Rémy Giard’s blog

Recently, I’ve been reading and discovering many technologies, but I stayed at the observation level. Having more spare time since few days, I decided to crunch into those technologies by reading the APIs, blogs, forums, reviews and listening to podcasts. Now, it\’s time to start test projects for this new stuff.

First, in the open source world, my next targets are jQuery, blueprintcss, Drupal 6, JRuby and Git.

Well known in the Ajax world, jQuery seems to be very light, easy and efficient to find, create and update DOM element. More, it now has UI controls. For blueprintcss, it seems an excellent platform to build a multi-browser compatible site without having to use CSS hacks for this and that. A plus, I know two CSS gurus, Eric Meyer and Jeff Croft, have been working on this framework. In the PHP world, Drupal 6 seems to be the platform I was expected from the beginning. Having work in Drupal 4.7, I was disappointed for the number of bugs and difficulties to have a clear cut between the UI and the code. Since the upgrade to version 6, the installation process is easier and multi-language templates are more easy to create and maintain. Compared to Joomla, Drupal is really a completely CSS themable product.

Next, being a Java and an open source guy, I still worked on ASP.Net projects since a year. I have to admit that the Microsoft world interest me more than never. In fact, it’s not ASP.Net which interest me, but the new products that are coming soon. I am talking about the MVC framework, Entities Framework and Silverlight. I have not read or seen code for now, my sources being co-workers and the podcast from http://www.visualstudiotalkshow.com/. At first, MVC architecture seems a lot similar to Struts in the Java world. I guess I will feel more comfortable in a MVC architecture than with postbacks, view states, controls tree, etc. I mean, I wish MVC is more like the other MVC web frameworks instead of being completely different with its own philosophy … like ASP.Net is.

On the other side, the Entities framework used in pair with LINQ is a ORM. The product seems to be really well thought and designed. With these new products, it seems feasible to have a complete efficient and testable application architecture with only Microsoft products.

Since I switch all my mail hosting to Google, I started to use Google Docs. I just discovered that using Google Docs, we can write a post and publish it to our blog as easy as two clicks. Just write the post, click “Publish” and then “Post to blog”. I love it !

* Note that I had to use the MetaWeblog API to have a blog title

I’ve just found the following post on Digg : “How to Make the Time for Your Personal Goals“. I am sure many people will recognize themself in that post. Here the proposed “steps” to augment the achievement chances of your personal goals.  In resume, know and understand why you want to achieve the goal and commit completely to it.

• One goal at a time
• Make sure you really want it
• Make it your top priority
• Reduce your commitments
• Keep it simple
• Stay focused
• Block off time
• Make it your most important appointment
• Show that your are serious
• Find your time wasters
• Make it a part of your daily or weekly routine

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 !

Il y quelques mois, j’ai lu un livre sur CSS nommé “Bulletproof Web Design” écrit par Dan Cederholm. Ce livre m’a fait découvrir une méthodologie pour mieux bâtir des sites webs respectant les standards XHTML /CSS. Ayant adoré le livre, j’ai décidé de faire une recherche sur l’auteur. J’ai alors découvert qu’il avait récement lancé un site “social” s’adressant à la communauté des amateurs de vins.

En effet, sur le site thinkvitamin.com, on pouvait trouvé une entrevue avec Dan Cederholm discutant de son projet. J’ai trouvé intéressant d’avoir lu son livre et maintenant de pouvoir vérifier comment il appliquait les principes de son livre sur un site qu’il a lui même créé.

Du même coup, j’ai trouvé son projet simple et surement plaisant à démarrer.  C’est le genre de projet qui amène une expérience sur plusieurs facettes autant technique que marketing et administrative.  À partir de ce moment, j’ai suivi l’avancement de ce projet en essayant de trouver moi-même un projet semblable dans le but d’aller chercher le même type de l’expérience.

Quelques mois après la découverte du site, je me suis rendu compte que celui-ci venait d’être vendu.  À la suite de cet évènement, je considère que le projet est un bon exemple simple et efficace de projet web pouvant apporter un revenu intéressant.  Comme Dan le mentionne dans l’entrevue et sur son site personnel, ce projet était fait à temps perdu et par les soirs.  Lui et son partenaire ont réussi à faire connaître le site et à amener une clientèle de centaines de milliers d’internautes, tout ça en travaillant qu’à temps perdu.  Bref, ce projet est pour moi un exemple inspirant.  Félicitations aux fondateurs !

• Entrevue avec Dan Cederholm concernant Cork’d en aout 2006 : http://www.thinkvitamin.com/interviews/webapps/dan-cederholm/
• Cork’d
• Site personnel de Dan Cederholm : SimpleBits
• Commentaires de Dan Cederholm sur la vente de Cork’d : http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2007/05/14/corkd.html

Eh oui, je me lance dans le monde du blog moi aussi. À la base, j’ai l’intention de discuter de nouvelles du monde technologique ainsi que des nouveaux produits web que je juge intéressants.  Au plaisir de lire vos commentaires !!