Fear of Fish

This blog has come to the end of its lifetime, and for now will sit quietly doing nothing. The new blog is at:

blog.fearoffish.com

We've been increasing our workforce dramatically at Engine Yard over the past month or two, and having recently been promoted to 'App Support Manager, EU' I'm on the look out for talented Ruby on Rails developers and general Linux Sys Admin gurus.

For App Support I'm looking for the following (in priority order):

The App Support Engineers are responsible for deploying customers applications, maintaining the slices they reside on, interacting with customers and making sure they're happy, and working on automation tools to increase productivity.

• Good customer service attitude
• Availability in the GMT hours
• Rails
• Ruby
• Nginx
• Mongrel
• MySQL
• Monit
• Gentoo Linux (packaging experience with other distros a +)
• Xen

For a Sysadmin:

The Sysadmins are responsbile for maintaining the low level Linux, Xen, LVM, and networking pieces of our setup. The ability to speak in binary is always a plus, but not necessary, we have experts who can do that already!

• Good customer service attitude
• Availability in the GMT hours
• Gentoo Linux (packaging experience with other distros a +)
• Xen
• LVM (CLVM is a +)
• LVS (Linux Virtual Server)
• Shell scripting (Bash is best)
• iptables
• CoRAID (http://coraid.com)
• RedHat Cluster Suite
• Working knowledge of TCP/IP
• Working knowledge of DNS
• TinyDNS (aka djbdns)
• Exim
• nginx
• apache
• MySql
• Postgres
• Python
• Ruby

Let me know which pieces of the puzzle you have and which you don't, and why you think you would be a fantastic addition to the Engine Yard team. You'll love working here, I promise!

Contact me at jvandyke - at - engineyard.com

Everyone in the Leeds area, or those who want to visit, head on over to the Official BarCamp Leeds page and get signed up, I might attend, depending on whether or not I'm training or not. Update to come next week.

So I recently came across a website called Trust Places, it's a central repository for finding and reviewing cafe's and restaurant's (and more) in your local area. The great thing is it uses google maps to help locate where they are. To my surprise (I live in a small town in the middle of nowhere, called Skipton) it already had quite a few places near me just waiting for review!

So, seeing as I like to eat out and love to rate and gossip about what places are good or bad, I've found myself adding lots of reviews to all the Skipton cafe/restaurants. What's interesting, is that people are already finding what I've put as useful or interesting! So, go and review the world, my friends!

As you may have seen on the Riding Rails article, I got a thanks for the patches I added for documentation and other bits and bobs. I'd just like to extend that thanks out to everyone in the Caboose Documentation Project (who were also mentioned) and everyone who donated to the fund. You guys are chuffing great. :-D

More patches to come...once I get the Scalability Course written and Engine Yard get more staff!

I was recently interviewed by Satish Talim for Ruby Learning, it was a pleasure being among the 13 that were published, others included Jamie Buck and Ola Bini and more.

Check out the article here: http://rubylearning.com/blog/2007/09/27/advice-for-ruby-beginners-1/

In case any of you British people are unaware, there was an announcement at a private Apple event in the Regent Street Apple Store today, letting us all know that the iPhone will be available on the O2 network on the 9th November for £269, on varying tariffs, all with unlimited data (YAY!). The disappointing fact is that it's on EDGE, not 3G. Which is a shame because the 3G network throughout Europe is much nippier.

I for one will be getting one pretty much immediately...now how do I get out of my 18 month Orange contract without it costing me a fortune? ...more to come on this

Check out the O2 site: O2 iPhone mini site

It's that time of year again, and I'm setting off to Berlin today for RailsConf Europe because Engine Yard are sponsors of the event. So for all of those going, come over to the Engine Yard booth and meet up because we'd love to hear feedback you have and any questions you want to fire at us. It's looking like it might turn out to be a pretty schweet event this year!

Oh, and catch us early and you might get one of our highly sought after Engine Yard t-shirts! ;-)

It's been a while since I did a Ruby post, so I thought I'd fire out a simple task I just made for a customer. He wanted to be told when he hadn't committed changes to his svn repository when deploying his application. So I fired out this very simple task that merely exits if he didn't, the beauty of Capistrano (1.4.1 for this):

task :before_deploy do
  synced?
end

desc "Check local changes have been committed to the svn repository"
task :synced?, :roles => :app do
  output = `svn status`
  unless output.empty?
    puts "PLEASE COMMIT YOUR SVN CHANGES"
    exit(0)
  end
end

Simple, but effective.

A couple of my friends (Ruth and Mal) organised a charity ball at their house to raise moneyz for Diabetes UK over the weekend, and we raised £325 and had a damn good laugh. I've put a selection of the photos on my flickr account and the full list at http://trolleywood.fearoffish.com/, if you have any more let me know and I'll grab them off you and get them added.

There were oscars handed out for different awards (e.g. The Lifetime Achievement Award went to Doug for breaking up with Shauna), then there was an auction, of particular interest was a photo of Derek and Andy kissing...Ouch! Derek bid and won on that one, after a little price hiking by the auctioneer (me!).

Anyway, I'd like to say thanks to all those that came for making the event a success, and also to all those who cheered me up considerably!

Note: Due to unfortunate circumstances I didn't have my full suit on when I bobbed round, so I look out of place. :-( The ladies at the evening did a damn good job of making me feel at home though!

I've had a project sat 'almost done' for so long now, I can't remember what needs doing, and the todo list has gone walkabout, so I think it's time to just deploy it and see what happens.

External link to the site=> Get Me Started

The idea behind the site is that you put your tutorials for learning a language in one place, and that's where everyone goes when they think "Oooh, shall I learn X". The site will have many languages, each will allow the user to add an article on installing that language, making your first program in that language, and where to go next on the net and at the bookstore.

I've added Ruby on Rails to the language list, a few others I enjoy playing with and of course the more popular ones. Let me know what you think...if it is successful at all, then I'll improve it a chunk. So far it's the work of myself, Jeremy McAnally and Cristi Bălan.

There is a lack of content at the moment, but it's a community driven site, so if you want to see something there, please sign up and get your content on.

A side note: I've added a referral id to the books that get added, because the site has to make a revenue and I didn't want ads. If you think that lessens the impact of the reviews for any part of the site, think again. The referral fees on the books pay for the site and further development, but I don't add them so the strength of the review is still there. Also, the ratings on the books are done from Amazon, so I don't change them to sell more.

Have a play, let me know what you think.

I've kept my running to a minimum by running only a mile a day (ish), and I've been trying to even out the run so it's less like a mountain (Thanks Loren!) and more like a straight line...that shows that the leg strength is there, and the cardio-vascular fitness can keep me going. I've only done 4 runs, and the feeling of death has slowly been dwindling away...I'm starting to think I can actually keep this up, and become fit again!

Here's today's progress...bear in mind I forgot to press the "End Workout" button when stopped running (after my mile). You see, the run I do has a tiny path leading from my house to the park (which is conveniently next door), I usually stretch, then walk to the end of the path, press "Begin Workout" and start running...I usually end in the same place...instead today I pressed the button when I got home so it recorded my last walk, disappointing.

Onwards and upwards, my friends!

...and I'm a fat bastard.

In my teenage years I was able to do 100 press ups, 45 sit ups a minute, 40 pull ups in a minute etc. I was fit. What the hell happened...I became a lazy shit bag! What's worse, is being a smoker as well has taken a serious hit on my ability to breathe, and that means that even running up stairs puts me a little out of breath. Let's look at what some machine in Tesco said about me:

Age and Gender: 29, Male My Weight: 15st0.5lb / 95.5kg My Height: 5ft10.9in/180cm Body Fat Estimation: A Normal Fat Index: 14-20% My Fat Index: 25.2% My Fat Mass: 3st10.19lb / 24.0kg A Normal Fat Mass: 11.6-17.9kg/m squared or 1st11.5lb-2st11.41lb My Free F Mass: 11st3.6lb / 71.5kg

The normal Body Mass Index for my age and height is between 20 and 24.9 My Current Body Mass Index is 29.5kg/m2.

Seriously, I know how bad this is...I feel ashamed. Time to change!.

• Step 1 - Give up smoking - Done
• Step 2 - Buy a pair of Nike + iPod running shows with the iPod contraption - Done
• Step 3 - Eat healthier - Done
• Step 4 - Run + Exercise - Done
• Step 5 - Rinse and repeat from step 3

So, the ball's rolling. How did the run go, I hear you ask? Well, I was a steaming pile of horse dung, as expected. Not only did I do terribly in the run, but it took me 45 minutes (I kid you not) for my lungs to breath normally again afterwards, and they still hurt as if they're bleeding heavily. However, I'm not done. I feel like I could die the next time I try, but I'm going to change the plan...tone it down, quick walking to start until my lungs are able to cope better, then I'll up it to a jog, then a run.

Anyone else in my boat? or maybe you just don't care and think that fat is phat?

Highly Recommended

It's taken me a while to get through Peter's book, but I'm certainly happy I put the time in. This has to be the best book for Ruby beginners, whether it be for scripting or for moving towards Rails.

Beginning Ruby is broken into three parts, Foundations and Scaffolding, The Core of Ruby and Ruby Online. Each leading on nicely from the previous section, and breaking up the different requirements of the learner as they go.

Peter starts off nice and slow (with a most excellent foreword from _why the lucky stiff), and eases you into Ruby by first explaining how you get it installed. He covers both Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

Once you're installed, the basics are carefully laid out in front of you, from pieces like variables and keywords, to object orientated programming basics. His writing style is easy on the eye and travels at a good pace without confusing the beginner. More advanced users can skip the first couple of chapters, or at least skim over quickly. That's what I liked about this book, though. A mature beginner will naturally need to know about the basics of programming in Ruby (or any language) before their first application, and this is the order that Peter takes. There are certain readers who will relish Chapter 4 as the starter block, jumping straight into their first application...however they'll soon go back to Chapter 2 and 3 to really get a feel of how Ruby works.

Oddly we are led through the history of Ruby in Chapter 5, this seemed like a strange choice in positioning that I personally would have skipped had I been learning Ruby. However the content is accurate and informative in such a way that if you skip it, you're more likely to return once your journey through the book is complete.

Chapter 6, in the section "The Core of Ruby" is really where the in-depth knowledge starts to seep through. The examples are plentiful, concise, and easy to read. He digs thoroughly into the most juicy parts of Ruby like Symbols, Blocks, and Mixins. I found myself not wanting to put the book down, as if I was reading a chapter from the Tolkien masterpieces. Of course, your geek mileage may vary, but I can't see you having many qualms with this chapter. I found a surprising amount of information that the more experienced developer may not have known which you wouldn't expect from a book titled "Beginning Ruby".

Chapter 11 particularly impressed me, in which he talks about the more advanced features in Ruby. Dynamic code execution, safety levels, threading, and RubyInline. These are all examples of what gems you'll find in this chapter, and all explained in bite size chunks to let you get a general overview of what can be done, and where to go if you'd like to really dig into that particular piece.

Finally, Part 3, Ruby Online. This section features as more of a fleeting visit (and re-visit) of many more of the Ruby pieces that you could use in your application. It talks about Ruby on Rails, RubyGems, networking etc. It also gives a quick run-through of the Ruby language as a 'primer' for developers who might just want to have a concentrated burst of knowing what Ruby can do. It also provides references and resources that you will be prudent to bookmark in your favourites.

So, I wholeheartedly recommend this book to not only beginners, but amateurs and advanced users. There might be a few bits and pieces you were unsure of, or were completely unaware of. Easily a 9/10 in my eyes...nothing gets the 10 unless it has nudity....and that's not an invitation Peter.

So thank you for sending the book over to me for review, and good luck with sales. I can't see you struggling to capture them with content like this. Nice work.

"A true geeks potential can only be realised through the power of the pretty desktop."

Jamie van Dyke, 16th May, 2007

This is how a typical day starts off before the storm, we have Mail, iTerm, Colloquy, and iTunes windows...however, some of you are probably wondering where the windows are, and if you've seen them, why are they so small!

So here's a listing of the applications which I find most important that I have running now:

• Windowshade

  Responsible for icon-izing the windows at the top left of Desktop 2 (Mail, iTunes, iTerm). Note: these are just miniaturised windows, they still show the correct content, so if you're a mail hog, or waiting for something to happen in a window, it's rude to stare!

• Uno

  This makes all the toolbars and windows throughout Mac OS X have a unified look, and doesn't show up anywhere on my screenshots because it gets run once and then goes away.

• Stattoo

  At the bottom of Desktop 2 I have Stattoo, which very kindly gives me an overview of my mail, todos, etc.

• iPulse

  At the bottom right of Desktop 2 I have iPulse, which is an extremely handy application for monitoring all my system stats. I know when I have a busy or runaway process (and not just from my busy MacBook fan) by the colour of certain sections on iPulse.

• Desktop Pictures

  These desktop images are great. They're surreal, colourful, artistic and most of all peaceful. I highly suggest yo grab a print or two from his works.

• CoverSutra

  If you listen to quite a bit of music like me, then CoverSutra is the candy to top off the tunes. The album (Hard-Fi) showing at the top left of Desktop 1 is placed there by CoverSutra, and my Last.fm scrobblings are handled automatically too.

So, that's the quick run through, there's plenty more productivity tools I have running that you can't see, I'll have to sit down and do a full run through some time.

How do you eat yours?