Author Archives: Bill

Intuit is Lame

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a long time Quicken user, but I’m a Mac user and its fairly frustrating dealing with the differences between their Mac and Windows versions. Unfortunately, my accountant is a Windows user, so every time I … Continue reading

Posted in Business Strategy, Mac OS X, MacBook Pro | 4 Comments

In the Pradipta 416

For what its worth, I was one of the Pradipta 416, a group of 416 recipients of an email seeking a Ruby on Rails developer. Trouble is, we weren’t BCCed, so it became a huge email thread and spawned a … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Web Standards — Aren't they a given now?

It is hockey season now and so I’ve been paying attention to the local team and all things surrounding it.  So today I noticed that Mike Modano has relaunched his site.  Well, Mike has been one of my favorite players … Continue reading

Posted in Business Strategy, CSS, Design | Leave a comment

Testimonials & Recommendations

Out of the blue yesterday, I received a request to take down a testimonial on my “hire me” site that I had received from a colleague from a past employer.  There was some question about the testimonial being a violation … Continue reading

Posted in General | Leave a comment

Circling Back

People have asked me quite a lot lately what I’m going to do now that I’m free and clear of Click Here and my pat answer has been one of two or three things: Find a product-oriented company with a … Continue reading

Posted in Business Strategy, Java, Ruby, Ruby on Rails | Leave a comment

Follow the process?

I have been making my living for the last 20+ years following processes.  Unfortunately, I have not seen that processes have been maintained, evaluated, and evolved as they should be.  My theory is this: no one collects any metrics anymore, … Continue reading

Posted in Business Strategy, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Preserve Semantics in Callbacks

Many people tend to place logic within a method named for the callback (e.g. after_destroy).  This works fine, but tends to be less maintainable, in my opinion. You basically have a method called after_destroy (or whatever), but you don’t readily … Continue reading

Posted in Ruby, Ruby on Rails | 1 Comment

Using Constants in Rails Models

One of my pet peeves in code is the absence of constants and thus the prevalence of “magic numbers” in their place. Constants add a touch of readability and semantic meaning and magnify the maintainability of the code. As a … Continue reading

Posted in Ruby, Ruby on Rails | 6 Comments

GeoKit Updates

I have added a few features and made a few bug fixes to GeoKit. These are as follows: [FEATURE] Added timeout support for geocoder web service calls [FEATURE] Added proxy support for geocoder web service calls [FEATURE] Added support for … Continue reading

Posted in GeoKit, Ruby, Ruby on Rails | 11 Comments

Just One Domain Name?

Anyone tried to get a good domain name lately?  If you have, its likely you’ve been frustrated with the options that you have left.  Of course, that is the case only if you wish to have a domain name that … Continue reading

Posted in Business Strategy, Design | Leave a comment