The other day I was asked how I want my espresso. Is there more than one way to make it? Does anyone actually request a long espresso? I heard people complain that for the $2-3, all they’re getting are a few drops of water. True, it’s not a particularly hydrating drink, but mostly I hear that from people who don’t like espresso in any size. Adding more water doesn’t solve that problem, it’s still one sip, and ironically the shorter espressos have longer lasting aroma and flavor.
Anyway, in case you’re wondering about the recent radio silence, I got caught up in a number of projects that resulted in a lot more espresso drinking than usual and hardly any time for anything else.
Ruby in Practice
Ruby in Practice is heading for production, and that one is eating up all my spare time. Thankfully we’ve got a copy editor to fix all the typos (no shortage of that) and writing errors, and a technical proofreader to spot some of our silly mistakes. But responding to edit requests, and reviewing the text again, and fixing the sample code, and creating high quality graphics, already stands in conflict with my unexplainable need for sleep.
Good news, soon on the bookshelves and you can already get the PDF before it hits print. Manning has a pretty good cycle for taking major edits and sending new PDFs to anyone who pre-orders the book.
Singleshot
The second project is Singleshot, and I’ve been racing to get a demo done to show during the Intalio User Conference. Now I’m back to regular pace, working on the specification, test cases, API and everything else needs to round it up into a usable product.
Singleshot — which I’ve been drinking a lot of to make that happen — is a task manager. Not to be confused with todo lists, there are plenty of those to last us a lifetime. Task managers allow software to put new things on your plate (thanks!)
It’s big, and important enough, to warrant its own blog post, so I’ll cover it separately.
Rolling Résumé
While drafting this post, I realized I don’t have a good enough place to list all the different projects and other “things of interest” that are keeping me busy. I had a static page before, which is easy enough to do with WordPress, but it didn’t feel quite right.
What I wanted was more of a résumé, a very short one, I’m too lazy to list anything but ongoing projects. Still, it had to feel — even if only when adding new entires — chronological. And I wanted something lighter than WordPress, don’t need all that firepower for the occasional addition.
Since I’m already using Tumblr here, I went and added another group to my account, pointed a DNS record at it, and added all the entries I could remember off the top of my head. Done.
So if you’re looking for an easy way to create a rolling résumé — a résumé that records your life as it happens — give that a try.
Incidentally, there’s also a new theme to this blog, which is now shared across the main blog, bytesized and the rolling résumé. Created using the amazingly wonderful, can’t praise enough CSSEdit. I’m guessing it doesn’t look so sharp on IE. I’ll fix that. Some day.
Now back to my espresso.
Antoine
Assaf
tnkgrl