I ticked the wrong box

Righto, I’ve been putting it off long enough. Got the GiST has been running on rails 1.1.6 almost since it has been launched, and I’d like to take advantage on some of that RESTful 2.0 goodness. So, I’ve decided it’s time to upgrade it.

I’ve got a couple of issues though. I currently use (shhhh, I’m about to say a dirty word) Engines to handle my user logins and roles… They don’t work with much past rails 1.1.6. I also don’t have good admin screens on the application, and whenever I need to do maintenance (which is very rare) I need to go and edit the database directly

So, there are a number of things that I want to do to the app.

1. Upgrade to Rails 2.0.2
2. Convert my user login goodies to use acts_as_authenticated
3. Get another way to handle roles
4. Implement Streamlined for admin screens
5. Write some tests - I’ve was a bit slack when I initially wrote Got the GiST
6. Refactor my code - this goes without saying - some of it is a bit shabby

The main issue I have is that I’m not sure what order I want to do this in. The issue that I have is there are a number of dependencies. For example, old-style Engines doesn’t work past 1.1.6 - and I have my complete login and role system built around that. streamlined don’t appear to work with Rails 1.1.x. acts_as_authenticated requires a simple bit of script hackery to work with 1.1.6, so that might be able to come early…

I think what I’m going to do is drop Engines ASAP. That’s the main cause of my pain. I need to recreate with acts_as_authenticated essentially the same methods for authentication as login_engine currently has, as well as find a (perhaps temporary) solution to my roles issues. Then I’ll set about writing tests. Next step I think could be to upgrade to 1.2.6, and then implement streamlined. I think I’ll then be ready for a migration to Rails 2.0.

Unless someone else has a much better suggestion!

I was listening to a Redmonk Podcast on the train on the way home from work today, and James from Redmonk said something that struck a chord with me. The quote was…

How many customers really have the requirements of Charles Schwab? That is an edge case and sometimes large software companies treat these edge cases as if they were the most sensible source of requirements.

This just really gelled with me. I’ve been working for the largest global mobile telecommunications company on earth for 8 years now, and we battle with vendors every day on requirements, features, architectures and roadmaps that we’d like them to build into their applications. What I take from that (and other things I’ve been reading and listening to) is that you have to be acutely aware of who your customer base is. If you are serving the top 5-10 companies in a particular sector in the world, then you can clearly afford to bend to their requirements, because that’s what they are paying you for. If you are trying to hit mass market, don’t try and emulate the big boys. Keep it simple. Keep the minimum. Keep the maintenance down.

I guess this aligns well with the philosophy that 37 Signals use with their rails apps, and also with the way I tried to create Got the GiST. That was an exercise in taking a painful and complex activity (tax preparation) and simplifying it so my mother could use it.

This is also something I need to remember when I start my new job in just over 1 month. Moving to the vendor/consultant side of the equation is going to be a real eye opener. I won’t always be working with very large enterprises.

The episode was only podcast 2 (very old!), I’ve only recently been introduced to these guys by a colleague. I say give them a listen if you’re keen for an alternative analysts take on IT and the industry.

The Economist published a story called “The end of cheap food“.

It has a couple of interesting quotes:

• The Chinese consumer who ate 20kg (44lb) of meat in 1985 will scoff over 50kg of the stuff this year. That in turn pushes up demand for grain: it takes 8kg of grain to produce one of beef.
• This year biofuels will take a third of America’s (record) maize harvest. That affects food markets directly: fill up an SUV’s fuel tank with ethanol and you have used enough maize to feed a person for a year.
• Increasing productivity means you need fewer farmers, which steadily drives the least efficient off the land.

The first two are interesting for their “facts”. The last is interesting because countries in the EU (as I have had it explained to me by British colleagues) will pay farmers to leave land fallow - ie, not grow crops or farm animals - this is in a drive to keep prices up in Europe - sort of a reverse subsidy. Local suppliers used to be encouraged to produce with subsidies, now foreign suppliers are discouraged (and this is particularly strange in my opinion because a country is giving away money offshore to not produce anything, whereas they could stimulate their own economy by spending the money internally - however this in turn will likely increase efficiency of farms, due to more funds available to farmers for RnD activity). What I find interesting (and surely obvious to all) is that increases in technology and production methods will yield greater productivity, increasing the supply, and thus, depressing the price even more. This will in turn require more intervention in terms of subsidies for supply in europe, and subsidies for lack of supply in other countries.

And of course, this all hurts the developing nations - they struggle to produce food in a manner that is as productive as the west due to lack of technology and advanced production methods.

The point I want to get across here is that subsidies aren’t good for anyone when viewing the global economy. Subsidies at home encourage oversupply. Subsidies offshore (for lack of production) artificially raise global prices and is fighting a losing battle due to advancement of production methods and technology.

My view is that if you can’t survive at a free market price, then you should seriously consider exiting that market and doing something else with your capital. Subsidies are not a long term solution. (Re)Investment is.

Today I had my first experience creating a VERY simple workflow with Automator.

I was editing word documents, excels and powerpoints on my mac and then sending them back to my work PC so that I could embed visio diagrams in them, as well as image files I have on that machine.

I was emailing lots and lots of files, and doing it over and over again, so I thought there must be a better way to do this. Even Windows has a “Send To” option in Explorer, so the mighty OSX 10.4 should be able to do that too.

So, to cut a long story short I clicked on Finder in the applications pane, then selected “Get Selected Finder Items” as the action. That was dragged over to the workflow area.

Then, I checked out the actions in Mail. This was a bit confusing, because initially I tried to run “New Mail Message”, and then “Add Attachments to Front Message”. This second step is unnecessary. First of all “New Mail Message” returns “Mail Messages” and can’t be used as input for “Add Attachments to Front Message”, and secondly files/folders are input to “New Mail Message” and they are attached automagically. I then selected my details by clicking on the Address Book icon, and set a subject “Files from home”.

Third step was to send the message. The action is called “Send Outgoing Messages”. This was dragged over, and then I saved the action as “Send Files to Work”.

Now I have a shiny new menu item under automator. Basically any file(s) or folders I want to email to work, I now just right click, go to automator, and click on Send Files to Work. And off they go!

I will have to play with Automator a little more I think. I’ve had my mac over 2 years now, and this is the first I’ve used it.

1. Read the guide
2. Complain

Yep, that’s the guidance for Capital Gains Tax here.

Source: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/leaflets/cgtfs1.pdf

Look what I just pre-ordered…

I already have a 13″ PowerBook that is a little over 2 years old. The battery now has a 45 minute life, it’s scratched a bit, and I think it needs a rebuild. With my new job (!) I’m going to become a bit of a power commuter, and want a machine that is ultra-portable. The original reason I opted for the 13″ PB was because of the portability, but the MacBook Air is just that bit more portable. I know the battery can’t be replaced by mortal men, and that it only has a mono speaker, and that it has no internal optical drive, but the portability and battery life for me is the key.

Oh, and it’s as sexy as hell.