Crowd Control

Crowd-funding meets open-source Something makes me deeply uncomfortable about Yehuda Katz's (@wycats) recently announced crowd-funding effort for rails.app, and I have been trying to put my finger on it. To a certain extent, writing anything...

Bundler Pain Points

In so many ways, Bundler is a godsend. Yet, like all gems (forgive the wordplay), it is not without a few rough edges. While at the (absolutely fantastic) Wroclaw.rb last weekend, I finally took a...

Project Update: MarkdownJ

The Web Dingus for MarkdownJ is back and deployed to Google App Engine. This is the first "application" I've deployed to GAE (I use inverted commas, as it is a pretty trivial application). The experience...

Getting Started with DataMapper on JRuby

Underneath DataMapper (at least if you haven't bitten the NoSQL bullet just yet) lies DataObjects. DataObjects is an attempt to rewrite existing Ruby database drivers to conform to one, standard interface. If you're a recent...

The Hazards of Google Image Search

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/west_midlands/7560392.stm Birmingham + skyline.

The Hazards of Online Translation

http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2008/07/then-well-grab.html I have always been rather skeptical about online translation tools. This is a great illustration of what can go wrong for those who don't have any understanding at all of the target language.

A really simple way to integrate your Trac with GitHub

Thanks to GitHub's API, there are definite possibilities for integrating Trac with GitHub. However, for right now the simplest way is to just provide a link. Thanks to customizable navigation introduced in Trac 0.11, this...

The best Hillary impression I have seen

The best Hillary impression I have seen. Someone at Saturday Night Live needs to employ this woman.

Joining the bandwagon

history | awk '{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' | sort -rn | head 140 git 103 ls 73 cd 55 mate 26 sake 26 mv 23 rake 8 autotest 5 gem 4 sudo...

A prime explanation of subprime

Update: Video no longer available.

State of Flux

This site is in a state of flux while I work on various design improvements.

TheAtlantic.com | Andrew Sullivan

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/ Good source of commentary, with snippets and links on the Presidential Primaries. An Obama supporter.

moche

Yes, this site is rather ugly at the moment. That should change soon.

Keyword: Evil

http://harpers.org/media/slideshow/annot/2008-03/index.html There is an great feature in this month's Harper's Magazine on Google's Data Centre plans for a small community on the banks of the Columbia River in Oregon. I think its really easy to...

Just words?

Colours

This blog is currently undergoing transformation. Change colours.

Changes behind the scenes

I do realise I spend more time blogging about blogging, than actually blogging. I spent a couple hours moving away from WordPress, which was the blogging software this site has used since its inception a...

Americans Away from Home

http://www.americans-away-from-home.com/ A website written by an American expat following the course of the U.S. Presidential Primaries.

Battle of the Bands

Do we have a winner?

Life on Mars

I am using <a href="http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/">MarsEdit</a>. Perhaps this will make it easier for me to publish when I feel that sudden writing impulse.

Bienvenue et Welcome

Welcome to my new Portfolio site - mon book en ligne. I have been meaning to get this site up for quite some time, but I resolved to get something up, so here it is....

Interlude

New Year, New Start and Finish

I have a constant stream of ideas, but I do have to admit to finding it hard to finish things. My lack of content on this blog is rather indicative of some of the difficulties,...

Update 2

I am in Paris, France. More soon.

Additional Blog

I have set up a separate site and blog for work-related interests. Find it at alexcolesportfolio.com/blog (update: content now merged back into alexbcoles.com).

Update

Once in a very occasional while a visitor stumbles across this excuse-for-a-blog. And when they do, they feel inclined to chastise me for lack of content. So, I thought I'd let any occassional visitors know...

Blog back up and running...

Somehow I managed to delete the blog, and its postings. But it is up again, once more. I lost my last posting, but it wasn't anything prolific (unlike most of what I have to say...

There is stuff to come...

This site is being worked on! My project over the holidays is to get my Portfolio online. I looked around on the web and there isn't any software out there to handle creating a portfolio,...

Writing

I received a friendly reminder to update my blog the other day. I still haven't got the hang of it. It's partly because I don't really think I lead an eventful enough life to talk...

Quick test message

Quick test message to test ecto, the new blog editing software I am trying out.

Invites for Windows Live Messenger

Microsoft have rebranded the next version of MSN Messenger as Windows Live Messenger. Information is at Windows Live Ideas. Much like with the birth of Google's GMail, download is currently by invitation only. I have...

Using Flock

For the first two posts on this blog I used the WordPress editor through my browser. Despite following certain Internet trends closely, I am not at all au fait with blogging. I did remember though...

Where in the World?

I'm always on the look out for ways to waste time online. KLM make up for their mediocre in-flight service by providing a wonderful public service that plots where you've been in the world. Use...

First Posting

After various failed attempts at blogging (including two when I was a Sabbatical Officer at UCL Union), I'll now try again. I am not sure I'll say too much about myself, as I don't really...