to make it easy to do things the right way, and I believe the lessons we’ll learn in developing RoR applications will help my team and I become better developers in general, regardless of the development environment we use, and I’m excited about that.

I’m also looking forward to attending the Lone Star Ruby Conference this weekend in Austin and seeing what I can learn.

In Search of The Best Issue Tracking System

// July 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // Technology

We’re currently using Eventum, which I really, really like. The only issues I’ve had so far with it are there seems to be no way I can find for unregistered users to check the status of tickets they submitted (e.g., simple public report) and internal notes get routed to everyone on the notification list (would be nice if it routed only to registered users with a certain role on the project). Otherwise it has pretty much everything I could want. I may end up writing reports to solve my status-checking woes and making a simple PHP form where requestors can enter there email address and it will return all the tickets they submitted or are on the notification list for and info about those tickets. But I’m wondering if there’s not something better out there.

I spent 7 years using Request Tracker, which was nice in many ways. Biggest drawback with it was poor handling of attachments and lack of reporting (maybe I was using an old version…). I’ve tried FogBugz for a few months, and it was good, but again not happy with reporting and depth of features. Looked at Trac (nice but light on features), Lighthouse (very feature-light), Mantis (lightweight), Bugzilla (you’re kidding, right?). JIRA totally rocks but I’ve owned houses that cost less than what it’d take to use JIRA at my company. Looked at Redmine (promising but can’t determine if it’s better than Eventum).

Here’s what I’m looking for:

1. Free or very cheap (~ $10/month per registered user)
2. MySQL-based
3. Preferably open source / GPL
4. Preferably PHP, but could do RoR or Perl, don’t want .Net, Java or Python
5. Un-registered users can submit issues via email to specific projects/queues
6. Robust email routing/notification
7. Un-registered users can easily see the status / discussion on their issues
8. Robust reporting (charts/graphs, gantt would be nice)
9. Subversion integration
10. Highly customizable

Anyone want to offer suggestions / feedback?

Mac-ify Your Desktop With ShellEnhancer For Windows

// June 22nd, 2007 // No Comments » // Technology

Recently on LifeHacker, the featured windows download was a tool called ShellEnhancer.

Paraphrasing:
[...]
“ShellEnhancer is an application designed to enhance the default shell of Windows and to make your life easier. ShellEnhancer allows you to make your own tasks. Tasks consist of a number of commands which get executed one after the other. Available commands include: insert text, send keystroke, manipulate windows, run program, start screensaver, lock workstation and many others. Tasks can be executed with hotkeys, mouse gestures or screen corners. This can also be automated with the Auto Managed Windows feature.”
[...]

It also lets you make windows transparent, a nice feature and the one of the things I miss most about my Mac.

Domains Bot – A Better Domain Search

// June 21st, 2007 // No Comments » // Online Marketing, Technology

SEO Scoop had an article recently on what they tout as the best domain name finder ever called Domains Bot.

While I haven’t spent much time researching this space, on first glance I’d have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

After you go through the quick registration process, you can search for a concept and return a gigantic list of domains based on the concept and a broad list of synonyms, rendered in a format that makes it easy to quickly identify and buy the ones that most appeal to you. You can also choose to show or hide TLD’s as well as whether the domain is registered or for sale or expiring. If the domain is for sale, you can quickly make an offer.

Though I don’t see it, hopefully they’ll soon add the ability to save searches and create alerts as new domains expire.

Onion Skinned Drop Shadows

// June 15th, 2007 // No Comments » // Technology

For many years one of the Holy Grail’s of web design was achieving drop shadows on images without having to manually edit the images to create the effect.

Many tried, and many failed. But one of the best implementations I’ve seen is the Onion Skinned Drop Shadows by Brian Williams (yes, I’m linking to a 3-year-old article again).

From the article:
[...]
“…if you wish to create visual effects that expand and contract to fit any object, require no image manipulation, and render the same across all browsers, then ‘Onion Skinned Drop Shadows’ may be just what you’ve been looking for.”
[...]

It’s not for CSS rookies, but if you dare, give it a shot. It works well.