tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-217319692009-12-30T13:57:09.984-08:00software engineer &#0164 yogi &#0164 turban cowboyRubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-30259986626457058652009-12-30T13:49:00.000-08:002009-12-30T13:54:27.751-08:00

I just finished Purple Cow. In the book, Seth Godin asks one very intelligent question a number of different ways.What are you doing to create a remarkable experience for the person who will consume your product?The foundation Godin uses to answer this question is a mixture of anecdotal evidence and rational thought. The choice of case studies and source material makes the answers compelling

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-53913774952068045432009-12-22T09:16:00.000-08:002009-12-30T13:57:09.997-08:00

Cover of Coders at WorkYesterday I was in transit for twelve hours door to door. While I wasn't sleeping or on conference calls regarding secure video for the web, I read three chapters of Coders at Work.There is a fascinating and nuanced history to the development of software engineering and it's a shame that so little of the field is dedicated to capturing it in a permanent form. It's

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-89938367378239586602009-12-16T20:05:00.001-08:002009-12-22T09:23:03.597-08:00

Image via WikipediaI've heard several people talk about test infection over the past two years. I am going on the record right now. I don't think that having tests means that the code base itself is good. I do wish, however, that there were tests for the code base that I am troubleshooting right now.I understand that there were operational concerns with providing the ability for full testing. I

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-31287392159359240482009-12-16T19:43:00.000-08:002009-12-16T20:02:36.857-08:00

Part of my day was spent researching web services for semantic data extraction from text, including Zemanta, a service designed to improve the quality of blog content by making it easy to add links, images, and tags to posts.The service provides a REST API, browser plug-ins, and server side plug-ins for major CMS systems (think Drupal). I am using the Firefox plugin right now. So if you see a

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-35872973879694457662009-06-20T17:38:00.000-07:002009-06-20T17:44:26.617-07:00

The grayness of the day has kept me indoors, researching cloud computing providers for my side projects. Operations engineering has never been one of my strong suits, or one of my weak suits, or for that matter anything that I would want to put on my body ever, so deploying web applications on the cloud is a clear plus for me.After judging the lay of the land, I settled on Aptana Cloud (the one

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-67307042056827350802009-06-14T10:04:00.000-07:002009-06-14T10:12:25.676-07:00

On my current project the component developers are moving towards constructor-based dependency injection. But here's the thing. I think that constructor-based injection looks ugly. There. I said it. I understand why it's there but it's ugly and verbose and I think that we might be using it as a workaround for more serious problems within our software architecture instead of using it for its

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-850306407738442432009-05-31T08:37:00.000-07:002009-05-31T08:50:05.183-07:00

A MIX09 presentation by Nate Koehchley has brought to mind the muddle that is front end engineering. Where server side programmers are surgeons performing in an operating room, client side programmers are first responders. Nothing is sterile and we're trying to stop the bleeding in the middle of an Arby's. At times it's an exercise in futility that I have grown to love. Honestly. I love the

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-50258804826908396432009-04-20T18:12:00.000-07:002009-04-20T18:17:00.106-07:00

Returning to the world of statically typed languages, I am reminded of how weak the public access specifier is from an architectural perspective. Private is fine. Internal is fine. But public is a nightmare. Public in what context, or rather, public to what other assemblies? Assemblies and their connectivity is a topic that I studied in graduate school but haven't thought of in a while. Like

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-24522980431624837522009-04-10T02:04:00.001-07:002009-04-10T02:14:25.076-07:00

Barcelona is damp and humid, smelling of rain and sweat. It´s 4:30 in the morning to my body and I´m dragging everything I need over the next ten days around train stations, airports, and bus terminals. For the type of area that usually exists around a bus station, this is actually quite nice. I think I can find a decent breakfast among what is open on a deserted Good Friday.

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-80737686293955059852009-02-03T19:00:00.000-08:002009-02-03T19:11:03.391-08:00

I was flipping through the New York Times magazine and read an article about crises. Crises disrupt the influence of special interest groups that wind up dominating any established system. With that disruption comes the capacity to realign the rules so that those groups do not dominate the system at the expense of the system as a whole.This year I've taken a senior-ish position at my company

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-83983700331354542172008-08-13T15:11:00.000-07:002008-08-13T15:28:19.216-07:00

We've been discussing JavaScript patterns at work. It seems like the patterns that we're considering go step further than unobtrusive JavaScript. It seems like they could described better described by the word "attentive". As in the script is paying attention to what's on the page. It waits for the page to load and then wires up events automagically by listening for certain pre-structured

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-26180486115637344912008-08-12T20:41:00.000-07:002008-08-12T20:52:28.463-07:00

I was talking with Mark Sherrill a couple of weeks ago about standards. Not web standards or or anything. Personal standards. Now it's important to note that Mark is perhaps the best designer that I have ever met. So you see, it was kind of an important talk for me. I think I learned something about how to set the bar for myself and my work.Anyway Mark starts telling this crazy story from

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-6656257915808169392008-08-02T13:05:00.000-07:002008-08-05T07:22:23.834-07:00

For the first time in my career, I'm encountering profound JavaScript performance issues in Internet Explorer while trying to manipulate elements in a very large DOM.The situation involves pulling down a large chunk of JSON data from the server and then creating a DOM representation of that data along with all of the relevant event triggers. For reference, with a data set consisting of 50 items,

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-21614501879408083012008-04-08T20:18:00.000-07:002008-04-08T20:20:56.972-07:00

I've been using the YUI libraries at work on a new project and I'm vaguely dissatisfied with the way event listeners are attached using YAHOO.util.Event. I think I have a different way that could be better, although I haven't tried it myself.Instead of passing the function, the arguments and the scope separately, it might make more sense to pass an inline function that wraps the function call

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-24227557326959713862008-01-23T20:02:00.000-08:002008-01-23T20:15:31.779-08:00

Joel on Software the other day had an item on Sakichi Toyoda. After reading it, the fact that I hadn't been introduced before to Toyoda's "5 Whys" struck me. It's a process for understanding that is both simple and elegant, well suited towards many tasks. It's not deterministic per se, but for the record, determinism isn't always the hallmark of excellence.So why hadn't I been bludgeoned over

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-66585908798195376162008-01-22T14:42:00.000-08:002008-01-22T14:49:06.504-08:00

Today’s recurring theme of the day is that there is a problem with most software products, and that problem is that there is too much to them. The code base is too big to manage. There are too many bugs in it. There are too many features to maintain. There are too many features to explain to users. The interface is too cluttered. I could go on. But that’s the gist of the situation. So how

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-58281712309002790182007-12-01T11:11:00.000-08:002007-12-01T11:19:45.792-08:00

Today's tip comes courtesy of a conversation that I had with Dan, the CSS guru at my company. It's a work around for vertically centering a block level HTML element using CSS. The trick is to wrap the block level element inside of an inline element. That will allow you to use the vertical-align property to center the inline element, and thus the block level element inside of it.Is it a hack?

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-78762916128532347002007-11-26T19:47:00.000-08:002007-11-26T19:53:58.979-08:00

Coming back to my smallish apartment in Queens and looking out onto the Manhattan skyline with a nightcap is something that I mega heart. The current in Manhattan can be so intense that it's hard to step out of the flow and think critically about what I'm doing. I tried a new way of breaking out of that flow today after work, closing my eyes and meditating with the Stone Roses in my ears while

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-56472700866895412172007-05-16T13:17:00.000-07:002007-05-16T13:20:00.432-07:00

I spent much of last weekend changing my unhealthy information gathering habits. That sounds as banal in my head as it looks on this screen. Still, these are the things I do so that I can streamline my work activities and spend less time in information transit, that dull purgatory where mindless effort meets clicking and load times.Of course, setting up Mail and Vienna in order to let the

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-73352785554842056022007-05-14T17:31:00.000-07:002007-05-14T17:33:24.577-07:00

While looking for new software on Friday, I found a gem called Nocturne. It inverts, de-saturates, and performs minor color corrections to the screen output on OSX. This is why I am looking at a vast field of black like the night on my screen, broken by white sentences like constellations of stars. I never realized how intense it was to stare into a full color screen with bright backgrounds

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-91520587431788473742007-02-10T18:01:00.000-08:002007-02-10T18:17:24.726-08:00

I caught some issues in recent posts, mostly vagaries and incorrect links. I was trying to clean them up on the sly, but it really didn't work out the way that I intended it to.Where I intended something like a vapid, spandex-clad bimbette, what I got was a large Eastern European man with no rhythm or shame. So I apologize to the two of you who actually read my inane chatter. Feel free to taunt

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-20647109996297612792007-01-31T23:47:00.000-08:002007-02-09T02:44:20.026-08:00

Last night I had nightmares about implementing hash tables from scratch. I suppose that my anxiety over the next few weeks is bearing down on me, as I start in earnest on my graduate thesis and prepare my mind for the upcoming Google campus interviews. I only slept soundly for a couple of hours before I had to wake up for a seminar by Edward Tufte on the visual display of information.By its end

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-21238393390170312382007-01-20T09:03:00.000-08:002007-02-10T17:49:29.448-08:00

Yesterday I walked over to the rock climbing wall at the student recreation center for a little more information. Fifteen minutes later, a one hundred pound girl who alternated between disinterest and enthusiasm had me suspended twenty feet above the ground in a situation which assured death if the rope gave way. Did I mention that I'm afraid of heights, as well as afraid of looking like a

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-1166597052122176552006-12-19T22:36:00.000-08:002006-12-19T22:44:12.136-08:00

Today I set up a demonstration workstation. While helping to clear obsolete programs from the machine, I took a moment to scan some of the new features in Java. The most eye catching item on the list was the ability to mix scripting code with Java. I don't know what to think about this.I would think that when mixing interpreted languages with compiled languages, it would be important to make

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21731969.post-1166406473080405792006-12-17T17:44:00.000-08:002006-12-17T17:47:56.526-08:00

Taking a cab through a White Castle drive through at four o'clock in the morning because the attendee at the window won't let pedestrians order.$10.00.Having the Senegalese cab driver invite us to visit his country afterwards.Priceless.

Rubikzube*http://www.blogger.com/profile/09418973047022284955noreply@blogger.com0