Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

What is Habari's core message?
May 19, 2008

On IRC a few weeks ago this question was posed by an unassuming visitor:

What makes Habari different from any other blog application like WordPress?

I blew a mental gasket sitting at my desk, but managed to scrawl out a few words that managed to be quoted here and there by folks in the community. It may have sounded profound to others, but it was really offered up in haste and without much consideration.

Since then I’ve been thinking: If I had to give a serious elevator pitch about Habari, what would I say?

All The Community That Your Blog Doesn't Have
May 16, 2008

Habari’s community is a sight in action. Two weeks ago, I threatened to make a significant change to the appearance of Habari’s back-end admin, and the day afterward, I executed on that threat.

The Monolith design for Habari’s admin had been on the slate for a long time, even prior to Michael Heilemann’s announcement back in February. We’ve been striving toward user interface excellence. While there’s been a lot of contention by those concerned over what constitutes the best design, I think it’s impossible to deny that the design is handsome.

The Monolith source code had lingered in a branch of the source repository awaiting the day when it would be mature enough to merge. It became clear to me that although opening branches of our repository for non-PMC (Primary Management Committee) coders to work on special-interest changes to the core code was good for innovation, it wasn’t necessarily as inviting in the spirit of our community-contribution nature.

So after a couple of months progress, and with the blessings of several other PMC members, I made good on the threat of merging the Monolith code to the main branch of the code repository, and over the past two weeks the flurry of contributions has been nothing short of amazing.

Developer Interview Questions
May 09, 2008

I’ve had the occasion over the past few years in my capacity as a long-time developer to interview candidates for jobs within my company and for clients I’ve contracted for. As a result, I’ve had some time to formulate some opinions about what questions to ask developers who are applying for a position, and the types of answers to expect from a candidate that you’d want to hire.

Sadly, I think the market of good developers is far, far too small. I do subscribe to the philosophy that great developers are born, not made, although I also believe that you can produce adequate developers with good training and persistent oversight. It is really unfortunate that coders who want to get jobs aren’t as versed in what makes a great developer great, and it’s a frequent topic of discussion when hiring rounds begin.

Scouting out Habari
May 06, 2008

I found a list of events that Abby’s going to participate in with her Girl Scout’s Brownie troop over the next couple of months. Apparently, Berta gets emails from their scout leader every so often with a list of updated events and notices. I think this is an effective way to keep in touch with the troupe, but I think there’s room for improvement technologically.

It might be nice to have a published calendar of events, along with a feed that parents could consume in Outlook, Google Calendar, or in my case, Lightning. I’ve discovered that meetup.com provides iCal feeds that make it easy to subscribe to events. Of course, there are my usual misgivings with meetup.com, particularly that it’s a paid service and that they retain control of the data so that you can’t move it elsewhere when you decide you can’t pay them anymore. So I think there should be a better, open solution.

Kindle Arrived
April 23, 2008

My Kindle arrived today while I was watching Riley drive his electric Jeep around the cul-de-sac island. Since he refused to park his Jeep to go inside, I tore open the box right there in the driveway, and carried its contents up to the circle to get acquainted.

The Kindle is an electronic book. It has a paperback-sized screen with a small keyboard below, and large buttons on the sides. When the device is on, it reads just like any paperback book except that when you want to turn the page, you just press the button.