Kevin Werbach's coursera course on gamification is restarting again!
He's the bloke who wrote For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business - and the gamification course had amazing reviews.
I started it too late last time to fully participate - and now I get another chance!
it's only just begun - so there's still time to sign up without missing out on any of the assignments or the option to get a certification.
If you're wondering why I've been so quiet... I'm currently teaching the "Immersive web development" course for General Assembly at fishburners, in Ultimo
This is a 12-week course covering the full stack of web development. Students learn ruby, HTML, CSS, SQL, sinatra, rails, javascript and several javascript frameworks.They complete three personal projects as well as many small homework projects. They also get an introduction to the ruby/rails and startup communities (especially via fishburners).
I'm teaching the course - and teaching is, for me, a brand new skill. While they learn rails, I get to learn how to structure and plan lessons, and how to deal with multiple levels of understanding.
It's tough - which is what I expected. I have to plan 40 hours of talking... every weekend - and brush up on every aspect of what I'm teaching so I can answer the tricky questions.
This essentially means I'm working 6 days a week, and the teaching itself drains a fair bit out of me.
So if you're wondering why I'm a bit quiet atm... that's why
There is No Governing body
People come together purely through enlightened self-interest to build something useful
Yes there are freeloaders
yes there is chaos
yes standards vary
But some amazing stuff gets built despite all that.
* Note: anarchism != anarchy... go look it up, if you've never heard of it before...
No. it wouldn't work as a form of government for obvious reasons (ie people are still people)... but that isn't the point I'm trying to make here.
In the land of the blind
the one-eyed man is burnt at the stake
for asserting the heresy of light in our land of blessed darkness
If you're anything like me, for a graphics designer you make a great web developer.
My past attempts at design have run the gamut from "geocities" to "unicorn vomit", and I've become increasingly minimalist in an attempt to rectify that
-> less design == less unicorn-puke == win!
But it still leaves my sites looking like crayon-drawn whitesites
It's a long way from there to the current industry requirements of a clean, flexible, responsive design - able to handle mega-huge desktop-monitors and tiny smart-phones alike while looking sleek and professional... and I had resigned myself to basically just not sucking too badly and hoping my sites were useful enough for people to get past the ugly-duckling look.
but now I've found bootstrap. It lets you quickly and easily build a fully-responsive all-devices-ready design with very little graphic-design nous required. From a full grid-based system (to easily build columns that will nicely collapse on smaller screens), to all sorts of components - navbars, breadcrumbs, panels, lists of linked thumbnail images... the list is pretty huge.
Don't be put off by the "oh my god PURPLE" look of their website - this is a tool worth using.
The getting started guide is where to begin.
There's a number of pre-built templates on bootply templates that even if you don't like, you can cannibalise for the various pieces you want.
You can also buy a whole bunch of pre-packaged, professional themes (for about $12 each) from WrapBootstrap to kickstart your website design. Though be aware they are mostly built on Bootstrap 2
If you're building this stuff in rails, there's a whole bunch of bootsrap-related gems - which mean you don't have to download the css/js versions of bootstrap and mix them all into your assets directory.
Ryan Bates' railscast (see below) uses seyhunak / twitter-bootstrap-rails, which seems to have a whole bunch of neat generators for quickly throwing up layouts. I prefer not mixing bootstrap's Less with the existing SASS, and so have gone for the sass-based gem: bootstrap-sass gem.
I suspect you can combine these two powers for good by using the generators of twitter-bootstrap with the sass-based assets of bootstrap-sass... but have yet to try it (let me know if you do).
There's also a great overview of rails and twitter bootstrap with a related RailsApp that goes into far more depth (I haven't had a look at that yet).
and Ryan Bates has done a railscast on twitter bootstrap basics, and a pro-only railscast: more on twitter bootstrap
enjoy...
Note: Bootstrap version 3 has recently been released, and a lot of the tutorials, railscasts etc are based on version 2. Bootply has a Bootstrap 3 migration guide if you want a reference to what has changed.
Load info is a neat website that lets you generate your own loading icon.
The first page has a hypnotising array of load-icons to choose. Click on one and it'll bring up a box that lets you choose the size and colours you want and it'll generate you a customised animated gif you can use.
Just a bit of fun for the day: Exploring Expressions of Emotions in GitHub Commit Messages
For example, here's the relative list of angry commits by programming language:
Zen seems to have, as central to its dogma, a mystery tradition. ie it makes all its teachings appear incredibly mysterious in what appears to be an effort to make it seem harder to attain - and thus weed out those not willing to work for the enlightenment it proffers.
at least this is how it seems to western thinking. I've known a number of people who have fallen into what I believe is the trap of thinking that zen actually *is* a mysterious hidden secret that can only be approached in a non-rational way...
The reality is that zen is a very good way of switching off that part of the mind that gets in the way of thinking about the things that zen teaches... however, its not the only way.
As they say in zen - zen is not the way, but it approaches the way.
ie it's a good way of starting out, but it won't get you all the way there.
and (unlike the smugness of certain woo-woo types would lead you to believe) it's not the *only* way of reaching The Way.
It's my contention that it is just as possible to work your way there, starting with traditional western rationality/philosophy.
Here's an example pulled from zen:
A teacher once said "this is my short staff. If I call it a short staff, I deny its reality, but if I do not call it a short staff, I deny its fact, so what do I call it?"
It sounds incredibly mysterious. It's a mind-puzzle that you must work out for yourself - and if you are starting from scratch, it may take years of meditation to get to an answer... or you may grasp it in a second.
This is why it seems mysterious, like a great hidden secret that must be very valuable and thus you can feel all smug about knowing...
However, this koan contains some truths which are quite easily expressed in Western rationality also, and I believe it's more valuable to share those truths than to remain "terribly mysterious".
This koan, to me, expresses the map vs territory problem.
The map is not the territory, and yet it is the territory - just not *all* of the territory. The territory is represented by the map, but it is not defined by the map. Change the map (say, pencil in a new road) and the territory will not change (the new road does not spontaneously appear). Change the territory, and the map must be changed to match or lose it's connection with the territory.
Yet the map (if properly drawn) is the territory also - that road connects to this one in just such a way. If you follow the pattern of roads on the map, you will arrive at the destination that the map says you will.
The territory contains those facts that are within the map, but it *is not* the map itself. The map contains facts which are defined in the territory. You can recognise the territory by looking at the map - but the territory is so much more. It contains trees and roof-tiles and many other things that are not in the map.
The map is not the territory, and the territory is not the map
If I look at a map of england and say that this is england I will deny the reality of england. But if I look at the map and say that it is not england, then I deny the fact that the map is of england.
The map is the territory and is not the territory
but using the map you can approach the territory, but it is not the territory.
It does and does not have "england-nature"...
To get back to the koan... the object that the teacher is holding out is a short staff - that is the fact. If he said "this is not a short staff" then he would be denying the fact of it actually being a good example of a short staff.
However - if he broke it in half (so that it was no longer a short staff), it wouldn't be like there was no longer any short staves in the world. Thus you cannot say that is is "the" short staff. Other short staves are not defined by the properties of the object in the teacher's hand.
The name "short staff" is just a reference to it... but not a definitive one. It is not the same short staff as, say another one lying on the floor over there. If I can point to each and say "this is a short staff" then you are not naming a thing, only categorising it.
Therefore if you name it "short staff" you deny the reality of it being something *more* than a short staff.
The phrase "short staff" is the map that lets us recognise "things that have the short-staff property"... but it is not the short staff itself.
Now - perhaps you got something different from the short-staff koan. If so, instead of being "all zen and mysterious" about it, I implore you to figure out what it is you've learned... and share it with the rest of us.
Rails girls is a group dedicated to training up the next generation of Rails developers... who happen to be women.
They tend to run over a weekend and get women of all backgrounds (but without rails experience) to build a rails app from scratch.
They have a set of materials that is brief, but quite impressive - and if you follow them through step-by-step it's a quick tutorial on how to get a pretty decently functional Rails app off the ground.
Start with the App tutorial to get it up and running with a simple scaffold, to add some basic styling with bootstrap, and add picture-uploads with carrierwave.
Then follow the set of guides (links are at the bottom of the app-tutorial page) to get it up on heroku, to add authentication with devise, to use geocoding to add your widgets to a map, to create thumbnails for your uploaded images and more.
With just the above you can get a fairly decent rails app built for most purposes in a day or so.
When I set up a new quick-and-dirty app on heroku... I often also want to put my code up on github.
I was really surprised this simple process wasn't covered in the otherwise pretty excellent Getting started with Rails 4 post on heroku.
It's pretty straightforward, so here it is.
If you follow the instructions as per the getting started guide (above), you'll have a local git repo, and it'll be tracking the heroku remote as "heroku". which means there's no problem with using the bog standard "origin" for your github repo version.
So from there
Your heroku app is now on github.
You can continue to push to heroku with:
git push heroku master
and to github with:
git push origin master
So, I've recently found myself back on the job market... at least I will be, but I first want to re-sharpen my skills. I've been working in legacy Rails for a while now, and I want to make sure I'm au fait with the latest and greatest the ruby+rails world has to offer.
But when I went looking for courses - there's not a lot on offer for experienced rails devs. Most rails courses are pitched at complete beginners wanting to become a rails dev. Fair enough, but what can I do to polish my existing skills?
Thankfully, some more digging produced a nice set of related online tutorials and screencasts that will get me ship-shape in no time, and for far less than I expected
NewRelic currently has an offer whereby if you deploy a new site with NewRelic installed, you can get a free month of CodeSchool. Now, NewRelic is an awesomely useful tool for giving you extremely useful metrics for your site. They even have a free account - and to set this all up, you can roll out a simple site to heroku (also for free) with the new_relic gem installed and away you go.
You can then sign up for a free CodeSchool account (which will give you access to the basic level free courses), and sometime in the near future - you'll get an email from NewRelic with a special promotion code to give you your free month at CodeSchool.
So once you've got a month of code school - you can start to work your way through the courses. Starting with the simple "Try ruby" course and through their funny "Rails for Zombies" courses all the way through Rails testing and best practices and some advanced topics of Ruby.
I was happy to discover that even in the simplest ruby course there was one or two things I'd never seen before - so they're all worth the time (but you can skip ahead to the challenges if they're too simple for you).
But the courses don't just cover Ruby/Rails, they also have a series for Javascript, HTML5, CSS3 and even iOS development. Which I'll be availing myself of for the next month - and will almost certainly spring for longer until I've done them all!
I was even happier to discover, that as a "prize" for finishing the "Rails for zombies 2" course, you get one month of a Railscasts Pro account.
Now RailsCasts was where I was planning on heading next anyway - I followed RailsCasts religiously in my early years of developing Rails, and learned a hell of a lot thereby. The number of screencasts that Ryan Bates has done by now is simply staggering. They cover a huge range of topics from detailed aspects of developing Rails (eg tagging or nested forms), to most of the commonly-used tools, and it's great place to go if you want help on a particular topic. To get access to a free month of these on a pro account is wonderful icing on top of the CodeSchool month.
Other CodeSchool courses give you other freebies, and discounts on books etc too, along with lots of links to other amazingly useful resources - so my reading list has suffered a cambrian-explosion this week. I'll keep you tuned if I dig out any further fabulous free offers.
It's a limited offer... here's a link: 3 months of codeschool
Ben Orenstein has written an interesting article: How much should global variables cost?.
It's basically a price-list for different kinds of technical debt, and you can use it to calculate the "cost" that each of your commits adds to your codebase. By actually putting a dollar amount on each "violation" - you can get a good, visceral feel for what you're doing.
As he points out - you can still choose whether or not to keep something (sometimes you really do need to do something that would otherwise be considered a no-no), as long as you can "afford" it.
I think it's an interesting way of looking at the problem. I'd like to see you regaining points for fixing/refactoring similar code-violations out of the project too :)
I probably don't really need to tell you that it's dangerous to publish secret keys on a public website... but which key am I talking about here?
# this one... MyApp::Application.config.secret_key_base = 'fb636477f014943b9cf2d202f9da4349a580fbb9521ef38d8dc0111ae933a10bfec732ce7d563a854db1663ba00af1db21d06d6764d84a88d0a6286bcd2299e2'
It's one of those things that often gets overlooked...
rails new git add . git push
Bam!
But if you're on heroku, rather than deploying to your own hosted site (where you can easily drop config files into a shared directory), how do you have a secret key?
Here's a great little gist that will show you how to set it up on an environment variable.
Don't forget, that if you put more than one of these into your .env file... you need to append to the file or you just overwrote your secret key (oops)
If you're on heroku and putting one of these environment variables into code that will be evaluated at compile-time (eg config/initializers/devise.rb for instance) you will need to switch on heroku's "compile time environment variable" option: user-env-compile or you will not even be able to deploy your site.
This feature allows your environment variables to be available during compilation of the slug (which is when things like bundler, asset-compilation etc are run)
Note that this is an experimental heroku:labs feature - so blah blah use at your own risk blah...
Small thing I figured out. I was in irb and trying to copy/paste some text into a multi-line string to play with gsub, and it kept exploding halfway through and showing the message:
Display all 309 possibilities? (y or n)
instead of actually allowing me to create a multi-line string.
Turns out, irb still responds to tab-completion even if you're halfway through creating a multi-line string.
This kinda sucks if you want a string that contains tabs - but don't want to manually type the whole string (including tabs) yourself as you go along.
To fix it, I copy/pasted the text into vim and used :retab to replace the tabs with spaces before copying it back into the string in irb... its a hack, but it worked for my purposes.
Any thoughts on a better solution?
If you ever wondered what the difference was, this quick post by Neeraj Singh will show you the difference between alias and alias_method
TL;DR:
Don't forget to use a comma for alias_method
I just came across ruby-warrior.
I can thoroughly recommend it as a couple of hours of fun diversion while picking up a few lines of basic ruby.
Its byline is:
"A triumphant quest of adventure, love & destiny all within a few lines of code."
If you've ever tried to implement an agile transition in a traditional workplace, you'll know there are many stumbling blocks - one of the greatest being that of the existing stakeholder: Your boss, the invader from Mars explains how change can and should be dealt with by both the SCRUM and kanban approaches to agile development - and how that can easily be messed up by your boss.
The case-study especially strikes a chord with my experiences, describing a shop wanting to "become more agile" but not actually implementing agile processes, instead trying to add the "agile" on top - with a rather apt simile where the agile process are described as "layered over existing dysfunctions as a sort of veneer".
The article then goes on to show various ways in which a boss who is not fully vested in the agile approach can unhinge the transition process... but also lets us learn the various lessons from that so a we can hopefully improve upon it in our own attempts.
I'm working with a legacy rails system. We're still stuck on Rails 2.3.2 (yes really) and ruby 1.8.7 (it's better than 1.8.6 which we were on only a few months back).
I've just been given a new computer at work (finally) and it has ubuntu 12.04 - and I was trying to set it up with a rails stack. For which I can strongly recommend Ryan Bigg's howto article: Ubuntu, Ruby, RVM, Rails, and You
I got through the tutorial ok, happily installed ruby 1.9.3... but when I tried to install 1.8.7, I hit a snag.
triton:[~]% rvm install 1.8.7
Searching for binary rubies, this might take some time.
No binary rubies available for: ubuntu/12.04/x86_64/ruby-1.8.7-p374.
Continuing with compilation. Please read 'rvm help mount' to get more information on binary rubies.
You requested building with 'gcc-4.4' but it is not in your path.
According to rvm, you can list the set of available rubies using rvm remote which gave me:
# Rubies available for 'ubuntu/12.04/x86_64':
ruby-1.9.3-p194
ruby-1.9.3-p286
ruby-1.9.3-p327
ruby-1.9.3-p362
ruby-1.9.3-p374
ruby-1.9.3-p392
ruby-1.9.3-p429
ruby-1.9.3-p448
ruby-2.0.0-p0
ruby-2.0.0-p195
ruby-2.0.0-p247
Ruh-roh!
Now, I know 1.8.7 is ancient news, but I didn't think they'd drop support for it so entirely.
I went wandering about looking for a way to specify an older repository - perhaps the 10.04 repo would still have 1.8.7 in a useable format...
Turns out I'd just made a simple mistake, easily rectified.
The important clue was in the last line of the result for rvm install:
You requested building with 'gcc-4.4' but it is not in your path.
I'd copied a whole bunch of things across to the new 'puter, including my .zshrc file - which is what was specifying the gcc version (can't remember why). And on the new 'puter I had gcc version 4.6 but my .zshrc (copied from my previous computer) was pointing at this older version.
Because of this small mistake, rvm thought I didn't have a c-compiler. Which means that rvm wasn't able to install any rubies from source - only pre-compiled rubies - which means it was restricted to only those already pre-compiled for my platform (ie 64-bit ubuntu 12.04).
oops.
When I fixed the gcc line in my .zshrc - rvm was able to figure out how to install+compile source-code rubies - including v1.8.7
Step 1. recognise that you have a problem.
Decide that ikea has the perfect solution.
Step 2. Find a time where you know you have four hours spare (just in case), but convince yourself that you're only likely to be there for an hour or so.
Step 3. struggle for two hours through a labyrinth of perfect mini-houses and dawdling shoppers trying to find the thing you know is there somewhere... you've *seen* it the last time you were here...
Step 4. Along the way discover solutions for five other problems you'd forgotten you had. Write down prices and numbers for ALL the Things!!!
Step 5. You reach the end. Stop for meatballs.
Step 6. Spend a few minutes adding it all up on paper to discover that you'd be spending the next five pay-checks paying back the credit card debt to cover it. Cut it down to only two or three things you most need.
Step 7. Refreshed and ready. Head downstairs to pick up your things... and suddenly re-discover the kitchen section... and remember that you needed some wine glasses, and you loved that metal bowl and could do with another one... and oh! memory-foam pillows, you need a spare! etc etc...
Step 8. Get to the warehouse section and discover there's no flat trolleys, there's a queue of ten people waiting already and they're somehow closing in fifteen minutes. wait... and wait... and wait... plan the order-of-attack for hitting the aisles at a run.
Step 9. Eventually get to the first aisle... and discover you wrote down the wrong number for this item, and without it, almost all the others are useless.
Give up and decide you'll just get the original item *only*. try not to feel bad about the additional two hours of lost time spent choosing these items.
Step 10. Get to the aisle and discover that it comes in a set of *three* huge boxes. Heave them onto the trolley. Think to yourself... holy shit, I don't remember the boxes being that long... how the hell are they going to fit in the hatchback?
Step 11. navigate the trolley towards the checkout... as you try to turn it, remember that these trolleys work on hovercraft-physics, and have about the same leeway... try desperately to stop five times your own bodyweight of flat-packed MDF as it begins to slew into a pair of inattentive shoppers that are drifting about in front of you without looking... discover that the best course of action is to yell maniacally "I can't stop this thing!!!" while they stare at you in horror and clutch small children to their shaking breast.
Step 12. When you're finally waiting in the queue, remember that they do deliveries! You won't have to fit the boxes in the car after all! ... Get to the deliveries desk and re-discover that Ikea assumes that *everybody* has a house-wife willing to be there from 12-noon to 8pm for when they decide to show up... and they will *only* do next day delivery. Decide you want to keep your job, and go fetch your car.
Step 13. break a nail off and bleed profusely getting the first long box in the car... realise that even with the back seats down and the front seat far forward, it's still sticking out by 5cm... of course you knew this was going to happen.
Step 14. use the remaining shreds of your undergrad maths to figure out a topologically viable solution that will allow you to slam the hatchback closed before the carpark closes for the night... When you do, realise you have zero side-vision on your left, it's pouring with rain and pitch dark outside... hope to god that nobody does anything stupid on that side of you tonight. Decide to see the silver lining - if you die, at least you won't see it coming.
Step 15. get to the exit gates and discover that you were in the carpark for your free three hours... and 15 minutes - about the same time you spent struggling to get the boxes into the car... and for which you now owe $8.
Don't forget to drop your credit card on the ground after the *first* time the machine rejects it... apologise to the three cars behind you in time for it to reject you a second time.
Step 16. discover you have to turn left when leaving the carpark. You know this when twice your bodyweight in MDF suddenly slides off the passenger seat onto your left shoulder. Resolve to drive like a granny until you get home...
Step 17. as you continue to drive... try to repress the sinking feeling that accompanies your realisation that you don't have a trolley at the other end...
I recently had to scratch my head over a strange exception message I'd never seen before:
undefined method `render' for #<SomeTemplate:0xb17da594>
The problem was, it came with *no* application trace at all... just the usual Rails stack-trace.
I had to guess at where the problem came from by grepping for SomeTemplate in the controller-action that had exploded, and came across the following line of code:
@template = SomeTemplate.new(params[:some_template])
Now SomeTemplate is a model of ours, and prior to this error occurring that line of code had been:
@temp = SomeTemplate.new(params[:some_template])
I have a strong aversion to calling any variable "temp", because my reaction to seeing a variable called temp is to say "a temporary what?" not "oh, that's an instance of a template", and if I'm getting the wrong idea when I look at a variable name - that's an indication it should be changed.
So I renamed it...
Unfortunately, it turns out that @template is a magic variable in Rails that refers to the template to be rendered in a given controller action.
So Just Don't Do That.
The code has now been rewritten to the following, and works just fine:
@some_template = SomeTemplate.new(params[:some_template])