Awesome, FREE Project Management

Over the last couple years I've tried out a lot of methods for managing my projects. I've tried almost everything I could find. Remember the Milk, Basecamp, Google Notebook and Tasks, a handful of open-source apps, even (gasp!) a pen and a notebook. Everything I tried either lacked features I needed or had a torturous interface.

I was doing some research, planning to write my own application, when I discovered ClockingIT. RSS feeds? Check. iCal? Check. Support for multiple projects and clients, wikis, time estimation and deadlines, even automatic creation of evil Gantt charts. Very cool.

The time tracking is truly beautiful. Click an icon next to the task you want to work on to start the clock, pause it to have a cigarette or go grab a coffee, then click again to stop working on that task and log details of your time spent. It makes the left side of my brain much happier.

The interface is OK, not great, but that's OK - ClockingIT is available under the MIT License! That also means you can host it yourself, if your organization won't allow you to host your super secret plans on someone else's server.

So, fork it, customize it and roll :)

Moth Story Slams in Detroit!!!

Fuck yeah.

My first dance with Sinatra

By now you've probably heard of Sinatra, the Ruby "micro-framework". I'd given it a look some months ago, but didn't have any appropriate projects in mind - until last week.

My recent obsession with Heroku had me wanting a similar workflow for the few apps I have on Dreamhost. git push origin, done.

The result: the unimpressively titled Deploy Magic. Taking advantage of Github's post-receive hooks, it'll pull changes from Github (or any other repo), migrate your database, and restart your app - without you having to lift a finger.

I <3 Heroku

I've been aware of Heroku for a while, but my first reaction was "that sounds like an awfully restrictive hosting environment." Man was I wrong. Forget Capistrano. Don't mourn the loss of SSH access (you can still run shell commands from the console). Give it a try and git push heroku will almost surely become your new favourite command. This is what Rails deployment should be, elegant and incredibly well thought out!

One thing that took a bit of getting used to was declaring gem dependencies, but even that I grew to like. Since the system needs to know if any new gems are required before trying to restart your app and having it explode, the typical method of declaring gem dependencies in environment.rb won't do. Instead, you create a plain text file called .gems in the root of your application, listing the names, sorces and versions of the gems you need. Environment.rb has always seemed a strange place for this, frought with danger (anyone who's tried to run Radiant on Dreamhost can tell you all about it!). I think this should be the way it's done in Rails 3 and beyond.

A friend's been trying out Heroku Garden, which allows you to edit your code (or play around in the console, install plugins and gems, or almost anything else you'd need to do) in your browser. You can even invite others to contribute. Though, beware that there's no protection against someone beating you to the Save button and wiping out your work.

Heroku isn't for everyone. It's got a few limitations you may not expect (most notably, a read-only file system, since it runs on EC2). But overall, I've been quite pleased so far.

If you're viewing this on Blogspot or the Tapioca Collective site (or anywhere else for that matter), come check out my new online home.

Video transcoding plugin released, new site coming soon

I've been talking about redesigning this site so it's less about me and more about the other members of the 'Collective for a while now. But (luckily) we're busy people and just haven't gotten around to it.

I'm happy to say, though, that I've begun work on the new site which will, among other things, present a unified marketing message, highlight our recent work, and integrate with Github (because I have a bit of a man crush on Chris Wanstrath since watching his talk at RailsConf).

I'm also toying with the idea of turning BubbleT into a service, but I haven't figured out the revenue model quite yet. Maybe I'll just put it out there and deal with the money later.

One more thing: I wrote a released a processor for Paperclip over the weekend, Videoclip. Videoclip allows you to upload a video and have it automagically transcoded and/or resized. Check it out :)

Miru Kim explores abondoned spaces

I'm at a loss for words. Simply overwhelmed by the beauty of Kim's work, life and spirit.

"Transit City"

Thought I'd share this video I stumbled on while talking about transit the other night. Sounds great. Rotterdam and Cologne have pretty similar systems in place now, and they seem to work really well (the little I took them). But in the meantime, why can't we start running rapid transit buses in dedicated lanes? Especially when it comes to routes like the Finch hydro corridor.

What I'm really disappointed by, though, is the lack of upgrades in the Downtown Core and West End. My opinion: the time has come to close Queen Street. At least between Jarvis and Bathurst, where Richmond and Addelade are already better equipped to handle the traffic. One lane for streetcars, one for bikes, wide sidewalks with room for kiosks (a la the north side of Queen between Peter and Spadina)... How is this not a no-brainer? Cabbies wouldn't like it, but we could let cars drive in the streetcar lanes after the stores close, so they wouldn't lose the bar traffic.

Anyway, I present to you the (eventual) future of rapid transit in Toronto...

Looking for a simple CMS? Radiant vs. Frog

I've been doing some research for an upcoming project, which has a simple, easy to use content management system as a requirement. I've recently fallen in love with Radiant, but there's some chance the server this project ends up on won't allow me to use Ruby on Rails. So, I was happy to find that there's a PHP port of Radiant, Frog.

Upon first glance, the two look very similar. They haven't, however, quite developed in parallel.

First, licensing: Radiant is distributed under the MIT License license; Frog is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License. I honestly have no idea what the practical differences are, though. They're both free/open source; that's what matters to me.

The Radiant team, as is common with Rails developers in general, is committed to keeping the project core as simple as possible. The admin interface has only three tabs by default: Pages, Snippets, and Layouts. But, there are dozens of ready-made extensions, which add support for common needs like calendars, file attachments, WYSIWYG page editing, translation and more. Creating custom extensions is surprisingly easy, as well.

Frog, by contrast, comes with more features up front (drag-and-drop page ordering and file uploading, notably), but has fewer 3rd party extensions available. (Partially, I assume, because writing PHP is a pain in the ass, but mostly because the Radiant team has created such an OUTSTANDING extension system.)

All in all, both are excellent choices. If you've ever tried to create custom layouts for Joomla, Drupal, or other heavy-handed CMSs, you'll find Radiant especially to be a breath of fresh air. But don't take my word for it, check out their live demos:

• Radiant
• Frog (user: admin, password: password)

Or, download one and give it a shot. You won't be disappointed.

Less pop, more jazz

Schwartz talks about how rules and incentives can actually degrade our ability to do the right thing.

It's something I noticed and talked a lot about in England last year. Cameras, "anti-social behaviour" laws, overwhelming police presence - none of these emphasize our responsibility to one another, yet they relieve us of our duty to think about what's right and what isn't. There are certainly better, more universally appealing reasons not to harm others (or spit gum on the sidewalk) than the threat of punishment. Overprotective parents make for bratty children; overprotective governments, I believe, make for bad citizens.

I'm a sucker for gratuitous swearing

That help screen rocks ;)