Things that go Wump in the Night..

Really - I mean better than Victoria Secret even!

Here’s the online version of their latest.

Window’s doesn’t cut it

Ruby on Rails was the straw that broke the camels back for me, and motivated me to switch to Linux on my desktops and laptop. Since then, I’ve tried various tools, but here are a couple of things I wouldn’t like to try to do without.

Editor - Bluefish

Quanta is a close runner up but I find Bluefish to be “the one”.

Why? Well for me an absolutely ESSENTIAL need in a rails editor is a really good directory and file tree in the left nav. It’s great that rails has a place for everything, but let’s face it, rails applications also have lots of files. If I had to click Open and navigate to a file I’d shoot myself.

Bluefish sidebar does a great job of:

• 1) Finding your rails app
• 2) Making it the base directory of the tree
• 3) Allowing you to expand trees as needed

Personally, I find the visibility of files so good that as a general rule, if I can’t see all of the open file tabs without scrolling left or right, I close all files and start again.

Syntax highlighting is great, although you’ll have to add .erb as a ruby extension through the setup.

Feature wish: Multiple rows of open tabs would be nice, but then I’d just get into bad habits again.

MySQL tool - Navicat

I’m a command line kinda guy.. I’ll use a terminal to move files before I drag and drop, but for some reason I’ve never got hooked on command line sql. That’s possibly because in the early days, I found Navicat.

I know that phpmyadmin is somewhat of an industry standard, but personally I hate it! Navicat is a locally installed application, available for Windows, Mac and yes, Linux that for me blows the socks off anything else I’ve tried.

As it’s not running on the host, then there is of course the inconvenience of having to configurating mysql to allow your IP, but it’s worth it. I use both the Linux version, and the Windows version running under wine. Pretty much the same, except I have a Windows license, so that unlocks some extra goodies. I use navicat for:

• Adding sample data
• Fixing data ( not structures of course ) during development
• Administration on live sites ( e.g. flagging that someone has made a donation at Listingly.com )
• Browsing and generally perusing during development
• Backups! One click and you have a local backup of your remote application

Give it a go. 30 day free trial.

Quake style Terminal - Yakuake

Yakuake is a terminal that reveals and hides itself with the F12 key. For some reason, I just like using it for running my development server process in. It’s no different from a terminal window, but it just feels good to me to have it tucked away there.

SSHFS

Yikes, I’m going to reveal my bad habits now.. in that I don’t SVN and I don’t capistrano. I’m a bad person. It’s on the to do list now as I need to work along side my buddy benr75 on some projects, so no doubt I’ll take what he indoctrinates me with and apply it to my own stuff too.

Until then though, SSHFS is the ultimate. SSHFS is a way to mount remote folders as local folders across SSH. In other words, if you have SSH access to your server, you can mount it locally!

My personal setup is that I develop in:

/home/[user]/www/rails_app

and remote mount:

/home/[user]/rrr/rails_app

as the equivilent application on the remote server. I then have a couple of scripts:

getcore [railsapp] and sendcore [railsapp]

which either fetch or send:

/public /app /db

Of course after that I still have to manually run migrations, and restart mongrel processes but for a single developer environment I bet from a purely time efficiency perspective this effort is significantly less than the effort of using SVN.

As an aside, I always use SSHFS all the time when I realize that I have a file at home that I need at work and visa versa.. just open up an obscure port on your firewall and map it to 23 on your machine and you can mount the remote machine as a local folder.

Genius ;-)

XaraLX - In my mind the ultimate grahic design tool

Worthy of a mention as my rails projects would not be what they are without XaraLX. It’s really nothing to do with Rails, but for years and years this has been my tool of choice ( over Photoshop and Illustrator ) for design and implimentation. I cried for joy when I saw that they had an open source project!

Easy online time, cost and mileage tracking

Billabill springs to life. Billabill is all about time tracking but also allows you to track costs / expenses and mileage.

Full featured project time tracking and more

• Track projects for multiple clients and yourself
• Track time
• Track costs / expenses
• Track milesage
• Provide clients with “view only” login to their projects ( coming in beta )
• Group time and cost information together for reporting and as invoice evidence
• Send invoices! ( coming in Beta )

Dual purpose admin allows you to view your projects, and vendors projects in the same place

Once you get used to using Billabill to track your projects you’ll wish people doing work for you would use it too! An easy invitation option will allow your vendors to setup an account, and give you view-only access to the projects they are doing for you.

Planned iPhone and mobile interface to allow data entry on-the-go

What is the point of a tool that tracks your progress if you don’t update it regularily? Well that is much easier if you can enter your data from your phone or other mobile device

A flexible tool with a million uses

• Time tracking for client projects or your own needs
• Internal company time tracking - Billabill has everything you need
• Expense tracking / expense reports
• Mileage tracking for IRS compliance or project related travel

100% Free to get up and running

You have nothing to loose in trying Billabill. Signup is quick, easy, and free. Your free account will allow you to setup up to five projects with no feature restrictions. If you like what you see, and find that Billabill is right for you, then unlocking for limited projects costs only $7.95 / month.

Why Billabill?

Go and check out the options. You’ll find Project Management tools (with time tracking bolted on as an afterthought ), Invoicing tools ( with time tracking bolted on as an afterthought), and accounting systems (with time tracking bolted on as an afterthought ). You’ll find PC / Mac installable software ( that can only be accessed locally ), you’ll find mileage tracking products and expense report products that are geared towards more corporate customers.

What you WON’T find, is something like Billabill that has been developed from day one with the attitude that if you don’t use it every day, it’s worthless. That’s why Billabill is fun and easy to use. That’s why it’s focused on doing the simple tasks really well. It’s not trying to replace your accountant, or your accounting software. It’s not trying to manage your projects - it’s just trying to make sure that when you spend money, drive miles, or spend time on a project, that gets logged.

Try it. We think you’ll like it.

Billabill.com

I’ve just read about the $200Bn Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac are being allowed to play with and have realized something that surprises me greatly.

“We the people” often think that things are the way they are because government is this monolithic supertanker of an entity that lacks agility, changes slowly, and almost requires an act of congress to get something done.. no wait - bad analogy - or should I say “touche” as we are talking about the Bush administration.

But here we are, on Wednesday and already:

• The FED have made billions available to Investment Houses like they would to banks
• Interest rates have been cut.. again
• The FED managed to overnight make an agreement to secure $30Bn of Bear Stearn’s assets to massage the buyout by JP Morgan

Look at the MAGNITUDE of the decisions made here.. in FOUR DAYS! Why can’t the government move this quick around situations when they aren’t getting their asses handed to them?