Seeking Serendipity

I am in the process of working Gravatar into my WildObs site. Gravatar provides “hosted user icons” (avatars) for comments on blog/forums/social networks. I applaud that (1) ‘cos I don’t want to host/manage/backup (2) I wanted to save myself writing the  image crop (3) folks can use what they’ve already created.

They have good integration support, which was key, and I used the simple Ruby On Rails plugin. I love their “rating scheme” (PG, etc.) I’d not have thought of that. Perhaps obvious in hindsight.

I’d thought of writing this service, if it did not exist. It seems a great scam. Sure, their privacy policy states they don’t “sell your e-mail address” but what about capturing (perhaps selling?) your tracking information to folks who already know your e-mail address? They become a central point of collection for the many blogs you comment on, and other sites where Gravatar is used.

What is impressive about their integration is they capture all e-mail addresses on sites that implement this using their tools alone, and not just the folks who use their service. Again, great scam, and I cannot fault them for their execution there.

So why am I using it on WildObs? First,  same reason as I use OpenID (a similar central tracking service,  IMHO) that folks are willing to give up privacy for convenience. [My site is one I love, but is likely to be low on many folks priorities so I need to make it convenient.] Second, I’m not my users privacy cop & I make them opt in not opt out. Third, I already use Google Adsense, so doubt it matters much. Forth, I like to believe I support the idea that “the more marketeers know about you the less crap the ads will be”.

Ok, I am coding it so by default one gets a local WildObs avatar, and one has to request the use of a Gravatar. That way I don’t blindly leak all e-mail addresses.

BTW: OpenID is already (optionally) passing profile information with a new signup, I have to assume “link to avatar” is going to be in there next. It just makes sense.

This plugins worked well. No point in reproducing what it does for you; i.e. highlight (show) an image in a pop-over lightbox. The JavaScript it cool by itself, but this plugin rolls it into RoR (with it’s bundled JavaScript includes of prototype effect) for you.

I use it for showing the original of images I have reduced to fit.

http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/lightbox_helper

e.g. see “view original”.

http://wildobs.com/adam_jack/2008/9/29/Legless-Eleven

Lightbox.js doesn’t cope with massive images (bigger than your screen) by doing anything nice, like fitting them, so the “CLOSE” button pushes off the screen. But hey, it does way better than I did by myself.

FWIIW: I think I had to explicitly include the lightbox JavaScript as well as the CSS (and notice how their guide says reference the CSS not the JavaScript, I didn’t look closely enough and incorrectly assumed) but that could’ve just been a caching issue I had. I do like how Lightbox.js’ technique gracefully falls back to just loading/showing the raw image ‘cos browsers do that well enough.

This also does a better job w/ the Google Map z-index problem I had (my popped-up images had a map bleed through them.)

At the beginning of the year I started a mental/physical (and technical) journey. I took a leap into the career unknown. After a lot of hikes/snowshoes along came Ruby on Rails on a Mac,  a nomadic work-style, and a lot of fresh encounters. Not an easy transition (and still in progress) but so far a rewarding one.

First endeavor since: Ruby on Rails, Open ID, Google Maps, Flickr, (RESTful) APIs, AJAX plus plug-ins: acts_as_commentable, acts_as_rated, acts_as_state_machine, acts_as_taggable_on_steriods, geokit, model_auto_completer, open_id_authentication, restful_authentiction, ym4r_gm, lightbox_helper. Anyway, the result so far is:

http://wildobs.com/adam_jack

It has a long way to go, but it feels in the right direction.Some random observations (attempting to be atypical since this isn’t new to most of you.) In no order:

• Maybe it was just me, but RoR has a steeper learning curve than I expected. I guess the more it does for you (i.e. hides from you) the more you have to learn it’s ways, not the normal transition like . I learned whilst offline. Don’t do that, you need online support. Once there, it is powerful/fun/productive environment.
• Googling for RoR plug-ins/code samples/documentation is still weak, a frustrating endeavor. Sure there are sites that rate plugins but picking a plugin is still a crap shoot. Sometimes it works ‘like magic’ underneath you, sometimes not. Good luck debugging that when it goes wrong/doesn’t scale. I posted one bug report (a comment on a blog) on a plug-in I’d thought was stable to get a response a month later. Worriome.
• I wish Ruby logging had NDC concept (ala log4j) I want to stash UA/referring url/logged in user information. It is hard to debug w/o knowing if something is a robot, a script kiddy, or a real user and what brought them here.
• A Mac really rocks for me to enjoy my ‘nix-fix. Spaces take me back. Love ‘em. Stuff just works, stuff comes installed. I don’t worry about the environment with this platform.
• Ruby’s yield is fun/powerful, despite feeling totally screwy. It works for small snippets (e.g. stuffing HTML or XML into a map or Atom feed) but does it scale for more complex uses? Not sure yet.
• ActiveRecord rocks, Templates are ok, RJS is good, lots of good features in RoR that help the developer
• I never thought I’d do AJAX, I’d mutter “JS is a second class citizen, hard to code/test/debug cross browser”. Using RoR w/ RJS and using Scriptalicious even I can do it. That was an unexpected bonus.
• Ruby has some good stuff, but needs more. If I need to go get a remote image, check it’s mime type, extract EXIF headers to extract sizes/GPS I ought not have to swallow the whole file. Buffered streams please.
• Ruby is powerful for cranking out a website, but immature for managing/operating/monitoring it. I forget the last time I ran some RoR generate, I now write code. It is powerful code, but still code. I fear maintenance problems will face me in the future, I don’t know this webapp can scale (from a coding perspective.) Is it starting to inhibit me, not allow agility? Not sure yet? More to come…
• Ruby on Rails is a good tool, a good paradigm but sometimes a little too low level, and a little to “roll your own or gamble on a under-exercised plug-in”. Perhaps Cake PHP is a direction to explore, a melding of the paradigm into PHP’s richer framework.

Long story short, I am still glad I am on this path (to somewhere) right now; it feels right.

This morning my Google Maps started saying “Sorry, not that level of detail” on (satellite) maps that previously showed such detail. This weekend my OpenID logins started failing for some obscure reason. Last week AddThis had database connectivity issues that lasted for days (until they moved datacenters.) Each of these gave me an extra grey hair or two as I realized my inability to participate in solving them, and got me wondering about transitions away/to something else.

Sure, integrating services from the cloud is the way to go, but it what a house of cards. Pick those services wisely. I wonder how long before we get all the enterprise service monitoring/rating/review apps for cloud services.

Neat idea, and a good example of how to be remarkable to developers. Th good ones (with the big egos will want to be “one of the precious ‘few’ who were chosen”. Probably a cheap way to build a great database of e-mail addresses/resumes, and put some coder’s bums in seats.

http://wildobs.com/kathykeating/2008/7/30/what-a-bear-can-do-while-searching-for-food

This is the view from my sometimes office…this is the office…I was just taking these photos, thinking that this was the perfect place to work on a good weather day, and then my poor dog got attacked by wasps. Somehow he must have stepped on a nest or something, but suddenly there were ten or so burrowing into his fur to sting him. We got them off, but poor guy. [BTW: He got his revenge on a later trip in the woods when we found an old disused wasp nest and he rolled on it with joy, crushing it.]Ok, wasps aside, a perfect place to work. The side benefit for me are the critters.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of being up at 12K feet above sea level at Weston Pass, near Leadville (the 2 mile high “city”). I cannot describe how amazing are the feelings from fresh fall mornings and cool evenings in Colorado’s mountains, but trust me, get out there if you can. (Perhaps another day I’ll try.)

As well as a lot of hiking below timberline, seeing elk sign but minimal (seemingly they’d been passing through), I did a lot of glassing up higher. From one afternoon/evening’s vantage point I had the pleasure of watching a beaver go about it’s work. Despite being a hundred yards from water, I paid for this pleasure with scads of mosquito bites, but the watching was worth it. I watched a herd of 20 elk hustle over a mountain top (I wasn’t sure where they came from or where they went) obviously pushed by something that spooked them. Clearly the elk were high, so I kept moving me (and my camp) higher.

Next morning, with temperatures barely above freezing after a clear night (no mountain-top lightening storm like the night before) the elk were still happily above timberline. I guess 90lbs of coat does it’s job. Up with the marmot and bluebirds they have little to fear (but perhaps that lightening) and can avoid the bugs and the midday heat. The feed in herds on the open mountain tops.

The first herd I saw was spread over the mountain (on the south side of the valley), but (in part due to my presence) they’d grouped up and disappeared over the mountain top by 6a.m. Three bull were happily grazing in scrub bushes, as separately were two spike, but they soon joined the main herd to depart. This herd was 40-50 elk strong.

The second herd (on the north of the valley) were far more relaxed, for no discernible good reason. This herd was closer to 15 elk and was tucked up against the mountain in a thicket of scrub. One young spike was so enthusiastic I started to worry he’d gotten caught in something; he looked like a bucking bronco. He attracted a female, and subsequently the main bull, but instead of getting his butt kicked by the boss, it seemed like he was tolerated as just a nutty child. This bull emit some awesome bugling, early in the year but wonderfully eerie.

Coyote greeted the day with a series of calls around the valley, and quickly the rising sun turned morning into the full light of day. It was a privilege to observe this scene, to almost feel part of it. Quite fleeting, but a good memory.

I saw one of these on highway 93 entering Boulder CO. It seemed noteworthy, both for it’s oddity and it’s impressive stance; putting the planet earth ahead of mass/height/protective steel.

Last one I saw was in London, UK on one of my infrequent trips back there. It made perfect sense there (slower speeds, less likely to be squashed by a monster truck, less inclement/dangerous weather, better fitting for parking spots, and on…) but here? Kudos to the driver/owner…

Some ideas are just awesome … testaments to people power & ingenuity. Everything about this idea is beautiful. The power of people, borrowing a little bit of their effort (effort they need to undertake to foil spam bots) to help resolve OCR (optical character recognition) glitches.

See more at http://recaptcha.net/