I'm going to RailsConf

[ Posted by Ryan Rickerts Fri, 28 Mar 2008 01:28:16 GMT ]

RailsConf 2008

My new employer, Saturna Capital, was nice enough to sponsor the entry fee!

I’m quite excited.

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Photo galleries are now awesome

[ Posted by Ryan Rickerts Mon, 10 Mar 2008 04:58:52 GMT ]

Okay, I am getting pretty close to serving up the beautiful pictures of our family just the way I hoped I could. Check out our galleries in the sidebar for the new look!

Before I get into the technical description, let me give you some basic instructions. First, hopefully it is intuitive already. Just click on any image to see the larger version (as you might expect). Once in preview mode, click on the right half of the image to see the next one. Click on the left side to see the previous image. Click the close button (or anywhere in the shaded region outside the image) when you are done or want to start from another photo. That’s it!

Now, how is it done, you might ask? First, the pretty rendering of the thumbnails comes courtesy of ImageMagick. I have used this on other projects and really like the potential, especially for SVG (vector-based) output, which is responsible for the rounded corners.

Next, the ubiquitous Lightbox project has provided all the functionality in the full-size preview - thanks again Lokesh Dhakar!

But don’t forget the final key ingredient - our Pro Flickr account. As described previously, none of these photos are stored on my server. The multiple sizes are generated by their service, and we can manage a growing list of photo assets more easily with their interface.

Enjoy the new photo experience!

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YouTube is working also!

[ Posted by Ryan Rickerts Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:39:28 GMT ]

Wow, the electronics team is on fire this week! Must be the Leap Day phenomenon.

Look for the “videos” link on the right, under Pages. It will show you all our delightful YouTube videos at once.

Susie will work on adding footage of Q’s new skills, such as crawling, playing catch with Bandit, and more! I will work on archiving the older stuff into a separate page.

Enjoy, sports fans!

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Flickr galleries are now working!

[ Posted by Ryan Rickerts Wed, 27 Feb 2008 06:38:43 GMT ]

As Susie promised, I applied my “electronics skills” to the Flickr API. We are now displaying all the images from those galleries here for your viewing consistency, and you should notice the links in the sidebar.

Just to be really consistent, our image sets on Flickr are also linked over here once they have been added to the blog.

So what’s all the sorcery about? We have a bit of software called FlickrExport that synch’s Susie’s sets in iPhoto to Flickr in a few button clicks. Then I copied the Page class in Typo, called it Gallery, and added a method that identifies each photoset through the Flickr API using rflickr. So it is one more click to update the listing of content here with new galleries.

We will add descriptions, links to larger versions of the image, better layout, and maybe even some javascript slideshow effects to the gallery pages (eventually). But now, the hour has grown late, and this is really not my day job…

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Ryan starts a new job

[ Posted by Ryan Rickerts Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:00:43 GMT ]

I’m in my 2nd week at a new job. I’m an “associate programmer” at Saturna Capital Corporation.

What is Saturna? Well, you could check out their website. Basically, they (we?) provide brokerage services as well underwriting mutual funds, managing 401(k)s, IRAs, and the like. I don’t actually know what all this means, which is all part of the fun! I have to learn quite a bit the investment industry, as well as a new language and platform.

The custom program (a.k.a. application) I will be working on is called Neptune. It was originally written over a decade ago by the company founder, Nick Kaiser, to manage their funds and other internal business. It is written in and runs upon a rather uncommon database development software called 4D (or 4th Dimension). It has been maintained sort of “on the side” by a few different people over the years. Now there will be two full-time people maintaining and improving it, so it should get much better. If not, maybe we’ll just have to re-write it using something like Rails!

Another really nice, unique feature about this business is it’s almost entirely run on Macs! We made the switch at home a few months ago when I got Susie a Mac Mini. I have been running on my MacBook Pro for well over a year now. So my life is almost entirely cleaned out of that junkie crack called WinDough$, and I’m loving it.

There are more fringe bennies, like being located at the core of downtown Bellingham, one block away from the Co-op and across the street from the YMCA (where I get a free membership and a discounted one for Sue and Q), free haircuts at the salon downstairs, lots of cool people to meet and chat with, and so forth.

I will post more as I learn more. In the meantime, check out my stylish, professional photograph for the staff directory (click to see it in context):

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