Ignite Blog by Ruxton » Software

Being Overly Dry..

Ruxton — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:41:10 +0000

An interesting discussion came up in the office today about using the ruby gem inherited_resources. Many people I work with or have worked with love it, they love the fact it dries the controller up does all the stuff they continually have to type. I don’t.

As a developer I’ve always subscribed to a couple of theories and one of those is something that was drilled into me in Maths in high school; Show your working out. It’s all very well to have the answer, but if you don’t understand how you got there, you have failed.

This is the number one thing I hate that software developers do, they overly abstract/dry code up until it’s no longer easily readable. They sacrifice all their readability, for dry, abstracted code.

The inherited_resources gem is a prime example of this, your controllers are left looking empty; It completely reverses the expected convention of having to define those restful methods. So when Newbie Programmer A arrives at your controller, there’s a whole heap of things going on he just doesn’t know about or understand.

By all means write dry, abstracted code, but think twice before abstracting every last inch out. Just like a lot of things in the world, abstracting and drying up your code is great when used in moderation.

Resolving A Minor Issue With iTALM v0.5.1

Ruxton — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:40:09 +0000

It seems there may have been a minor issue in the last release of my iTunes Affiliate Link Maker wordpress plugin. Quite simply, if you had an existing install and didn’t have any links in it yet, you may continue to see the upgrade warning/notification no matter what you do. The man known to me only as daykilla has found the bug and nailed a quick solution (top work!) that’ll get you going for now.

If you need to work out what’s going on and how to fix it, head over and check out the post describing it. In the mean time I’ll be releasing an updated 0.5.2 later this evening with that fix and maybe a few extras.

Applications I’m Using On The iPhone

Ruxton — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:53:22 +0000

I thought it might be a cool idea to get through a list of applicatons i’m using on the iPhone and what each application does. Sometimes it’s hard to get an idea of what iPhone apps you should try out, so here goes my list.

Tweetdeck – Possibly the best iPhone application for Twitter, TweetDeck is great for users who are following lots of people.
Flickr – Yahoo’s Flickr iPhone application is used for browsing flickr and uploading your iPhone photos
eBay Mobile – eBay on the go, this application is great for just browsing eBay on the move or getting push reminders about watch items
FStream – FStream is great for listening to those streaming radio stations on the go!
Google Earth – The world at your fingertips, literally!
Google Mobile Application – Everything google Web App under one convenient roof, it’d be nice if the web apps launched inside this app though.
WordPress 2 – WordPress 2 is an application to manage your WordPress blog, whether it be creating and editing posts or trashing comments.
Uno™ – Do you know Uno? The great game, transformed to iPhone with multiplayer capabilities. A free version is available if you don’t want multiplayer.
Facebook – Facebook, duh.
Stanza – Stanza is an e-book application for the iPhone and features purchasing through FeedBooks and others, plenty of free works available.
Apple iTunes Remote – A must for all iTunes users the remote will allow you to control iTunes over your wireless network.
RampChamp – Another addictive casual game, think shooting or ball toss at the carnival
Quota – Quota is an application for viewing your bandwidth quota with ISP’s like Telstra, iiNet, Optus, 3 Mobile, etc. free versions are available for iiNet and Optus
Peggle – The world’s most addictive casual game is now on the iPhone, waste time wherever you may be!
Oz Weather – The best weather tool for Australia on iPhone, Oz Weather data is supplied by BOM and doesn’t just provide numbers, but satellite imagery also.
OsXs – OsXs is a free Naught and Crosses game from some guys i know
NetNewsWire Premium (Free/Lite/Ad Version)
Domino’s Pizza – Sometimes you just want to order cheap pizza and have it meet you at home, this iPhone application will do just that
Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D – One of the first driving games to hit the iPhone, a fun little game
CardStar – CardStar is an application for storing the barcodes of all those customer loyalty cards you carry around, enter them all in CardStar and never carry them around in your wallet again.
Bomberman Touch 2 – Volcano Party – A classic video game, the Bomberman series for iPhone is everything you’d expect it to be and then some.

iTALM Plugin Update 0.5.1

Ruxton — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:57:55 +0000

I’ve just pushed version 0.5.1 of my WordPress plugin iTALM into the WordPress SVN, it should arrive soon enough. If you have any problems please let me know.

The system now works around the shortag [itunes] with the following attributes:

url – a mandatory attribute, this a clean itms store url, fetched via link maker or your itunes client
title – the string in this field is passed into the output link as the alt tag on the image/title of the link
content – if you don’t use this field, the itms link image from the settings page is displayed, if you do use this attribute the string is output instead.

Saying all that you don’t need to type this stuff anyway, because that’s the beauty of the button being in both editors. Select text (it’ll be output as the content attribute) or don’t, click the button, search for what you want (or click manual url) and be quickly prompted through the process. If you enter nothing in the box? It’ll still enter someting like <Artist Name>-<Album name> out for you.

I think this is a nice step forward for the plugin, your feedback is appreciated, the general consensus seems to be to drop feedback over at the article page but i’m now closing that, so please leave your feedback on this post.

Recycled: iTunes, iPod, iPhone.. iChoose?

Ruxton — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:30:30 +0000

Original post date: 2008-07-05

Recycled for Recycle A Blog Post Day

Something just occurred to me this evening and it has to do with software companies and the monopoly ‘lock in’ tactics that some use. Microsoft was pulled up over forcing Internet Explorer on people in XP many moons ago now and I’m sure we’re all completely happy with how it eventually turned out, most of us use Firefox and Windows now recognises something called a ‘default browser’.

Fast forward a few years and we’ve seen Apple since day one, ram iTunes down the throat of every ipod owner in the world. This was understandable, after all it’s a portable music player and it only ran on OSX to start with, so it’s ok to force a music player that’s already installed on the operating system along with the device to provide sync support, in fact it totally makes sense. That is until they released on windows and iTunes wasn’t that great, also for years we’ve all been using Winamp or Windows Media Player and have no desire to switch to iTunes.

The one thing that always turned me off the iPod was iTunes, because on Mac it runs great but on Windows it just blows hard. I was pretty much given a 20Gb iPod photo a while back and was glad to see Winamp supported sync of the iPod (just like it did my WM6 device), so i didn’t have to piss around with iTunes. Wishful thinking, i still had to install iTunes just so i can restore and manage updates to my ipod, still.. i can swallow it, it’s a media player it makes sense that the program that controls the syncing is also a media player, right?

Here’s where it gets interesting, Apple released the iPhone, it runs it’s own flavour of iTunes/iPod and along with that is pretty much a fully blown smart phone/PDA. So heres where i begin to question the integrity of iTunes, when i’m syncing my Calendar, Music, Contacts, Photos, Videos, Software Updates and Applications all through what used to be a media player that i will soon be forced to use 100%, just so i can keep my mobile phone up to date. This little twist, in my opinion, makes the iTunes/iPhone(ipod) combo way worse than Microsoft ever did with Internet Explorer, yet for someone reason.. no one seems to give a shit? everyone is just copping it and dealing it with.

I shouldn’t have to install a media player that i don’t want to use, just because someone decided the updates for my phone should be delivered through it. It’s high time Apple released something that synced everything on your phone without using iTunes, perhaps an extended iSync for Windows/OSX with the ability to put files into the devices media player DB without iTunes?

iTunes should be a media player, it should have a ’sync interface’ that any device can use (listen closely apple). Apple should have some central ’sync software’ for their ipod/iphone collection that acts as a central point between the devices and ANY software (Yeah that’s right apple, not just iTunes). This way apple can still maintain proprietary code in iTunes and in the way they handle the sync, but still allow people to make decisions for themselves about what software they want to use and not have something they don’t want to use, rammed down their throat.

Oh and please, this isn’t some debate about what’s better and what’s not, because that’s always going to come down to user preference, which is something Apple isn’t providing right now. Yes i know most other major portable media players are playing the game the same way, but that doesn’t mean they’re playing fairly for us, the consumers. Perhaps one day people will learn to work together a little to build great things instead of trying to win the war, whether it be a format war, a software war or just good old fashioned war.

More Android Icons For Free

Ruxton — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:26:35 +0000

The team at glyFX are still working frantically as always and today they slipped out the Android Common Developer Icon Set II. This free icon set is a rework of the original Android Developer Common Icon Set, using all the details supplied by the Android Icon Design Guidelines, which was not available when the first set was created.

Head over to glyFX and get your free copy of the Android Developer Common Icon Set II now.

Woopra Site Analytics – First Impressions

Ruxton — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:48:40 +0000

I wrote this little post quite some time ago, around the weekend my first 2 sites were accepted into the Woopra Beta.
If you’re wondering how to pronounce Woopra, i like to think it has an exclamation mark on the end (Woopra!) and that it’s the sound Bruce Lee makes when he karate chops your arse. Because I get the impression thats exactly what Woopra is going to do to online analytics.

So heres the deal, Woopra is Live analytics for web site, just like google analytics all you do is add a javascript code. Then while i sit here with my Woopra desktop client open on my computer (this is the first win), i see you hitting the websites i have registered, i see it all while it’s happening and i see where you came from. Theres something weird about this, it creates a strange sensation for the developer of a website, the power of knowing someone is on your site RIGHT NOW!

I find i lose or disregard alot of the data that is in google analytics, purely because of the fact i go and “check it” and filter through it all. In Woopra i find myself rarely checking and just leaving it open on a screen at times to watch, due to this i find i’m noticing things about the websites i’ve not been paying attention too that REALLY need some attention.

In it’s current incarnation Woopra doesn’t seem to be doing alot more than Google Analytics, but that’s ok because they’re doing some of it better and talking about the future features. Some extras that make it that little bit better:

Visitor Tagging – obviously in all analytics programs each user is ‘unique’ so that they can see the difference between unique hits and page views. Woopra takes it one step further allowing you to Tag certain users. Of course i’m tagging repeat customers so i can see what they’re doing..why wouldn’t i? It’d be nice if woopra allowed me to add a default link on the tag so say if i wrote the tag as “
Live Geographical Overview – The kind of thing you push to displays and put around the office to watch
API’s for data access – Whats that i can build my own shiney live geographical overview using my data from your servers? take that google! (and weeks after i wrote this, google released their data api)

So there you have it, my first impressions of Woopra. I’ll be posting more again on Woopra as they get the current version out of Release Candidate. If you want to check out Woopra head over to their website to check out more.

iTunes Affiliate Link Maker WordPress Plugin

Ruxton — Sun, 31 May 2009 07:23:38 +0000

Got a worpdress blog? do you link to the iTunes Store with or without an affiliate program? this plugins for you!

The plugin adds an itunes button to the visual editor which when clicked brings forward a dialog containing a search for the iTunes store link maker.

After searching, clicking on any link will ask for a title for the link and insert it into the content editor. The link also enables the ability to directly link to albums, something the standard link generator does not normally do.

Enough gaff, if you want it, it’s here. It’ll be on wordpress.org soon enough.

Custom Tab Bar Images/Icons For iPhone Applications

Ruxton — Mon, 11 May 2009 03:03:16 +0000

So you’ve been making iPhone applications for a while, you’re sick and tired of the limited amount of icons the SDK gives access too and you’re over searching the for icons that are available in the codebase that you’re “not supposed to use”. Over at glyFX we’re feeling your pain and coming to the rescue again. Earlier this month we released a free 5 icon pack of iPhone TabBar and Toolbar icons as a bit of a teaser.

Now we’ve came out with our first iphone commercial set, 5 icons in the iPhone Messaging Icon Set that are geared towards a messaging application. We’ve got Inbox, Outbox, Chat, Buddies & Status, head over and checkout the iPhone Messaging Icon Set.

Free iPhone Tabbar & Toolbar Icons

Ruxton — Sat, 02 May 2009 05:25:11 +0000

Over at glyFX we’ve been preparing to jump into the market of iPhone icons. That is, icons for Tabbars and Toolbars. We’ve prepared a free set for everyone to take a look at and give feedback on. It really is important for you to give feedback so that glyFX can produce a product that meets or exceeds expectations.

The free icon set consists of 5 icons for the Tabbar an the Toolbar and will be followed up quite quickly with commercial iphone sets of 5 icons, for $5. Get in, grab your free icons and don’t forget to go back next week for more.