2007
AssetsGraphed Hits 200 Days Uptime • Friday, 28 December 2007
I’m pleased to report that my AssetsGraphed Ruby on Rails application has been running continuously for over two hundred days now, as the screenshot below taken from my installation of monit shows.
Rails Tip #11: Add Plugin Repositories • Monday, 17 December 2007
It’s something of a secret that you can configure the source code repositories the Rails plugin manager searches when you instruct it to install a plugin.
Purchasing Music Online, Microsoft Style • Sunday, 02 December 2007
My partner recently wanted to download a track from HMV Digital. The following is a true account of the process we had to go through before we could play the purchased music.
Bad Apple • Monday, 26 November 2007
One of the toughest tests of an operating system is how well it copes when disaster strikes and you have to somehow get your data back. Last weekend I found myself in this situation for the first time since I switched to using Mac OS X.
FogBugz World Tour • Monday, 12 November 2007
I went to a great gig in London last Friday with my good buddy John Conners. In a bizarre twist on the traditional format for these things, it was actually a presentation on project management software for software teams, rather than a music gig.
1982 • Saturday, 27 October 2007
Time for a quick quiz. What do the following have in common?
Front Row Slow • Saturday, 27 October 2007
In Mac OS X you can slow down some of the animation effects by holding down the Shift key whilst activating them.
Life With A Mac • Thursday, 04 October 2007
Hello! It’s John here. John Conners to be precise (from John’s Adventures fame). Way back in March John (Topley) wrote an article on my site titled ‘The Case For The Mac‘. At the time I was a lifelong Windows user (well, since Windows 3.1) and for as long as I’d known him John had been trying to persuade me to buy a Mac.
Atomic • Saturday, 04 August 2007
Two amazing facts that you may not know about atoms.
Improved Localisation In AssetsGraphed • Monday, 02 July 2007
As part of my process of continuous and sometimes arduous improvement of my AssetsGraphed web application, I’ve recently added slightly better localisation support.
Happy iPhone Day • Friday, 29 June 2007
After nearly six months of waiting, the day is finally here. All across the United States people are getting ready to put down at least five hundred Dollars in an Apple or AT&T store for the privilege of owning an Apple iPhone.
NASA And That Vision Thing • Saturday, 09 June 2007
I was born too late for the Apollo era. If I could choose to observe any momentous moment in history, then I wouldn’t choose to see the invention of the wheel because we don’t know when it was invented or by whom. There probably wasn’t much to see anyway—some guy discovering that you can more easily roll a round rock than a square one.
Wacky Windows • Thursday, 31 May 2007
A comic strip that shows that if you use the keyboard to rename the “My Recent Documents” menu item in Windows XP, it reverts to its default name but the new name is stored in the registry and survives reboots.
One Small Step… • Friday, 25 May 2007
I just got a skeletal Ruby on Rails application running on a Java Virtual Machine using JRuby.
So True • Monday, 21 May 2007
I absolutely love this spoof commercial from the Rails Envy guys, so I make no apologies for embedding it here in case you haven’t seen it yet!
Great Flickr Feature • Monday, 21 May 2007
I just noticed something that Flickr got exactly right—you don’t have to give photos a title.
Mac OS X Family Pack No Longer Good Value • Thursday, 15 March 2007
I was recently extolling the virtues of the Mac in a guest post on my friend John’s blog and I mentioned that you can buy a five-user Mac OS X family pack for the good-value price of £139.
Deal Of The Century • Monday, 05 March 2007
That got your attention, didn’t it? Maybe not deal of the century, but if you’re a UK-based Rails developer then you owe it to yourself to check out the PeepCode subscription packs.
Rails Envy • Thursday, 01 March 2007
Gregg Pollack and Jason Seifer have just started a great new Ruby on Rails blog named Rails Envy.
Highlights Of FOWA 2007 • Monday, 26 February 2007
Last week I had the pleasure of attending Carson Systems‘ annual Future of Web Applications conference in London. This two day conference and day of workshops has expanded significantly since the single day conference held last February (which I wasn’t able to attend).
Thought For The Day • Friday, 26 January 2007
Enterprise Java leads us to a point where choice becomes a bad thing.
Installing Mint On A Rails Machine • Friday, 12 January 2007
I recently added Shaun Inman’s superb Mint statistics package to my AssetGraphed Rails Machine installation. As the installation wasn’t particularly straightforward, I thought I’d write this little guide for others who may be struggling.
24 iPhone Impressions • Wednesday, 10 January 2007
I’m no mobile phone expert. My current phone is a Sony Ericsson Z200 which is a few years old and doesn’t have a camera, FM radio or MP3 player. I bought it because you can make calls with it and because it’s very small and quite robust.
The Anticipation Mounts… • Tuesday, 09 January 2007
I just checked the Apple Store and noticed that it’s down for updating. They always do this just before a Steve Jobs keynote when he announces lots of new goodies for Apple fanboys like me to spend our hard-earned cash on.
AssetsGraphed At The Rails Way • Tuesday, 09 January 2007
You may recall that a while ago I mentioned The Rails Way, which is a site where Rails core team members Jamis Buck and Michael Koziarski review code submissions and illustrate Rails best practices. Well, the big news is that they’ve started reviewing my code!
AssetsGraphed On Rails Machine • Wednesday, 03 January 2007
I’ve just finished moving AssetsGraphed over to Rails Machine. The application was originally hosted by TextDrive, on the same server as this site. I don’t have any complaints about TextDrive but it was clear that I needed something more substantial for AssetsGraphed.
2003–2012 John Topley