Alex Jones: Web Technologist, Barbecue Acolyte, Information Junkie, Austinite

Cake on OS X with Headdress

As I’ve been testing CakePHP I’ve run into an odd issue on my local OS X development environment. I couldn’t get the system configured to properly render the site I was building. It didn’t even show the default documentation properly - the CSS and images were missing. After digging around the Web and trying many different options, including mod_rewrite modifications and changes to MAMP, I discovered that I hadn’t properly configured my local dev site in Headress.

The issue was my choice of document roots within Headdress. I had chosen the main directory (Dev/MySite/), but what I needed to choose was the webroot directory a couple of levels down (Dev/MySite/app/webroot/). That small change fixed the appearance and redirection issues. Easy as Cake!

Posted in OS X, PHP & MySQL & Tagged: cake, OS X, php, Web Development

Recent Links: October 20 to October 27

Posted in Quick Links

I Want Sandy

I’ve used e-mail as a pseudo-reminder service for about as long as I’ve had an electronic address.; sending myself a quick note is efficient and highly effective for remembering to bring something into the office the next day or reminding myself about an event. But this system isn’t very effective for racking ideas and appointments that are more than a day out, as the messages get lost amidst their neighbors in my inbox. Calendar systems are great, but I don’t tend to use them as my schedule isn’t chock-full of events, and they aren’t suited to capturing non-event informatio. My GTD app of choice is great for keeping track of project tasks, but I don’t use it for time-based reminders, and it doesn’t run on my work PC (this may change with the release of the Web-based version).

So, I have several useful apps and processes, but none of them makes it easy for me to remember events, ideas or keep track of miscellaneous bits of data.

Enter Sandy, my new “personal email assistant”. Whether I e-mail her directly (via an unique address), or CC her on a reply to someone else, she captures the vital information and makes it easy to find when I need it, whether it’s an appointment reminder, contact information, to-do items or a random bit of info.

The E-mail I Send to Sandy

Building atop my ingrained habits of sending messages to myself, Sandy takes my e-mails, transforming them into To Do lists, appointments (which are easily imported into my calendar) and timely reminders. for example, here’s a message I sent to Sandy the other night:

This message contains two tasks. The first is to remind me to check up on a support message that I left on behalf of a client earlier. I’ll receive the e-mail on Thursday at 8 in the morning. The second is set for half an hour from when I sent the message telling me to log off and go do other things.

Sandy’s Got it Covered

Like every good communicator, Sandy makes sure she’s got everything down, sending a confirmation, with links to each entry she has added (the URLs won’t work for you - just me):

Sandy’s Nudges Me

At the appointed time, Sandy drops me a line via e-mail or a message to my phone. Simple, friendly and effective. Plus you can subscribe to the calendar if you want to include the events in Apple’s iCal or Google Calendar. Here is the e-mail reminder she sent me:

That’s pretty damn cool. Sandy’s deep - after learning about her advanced skills, I realized this is a concept that should have been delivered a very long time ago - it’s that obvious. That isn’t to say Sandy is simple, quite the opposite. Creating a system that is easy for a human to interact with via text without jumping through hoops is actually rather complex, even with a paired down set of commands. The folks at values of n did an amazing job recognizing this need and delivering a beautiful experience.

Posted in General, Technology & Tagged: email, gtd, productivity, web application

Feeling Ethereal: Prism, Air and SilverLight

Mozilla Labs has launched Prism, which is an application, based on Webrunner “that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop” They are approaching the solution in a different manner than Adobe’s AIR and Microsoft’s Silverlight, choosing to harness the power of the Web, which they call “a powerful and open platform for this sort of innovation” ultimately aiming to “identify and facilitate the development of enhancements that bring the advantages of desktop apps to the web platform.”

It’s interesting and exciting to see another contender working on the Web app to desktop app bridge. It’s even better that they won’t require developers and designers to come up to spread on yet another language.

Thanks to Rick for the heads-up on this one!

Posted in Technology, Web Development & Tagged: adobe, air, Flash, microsoft, mozilla, prism, web design, Web Development

Austin Blogs

Wired spreads word (Where The Bloggers Live: Austin?) of a new report from Scarborough Research stating that Austin has the “highest percentage of residents who read or write blogs.” About 15% of adult Austinites “had read or contributed to a blog in the past 30 days”, edging out Portland and other tech-heavy cities. According to the report (PDF),

The top cities for bloggers have tech savvy and youth in common. Thirty-seven percent of Austin adults are between the ages of 18-34; they are 20 percent more likely than the national average to be within this age range. Adults in Austin and Portland are attracted to new technology. Austin adults are 17 percent more likely than adults nationally to be a part of a household that owns a DVR and 51 percent more likely to be a part of a household that owns a PDA.

As an active member of the local tech community, I’m not surprised. Austin loves technology and as a whole, has an insane amount of energy, curiosity and love for life on the bleeding edge.

Simply put, Austin and its bloggers rock.

Posted in General, Technology & Tagged: austin, blogging

Recent Links: October 13 to October 20

Posted in Quick Links

Google Coming to Austin

According to the Austin Business Journal, Google is set to open an office here in Austin. Apparently they are about to lease the entire second floor of the Scarbrough building at 6th and Congress, which is a sweet spot. Having worked for three different companies downtown, I can tell you that it beats the hell out of locations in North Austin or elsewhere.

While Google hasn’t announced what the satellite will work on, this move is guaranteed to heat up an already hot market for engineers and Web folken.

Posted in General, Technology, Web Development

Colbert’s Thoughts on Two Presidential Candidates

For instance, Hillary Clinton. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to be scared of her so Democrats will think they should nominate her when she’s actually easy to beat, or if I’m supposed to be scared of her because she’s legitimately scary.

Or Rudy Giuliani. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to support him because he’s the one who can beat Hillary if she gets nominated, or if I’m supposed to support him because he’s legitimately scary.

Stephen Colbert in the New York Times

The politics behind the politics can get a bit confusing, a point which is beautifully illustrated by Mr. Colbert. Frankly, both Senator Clinton and Mr. Giuliani scare me.

Posted in General, Law & Government & Tagged: government, politics

Recent Links: October 06 to October 13