articles in July 2010

Its been a while since I mentioned anything about the FAQtory app. Rest assured that, along with Bugle it’s been keeping me busy in my spare time!

To re-cap quickly, the FAQtory (pronounced Factory) is a simplified stackoverflow-like question and answer app. It allows you to Ask and Answer questions on any topic you like. The app is entirely content-focused and deliberately simple. A simple user voting mechanism ensures the most popular questions and most correct answers filter to the top.

Looking at the logs, it was last August when I kicked off the very first commit. After almost a year of on-again, off-again work and long periods of inactivity, last week finally saw it launch! In its current form the FAQtory is deployed for a single account, (pmfaqtory.com) – you can take a look here. Over time PMfaqtory intend to use FAQtory to build a resource of project management questions and answers.

This is a big milestone for me and with all features locked down for launch, I can concentrate on preparing for a general release. This will involve adding an account model, pricing options and payment gateway integration. I’ll also be moving the app to a new server stack and cloud based host.

Over the coming weeks I hope to talk more about some the design and technology decisions I have made so far. For a bit of fun, here is a replay of the Git log using the latest Gource visualisation engine (now with added ‘Bloom’ effect!)

Gource is now available on Mac Ports which is a much easier install than it used to be (again, compiling from source stills give errors on FTGL)

You may have heard the news on my recent engagement. Not to be outdone in the proceedings, I took it upon myself to buy a new watch. I haven’t been a ‘watch wearer’ for years, always resorting to pull whatever gadget or phone I had out of my pocket for the time. No longer!

I’ve been a long time fan of Zenith and I’m now the proud owner of their 2010 edition, New Vintage 1965 automatic.

I was surprised to find out just how hard this particular watch is to find. Apparently you must specifically order it from Zenith through an authorized Zenith reseller, and after trawling around every swiss watch shop in London, I had lead times from 6 to 1 month. I went with Harrods, they had the original 1965 model in stock (for trying on), excellent customer service and they could have a new one ready for collection in 2 weeks.

I’ve been happily wearing it daily for the last couple of weeks and its running well. It is an automatic, so after initial winding you must wear it daily for the first 12 days to get it trained to your wrist’s movements.

I have jumped on board the RVM bandwagon for managing my development environments. I recently sold my Mac Pro on eBay and have a fresh new 27" iMac on the way. So I thought I’d document this part of the install process and a couple of gotcha’s.

First, grab the Postgres one-click installer and run it. Or you can build & compile it from source. Then for RVM and the latest REE follow these instructions;

# install readline for OSX if needed - check if it already exists in /usr/local/lib
wget ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-6.1.tar.gz
tar -xvzf readline-6.1.tar.gz
cd readline-6.1
./configure && make && sudo make install

# install RVM from github
bash < <( curl http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/releases/rvm-install-head )
 
# edit your .bash_login (or profile) and add this at the bottom
[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm"

# check RVM has installed OK, look for 'is a function'
. ~/.bash_login
type rvm | head -n1
rvm notes

# install REE, or whatever Ruby you'd like
rvm install ree -C --enable-shared,--with-readline-dir=/usr/local

# show what rubies are installed
rvm list

# set REE as the default and current ruby
rvm --default ree

# check your working directories
which ruby && which gem

# In general I use Bundler for apps, but for .irbrc and some scripts I need these too
gem install wirble awesome_print hirb bundler mysql heroku

# and finally for the postgres (pg) gem
sudo env ARCHFLAGS='-arch i386' gem install pg

I’m surprised by how few steps it takes these days (to get Ruby & Rails up and running with a database), four years ago this was a different story altogether. With tools like RVM and Bundler, it couldn’t be simpler.