Thong Kuah's blog

URL:  http://uxmovement.com/design-articles/faster-with-top-a...See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/9kjp

Amplify’d from martinfowler.comIdentity MapEnsures that each object gets loaded only once by keeping every loaded object in a map. Looks up objects using the map when referring to them.An old proverb says that a man with two watches never knows what time it is. If two watches are confusing, you can get in an even bigger mess with loading objects from a database. If you aren’t careful you can load the data from the same database record into two

Commited Facebook Suicide for the second time. Where do I start? … The first thing that jarred me was that my full birthday is published. This in combination with search engine visibility means that it’s spammer time. Next thing that happened is that the privacy settings had “Everyone”, “Friends of Friends”, and “Friends”. Nice and simple, I thought. But no, I have to exclude my full birthday again from everyone. (I know about how your friend’s applications can just mine everyone’s data through friends).

I have a problem where a project is using an older version of RSpec (currently the lastest version is RSpec 1.3.0). Therefore running spec spec/model/some_model_spec.rbgives me an error /spec/models/../spec_helper.rb:23: undefined method `use_transactional_fixtures=’The solution would be to use the older, vendored spec. Now, the spec binary that is installed as part of the gem installation should do this (some gems do checked for vendor’ed binaries) and my rspec is installed under vendor/plugins, not vendor/gems.

There are a plethora of install instructions out there for Firefox 3.6 Karmic (which uses Firefox 3.5 by default), however it mostly suggests the mozilla-daily build. By chance, I found the firefox-stable ppa (https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/firefox-stable/)Here’s how (enter each in turn):sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stablesudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get upgradesudo apt-get dist-upgradeHere’s what it looks like:~ $ sudo apt-get upgradeReading package lists… DoneBuilding dependency tree       Reading state information… DoneThe following packages have been kept back:  firefox firefox-3.

At the January WellRailed (Wellington Rails User group), I gave a presentation on the upcoming Rails 3.0, with special emphasis on cool new things. You can view the slides after the jump. There are a huge number of changes, but it should be all good fun :) Rails 3 : Cool New Things by Thong Kuah View more presentations from Y. Thong Kuah. Note: Rails 3.0pre was released after the presentation

Some good Software Engineering pearls of wisdom :  Coding Horror: The Xanadu Dream The bottom line is that a lot of the time it’s OK to create a solution that solves 80% of the problem. Always remember that shipping is a feature. Agile development, startups and government policy My recommendation to just about anyone with an idea is to just build the thing, iterate until you have some user traction, then pitch angel investors based on that traction.

Reading this article about Wellington Hazards just makes me want to plot it on a map. It took a while, but here is a map of Wellington Hazards / Contamination. Below is a screenshots of the hazards on Google Earth and Google Maps (Google Earth shot nicely prepared by Cameron).  Let me know what do you think? Read on after the jump for hyper-technical explanation of how I made the map.

Came upon this really good post about people you should cherish: Rands In Repose: Your People Really good insight - “As we edit our days into these stories, there is always a risk of fiction. This is why you need to identify and nurture Your People.” What are Your People? “You tell these stories to Your People without reservation. Your People love your stories — fiction and all. They love how you tell them, they laugh about the lies you tell yourself, and then they stop and they tell you the truth.

StrengthsFinder is an amazing book, and an assessment tool that helps you discover your strengths. Its central concept is that you should focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses. I was introduced to it at the Summer of Code (NZ) program several years ago. The concept of focusing on strengths was just brilliant. This really reminded me of my game playing style, especially in RPGs, where you have to increase the levels and skills of your character(s) in order to be able to fight enemies that pop up with increasing difficulty and toughness.