Technical Thoughts
Important Concepts and a More Personal Approach to the Ipad
Well, given my new commitment to blogging and the just announced iPad from Apple, I guess it’s hard for me not to post something about it.
Problems are: where to begin and pretty much everything and more has already been said.
I was going for the Random thought about blablabla… until John Gruber posted his Various and [...]
How Dropbox Changed My Life
How DropBox Changed My Life
Yes. Again. I had a life changing experience.
OK, little clarification needed here.
By reading some of the latest posts titles, one might think I have a rather small life.
In fact, it’s the opposite. I just have many lives. Many many.
The main one evolves around my wife and my son.
Then there is [...]
Ruby On Rails – The Ecosystem
There’s a catch !
(One could argue that there’s always a catch, but still).
When you begin learning Ruby on Rails, you quickly realize that it’s not going to be that simple.
Several reasons.
The first one is so obvious that it’s in the name of the technology : there are 2 things to learn. Rails, of course, but [...]
3.times do |r| learn r end
Two times I have tried, already.
PHP is a very comfy scripting language. Forgiving, pretty straightforward.
I learned it in a few months, at least enough for what I needed.
Then, two and a half years ago, I began looking for a new web development environment.
I boiled the choice down to two.
On one hand, there was Flash and [...]
How Sonos Changed My Life
Those of you who know me also know that I’m fond of music.
Really fond. Can’t-live-without-it fond.
This pretty much means that I need music everywhere all the time.
Walkman, then DiscMan, then MiniDisc, then iPod solved the problem when far from home.
But Home has always been a problem.
I need to easily have access to any one of [...]
Flip! Flip! Flip!
I could make a t-shirt with that :
A few months ago, I was raving for the soon-to-be-released Sony and Sanyo tiny/HD/pricy camcorders…
and all I got was a Flip…
It’s low res, it has no function at all but it changed my D-life.
Better than the One Ring: you don’t need 8 phrases to describe it :
On button [...]
PHP to XML to inDesign. How my two hemispheres ran into each other.
Next month is the first bday of my son.
A year ago, for the occasion, I set up some kind of blog so our closest friends and family could share some thoughts before the delivery, and we always said we’d publish a book for his 1st bday, with the content of the site.
Comes in the timing [...]
Gmail Dresses Up
A small buzz is running along the web.
Google introduced themes to its already wonderful Gmail.
Just go under the Themes tab, in the settings panel, and choose.
As usual, they worked well. 31 themes, you’ll probably find your.
They are pretty neat, and cover the whole app.
The geeky Terminal Theme, if not really easy to the eyes, will [...]
MS Photosynth, very cool indeed !
Most of my 2 readers know that: I’m a Mac Fan Boy…
We could put it another way: I’m usually not impressed with what comes out of Microsoft.
But once in a while, let’s face it, they have some pretty cool stuff.
Surface is cool, for instance.
But this time it’s more than cool. This time, it’s mega-cool.
This time it’s [...]
Hello World
Writng my first post from WordPress iPhone app.
The internet has evolved once more.
I lost… Fair & Square
This is one of these moments…
A bitter taste and a hard time getting through.
I was just beaten, Fair & Square, on the finish line, building a small web app.
Here is how it started.
Like many I was first confused when I heard about Twitter, a few months ago.
Some kind of broadcasted one-way IM, 140 characters limited.
I didn’t [...]
New Wordpress Is Great
The previous post was the first since Wordpress 2.5 upgrade.
It’s really cool. The work on the admin part is huge.
I particularly love the shift-return to make a new <p />, the embedded tag management, and all the DHTML nifty effects.
Cool !
We Want PHP!
Google App Engine will be big.
Lots of people are talking about it. There was this thing about HuddleChat, the rip-off of 37’s CampFire…
But beyond all that, it doesn’t take much foresight to guess it’s gonna be big.
They said it at launch, it will be language independant, but for now it’s Python only.
Here is a petition to make it [...]
Getting apache2 to serve eRuby files on MacOSX 10.5
Like many web developer, I heard of Ruby via Rails.
Rails make wonders. That’s true.
But it fits a really particular type of development. Application-oriented developments.
So Rails is not really for me (yet), but what of Ruby ?
Digging a little, reading about a lot, using prototype (rubyesque JS library), Ruby seems a really good choice for web [...]
Obviously bigger
I like how the new proto theme for Firefox Mac makes the back button much bigger than the Forward one.
Obvioulsy the Back button is used so many times more…
Certainly nothing new here.
But the point is this :
There are so many things we don’t question any more…
Always challenge established concepts !
- Why did you do it [...]
Dot Fruux
One of the creators defines it as social and sync.
You can sync your Mac Adress Book (OK, but what else ?), and it will be able to keep your contacts up to date, provided your contacts aslo use it.
More info on that feature here.
It’s still in Beta (beta like in not ready to ship, not like in google’s beta) so it lacks most of the features, but it surely is promising.
I’m curently beta testing. It does one thing for now : syncing. But it does it well and that’s all I’m asking – for now.
Simple ? Make it simpler.
I love my new microwave oven.
You just can’t make any simpler.
2 rotating knobs. That’s all !
One for power setting, the other for timing.
Nothing else, not even a start button.
And that’s the beauty. Once you set the timer, it goes off by itself, 1 second later.
The same goes for every thnig designed.
Be it a graphic design, [...]
That’s a lot of NO
NO external drive,
NO FireWire,
NO Ethernet,
NO PC Card.
That’s the price of AIR.
(That and $1799…)
That’s a lot of NOs comapred to what we’re used to, compared to what we expect (plenty of yes and more).
BUT (that’s one big but !) as any Apple product : wait to hold one in your hands before you judge,
AND try [...]
No more excuses
What was a tedious concept is now an easy-to-configure device
We said it again and again and again:
BACK UP YOUR DATA !
How can you justify loosing 4 years of photo in a snap ?…
Photos of Xmas, photos of the kid’s bday, photos of the other kid’s graduation…
I, for myself, couldn’t live with that (or should I [...]
The Problem With Social Networks (As If There Was Only One…)
The Problem With Social Networks:
Multiple personalities.
All of us – as human beings – have many aspects. We come in many flavors. That’s what makes human interactions so complex and interesting.
There is a Working-You, a Family-You, a Friendly-You…
More than that, for each one of these You there are different versions.
At work, you don’t behave the same [...]