@madpilot makes

I was going through my referrer logs for 88 Miles, and I can across the url http://screeniac.com/ – I followed it (as if I wouldn’t) and found this really cool site.

Bascially, they create “screencasts” of websites in the form of a review. Basically, each review is a short video demonstrating the use of an online application with narration. The link to the 88 Miles review is here.

This would save so much time if you see a site and want to know if it worth the effort signing up.

As I said – a really cool idea.

Oh yeah, by the way: 88 Miles webservice API has been released. Still a couple of small bugs to iron out, so consider it beta, but the interface isn’t going to change (for this version). Roll on some time tracking mash-ups!

Phew! What a week.

I’ve started at Bam, and I’m trying to get all of my outstanding contracts completed and trying to organise the WA Web Awards (I’m the sub-committee chairperson).

A few quick announcments:

• WA Web Awards entries are open. It’s $25 for Port80 members, $10 for Student Members, and $35 for non-members.
• 88 Miles is but days away from having a full web-service API released. It’s all working, I’m just finishing up the unit tests.
• Port80 Melbourne is starting up next week. It is piggy-backing on a Ruby on Rails user group meeting. Go and see Miles’ blog for details.
• There has been some interest in starting a Ruby on Rails special interest group on the back of Port80 over here, so I’m seriously looking in to that. Miles’ suggestion for a name was caboose. I like it

End

I’ve been working on setting up web services in Ruby on Rails for 88 Miles and have discovered somethings that may be useful to other users. It may save someone some time, as the documentation for this particular area is a little sparse.

1. Putting a colon(:) in front of a return type indicates a primative – i.e an integer or string. If you want to return a complex type, leave off the colon

This will return the “Shift” Object. You can return Arrays by using two square brackets:

This will return an array of “Shift” objects.

2. Raising an exception with only a message invokes a SOAPException (and probably a XML-RPC error too – haven’t tried that yet), which is a much better way of handling errors than returning integers or strings (For those playing at home, check out the “fault” body of the SOAP message)

3. If you are trying to access the webservices via WDSL, simply add /wsdl at the end of the URL

http://yoursite/controller/wdsl

4. You can generate the scaffolds for a webservice using the generate script:

# script/generate web_service controller_name

Well, Miles has finally managed to do it – today I signed on as the “Development Team Leader” at Bam Creative. Bam Creative is one of the coolest and most respected boutique web companies in Perth and it is an honour to become part of the team.

I’ve done quite a bit of contract work for them in the past and I think we will be a good match. There is of course that whole issue of having two Miles/Myles’ in the office. I don’t think there are too many companies that can boast that combination!

So what does this mean for MadPilot Productions? Not a great deal – I will still be actively working on 88 Miles and a some other yet-to-be-released systems (watch this space!), but I won’t be taking on any freelance contract work.

Lifehacker have been running a “How I work series” which has given an interesting look into how their editiors work on a day-to-day basis.

Well time for me to blatently rip off the idea :)

I challenge all of the Westcoastbloggers to answer the same questions on their blogs.

What desktop software do you use every day?

I’m still an Outlook user. Originally I used it because it sync’d with my PocketPC nicely, now it is just because I like it. I occasionally use Thunderbird on Linux.

I will often have a copy of either notepad (Microsoft’s BEST program – ever!) or notepad2 open. Notepad2 supports colour highlighting and UNIX line endings, so fills the gap nicely when notepad won’t cut the mustard. Unfortunately it doesn’t support ruby yet :(

I use Illium’s eWallet for password management. It is almost always open so I don’t have to remember all of my clients passwords. Also sync with my PocketPC so I can access stuff away from my laptop.

The command line utility NCFTP is my trusted FTP client. I started using this on Linux and fell in love with it, so I jumped at the changed to use it when the windows version came out.

If I’m text editing on Linux, I use VIM. There is a Windows version, but notepad is easier.

I use PuTTY to SSH in to the various servers that I work on. Since I work on a development server and I use Subversion for version control, this is a must have.

Although I try to keep this closed whereever possible, I use FeedDemon 2.0 for my RSS feeds.

What web sites do you use every day?

I always have my time tracking system, 88 miles open in a firefox tab

I frequent the port80 forums.

It goes without saying that Google gets fired up many times a day.

What PDA/personal organizer/system do you use to keep organized?

I have a Compaq iPaq, but don’t use it that often anymore. I used to use it mainly for time tracking, but now I use 88 miles. I have a big A4 paper diary in which I write meetings, todo lists and reminders for the next day (I’m more likely to read them in there as it is always right in front of me). If I’m out I will take my PDA because it is a bit smaller than my paper diary. I’m trialling Remember the Milk as a task list manager. Although I still seem more inclinded to write stuff down on paper.

Ideas3 was the third speaking event organised by Port80 – the Australian Web Industry Organisation (of which I’m a committee member). The night was a great success with over 90 people showing up to the Melbourne hotel in Perth city.

For those of you who missed it for what ever reason, Port80 has made the podcasts and transcripts of the great talks by John Allsopp (Sydney) and Mark Boulton (UK) available at the Ideas3 website.

If you are interested in 88 Miles updates, bug fixes and announcements, you can go to blog.88miles.net and get your fix. Please leave a comment – I really appreciate the feedback.

I have just launched a new web site called 88 Miles. I was sick and tired of trying to juggle excel spreadsheets to maintain my client timesheets – I ended up having to double input (Because it was too much of a pain to enter the time directly, so I would write them down first) and would usually leave the task until the end of the week. Not suprisingly this part of my week wasn’t my favourite.

Enter 88 Miles. This little system that I have designed is meant to be REALLY basic. There is no invoiceing system or task system and this is by design. I wanted to make it’s primary role – that is entering time – extremely quick.

When you go to the site, you click punch in to the project you are starting. When you have finished the job, click the corresponding punch out button. That’s it. Really.

At the moment, the system is in beta so it is missing some of the other features that I plan implement before the official launch (Aiming for 1 June 2006) like RSS, an API and some desktop applets, but please feel free to go and have a play with it and let me know what you think!

As a bonus, those of you that sign up before the 1st of June get the first two months of access for free if they decided to continue after that point!

Prices look like they will be $24/year for the premium account – standard accounts will be free but limited to three companies and five tasks at any one time.

The tech:

The system is built in Ruby on Rails and is running on Textdrive.

I have written a small colour picker using the Prototype javascript library, which I thought I would share with the world.

It is very simple, but does the job suprisingly well. I may very well add extra features to it later on, so watch this space.

You can download the source file here.

Instructions for use

1. Include prototype.js and colourPicker.js in you html

2. Create a “target” element and a “trigger” element. The target element is the input tag that will store the colour hex code, so a text box or hidden input will work nicely. The trigger element is the element the user will click to popup the colour picker

<input type="text" name="colour" id="picker" value="" />
<a id="trigger">Pick a colour</a>

3. Create an instance of the colour picker using the following javascript:

var picker = new ColourPicker(‘picker’, ‘trigger’);

And that is it! Clicking the link will popup the colour picker and after a colour is selected, the text box will then have the hex value in it.

Future plans include better positioning of the popup, and callback functions to you can intecept the colour.

Update: you can see a demo here.

I find some of the spam I receive quite amusing. I use spam assassin on my server so I end up with quite a number of mails in my spam folder. Sometimes it fun to go through them and see what the spammers are trying to get past my filters. The following techniques often make me chuckle, and sometimes stare at my screen bewildered. Keep in mind that the idea of spam is to try and sell you something.

1. Empty spam: These are message with no body. Sometimes they don’t even have a subject line. I don’t imagine the click-through from these mails is very high…
2. Spam with no links or URLs or email addresses: Well now that you have convinced me that I need to purchase low-priced pharmaceuticals from your esteemed client, how do I actually do that?!
3. Non-sensical spam: Sending spam with random string of text. Great for confusing the spam filters. Also great for confusing the user. I really don’t think I’m going to click on a link embedded in text that resembles Lorem Ipsum. If anyone can work out what this gem means, I’d love to hear from you (From a viagra spam):

_on decoy on tibia be formica.

try pessimum try conspiracy or typography, the detest a cerebellum , exogamous it sin but company not brainwash.

and grandchildren be conjugacy some arroyo.

, consecrate but judicial but jensenor ginsburg , presbytery it quadrature.

Something in that for all of us really…