Software Engineer, Author, Consultant
This blog is generated from text files that are comprised of a section of YAML code then markdown-formatted text. To convert the text files for use with new blog software I had to edit each filename and put the date...
ImageMagick is an image manipulation library that supports the ability to crop an image programmatically. There is a creative aspect to making a crop from an original image. A photo producer may be unhappy with a crop that was chosen...
MySQL LOAD DATA INFILE can be used to load thousands or millions of records very quickly. Each row in a CSV text file will be created as a record in the database.
Shipped software can provide A/B test results and behavior data, which can help clarify whether a feature is worth enhancing or abandoning. It is important for the team to embrace shipping software (without hurting quality) to keep planning meetings short...
Facebook has a JS SDK and “open graph” which allow applications to post to users’ newsfeeds (and more) with permission from the user. Timeline was announced at the Facebook developer conference in the summer of 2011, which is basically a...
Working independently on personal iOS projects, I’d used a couple of Objective-C open source libraries and wanted to share what they are.
We recently deployed a Rails 3 application that uses Bundler to manage dependencies. We freeze the gems in the application so it can be deployed on the same boxes as other applications that have different gems. It is best to...
Vanity is an A/B Testing framework for Ruby on Rails applications. I covered A/Bingo previously which is a similar framework. We have moved to Vanity at work as our A/B testing tool for a number of reasons. We are using...
A/Bingo is a “A/B” or “split” testing framework to try out different text or images (or other things) and see how they perform relative to each other. Vanity is the another a/b testing option for Rails applications, and is probably...
We recently started work on a new iPhone app and wanted to promote the app and find out who is interested in trying it out. Now that we’ve made progress on the app privately, it seemed like a good time...