Category Archives: Geek

It’s tough to use a computer with no display

2008-12-18 – 10:07

The screen on my work computer, a Macbook Pro, has died for a 2nd time. The first time, I sent it to Apple as we had no local Apple Authorized Service Center, and they returned it to me with my high-quality third party RAM in a bag, along with a message that the screen problems [...]

By frank | Comments (0)

Prototyping

2007-12-01 – 08:27

Via Steve Northover’s Inside SWT:
The week was an almost perfect example of prototyping. The code we have is utter crap and we have cut every corner, however, we have learned the technology and explored the area. Prototyping is about reducing risk using a short term, high energy, low quality approach to prove that a solution [...]

By frank | Also posted in Software development | Comments (0)

Is the light on, on, or off?

2007-11-28 – 08:19

This morning as Finley and I left the house for a cool and brisk morning walk, I noticed the cabin lights in our Honda Odyssey were on. I went back in for the keys, opened the front door, and looked for the cabin light switch. I wasn’t able to find one, so I figured the [...]

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Happy with the maps, unhappy with the vehicle mount

2007-11-20 – 17:31

A while back, we bought a Garmin Streetpilot c330 before a long car trip. We’ve been reasonably happy with the maps in the unit, though my ideal navigation product would include live updates to maps and points of interest when I plugged the unit in to my computer to charge it.
However, the vehicle mount [...]

By frank | Also posted in Gadget | Comments (1)

Loading data model with Fixtures in Rails

2007-10-21 – 14:26

I’m putting together a smallish data model in Rails. Some of my data is pre-existing, including a bunch of Items, some of which have SubItems. I found some hints on how to represent the initial data with YAML and to piggy-back on the Fixture functionality to load it in a migration, all from Agile Web [...]

By frank | Also posted in Software development | Comments (0)