Rémy Giard’s blog

Past few weeks, i was looking for an application where i could keep a categorized and easily updated list of tasks. Looking at what is most popular, i found RememberTheMilk. More, i could use it in iGoogle.

After testing it since a couple of weeks, i was feeling comfortable to use it to keep my day time job tasks. While being in the last days before our application’s delivery, the site has been down from this morning through 17h00 because of broken hardware. Being in a critical period, it was not time for this kind of shutdown.

I know, it is not safe to rely on an external resources for critical data. I knew it, but i felt confident that rememberthemilk was set and ready for those unpredictables events. There are public since few years, they seem to be established. Well, they were not ready ! They should have think about it while building their disaster plan. If it had been one or two hours, it is not that bad, but a whole day …

My conclusion : DO NOT RELY ON EXTERNAL RESOURCES FOR CRITICAL DATA !!

Well, i am not mad at rememberthemilk, i could work with the tasks i had in mind, but this event reduce the image of stability i had about the product. And sadly, tomorrow morning i’ll have to eat my two peanuts butter toasts and my Froot Loops without milk.

** Update  : Here is their explanation

Tuesday, i went to Montreal on Rails 3.  The presentations were nice and interesting.  I like this event, sure for the presentations, but also for the contacts and the discussions we have with all theses guys.   That time, I made contact with new people like David Fugère from Code Génome, Gary Haran and had a great discussion with Francois Beausoleil around a beer after the event.

Also, i’ve been the happy winner of the book “Programming Ruby” from “The Pragmatic Programmers” collection for which i heard great comments.  For sure, this new book will accelerate my learning of Ruby.

Hope to meet you at MoR 4 in a month !

This weekend, i spent some time on rebuilding this blog. So there is the new skin / template which i think is cuter and easier to navigate in.

At the mean time, i made the decision to switch the language to English. My goal is to communicate in the same language of the community of blogs i read and eventually have exchange with them. My english is not bad but not perfect, then i see it as the opportunity to work on it.

Also, i updated the blog list i regularly read. More, there is now a list of the latest blog posts i found interesting to shared.

Let’s enter this new blog life !