Jared McFarland

Are your friends making you fat?

This article in the New York Times is fascinating.  A review of a study concluding the effects and influence we can have on our friends and social connections.  Next time you're in a bad mood, want to light up a cigarette or you want to skip the gym, think of the effect you could be having on those around you, and more importantly, the effect on people you've never even met.

Are your friends making you fat?

Full stack ruby development for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

 http://www.metaskills.net/2009/9/5/the-ultimate-os-x-snow-leopard-stack-for-rails-development-x86_64-macports-ruby-1-8-1-9-sql-server-more

First SPUC update!

In order to keep myself on task with all my little programming projects (The LPP?), I joined the SPUC (Secret Project Update Club). I'll post updates once a week. This week, introductions:

1. Codename: Stars - I started this project about three weeks ago. I got some of the basic tests and things worked out, and an idea formed in my head. I've had to revisit the organization several times... still not sure I've got it right. 
2. Codename: A.C. Newman - This project is brand new, still just an idea. Gonna get it up and running soon I hope. 
3. Codename: Modest Mouse - I've been sitting on this one for ages. I've go a decent idea of how it'll work, how it'll be organized and how it'll be written. Just have to get around to doing it now. 

Keeping track of tickets in Git

Here at Bookmans, our development flow works in stages.  We code locally, push to a staging server, and move from the staging server to the live server.  To manage issues we have a ticket management system setup in ActiveCollab, where tickets are assigned a number by project.  A few days ago I pushed about five tickets to the staging server for review.  @tilopa checked 'em out, and told me that three of them were good to go live, but the last two had a few more quirks to work out.  This actually turned into an issue for me, I had been working in a Git branch called "jared", and merging into "master" to push to staging, then merging master with a branch called "stable" to go live.  But I didn't have a way to just push three tickets like, they were all jumbled into "master" together.

Now, when working on a new ticket, I branch out a ticket with the project name and the ticket number in it, for example "classifieds_8".  Then, when I want to push to staging, I merge that branch into "master".  When that piece of code is ready to go live, I don't merge "master" and "stable", I actually merge the branch containing the fix (ie, "classifieds_8") with "stable".  This way I can push one ticket at a time to the production server.

Installing ImageMagick on SnowLeopard 10.6

Update: You can install it a lot easier by following these instructions: http://github.com/masterkain/ImageMagick-sl

When I installed Snow Leopard on my laptop I did a clean install, so my working environment on my laptop was totally wiped out.  I had to reinstall ImageMagick the other day ( you can imagine my frustration when I was getting ImageMagick related errors thinking it was already installed properly).  The installation was a bit tricky, so I figured I'd share it with ya'll.

Here's how I did it.

1. First, go to the MacPorts site and follow their download/install instructions for OS 10.5 Leopard.  This install went smoothly for me.
2. Next, open up Terminal.app and type 
3. "sudo port install ImageMagick".  This will take quite awhile, as MacPorts will download and install all of the ImageMagick dependencies.  However, when I ran the install, it didn't actually download and install ImageMagick.  
4. To get ImageMagick installed and running, go to the ImageMagick download page and grab the Mac OS X Universal Binary.  Unzip it and you'll have a working copy of ImageMagick inside that folder (the folder will be called something like ImageMagick-6.5.3).  
5. Now, go back to the Terminal, and move the ImageMagick folder to a permanent home (probably not good for it to sit in your Downloads folder or on your Desktop).  I moved my copy to "/usr/bin/" and renamed the folder from "ImageMagick-6.5.3" to "imagemagick" so my full path is "/usr/bin/imagemagick".
6. Lastly, still in Terminal open up your .bash_profile or .profile file (found in your home directory; mine is "~/.bash_profile"), and add the following lines to it:

export MAGICK_HOME="/usr/bin/imagemagick"

export PATH=$MAGICK_HOME/bin:$PATH

export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH="$MAGICK_HOME/lib"

Rediscovering the joys of programming

I got home from the gym yesterday and decided I should start tracking my progress and performance with different lifts.  I've played around with an iPhone app (iFitness; other apps were too expensive or didn't seem so great), and found the interface too clunky and slow to actually use.  So I figured, I'm a programmer, I should be able to come up with something, right?

I decided no matter what, I don't want to use my iPhone to record reps/sets/weights at the actual gym, pen and paper work best (old skool, I know).  So really, I want a program I can transfer those stats to and chart some performance.  

I pulled out the pen and paper and started doing a bunch of diagrams... "Let's see.  User's will have workouts, will have lifts, will have sets, will have reps, will have weight.  So we've got six models to start..." etc.  In my head I was building this enormous app that I would publish, then I started thinking about servers... my personal development server isn't big enough for lots of users!  Then timelines popped in my head; I need to launch this before I go lifting again (tomorrow!!).  What about graphs and charts? Email updates? Workout suggestions?  The feature list was building at a crazy rate!

After my ten minute panic, I took a step back.  Why do I need to build this for a huge user base?  Why do I need user accounts at all? Why can't I just start with one model with some input fields?  Why do I need to impose time limits and deadlines? This is a project for me after all... I'll run it locally on my laptop and make it work for just me.  The important thing is that I start recording my data.

This revelation spawned several more: If it's just for me, I can use all the cool methods (agile, BDD, Getting Real); I can implement only the features that will make it better for me; I can start with a shitty, ugly app and build on it slowly; I can analyze my own needs, and move from there.

Then I got excited.  More excited than I've been for a project in a long time.  Like, "OMFG this is gonna ROXXORS!" excited.  I actually look forward to getting home from the office and working on this project; all because I realized it's purely mine.  

Try it with an idea for an app that you want to build just for you. Pull out anything that doesn't help your goal right now.  Work with technologies and ideas that seem exciting to you, but you don't have time to work with normally.  Get it up and running right away, so you can actually use it, and get some reward from your effort.  You'll be amazed at how quickly the energy and excitement transfers to your everyday "work" projects.

Got MySQL to work with Rails in Mac OS 10.6: Snow Leopard

After a huge headache, I found this post:

http://cho.hapgoods.com/wordpress/?p=158

And while the post didn't offer the solution I wanted, a comment by "synth" in that post did.  It boiled down to running: 

sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-Os -arch x86_64 -fno-common" gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

The issue was in my choice of MySQL packages.  Snow Leopard has an entire 64-bit kernel, and so naturally, I chose the 64-bit MySQL package.  Mac OS X ships with a version of Ruby that is only 32-bit, and tries to compile with a 32-bit package.  You can force it to compile with the proper package by passing the above arguments to the installer.

Hope this helps someone!

You have received a YouTube video!

The difference between you and I

Over the last week, I had been followed and unfollowed by @christianrep several times.  Receiving at least one notification in my inbox every day from him, frequently more.  It was obvious that this was an annoyance strategy to get me to follow him.  I made this public announcement to him:

@ChristianRep Because you're continue to annoy me by following/unfollowing, I'm now blocking you.  Bye!

The next day I got this email from him:

===================

Jared, sorry you were offended re: the twitter follower growth tactics that I was taught to grow in two months from zero to 6843 followers.  With all of the twitter gurus that continue to promote their programs, I elected to follow Charles Yeo.  Charles started about the same time I did on Twitter.  Today, he has about 37,000 followers worldwide.  I have just not been as assertive as Charles with his system.  If you are interested in growing your follower base, I can teach you what Charles has taught me.  It’s actually very simple… yet requires about one hour per day.
 
Re: my unfollowing you so many times... had you elected to follow me one of those times that I did follow you (because you were on the front page of one of the major twitterers that I was and do follow), you wouldn’t have been unfollowed by the twitter mutual tool that I use to unfollow all those who don’t reciprocate.
 
Once again, if it interests you, please let me know.  I’ll show you what I can,
 
Brett  

===================

My response:

Brett,

I'll be perfectly clear; I have absolutely no interest in "follower growth tactics".  I have no interest in amassing as many impersonal followers as possible.  The connections I make on Twitter, like the connections I make in real life, are about being genuine.  Gaining followers by annoying them into submission doesn't create a genuine interest in what I have to say.  I'd much rather have one follower that I'm personally connected to through shared interest and ideas, than 100,000 followers that don't have any interest in what I say, or what I'm doing.  I find your "tactics" rude and intrusive, and yes, I was offended.  Even more offensive is you emailing me to name-drop and number-drop your Twitter mass.  I don't care.  I don't care how many followers you or Charles Yeo have.  I don't care how long it took you.  What I do care about is you intruding my email inbox 4 days in a row, trying to get me to follow you.  I have absolutely no interest in what you have to say, and your email proves to me that you don't "get it", and you're not genuine.

So what IS happening?

We are all our own global microbrand.

Only we can save us.

  There are things happening all around us.  None of the implications of these things are clear.  The global economy is collapsing because everyone stopped making things, and only updates their status online.   Lawrence Lessig says government is so broken we have to opt out to fix it.  The benefits of being in the audience: quiet, rapt attention on a performer; have been eschewed in favor of lively crowd participation.  Only one thing is certain, expect change.  The audience is dead, but the crowd is alive and conversing with itself.

  The crowd moves much quicker than monoliths.  Quicker than governments, quicker than businesses.  Authenticity and reciprocity in the new rapid fire social sphere is capital, or Whuffie.  Business, long understood by most to be focused on making money to exclusion of all else, is expected to be human.  Not in some legal loophole granting them rights, but in the now, responding in a human voice.   If your business can't engage, you're dead; or silent, which is the same thing.  What you do, who you are, and your interests comprise your global mircobrand.  If you communicate it well, you'll have whuffie, and whuffie will be a key component in your survival in this new space.

  Bruce Sterling delivered the quote that killed me at sxsw.  No small feat, as there were many le petit morts.  A society is judged not just by how it treats its women, its elderly and its children; but how it treats its humiliated.  That's the real takeaway for me.  I can keep explaining twitter, tirelessly reassuring those who face these changes with fear, but these changes are coming.  And not just for those who understand them now... but for everyone.  And that includes our non-twittering, nostalgic, social media bashing friends, relatives and loved ones.  We've all been sold out by the banking monoliths, by inaction on global warming, by paralysis in government. 

  When the weather, joblessness, debt, hunger and hopelessness come, it will be us who is best prepared.  We're already cultivating our networks of real humans.  And it's to you I'm speaking (no one else read past 'microbrand'): the time is coming to open our hearts and homes.  Refugees will be coming to our shores from the old economy, the old way of life.  They will be disoriented, confused and afraid, and looking for their promised monilithic savior.  The savior is there, but it's the human spirit which exists in us all.  Help them find their way, their people and their dignity.  Connectivity is all we're left with, and I couldn't be more hopeful, having met the twittersphere.  We're the crowd we've been waiting for, and only we can save each other.