Busy, busy week this last week. Insanely busy, especially as my company’s year end is coming up December 31st, and I want to close my 2006 books and file my accounts very early in 2007.

Thankfully, things are on track for me to be able to pretty much shut down from the 17th December through to the 15th January, during which time I won’t be dealing with client work but will instead be retiring to my laboratory and tinkering on the mad, wonderful new inventions I have planned for release in 2007. If I get my planning right, by the end of 2007 I should be able to drop my client work entirely and move over to supporting my own products, which is where I wanted to be this time last year.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy client work, it’s just not what the company is about - I have absolutely no desire to work as a freelancer for the next 40 years, and I enjoy owning my own projects to take where I want. Client work doesn’t give me the freedom, challenge or the level of profitability that my own projects hopefully will.

Anyway, until I have some products to talk about here, it’s business as usual. Here’s some Sunday afternoon/Monday morning links:

I’ll find the time to post a full review next week, but I got an early copy of Designing the Obvious a few weeks back, and am very impressed with it. For somebody like me who needs to work at understanding design from a usability perspective it was a welcome dose, just in time for some major projects in the New Year. Like I say, next week there will be a full review with a run-down of what it covers but in essence, it’s all about making sure that we remember the humans who will be using the applications we make, and building interfaces around them.

For those of you unlucky enough to be working with Windows machines, you may want to know that Vista won’t be too bad once you get rid of all the cruft Microsoft was too busy ignoring to remove for you.

Whilst they only seem to be shipping the Nokia N73 right now, Three have announced x-series pricing which is very, very reasonable. I shall be grabbing one of these before Christmas, just as soon as a Sony Ericsson phone becomes available on those tarrifs. The only downside is that although they describe it as ‘unlimited internet usage’ what they mean by that is 1Gb/month data transfer, 10,000 MSN messages a month, 80 hours/month of Slingbox/Orb and 5,000 Skype minutes/month. Even so, that’s still a lot better than existing tariffs and when O2 and Vodafone step in with better offers, the deals will get better.

I owe Andy at Liquid Bronze a thank you for the heads up on this, but it would seem that if you know where to look and you’re in the market for an Apple this Christmas but want to spread the payments out, you can get 0% APR over 6-months on Apple hardware between £500 and £10,000. Unfortunately it’s individual customers only, and I need to splurge my money through the business so I’ll be taking a hit in January on my new hardware, but I noticed that their refurb products list has some pretty good deals going - slightly out-of-date Macbook Pros at 40% off, for starters.

When I get a few spare hours of free time in the coming weeks, I intend to spend a lot more time playing online chess. For those new, the comments section to this post on Feld Thoughts offers some good options. Feld himself settled on a site called Red Hot Pawn the name of which indicates just how young and cheeky the chess crowd is getting these days.

More ‘normal’ articles due up next week, until then comrades…

All over the Ruby on Rails blogs right now, people are getting excited about the upcoming release of 1.2 and all that it brings.

However, one of the comments on the announcement post above, strikes a chord with me:

jesus on 23 Nov 08:42: Release early, release often. not exactly right? Why do we had to wait 8 month were a lot of features could have been released as say rails 1.5? Watching rails_edge an break some stuff with an update is not for everybody. I don’t want to figure out stuff with no documentation for why it breaks my app now. So please do more interim releases.

(sic, throughout)

One of the biggest problems I have with myself is not releasing early and often. I spend way, way too much time trying to get things perfect, rather than just get something up no matter what state it’s in. I try to change my behaviour, but it’s not clicked yet that users just want regular, small, incremental updates.

It’s nice to know I’m in good company, but the way 1.2 has been handled is a little annoying. I’m glad it’s here but I would have much preferred a regular schedule of small releases every 8 weeks and deal with 4 small incremental updates rather than face one great big update. I have no idea how much work this update is going to create for me right now, but I’m thinking that there are some dozen or so applications I have belonging to clients that will need checking carefully.

Even so, I’m grateful for all the hard work done, and will hold myself back from biting the hand that feeds me too hard. It must be a bit of a slog as a coder if all you face is criticism and no praise whatsoever. So, if DHH or any of the Rails core are reading this: thanks for all the work.

Well, I missed a few weeks of Sunday headlines, but I figured they’re worth the effort. Here are some links and things I think are worth looking at, but don’t deserve an article all to themselves:

PHP eats Ruby on Rails for Breakfast - this article is getting some digg love right now, thanks to its contentious title. Unfortunately the stats it quotes are completely ridiculous.

The main claim is that 5 times more lines of code are being contributed in open source projects in PHP than in Ruby. The author misses the point that this might be because it takes 5 times more LOC to do the same thing in PHP as it does in Ruby. My personal experience is that the factor is more like 10-15 times more lines than in Ruby. Ruby style emphasises elegant one-liners.

What’s more “Web 2.0 is being built in PHP” is a moronic statement to make given that most “Web 2.0” applications are close-sourced and therefore not included in the stats. Thankfully they gain some sanity towards the end by pointing out the growth in open source Ruby projects is much higher than those in PHP project, but they’re not prepared to do the basic maths to realise that in fact, PHP is dying relative to Ruby.

Firefox 2.0 is due to go for release to the general public on Tuesday, and includes some interesting updates. Improved tabs, anti-phishing bits and bobs, integrated spell-checking for online forms and better system crash restoration - important if you’re running Vista, I would imagine.

YouTube demonstrate why US Data Protection laws suck! - It would appear that if you’re a major Hollywood studio wanting to know a YouTube user’s name and personal details if they’ve been posting up videos with copyright material, you merely have to ask. I think this will be the start of a backlash against YouTube if confirmed, and may hopefully encourage somebody, somewhere in the US to campaign for EU-strength Data Protection laws. We’re not going to see any real improvement in online web applications from the US until the consumers are confident in the laws protecting their identities.

Washington Post calls Click-fraud - I’ve been confused by Google’s business model for some time, as it is simply so easy to defraud. I don’t carry ads on vagueware.com specifically because I’m worried about ever being implicated in any way in a click-fraud scam, even if I would never instigate one myself. Once mainstream advertisers realise how popular click-fraud is, I think you can expect a major adjustment in Google’s stock price. So what comes next? CPC is a great model for advertisers, but only if there is no fraud. I’m thinking CPA might be the next wave.

ZDnet ask ‘What do Apple’s earnings say about Open Source?’ - An interesting question, but flawed. If Apple had stuck with OS 9, they would be dead in the water right now. They needed a whole new OS, they needed it quickly, and they needed it cheaply. Their solution? They lifted FreeBSD, plus the Mach microkernel and put their own GUI and APIs on top of it, built some tools quickly, and they had a stable, high-performance OS ready to roll in just a couple of years. Open Source created the new Apple, and Apple know it - their head of release engineering is to my knowledge, still Jordan Hubbard. Jordan was the guy who started the FreeBSD project. Go figure.

Diebold source code ‘stolen’ - After my little rant yesterday, this is timely. Diebold are not keen on coders people like me seeing the source code to their machines because they’re worried we’ll find the smoking gun all the evidence points to: their machines are perfectly designed for the engineering of a massive election fraud. If we ever do go for e-Voting in the UK, I think it’s critical we only allow open source systems into the game.

Rock & Roll is about Freedom - Hugh riffs a little about what it might mean to deal with the fact that you are no longer a ‘Film Director’ because you’re not actually making films any more. I see where he’s coming from, but I disagree with his conclusion. I’ll always be ‘a Software Engineer’ even if I never use Z in my life ever again - true freedom is being able to define your own job title, irrespective of what society thinks of you.

If you’re a homeless guy, should you call yourself a homeless guy begging for change, or an entrepreneur at early-stage start-up? The difference it can make to you is huge. It defines your attitude to yourself, your life, people around you. It can give you drive, make you optimistic. Don’t ever listen to what society calls you - listen to what you think you are, and act on it. It’s the only way you’ll ever make your ideas come true. If Terence Davies wants to call himself a ‘Film Director’, I’d rather he did so than accept the label of ‘unemployed’.

Warning over UK race riot danger - Off-topic for here, I know, but whilst we’re talking about freedom, I’d just like to ask something.

Given that the UK is the country that has a history of defining personal expression through dress - mods, rockers, punks, goths, techno-kids, grungers, whatever - why is it so incapable of accepting a small piece of cloth that is purely a symbol of personal expression? Why is it any more threatening than a mohican, skinhead, a face full of piercings or an extraordinarily large amount of eye-shadow? People’s fears are so much stronger than their dreams in the UK.

That’s it for now. Next week’s articles should include one review of a Seth Godin book, a bunch of articles on development methods, and an analysis of snowflaking business ideas - providing I get time!

Even Sunday is a work day at Vagueware HQ more often than not. Instead of trying to impart some lengthy wisdom/nonsense though, each Sunday I plan to do a quick round of the blogs and mailing lists and find things that should make the evening before Monday morning a bit more interesting. If you don’t get to this before Monday morning, well, it’s better than work - go make another coffee, and tell the boss you’re catching up on e-mail.

Vlogging the VRML of Web 2.0 - I’m becoming increasingly enamoured with Dead 2.0 even though I don’t agree with their central premise that this is a bubble like the last one. However, I agree that video blogs need to mature to the point of competing with normal TV for people to be prepared to give up their time to them. I can scan read 100 blogs and pick out what I need to be aware of, what I want to come back to later, what I can ignore, all in about 30 minutes a day - I can’t do that with video. I still have a TV in the corner of the room (I owe a business partner £50 for losing a bet by not getting rid of it actually) but I only ever really watch The Daily Show, Newsnight and the odd thing on FilmFour. I don’t think I can add several hours of video to my daily digest of media, even if it does involve attractive women leaning forward in an oh-too-unsubtle-pose - I’m too busy formenting digital revolution.

Creative Commons making life on-board a warship more tolerable - great story, because it confirms what I’ve always suspected: expose somebody to culture and they’ll ignore the fact reading isn’t meant to be ‘cool’ and gulp it down. Stories like this just help me confirm that if I can help boost the economy around CC/PD content I’ll not only build a successful business, I’ll be helping people express themselves, connect, and do amazing things. I’m still looking for legal help, by the way. Story via the wonderful people at The Open Rights Group

MythTV beats MCE in Review - One of the very first business ideas I had was to build a device that could sit under a TV, connected to a high-speed Internet connection and download video to a hard disk to watch at the user’s pleasure, therby meaning you had every TV programme, film, radio show, ever, all accessed for little cost in your home. Thing is, I had that idea and a design when I was 14 (that was 1992 when the commercial Internet was months old in the UK) and no money. These convergence boxes are heading down that route, and I’m still thinking about how to plug MythTV into a distribution network to offer something better than the commercial nonsense we’re about to get shoved down our throats. In the meantime if you want a great DVR, I know where you can get the best cards in town at the best prices for the job if you want to build your own. However if you contact the man behind the facade - in exchange for portraits of the Queen signed by Mervyn King, naturally - he may even build you your dream home-media device. He knows his stuff.

RailsConf Europe sold out - in truth, I would have loved to have made this. Rails is my worklife right now, and in months to come I hope to actually contribute to the core code itself via several means. The price however, was just way too high. At £475 on the early-bird for registration, it was just too rich pickings for me. Never mind - maybe I’ll think about what I can present at next year’s and try and get in for free…. ;-) Hope the guys have a blast in London, and I’ll be checking the blogs to see what goes on.

The Ultimate Blog Post - this will be all over the ‘blogosphere’ in a matter of hours and if you’re new to the whole blogging scene, it’s terribly in-joke-ish. But funny all the same.

A-Z of making money from a blog - whilst we’re talking about blogging, here’s the real reason people are loving the blog thing. TechCrunch reportedly makes $60,000 a month in ad revenue and they’re not the only ones - Steve Pavlina has for some time been making ‘five figures a month’ from his blog. Of course it helps if you settle on a topic people are interested in, there is a a high CPC on your ads and you can actually write but I expect this to blossom into a bubble - or maybe even a real sustainable business model - proper in 2007. I’ve run over a dozen blogs in the last 5 years, and I reckon total revenue from AdSense was less than $20, but don’t listen to me. Be inspired, learn how to express yourself and get going.

Why Joel’s Business isn’t like yours - it’s easy when you start a software company - trust me - that the way to go is to follow in the path of other successful software companies. Fog Creek, 37signals, whoever. Not the way to do it - you have to find your own voice, your own way of doing it. My way? Don’t hire for as long as possible; don’t hire employees, ask peers to come and have fun with you; cashflow is king; the nicest office is bed; customers matter more than you. Maybe I’m wrong, but it feels right for me right now, so until I’m proven wrong….

Top 10 ways anyone can guarantee an angry workplace - I swear I’ve worked at places that hired people who considered those 10 steps their personal raison d’etre. I fouled a few of them myself in the past.

Shuffling cards one-handed - little known fact about me #9273: I used to be able to do some really, really cool (and dodgy) things with a deck of cards. I sometimes practised for days, weeks, months and read up on books written by old card sharks. This is a simple cut that can get you started, but there’s an easier way to do this my Dad showed me when I was little that shoves the bottom half up straight under the top half using the index finger running alongside the underneath of the top half of the deck. Also, if you want to do this seriously, look at exercises piano players do to stretch their tendons, and consider being kinder to your hands by moving to a Dvorak keyboard. Yes, I know I take this stuff way too seriously. Via lifehacker