2007 May Archive at JJB Blog

Monthly Archive for May, 2007

Maciej Ceglowski is looking for work

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on 5/31/2007

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One of my favorite writers, Maciej Ceglowski, is looking for work.

I’m a Perl and JavaScript developer looking for contract work in the San Francisco area. I can design Web applications, help with scaling and integration, build search and recommendations engines, and deliver working code on deadline without a lot of supervision.

Some of my favorite writings of his:

The Unbearable Thinness of Crust — ruminations and an epic journey regarding the worst and best pizza in the world

Dabblers and Blowhards It’s surprisingly hard to pin Paul Graham down on the nature of the special bond he thinks hobbyist programmers and painters share. In his essays he tends to flit from metaphor to metaphor like a butterfly, never pausing long enough to for a suspicious reader to catch up with his chloroform jar.

Attacked By Thugs! — If you are ever, ever in Warsaw, I highly recommend you flag down a passing cop car and tell them you’ve been assaulted. You will meet with a kind of unconditional acceptance and emotional support that I didn’t know could be found outside one’s immediate family.

A Rocket To Nowhere — the first of Maciej’s writings that I came accross — a hilarious and fascinating tirade on why the US space program is pointless and pathetic

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Open Rails and PHP programmer positions at Digital Pulp, in New York (telecommuting possible)

Published

John

on 5/22/2007

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. 2 Comments

UPDATE: newer job descriptions here.

My day job, Digital Pulp, is seeking backend / application programmers. Our biggest need is for a Rails developer. We would prefer someone with some experience building a production application in Rails, but would also be open to experienced programmers who are interested in getting into Rails. Telecommuting is a possibility.

As you can see on our job listing page, we also have a smattering of other openings, including PHP programmer, flash animator and programmer, graphic designer, and producer.

Digital Pulp is an amazing place to work– a smallish team (right now around 25 people total, and less than 10 developers), a very casual environment, excellent communication and respect between colleagues, and excellent system architecture and software engineering methodology: Source control. Unit, functional, and integration tests. MVC. REST. style/content separation. cross-project style conventions (that are a joy to work with). obsessively semantic markup. accessibility.

Great clients: The Make a Wish Foundation, Harvard School of Government, Bausch & Lomb, Continental, Redken, NRDC, Scientists Without Borders, the list goes on and on…

Digital Pulp is in New York, at 23rd street between 2nd and 3rd Av.

If any of this interests you, let me know at john AT digitalpulp DOT com

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New business cards

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John

on 5/20/2007

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from moo

a furry bunny

a fluffy pomeranian

the back of the card, with my contact information

(the cross weave pattern you see is a result of scanning– the photos look flawless in real life)

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Finally hooked up my scanner

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John

on 5/16/2007

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. 2 Comments

I finally got around to setting up my scanner, and the first things I scanned were the gifts I received from a swarm of children on voting day, 2006. Go check out that article and be sure to view the full size version of the poster.

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A great experience with moo business cards

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John

on 5/15/2007

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Quick note: I recently ordered some business cards from moo, and had an excellent experience with customer service when I had a small problem with my order. If you are looking for some original, tasteful, custom business cards, I highly recommend them.

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Noel is taking a trip around the world and wants YOUR $11.11

Published

John

on 5/15/2007

in general

. 1 Comment

Man of mystery Noel is taking a trip around the world to study and promote freedom and stuff. Go check out his project and if you like it, give him $11.11.

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An excellent script for removing duplicate files from an iTunes library

Published

John

on 5/15/2007

in general

. 2 Comments

After shifting some media around I recently found myself with a lot of duplicate files in my iTunes library. iTunes’ “Show Duplicates” feature is a nice thought but doesn’t come near being useful in the case of thousands of duplicates — not only is the heuristic sophomoric, there is no way to select “every other” file — you must select either all the files or none of them.

I searched far and wide for a third-party program or script and was surprised by how poor the solutions were. I found a handful of shareware programs that were either flakey, underfeatured, overpriced, or all of the above, and a smattering of shell scripts that didn’t do quite what I was looking for.

Finally I came across this applescript, and it does precisely what I want (and what I imagine everyone with this problem wants): finds duplicate songs according to user-specified metadata dimensions, and put “all but one” of each file in a playlist. Select all, option delete, DONE.

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Ruby class methods — several ways to define them, and how to abstract them into a module/mixin

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John

on 5/12/2007

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I learned/confirmed two things about Ruby class methods recently: several equivalent ways to define them, and how to abstract them into a module/mixin.

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Wireless network interference generated from external hard drives

Published

John

on 5/5/2007

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. 0 Comments

Wow– I just did some simple tests using iStumbler, and found that my hard drive with a plastic enclosure generates a lot more interference on my wireless network than my hard drive with a metal enclosure. Both have Segate Barracuda drives inside of them.

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