The 2 projects launch week.

Before starting a new project, take a look.

If you’re planning to start a new project, from scratch, Jim Neath, from Fudge, had the good idea to create Bort, your application skeleton to start without pain.

What is Bort ?

      Ruby on Rails popularity brings to it a lot of very good plugins. And it’s that, on 98 % case, when you start a new project from scratch, you’re going to do every times the same thing.

      From starting your test with Rspec to install the lastest version of RESTFUL Authentication, we do all the same thing every time.

      So Bort is just an easy to use starting point, like the scaffolds sometimes.

How can I play with it ?

      Open a terminal and clone Bort git repository : clone git://github.com/fudgestudios/bort.git  (or download it directly from the GitHub )

      Then a Rake db:migrate will do the magic.

What’s inside ?

      At this time, a Bort fresh installation come with :

1. RESTful Authentication and params
2. User Roles
3. Open ID Authentication
4. Will Paginate
5. Rspec & Rspec-rails
6. Exception Notifier
7. Asset Packager
8. Capistrano recipes

       A rake:bort:[plugin name] will help you to an easy install of some useful plugins.

How can you help ?

        On his blog, Jim Neath calls for developers ideas, so give a look and report bugs/ideas here

NBGit, a Git plugin for Netbeans

Use Git and GitHub on Netbeans (image source : http://www.flickr.com/photos/boboroshi/2591305062/ )

For three months now I’ve managed to migrate my project on the Git version control system.

Just found, yesterday night, a Git plug in for Netbeans. It’s the first version, not all the commands are implemented, but, you will have the commit one, the diff one and the update. For the branches and the tag, you will need to wait a little.

Why use a version control :

A version control is a must have for every kind of project development.

A version control will help you to :

• Save your code
• Keep a trace on what you are doing
• Keep a history of the changes
• View the difference between the old version of the file(s) and the local one
• Keep your modification and your code safe when you work in a team
• Tag and branche your code for a better organization

And more and more and more …

The most commonly used in companies are : CVS or his fork Subversion (svn), Mercurial, Git.

You can find a good review about seven different version control systems on Smashing Magazine.

What is Git :

Git is a distributed version control system. It means that every developer of the team own a copy of the repository on their disk.

This is the one chosen by the Ruby on Rails core team development and now a lot of rails plugins (Before it was SVN).

Pro :

• Distributed version
• Quick (very quick)
• Easy to manage
• GitHub
• Open Source

Cons :

• ? I do not see any for the moment

You can find a Git cheat sheet here and the official website is here.

What’s GitHub :

GitHub is an ‘easy to open’ and cheap Git server repository provider.

Instead of managing a repository server (and the data backup/security/cost … who come with) you can open an account with GitHub and manage free public repositories.

If you need to have some private projects, you can sign up for a pay monthly account from 7$ a month.

It’s really easy to use, and if you’ve already used another version control system the ‘learning curve’ will be very short.

Your repository will be on safe hands, and will be backup on two others servers, and pushing code is only allowed if you give them your SSH keys.

So, and this Netbeans Git plugins :

Netbeans 6.5 comes with some source control plugins, but there ISN’T ANY for Git.

This issue is corrected with the NBGit plugin, purposed by Jonas.

You can find the plugin here and the git repository here. The official website is on http://nbgit.org.

For the moment there are only the basic operations like Commit/Update and Diff, but I hope branches and tags will come quickly.

I tried it yesterday night, it worked fine for me. Perhaps this plugins will help me to decide definitively between my Gedit a la Textmate and Netbeans.

Rails Rumble 2008, I’ll participate

After long hesitation, I finally took a place for the Rails Rumble 2008.

What’s the Rails Rumble :

Basically, you have 48 Hours long to build from scratch a deployable Ruby on Rails web application.

Every team will have a virtual seat. The rumble starts on October 18th 2008 at 00:00 GMT and stops on October 19Th 2008 at 23:59 GMT.

Every team can have between 1 and 4 persons.

You’re not allowed to start coding/design before or after the 48 hours.

Your application will be judge during 10 days after the competition.

Who can participate :

Any Ruby on Rails developer with an idea to develop, all levels.

My Project :

I’ll try to have a complete Online Cv builder working.

My Rails Rumble project page is online, with the Sheep’n Geek team name.

If you have some reasonable ideas for it, I’ll take them to consideration

Sponsors and prizes :

You can find on the Rails Rumble blog all the sponsors names, with their contributions.

And now :

I have my day job, my travel planner project, and this contest … Ho, and our anniversary with my peanut. I’m going to be very busy.

Goog luck to all contestants.

Hug a developer

After a 1 week break, I came back at work and find this video.

Please, be Agile with your developer

5 links of the week

I’ll post every week 5 links from my Google Reader. This can be development, web, geek or design stuff as anything else.

220 Stunning creative skateboard graphics, from Spoongraphics.

Spoongraphics guy’s offer us an amazing selection of skateboard design. As usual on this blog, it’s a good way to find inspiration.

The new peepcode pdf is out as a draft. A must to have if you’re looking to some low pro Js implementation.

Yes, in France we have more than 2 summer day per years

Pamela Poole, via WebWorkerDaily made a post on the French way of work during August, I was thinking doing the same for the English ;). But, to be honest, she is completely right.

Crazy gadget found us a laptop case and pillow prototype.

And finally, Smashing magazine offer us the Simplicio Icon Set. And I already know where I’m going to use them.

How to be productive on spare time

Last Sunday I was working on my current personal project, when, during a tea break, I thought about “how to be productive on your personal projects”.

The pros :

Using this organisation let me have some time with my peanut for discovering England, cooking, watching films, whatever we want, because I can keep 2 or 3 nigths a week and 1 week end day with her.

Even if this organization seems to work quite well, there are some cons :

1. If you make the addition of all the working hours, you’ll have up to 25 hours dedicated to your application, with ‘only’ 15 hours a week for the real development.
2. When you have a coding problem, you know this
   kind of little bugs that can take hours to be solved, it’s like if
   you’ve lost a week of work.
3. You need to have a solid idea of what you have
   to do every day, and be well organised in your development process
   between test, development and design.
4. You need to wake up in the morning after the night work day …

What about you ? What’s your organization method to work on personnal project ?

Find jobs in the UK with Twitter

That’s a fact, Twitter changes the way we access the information. We are not only supposed to search for information, but now the information have to come to us.

If you’re living in the UK, working on the web development, being a fan of twitter, just have a look to these contacts, they are a very good resource for job hunting :

• https://twitter.com/RailsJobs
• https://twitter.com/Web20Contracts
• https://twitter.com/LAMPContracts
• https://twitter.com/RailsContracts

What about you ? Do you have others twitter job hunting contact to follow ?

How do you like to work ?

(image credit)

Last week end I’ve wasted my time during 2 days because I’ve changed my work habits.

2 Weeks ago, I’ve started working in my spare time on a new web application project. But because my time was limited, I haven’t respected the way I usually work and I’ve started directly on my ‘./rails MyKillerApp’ … And last week end I’ve payed the price for that :(.

Because I haven’t respected my working habits, it was a complete anarchy on my source code, I’ve got a lot of migrations, and 3 pages that are started but not finished because I wanted to think more about it …

The real fact is, I don’t have my written notes, and I haven’t thought before starting to write my code. I had a global idea of what I wanted, but it was too global.

A Long time ago I tried a lot of stuff like Kivio or some note and schema applications … and each time, I went back to my blank paper and my pen.

1. The Idea
   
   When I have an idea fixed in my head, I take a paper, and I write down, in few lines what I want the application to do.
   
   
2. The Storyboard
   
   This is, for me, the most exciting part of the preparation.
   For my future application, I try to write some scenario of it. What the user will do, what will I need to do, what my database will look like …
   For me, this is always the same scheme :
   
   • 1 Page = 1 action
   • On the top, in the middle, the action name
   • Under, a few lines of the action description
   • Then, I try to draw the application windows
   • Then under, on the left in two rows : Function needed, table scheme needed.

   
   At the end I have some notes with the most important part of the future application. I take a paper sheet, and everything goes inside, with the name of the application in capital letters.
   At this stage, if needed, I open a basecamp account, just to share a todo list with people who need to be involved.
   
   

3. Source Code

   When I have everything on the paper, the first thing I do, is to open an SVN account on my server and create the application structure (rails MyKillerApp)
   Then I start to code, trying to respect my scenario order.
   Each time I’ve finished a part of the storyboard, I just tick the action title.
   If I need more functions, or more data tables, I try to write them down before.

Even in my day job, I use the same structure. And I try to keep on my desk just the paper I need (…). When I don’t have to share these information with team-mates, it just stays here as a prototype, and if I need to share them, I just write a more formal document.

Nb : Only few peoples will understand the top photo, but if you follow this blog, you will