Hampton Catlin - Home

Rubyists To The Rescue

2008-12-24T21:33:00Z

Alright people, I know you are all busy with your Holidays right now, but I want to ask for something really important here. Pretty much everyone who is getting to this blog is a blessed person. I don’t mean blessed in a religious way or just luck. But, all of us make more money than someone. I know a lot of you are like me and live very comfortable, nice lives even in the downturn.

People are always thanking me for Haml and for my other OSS work, and I finally found a good way for people to say thanks. Donate some money to the I.M. Sulzbacher Center. The Center is a really great place that helps less fortunate families get back on their feet. Giving them housing, job training, support, and a helping hand.

We as software developers need to bond together, thank the universe for what we have, and make sure we support people who have lost everything. Even those of us who grew up at country clubs had family in the past who worked blue collar jobs and those people are really exposed to becoming homeless. You get laid off at you job and you have no where to go.

This holiday season, please consider donating.

CLICK THE DONATE BUTTON!

ByteClub.tv

2008-10-23T20:27:00Z

So, as some of you guys might no. I’m not longer a partner at Unspace Interactive. But, I’m still involved there! Its the company that I helped grow and I’m still on the ‘team’. I’m just in Florida working on other shit right now and a bit of Unspace work. Still the best damn company in the country for this kind of stuff. Anyhow, a few months ago ByteClub.tv came by and did a video about Unspace (no, we didn’t pay for it). Its really good! I look kind of fat sitting, but beyond that, I love it!

Also, they covered the Ruby conference that I helped put together!

MobileOrchard Interview

2008-10-23T20:24:00Z

Wow, this is a week of me-on-the web! Dan Grigsby gave me a call and we did an interview focusing on the iPhone development that I’ve been doing recently.

Listen here!

MobileOrchard is a pretty awesome blog, I have to say. Dan gives us a developer view of the new G1 phone! And a ton of other related articles.

Hampton Hates Automated Testing

2008-10-22T21:56:00Z

Hampton’s Testing Theorem: “Unit tested code often contains more bugs than its non unit tested counterpart.”

iTunes Sales Drop?

2008-10-03T22:10:00Z

My iPhone app iWik has been floating around 48-50 on the “Top Paid iPhone App” list for the last month. To keep that spot in popularity I used to have to sell around 1,600 copies a day. It seems that it has dropped in the last week to about 1,000 sales per 24-hours. However, I’m still in the same spot.

Has the economic crisis in the US caused total sales to drop for iTunes? I wouldn’t be surprised. People thinking twice about dropping $1-$5 on something they don’t really need.

I wonder if this is hitting the entire for-pay software market? Its not a total business killer, but its definitely a drop in numbers. 1,000 would not have kept me on that list just a few weeks ago.

PS: This lack of an NDA is cool….

iWik Cracked!

2008-09-24T17:15:00Z

I don’t know if most of you know, but I’m spending most of my time doing iPhone products right now. The major one I have out there is “iWik: Wikipedia for your iPhone.” Its been selling well, but today reached a new milestone. You can download it with a torrent!

http://iphonemon.com/2008/09/24/390-appstore-cracked-via-torrent/

Amazing!

Best part is… its version 1.0… which doesn’t work anymore.

PS: Did anyone see iWik featured on iTunes last week. AND it was in Time Magazine (in the US only) for September!

Hampton's Ruby Survey 2008 Results!

2008-09-23T05:32:00Z

Well, i was going to write a whole lot of analysis of the data, but then again, I’m lazy about that kind of stuff. Working on releasing Jabl and Sass is more important.

You can get a nice human-friendly version of the results at http://survey.hamptoncatlin.com!

Also, you can get the data dump here: survey08.yml.gz

A few surprising things. First, more people use jQuery than Prototype. Most Rubyists are agnostic or athiest… only 20% believe in a single god. Most people don’t use Haml. MRI is still the dominant interpreter. And Textmate dominates for editors, but vim beats emacs.

DART Raids in Jacksonville

2008-09-18T18:07:00Z

I recently moved my business to Jacksonville. I came back primarily because for a medium-sized city, Jacksonville has a vibrant and interesting indie scene along with a relatively cheap cost of living. However, my move coincided with police “raids” on several of the more interesting clubs in town. A police group called DART has been running these raids. The Pearl was shut down last Thursday. Read more about the drama at Urban Jacksonville. I wrote to the mayor and actually received a response back. I have posted that response here.

Dear Mr. Catlin:
Thank you for taking the time to write. Mayor John Peyton has asked me to respond on his behalf. We appreciate your concern and know that The Pearl is a ‘destination’ for many people around the city. It has done a lot to put Springfield on the map with our under-30 crowd in Jacksonville.

To provide background, Jacksonville’s Drug Abatement Response Team (DART) was established in January 1996 to combat illegal drugs in Jacksonville. The team is composed of representatives from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, Fire Marshal’s office, Municipal Code Compliance and the Building Inspection Division. It also can call on the resources of Community Services, Animal Care and Control, Community Development, JEA, Public Utilities, the Division of Alcohol, Beverages and Tobacco, the Division of Hotels and Restaurants, the Property Appraiser’s Office, the Office of General Counsel, the Department of Children and Families, and the State Attorney.

The city would not DART a commercial establishment or private residence for potential code violations alone. These types of violations are handled by the Municipal Code Compliance and Building Inspection Divisions of the city on a day to day basis. For the DART team to investigate a property there must be credible evidence of illegal activity. In addition, the team must ask for permission for entry before entering the establishment.

Please understand it was for these reasons that The Pearl was the subject of DART action on Thursday night. Following concerns about underage drinking and narcotics being sold/used at The Pearl, the DART team arrived at the club and was allowed in by the manager. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and the Division of Alcohol, Beverage and Tobacco entered the building with the city’s Building Inspection Division and Fire Marshal. While I do not have the exact number or nature of the arrests, I do know that law enforcement officials did make at least one arrest in the establishment that evening.

Once inside, the team observed that the club had more than 400 people in it. I am told that the Fire Marshal’s capacity rating for the building was less than half that number, creating a serious safety risk had an emergency occurred in the structure.

There was also a concern about the building’s emergency egress. The only open and accessible egress/exit from the building was through the front door (the gate in the back was chained shut).

There were multiple other Building and Fire code violations that made the building unsafe. This included extension cords with the ends stripped off and hard-wired to an electrical panel, extension cords in unsafe places, unsafe/incomplete remodeling work, and a variety of other electrical and plumbing issues. To ensure the safety of the club’s patrons as well as the structures located around the establishment, the facility was closed until the hazards were eliminated.

I truly understand and appreciate your concerns. I also hope, however, that you can appreciate the city’s responsibility to ensure the safety and security of our residents. I hope that the owner can bring the Building and Fire violations into compliance so that she may re-open as soon as possible.

Again, thank you for writing.

Sincerely,

Derek D. Igou

Deputy Director
Environmental and Compliance Department

And my response:

Derek-
Thank you so much for a response. I will make sure that this answer gets to the right people.

I think it would be excellent if the City would make a public announcement of support for business owners in this city.

Whatever the intention was of the “late-night inspection,” the feeling of being there was a bit spooky and Police-state feeling. The fact is that the building inspections could have been done during less conspicuous hours. And no club owner can guarantee a totally drug-free environment. I have never seen any drug use at the Pearl, but certainly young people have come in with something in their pockets. Second to doing a pat-down at every entry and re-entry of the club, something I have never witnessed anywhere, its impossible to keep an entirely clean business. Much like a restaurant being held liable for a patron having drugs in their pocket, I believe this to be an unreasonable expectation of businesses. Now, the expectation that visible usage is discouraged (clientele kicked out and banned).

The building code violations I’m sure were real and serious and needed to be addressed. But, perhaps make it feel less like a raid?

Anyhow, none of that really matters. However, I do suggest making a public statement of support for business owners that cater to the young artistic crowd. It would do a lot to help things.

Thanks again for the response. Its good to know someone is listening.
-Hampton Catlin.

Its good to see that someone is listening at least!

Find me...

2008-06-11T14:13:00Z

I’m mostly blogging at Rethink these days… but I might do some more general posts still here.

I don’t know, more technical or less technical. I can’t really decide.

Podcast?

2008-03-13T17:40:00Z

I’m thinking of getting back to doing a podcast. I used to have a popular one.

I want questions submitted.

Tech questions are OK, but not preferred. I prefer questions that require opinion.

So, ask away if you can think of anything. Or if not, let me know if you’d like to listen to a podcast of me just doing my thing. Perhaps if you have enjoyed my interviews before or something like that.

Thanks, Hcat.

Announcing RubyFringe

2008-02-11T18:39:00Z

We at Unspace had started to become a bit dissolusioned by the conferences we have been attending. Leaving us with the feeling that we really don’t like going to conferences. We sat down and asked ourselves why.

The result is that we are doing the insane task of throwing our own conference called RubyFringe. We are super excited that other people like the things we are doing and we’ve been able to get every single speaker that we wanted to have at the conference. We had a list of 10 “dream speakers” and we have all 10 now.

Check out the Rethink post here about it.

scoped_struct

2008-01-29T17:45:00Z

So, Mike Ferrier tossed me this idea a long time ago… and I was very excited about it. Its something I often wished I could do.

For the Rubyists out there, check out this awesome new software release!

http://mikeferrier.ca/2008/1/28/scoped-struct

Seriously?

2008-01-18T16:43:00Z

I don’t know how long this will remain up.. but check out this page on Zopa.com

https://us.zopa.com/co/AboutMe.aspx?Id=26

Everybody Votes?

2008-01-08T18:47:00Z

This is an essay written by one of my good friends from college about the Nintendo’s Everybody Votes channel on the Wii. Its a pretty interesting looking at a pretty strange little application that NIntendo has cooked up.

What possible purpose could there be in a Wii polling application? Once I played a little with it though, I began to see the genius behind it. By spacing out the polls to one every other day or so, Nintendo ensures that the user plays with the Wii every couple days to check out what the new poll question and to see what one’s results were for predicting the outcome. Each Mii is ranked by its predicting accuracy and told about its “distance from public opinion” and so forth via a snazzy interface. The point is that once Nintendo has users checking the Wii every couple days in order to try the new poll question, see tomorrow’s weather, and read a couple headlines from the AP, users are more likely to think, “Hmm, I guess I should go ahead and get a new game for this thing, since I’m always just fiddling with the channels anyway.”

He goes on to talk about the roles of gender in gaming and the representative numbers shown through statistics made available by Nintendo.

Check it out here, yo.

Haml 1.8.0

2008-01-08T13:29:00Z

A new, faster Haml has been released. Significant internal changes have been made for this release. In fact, 39 different people submitted patches to Haml since the last release (about 2 months ago). I just want to say thanks to Nathan and the whole community for helping us get this release out of the door.

Nathan has the deets.