J-dee.com

AmpliFeeder 1.0 Released

I finally got around to releasing my open source lifestream platform AmpliFeeder and the initial response has been very good indeed. I’d like to take the time to say thanks to all the cool people who helped me get it out the door, including:

Super-devs Paul Rawlings and Paul Kinlan for the encouragement, beer and laughs
Mark Krynsky and Trae Blain for the advice and expertise they have in the lifestream arena
Jake and Mai-lan from Microsoft who are currently helping get AmpliFeeder into the awesome Windows Web App Gallery
WooThemes for letting me port one of the amazing themes they create
The users of StackOverflow who offered solutions to technical bits I was stuck on
The kind people who gave their time to debug and offer suggestions as part of the AmpliFeeder private beta
Everyone at jQuery for creating such an amazing framework
Everyone who is currently Twittering like mad about AmpliFeeder
All the people who have said nice things, downloaded or enjoyed the app.
All the nice press people who have reviewed AmpliFeeder.
Lynne and Kitty for being the coolest of all.

It’s been a fantastic project to work on, I learned so much in the process and gone a long way towards my goal of becoming a wiz at jQuery. I plan to share a lot of my findings over the next few weeks now that I have time to get back to blogging. Finally, you can see my amplifeeder here. Why not get your own?

AmpliFeeder Private Beta

AmpliFeeder is entering private beta and I have a handful of spaces left to people who are interested in trying the service out. Testers will be running on the hosted platform so there is nothing to download or install. If you want to get a sneak preview and are prepared to report any bugs you find, get in touch via the contact form on this site. Active FriendFeed users are preferred but not essential. If you don’t know what AmpliFeeder is, you can see it in action in the video here.

Update: Sorry, all invites for the private beta are gone! Thanks to everyone who applied, sorry I couldn’t let everyone on. There were simply too many requests for me to be able to handle. Subscribe here or follow me on twitter @jonpauldavies to be first to know when it goes public beta ( within the month I hope).

I Work in an Agile Shop

In case you don’t know, I work for one of the most progressive and innovative tech companies out there, building enterprise scale voice solutions that make our clients very happy indeed. Qire in Liverpool makes multi channel communications easy to engage and we really try our best to squeeze every last bit of juice out of the technology to make solutions that are truly unique.
The reason I mention it is not as some kind of extended sales pitch, it’s because two wonderful things happened this week at work.

The first is that my bosses bought me a brand spanking new MacBook Pro 2.93 to start investigating edge Ruby on Rails as a platform for a few small scale satellite projects that we have on the go. It’s never going to replace our workhorse C#/CCXML/VXML combo but as a super RAD way to knock out small pieces, it really can’t be beat. It’s fantastic to work for a company that understands that technology is a slave not a master, and that solutions are best shaped by using the right tools for the job

The second thing that happened was that we were able to migrate our entire database rig to SQL Server 2008, syncing millions and millions of rows of call data without any downtime or disruption to our clients at all. No small task I’m sure you understand.

Both of these occurrences are testament to the way we run our shop: Agile. True software agility requires elements of bravery and curiosity, experience and  negotiation. The path to being agile takes more effort and dedication than other methods, but the reward is the chance to work in a place that fosters true innovation and creativity.

AmpliFeeder Preview Video

AmpliFeeder Preview

Mark Krynksy over at lifestreamblog.com has written a fantastic preview of my new open source lifestreaming platform: AmpliFeeder  that pretty much sums the project up entirely. The plan is to get the self hosted version to release a quickly as possible with the other versions ( including the hosted version ) rolling out towards the summer.

Mark provided me with some invaluable feedback that has pushed the release back a little, but the app will be so much better for it. From a technical point of view, the initial release is 90% jQuery and only 10% ASP.NET so knocking out alternate platform versions will be a breeze. I’ll keep this site updated with developments as they break but if you want to contact me instantly I’m always on Twitter @jonpauldavies. Here are a few more exclusive screen shots of what is to come.

Dabbling With Ruby on Rails 2.0 + Other News

I did a massive amount of Ruby on Rails development when the first wave of Rails hype hit about 4 years ago for a project that required it. I enjoyed working with the framework but to be honest it didn’t knock me out. I’ve been toying with learning Django recently and thought I’d check out how it compared with Rails. The interesting thing that came out of my investigations is how much Rails and it’s ecosystem has changed.
Rails 2.0 is quite a different beast to the original rails and the amount of plugins and gems now available is simply amazing. It looks so good that it’s put me off Django and I’m investing quite a bit of time picking up rails again. Windows Rails used to be rubbish, but now we have E-Text Editor, a perfect clone of the popular Mac only TextMate - the Rails dev weapon of choice. I’ve also invested in the PeepCode library and can recommend it highly.

I’ve not been blogging much as I’ve been working hard on my new application, AmpliFeeder that I’m going to release as open source in the coming weeks.

This blog is moving too. I’m getting rid of Mosso as a hosting provider as the exchange rate and reliability problems are just making it impossible to continue with them. Mosso is cool in principal but has always failed to live up to expectations in my opinion. I’m moving it to Clook a host that seems to be highly regarded in the Wordpress arena. I’ll let you know how it pans out.

5 Things I learned the hard way while setting up Hyper-V

1. Hyper-V can only be turned on in 64 bit versions of Windows Server 2008. Don’t spend 4 hours downloading and installing the 32 bit version DVD from MSDN, realise the Hyper-V role doesn’t exist, and then another 4 hours downloading and installing the 64 bit version.

2. Make sure you RTFM and enable the hardware virtualisation in your BIOS or it just won’t work.

3. Make sure you download all automatic updates as Windows Server 2008 shipped without Hyper-V. It has to be downloaded as an update. Remember to turn auto updates on too.

4. If you want more than 4 virtual machines, you need Windows Server 2008 Data Centre edition.

5. Dell Poweredge 5110 take ages to boot up, and the installation of Windows Server 2008 needs many restarts. Hyper-V itself takes an age itself to install. Get a good book as you are going to be doing lots of sitting around.

On the up side, Hyper-V is a fantastic technology and I have managed to re-purpose a high spec server into 5 high spec VPSs making us thrifty in these hard economic times, and greener and friendlier to the planet by opting for virtualisation.

End of 2008 Roundup

Another year jars to a halt and without any pause for thought a new one appears.

Book of the Year
This may seem like an obvious one, but it’s the book that had the largest impact on my day to day work. Linq In Action is a great primer to get going with Linq and once you get going, it’s difficult to stop.

Non-Tech Book of the Year
The Jelly Effect by Andy Bounds which will redefine the way you present, network, sell and communicate. Highly recommended.

Album of the Year
A pretty grim year for music I thought. Highlights were Beck - Modern Guilt , Foals - Antidote and even thought it came out in late 2007, Municipal Waste’s The Art of Partying provided the cheapest of thrills this year. Hip-hop? Forget it, it’s long dead. The La’s only album also had a massive resurgence around my way and scored the most play time hands down.

Booze of the Year
A hard choice between Van WInkle 10 and Elijah Craig.

Next Year
Next year promises some very exciting projects for me, both with work and personally. I’m hoping to release quite a big open source application in the next few weeks and I have a few massive bank security two-factor authentication systems to architect and implement at Qire. We are planning some revolutionary innovations in terms of voice technology management information and visualization too. Enough to keep me off the streets anyway! Very exciting indeed!

The photo is of me and Kit on Boxing Day going for a stroll by the Mersey. She’s nearly two, endlessly entertaining and a constant source of awe and wonder.

That’s it! Have a happy new year!

TinyMCE - A Common Sense Configuration

TinyMCE is an open source WYSIWYG editor that is pretty popular, and used in many applications including being the editor installed into Wordpress. It’s small and gets the job done. The only downside is that it’s a pig to configure and the documentation is of a chocolate fireguard caliber. So here, if anyone wants it, is a TinyMCE configuration block I knocked together that contains all the stuff you need to act as a web based content entry text area. In fact, it’s an exact clone of the Wordpress editor.

    <script type=”text/javascript”>
        tinyMCE.init({
            mode: “textareas”,
            theme: “advanced”,
            theme_advanced_toolbar_location: “top”,
            theme_advanced_toolbar_align: “left”,
            theme_advanced_buttons2 : “”,
            theme_advanced_buttons3: “”,
            plugins : “inlinepopups”,
            dialog_type : “modal”,
            theme_advanced_buttons1_add: “bullist,numlist,blockquote,image,link,unlink,code  “,
            theme_advanced_disable: “formatselect, fontselect, fontsizeselect, styleselect, justifyfull  ”

        });
</script>

JQuery Pager Plugin

I’ve just knocked together a JavaScript pager for use in an application I’m working on and thought it may be of use to other people. I’ve therefore converted it to a jQuery plugin and released it under joint MIT and GPL licenses and it is entirely free for you to use or mess about with.

You can see a demonstration of it in action at http://jonpauldavies.github.com/JQuery/Pager/PagerDemo.html and visit my GitHub repository at http://github.com/jonpauldavies/jquery-pager-plugin/tree/master to download it.

Usage is very simple indeed. You just give it the number of pages to view, the current page, and a callback method to fire when the pager gets clicked.