{ |one, step, back| }

QR Code Fun

Aaron Patterson put a QR code into his RubyConf Brazil Presentation.

Aaron Patterson Shows the Way

At RubyConf Brazil last week, Aaron Patterson (@tenderlove) posted his contact information as a QR code as a slide in his presentation. How cool is that? I managed to snap a picture of it while it was on the screen and later downloaded a QR scan program for my iPhone to decode it.

QR codes are 2D bar codes that can easily be printed. You can encode URLs, phone numbers, SMS messages, or even just plain text in a QR code. Check out Wikipedia for more information.

To get started, grab a QR scanner for you phone. The AT&T scanner works pretty well and is available on a wide selection of phones.

QR Code Examples

To get you started, here’s a link to my twitter feed. If you are using the AT&T scanner, just start the program and aim the camera at the graphic below. After a moment, the scanner will automatically detect the QR code and offer to send you to the URL.

Next up, my contact information:

And finally, a little snippet of Ruby code. Does anybody recognized it?

Generating QR Codes

I used this generator site to generate the QR codes seen on this page.

Give it a try and have some fun!

(QR Code is registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORTATED)

Why Whyday

This next Thursday is Whyday. Celebrate with some outragous coding.

What are you doing for Whyday?

This next Thursday is designated as Whyday, a day set aside to commemorate all the many wacky contributions of Why the Lucky Stiff to the Ruby community. How do you celebrate WhyDay? The WhyDay web page suggests:

See how far you can push some weird corner of Ruby (or some other language).
Choose a tight constraint (for example, 4 kilobytes of source code) and see what you can do with it.
Try that wild idea you’ve been sitting on because it’s too crazy.
You can work to maintain some of the software Why left us (although Why is more about creating beautiful new things than polishing old things).
On the other hand, Why is passionate about teaching programming to children. So improvements to Hackety Hack would be welcome.
Or take direct action along those lines, and teach Ruby to a child.

As for me, I have several ideas:

Play with the HTML5 canvas, maybe writing a Ruby DSL for easily generating diagrams in Ruby.
Play with some Grit (a Ruby/Git library) and see if I can categorize git commits into a swimlane structure.
Combine the two ideas into program that generates a graphical swimlane representation (using an HTML5 canvas) of a git project history (similar to the hand drawn swimlanes in Vincent Driessen’s Article).

Those are just my ideas. And I reserve the right to change my mind at a moments notice.

So, what are you doing for whyday?

Articles are Back!

I’ve received a lot of requests for my old articles …

The Article Section has been Restored

When I changed to my new hosting machine, I moved all my blog posts but didn’t move any of the articles. Of course I intended to move them eventually but never got around to it.

A lot of people have been asking for this article or that presentation, or pointing out that a number of old bookmarked links are no longer any good. So due to popular demand the Articles and Presentations section of onestepback.org is now restored.

Enjoy

Comments Are Now Enabled

I’ve gone without comments on this blog for a long time …

Comments via Disqus

I’ve gone through several commenting systems for this blog over time. First was the really cool TagSurf application that allowed commenting on about any web page on the internet arbitrary tags. Unfortunately, TagSurf died a (in the words of its creator) “well deserved” death.

Then I tried a wiki for comments. That worked pretty good (aside from spam issues), but setting up a new page for comments for each new post was just too much hassle.

Now I’m trying Disqus for comments. It only took an hour or so to integrate Disqus with my ancient blogging engine (anyone else still using Rublog?).

Kick the tires and see how it works. If you have feedback … well, just leave a comment.

I guess this means I’ll have to start writing some real content here so there will be something worth commenting on … let’s see if there is anything I feel like ranting about …

(Oh, and a hat tip to Ryan Briones for pointing out Disqus when I was ready to go out and implement something from scratch.)

Moving Blog Host

I am changing host for the One Step Back blog.

It’s Time to Move

This is just a quick little post to let you know that the One Step Back blog is moving. In fact, it has already moved. But don’t worry, we aren’t going far.

Originally this blog was hosted on a shared co-op system run by N2Net. It was dirt cheap and easy to maintain. The down side was that support was sporadic. As the hardware has aged, the Co-op has decided to let the current system run until the hardware dies, and then disolve the co-op.

Today there are tons more hosting opportunities available than there were when the co-op was first formed. I’m now leasing a Linode node and running the blog and other associated software from there. Its almost as inexpensive and the co-op and uptime should be better.

Write now the blog has been moved. As time passes I’ll move the article archive as well. Let me know if anything looks amiss.

—Jim Weirich

Presenting Code ... An Update

I received some feedback on the ‘Presenting Code’ post from yesterday.

Presenting Code … An Update

I got lots of feedback on the “Presenting Code” post. In addition to Cédric Beust’s initial comments, the following people had something to say on the topic:

John Wilger asked on Twitter why I didn’t use “file:” (rather than “http:” and a local web server). Unfortunately, Keynote will not do a web view from a “file:” style URL.

Luke Kanies reports that he does something similar. He uses Vim (rather than Ruby + the Syntax gem) to generate the highlighted HTML. He also adds:

In general, this method works out great, but the one thing I would say is that you should always uncheck “automatic update”. Otherwise, you’ll find that it tries to update 10 seconds before your presentation starts and your web server isn’t available.

Ok, that’s good advice. BTW, I would be very interested in a script (AppleScript or Ruby+OSA) that would iterate over the pages in a Keynote presentation and refresh all the WebViews. Any takers?

James Edward Gray II and Mike Clark mentioned the HTML output bundle. James gives the following details:

Select Bundles → TextMate → Create HTML From Document (or Create HTML From Document With Line Numbers, if you prefer)
Preview the document in TextMate with Window ⇢ Show Web Preview
Highlight and Edit → Copy the content you want from the HTML window
Switch to Keynote and Edit → Paste

Mike (who credits Bruce Williams as his source for this tip) also provided a video.

Couple of items on the above:

When creating the HTML from the document, convert the whole document. Once in Web Preview mode you can cut and paste only what you want.
Choose a TextMate theme with a background that matches the background in your presenetation to get the best effect for your colors.

Dr. Nic also mentions a “Copy as RTF” TextMate bundle. (I’m not sure if this is the same as James and Mike’s hint above or something different).

Finally, Chris Nelson confirms (via Twitter): “AFAIK there is no equivalent of web views in OpenOffice :(“

Presenting Code

This exchange on twitter got me thinking…

Twittering …

I noticed the following twitter conversation this evening between objo and superchris:

superchris: any good recommendations on showing code samples in OpenOffice Impress?

objo: @superchris yeah, get a mac and use Keynote

objo: otherwise, I would screenshot emacs

superchris: @objo.. ya know, i almost added “And I’ll smack anyone who says get a Mac” but ran out of space

superchris: @objo… but actually your idea of using NetBeans screenshots is pretty good

objo: @superchris you never listen …. EMACS not netbeans. Come on man.

superchris: @objo just being helpful by translating for you.. :)

superchris: planning to code with NetBeans on linux forever for no other reason but to annoy @objo

ScreenShots … Yuck!

The problem Chris is trying to solve is putting code snippets into a presentation. There just isn’t a good way to do this in modern presentation programs.

In the old days, I would generate my presentation completely in HTML from a simple text markup file. The generation process was controlled by rake. This allowed me to changed the code, run the unit tests and rebuild the presentation all with a simple rake command. Eventually, I got up to speed with CSS and could make some really nice looking presentations, all from HTML.

Although I could get nice looking slides with CSS, it was a lot of work getting it to work just so. Eventually, I abandoned that approach and swithed to a modern slide presentation program (Keynote in my case).

Although generating the slides is a bit easier in Keynote (or PowerPoint, or Open Office Impress), reproducing code for technical talks is much harder. You generally have two choices:

Cut and paste the code text into Keynote losing any syntax highlighting you might have had, or
Take a screen shot of the code in your fancy editor, preserving the syntax highlighting but losing the “text” nature of the code.

Neither option is pleasant. The former punishes the audience by making the code harder to read, the latter punishes you making the presentation hard to change. (I once saw Dave Thomas giving a Ruby talk and he noticed that he had a minor typo in the code. He switched to edit mode in Keynote with the intent of fixing it on the spot, then he realized that the code was in a graphic image and was uneditable).

Of the two options, I’ve been using the text cut’n’paste technique for most things. In the twitter conversation above, Chris is considering the edit snapshot technique.

Other Options?

I’ve heard rumors of someone working on a script that will insert code snippets into the Keynote data file directly. Unfortunately, as far as I know, they are still rumors at this time.

But here’s another idea. I’ve prototyped this, and think it will work. But be warned I haven’t tried this on a really presentation yet.

Presenting Code … A Proof of Concept

While perusing the options in Keynote, I noticed an insert option called “Web View”

It turns out that this option allows you to include a web page in your presentation. For example, here is my blog inserted directly into the presentation. Clicking on the “web view” object will show an “update” button that will refresh that page from the web.

So, all I have to do is get the code onto a web page, formatted nicely with syntax highlighting, and Keynote will suck it into the presentation, more or less automatically for me. Cool.

Getting it formatted is easy. That’s just a small little Rake task with a good syntax highlighting library. I used Syntax (its a gem, docs on Rubyforge), but there are other options out there.

Here’s the rakefile:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require "rake/clean" 

CLOBBER.include('*.html')

task :default => :extract
task :extract => "hello.html" 

file "hello.html" => "hello.rb" do
  extract "hello.html", "hello.rb" 
end

and here is the rakelib/extract.rake library:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'syntax/convertors/html'

def extract(outfile, infile)
  open(outfile, "w") do |out|
    out.puts "<html>" 
    out.puts "  <head>" 
    out.puts "    <style type=\"text/css\">" 
    out.puts %(
.ruby { font-size: 24pt; font-weight: bold; }
.ruby .normal {}
.ruby .comment { color: #888; font-style: italic; }
.ruby .keyword { color: #A00; font-weight: bold; }
.ruby .method { color: #077; }
.ruby .class { color: #074; }
.ruby .module { color: #050; }
.ruby .punct { color: #447; font-weight: bold; }
.ruby .symbol { color: #099; }
.ruby .string { color: #944; }
.ruby .char { color: #F07; }
.ruby .ident { color: #004; }
.ruby .constant { color: #07F; }
.ruby .regex { color: #B66; }
.ruby .number { color: #D55; }
.ruby .attribute { color: #377; }
.ruby .global { color: #3B7; }
.ruby .expr { color: #227; })
    out.puts "    </style>" 
    out.puts "  </head>" 
    out.puts "  <body>" 
    out.puts "    <pre class=\"ruby\">" 
    code = open(infile) { |f| f.read }
    convertor = Syntax::Convertors::HTML.for_syntax("ruby")
    html = convertor.convert(code)
    out.puts html
    out.puts "    </pre>" 
    out.puts "  </body>" 
    out.puts "</html>" 
  end
end

Edit the CSS styles above to tweek the output to exactly the colors you want. I’ve added a large font-size line to make the code big enough for teh presentation (I hate small code fonts in presentations, you can ask objo about my rants on that topic.)

Now we need to get the code on a web page. No need to get fancy here. I have a script called servefiles that will start a webrick process that serves files from the current directory. Just start it up with “servefiles 3333” (the 3333 is the port to use). Servefiles will display its URL in its startup message, like so:

$ servefiles 3333
URL: http://tardis.local:3333
[2008-03-23 00:47:37] INFO  WEBrick 1.3.1
[2008-03-23 00:47:37] INFO  ruby 1.8.6 (2008-03-03) [i686-darwin9.2.0]
[2008-03-23 00:47:37] INFO  WEBrick::HTTPServer#start: pid=874 port=3333

Here’s the code for servefiles:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'webrick'
include WEBrick

dir = Dir::pwd
port = (ARGV.first || (12000 + (dir.hash % 1000))).to_i

puts "URL: http://#{Socket.gethostname}:#{port}" 

s = HTTPServer.new(
  :Port            => port,
  :DocumentRoot    => dir
)

trap("INT"){ s.shutdown }
s.start

Now all we have to do is cut and paste the URL given by servefiles into keynote and append the HTML file name we wish to add to our presentation:

Now, to update the code in the presentation, I need to:

Edit the original code base (and run unit tests against it).
Run rake
Press the “Update Now” button in Keynote.

Not bad.

It’s Just a Proof of Concept

Just be warned, I haven’t tried this in a real presentation yet. I’ve just spent an hour or so seeing if all the pieces would work together. There are some obvious things to explore.

The extraction code could be enhanced to pull snippets from files based on tags. Or even better, being able to say “Extract Method m from Class C”.

I’m using a fixed font size, but extract could easily take the font size as an argument or even calculate the proper font size given the amount of text found in the snippet.

I’ve not played with the “Update automatically” checkbox in the Keynote dialog. I’m not sure when it automatically updates, but it is possible that using it might mean you don’t even need step three above.

I will probably experiment some more with then in my next code heavy presentation. Let me know if you try this and how it work for you.

UPDATE

Cédric Beust points out that cutting and pasting from Eclipse to PowerPoint does preserve syntax highlighting. I verified the same is true for Eclipse and Keynote. However all the other IDEs and editors I tried (NetBeans, Coda, TextMate, Emacs) will paste as plain, uncolored text in Keynote. So, if you are going the cut and paste route, you might want to consider using Eclipse for the cut source.

Just for kicks I tried the presentation software in OpenOffice with the same result. Eclipse copies will preserve highlighting, none of the others will.

So, there you have it.

Joining EdgeCase

Hello EdgeCase!

This is exciting news … well, exiting for me at least.

I have just accepted a position with EdgeCase, an agile software firm started by Joe O’Brien, Chad Humphries and Ken Barker located in Columbus Ohio. EdgeCase is focussed on agile software development and delivering Ruby on Rails solutions, a perfect match for my passions, skills and abilities.

I have known Joe for a long time, and we have a deep, mutual respect for each other. I am extremely excited to be a part of his team.

I still have a few remaining responsibilities with Compuware that will be discharged over the next few weeks before starting full time with EdgeCase. I’ve been at Compuware for nearly 12 years and I’ve had some great assignments and really wonderful learning opportunities while working for them. But this chance to work with Joe and the gang is a golden opportunity that I am not willing to pass up.

Fireworks on the Fourth of July

We had some fireworks on the 4th of July … Unfortunately they weren’t the usual kind.

Fireworks on the 4th

It is a tradition in the US to fire off fireworks on the 4th of July in celebration of Independence day. Well, the Weirich household had some fireworks, but it’s not what you would expect.

What we thought at the time was a really loud firecracker from the neighbors turned out to be a close lightening strike, probably hitting the phone line. I discovered later that my DSL router (attached to the phone line) was dead (as in no lights, no power).

After a picking up a new DSL router on Wednesday from the phone company, it still didn’t connect and the phone company promised to send a technician out one Friday. Arrgh! Three days with no internect! Sigh.

The technician arrives Friday, checks out the wiring and decides to upgrade the “system”. Part of the upgrade is another new DSL router (different model from the replacement unit I picked up Wednesday). We connect up the laptop to the DSL router and everything looks great.

So once the phone guy leaves, I start hooking up the rest of the network: firewall router, network hub, wireless base station, and the other computers in the house.

And nothing works.

It looks like the lightening not only took out my DSL router, but it also got the firewall, network hub and wireless base station. Fortunately, I have another firewall and hub in my spare parts box.

Bad Cables?

I’m not certain of the total extent of the damage yet. The cables running to the other computers in the basement seem to be bad now (tested by against my working laptop). Since I don’t have long enough replacement cables, I haven’t checked out the network cards in two of the computers yet.

I am a bit surprised by the cables going bad. I understand delicate electronic equipment fried by lightening, but the cables are just wires and connectors. For them to be bad must mean the strike was strong enough to short them out somehow. And that doesn’t sound good for the network cards at the other end of the cable. Sigh.

On the good side, the my desktop computer that sits right next to the network equipment is up and running on the network. So one would that the network card in it is ok. However, it does seem to be a bit slow when browsing web pages. I mean really slow. I timed it against my laptop. What loads two seconds on my laptop takes over 20 seconds on the desktop. But that sounds more like a network configuration error than a hardware issue. Sigh, more work to do.

At any rate, it looks like there will be a run to the local computer store soon.

Breedlove Tour

Extra-Curicular Activities during OSCON Week.

The Breedlove Guitar Company

During the week of OSCON, I took Monday off to drive down to Tumalo Oregon and take a tour of the Breedlove Guitar factory. I’ve owned a Breedlove guitar for 6 years and really love it. This was a fanstastic chance to see the place where it was made. I’ve posted some pictures from the tour if you would like to see them.