Shaw Consultation about UBB

Oh the drama of the "usage based billing" debate! Or is it really a debate when one side is a few huge companies with a virtual monopoly on high speed internet and the other side is pretty m… »

Brevity, my elusive friend...

I have fallen prey to one of the many clichés of blogging, developer friends. In the beginning, there seem to be far too many spectacular ideas and so little time, but before you know it, there's just… »

Eclectic Ruby, MIDI, and Dr. Von Funk

One of the things I like about the Ruby community is that it seems to attract and even encourage eclecticism. I suppose it was only a matter of time, then, before a book like (Practical Ruby Projects:… »

iPad: First Impressions

Despite not being completely blown away with it (the "it's indistinguishable from magic" propaganda from Apple was a bit much, even though I think the company is probably still the most inno… »

On copyright

I saw this on BoingBoing earlier this week and thought it was especially appropriate as my own country moves towards adopting a stricter set of copyright laws. In summary, the presenter cites the fash… »

Ruby meta-hell

So, there's a certain type of test that's been failing in the M7 code, and I've been working on it all day long. It has to do with the Erector 0.5.1 gem from Pivotal Labs. Now, they've since moved on … »

Sometimes you just have to bang your head against that wall...

Thursday night, there were 136 failing tests left on the M7 test suite. As of this morning, that number is 90. 46 fixed tests in 3 days. Not bad! Of course, 1.5 of those days consisted of trying to fi… »

The Art of the Confessional

I think you could make a very compelling argument that programming is simply the practice of making trade offs. Minute after minute, day after day, week after week, we're presented with these tiny lit… »

This is the end (of week two), beautiful friend, the end...

Sean and I got to spend a whole day going mad over the bug that we thought we squashed but, as it turns out, was not ready to die so easily. It was a heroic effort, full of sleuthing and more than a f… »

Coffee, Diaspora, and Indulging in the Test-first Kool Aid

Today was a day to be thankful for caffeine. I truly don't know what I'd do without coffee. Even when I'm not tired, I need to have my cup. My favourite, when I'm not freezing (in other words, for abo… »

Bonus Post!

I just had to comment about this in more depth. Check out this article. The gist of it is that because Facebook changed gears a bit and put more limitations on how much applications could spam people … »

IE, I bite my thumb at thee!

When you can broadcast to the entire world in a few clicks of the mouse, you sometimes forget what a strange and terrible power this is. And as it turns out, I seem to have the odd regular reader at M… »

The 11:30 Post

I know what you're thinking. It's 11:30 PM on Tuesday night, and David's going to miss his first daily update. And you know, I'm sort of disappointed in you for that. I thought you'd give me a bit mor… »

Week 2: Who tests the tests?

People are already becoming skeptical as to how long I will keep up my daily posting regarding the brave new world of telecommuting. One of those people is me! Well, actually... I never intended to ke… »

Day Four: Made it!

My first week of telecommuting is coming to a close, and you know, all in all, it wasn't too bad. Communication delay was probably the number one difficulty for me, with people being in transition, no… »

Day Three: The Sky is Falling! Oh... wait. False alarm.

I don't think you can work for long with interesting companies before you become a bit traumatized. One company used to serve pizza before telling you something bad had happened and they wouldn't be a… »

Day Two: Enter the Code!

I can't decide whether the title to this post reminds me more of old Bruce Lee movies or of classic Metallica tracks. This is going to be a shorter post as it's been a fairly long and intense day, and… »

Day One!

Day one ends with me frantically applying for a business license after texting my accountant friend (and fellow karateka) saying, "Hey, accountant friend, will I need to get a business license if… »

Telecommuting: Brave New World

There's always a struggle between being comfortable and being free. For the last three years, I've chosen the latter. I moved from a very secure, big company job to one that would be dependent on cont… »