FitTimer

A few days ago, we released our second iPhone application, titled FitTimer. It helps you get the most out of the time you spend in the gym by tracking how much time you actually spend exercising and helping you limit the amount of time you spend on breaks.

Find it in the App Store.

Chess Clock for iPhone

I've been remiss in not mentioning that my first iPhone app has finally appeared in the App Store. iChessClock is a simple and attractive Chess Clock for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Ready/Paused

In Play (white to move)

Time Expired

Setup Screen

Looking for the Mouse

Great article by Clay Shirky.

I avoided Twitter for a long time, thinking it was the level of hell below Facebook. I gave it a second look because some guys I respect said they were on it.

After nearly three weeks, my conclusion is that yes, it is another time sink and source of interruptions, joining e-mail, IM’s and blogs, and yes there is a certain amount of drivel, like “I’m eating a cheese sandwich.” But, it’s an interactive time sink and the people I follow are, for the most part, interesting people doing interesting things. Their default activity is not sitting on the couch watching the boob tube. They are traveling, writing code, making presentations at conferences and user groups, taking pictures, playing chess, reading interesting articles and sharing them.

Of course there have always been people who never went into a TV stupor. My parents didn’t have a TV when I was growing up, forcing me outdoors during the day and into books at night, but the common understanding was that I was deprived—disconnected from The Source of popular culture. Now, the feeling is that TV is tired and it is the alternate activities that are hip.

Software Development Schedules

“Talking about a software development schedule more than a year out is like talking about where we go after we die. Everyone has some idea where we’ll end up, but those ideas differ wildly, and there’s a lack of solid evidence to support any of them.” —Kyle Wilson

Mis-quoted

I was mis-quoted.

The actual quote was “Your Google is as good as mine.”—as in, “Why should I look it up for you?”

Demeter's Revenge

More evidence that if something in Ruby or Rails seems to be more work than it ought to be, you’re probably doing it wrong:

http://www.lukeredpath.co.uk/2007/10/18/demeters-revenge

In this case, mocking ActiveRecord associations was unreasonably inflating the ratio of lines of test code per lines of application code tested.

If ActiveRecord saves you from needing to manually (or otherwise) generate boilerplate ORM code, but you give that advantage back by writing tons of test code, your net advantage just shrank. Also, consider that an excessive ratio of test code to application code acts_as_ball_and_chain, reducing the agility with which you can respond to changing business conditions.

The solution described has two parts: 1) Follow best practices (in this case observe the Law of Demeter) and 2) apply a little more meta-programming goodness.

iTunes Tip

Here is a tip you’ll find useful if you use iTunes to subscribe to podcasts. I managed to only get 43 seconds of Coverville episode 356 and it wasn’t obvious to me how to download it again. This tip did the trick.