Matt Warren

It's been just over a month now at my new job. I'm very much enjoying it. I think in particular the biggest thing is that the system is run on Linux which just makes everything so much more flexible.

The biggest part of my learning curve has been learning Grails for developing web applications. I've done other projects (including this website) with Django - a similarly styled web framework for Python. Grails however is based on the Groovy language and Java technology.

Grails has been a pleasure to work with for the most part. There are some warts, but it is a vast improvement over Java web development.

I think the biggest revelation for me was the testing. Web frameworks like Grails put a big emphasis on proper testing. It's practically enforced that your project should have a lot of tests. Having spent the last 6 weeks coding with a library of 3000+ tests to run against any changes I make I really understand their value. I wouldn't want to work on any team project that doesn't have a good test suite.

One of the things that I always am keen to learn more about is how to naturally improve my eyesight. Over the years I have developed a number of theories and possible exercises that I hoped would improve my vision. unfortunately none did.

According to Wikipedia, there is no definitive cause for myopia. However there are a few theories.

Genes - this is in my mind completely bogus - right now over 50% of americans need glasses to see. If our primary sense had evolved so poorly that 1/2 the population couldn't see then we never would have made it. Environment - The idea that the muscles in our eyes accomodate to looking only at things within 10ft from being indoors is totally plausable but difficult to do anything about.

Then I read this about the new 3D TVs. 3D video hazardous to your health

it got me thinking that perhaps looking at 3D things in 2D, like in photos or TV might train your brain to ignore depth. What convinced me more is that I can perceive things relatively close to me as flat. I'm still trying to think of ways to test this theory out.

I picked up a new road bike last weekend. It's a entry level road bike from Trek. Here's a picture:

The plan is to use the bike to get to and from work. The terrible bus system here in Calgary kind of forced me to get a bike sooner than I had expected. It's really painful to see how often the buses get off schedule.

The other thing I want to do is start training for some road races. After the first couple of rides I'm realizing that it's going to be harder than I expected. The big quad muscles take a lot of energy and it doesn't take long before I'm exhausted. Building endurance and increasing my weekly distance up to 100km/week is going to be a challenge.

This is also the first time I've owned a road bike. They are quite different beasts from mountain bikes. Light and nimble steering and with the narrow high pressure tires they roll very smoothly and with very little effort. But they are also a bit fragile and I'm having to force myself to not hop curbs or take gravel shortcuts.

We are settling into life in Calgary. It was a pretty quick transition from the move on Friday to starting work on Tuesday and I would have liked to take some time off to get more things done.

The new job is really good so far. I'm enjoying the technology especially the Linux desktops with plenty of horsepower (quad-core, 8GB memory, 1TB disk), and programming with a modern dynamic language and framework (Groovy and Grails). Feels good to be working in software development again.

Living with good friends is a laugh. It's a bit difficult to settle down though knowing that we're looking for another place. Colum and Jen have been excellent hosts, I'm glad they're here to help us transition to life in Calgary. Without their help it wouldn't have been possible.

Still no cell phone. I'm holding out for the new iPhone coming out next week (hopefully available immediately). I'm feeling out of touch without having that internet connection in my pocket. Strange how quickly you get used to having instant notification of everything.

In just one week we'll be packing up our life in Vancouver and moving east to Calgary. I'm getting more excited and a bit surprised at how quickly time caught up on us. We have all the important stuff organized and the only remaining things to do are pack stuff into boxes, clean the apartment, and figure out how what to do about our mail.

For the past few weeks I have been cluing up things at work and making sure everything I maintain is well documented. I have a going away lunch tomorrow with a bunch of people from the office, then Friday and Monday off. So there's really only 4 days left of work here in Vancouver.

One of my last projects here at CCL was to migrate developers from Subversion to Mercurial. There were a few things that could have been done better, but unfortunately convincing people to take time to learn how to use new tools before they have to is a hard sell. we made the switch and forced everyone to spend a few hours reading documentation and fumbling with the new tools. After a couple days to settle down I think people are starting to really like it and appreciate the new power they have.

Next week should be quiet and I hopefully will have time to learn more about Groovy and Grails.

When we moved to Vancouver 5 years ago one of the things we found in the newspaper our very first summer here was a list of 100 things to do in BC. It listed every major annual event, special place, and thing to do in the province. We kept that list on the coffee table for the last five years and in that time have crossed off many of the things on it.

Next weekend we'll be finally getting to an item on the list that we've been putting off. Learning to surf at Tofino. We're going to take the bike for the 6 hour drive to Tofino next Friday and make the most of coastal life before moving inland at the end of the month.

We also found out that there is going to be some movie filming next weekend too. Jack Black, Jim Parsons and Owen Wilson may be in the area so we'll get a chance to do some celebrity spotting.

Looking forward to a weekend of fun on the beach. Hopefully the weather cooperates.

My Macbook is getting close to end of life. It's been just over 3 years, and the laptop is starting to show it's age. The plastic on the battery has started to come off which makes it not particularly good for carrying around and the performance is starting to feel sluggish when running virtual machines.

So I started thinking about what my next computer setup will be.

I'm starting to lean towards replacing my macbook with a more powerful desktop. I really want to be able to start running more virtual machines and for that I need to have lots of memory, lots of disk space and plenty of CPU cycles to spare.

The real question is should I build a computer from parts and put Linux on it or get another Mac. I can get good price/performance out of a Linux desktop I build myself, but there are a bunch of excellent software that I have on my Mac that I'll miss in Linux. What to do?

Yesterday I got a notice from goDaddy about a security issue with Wordpress that recommended that I upgrade to the latest version on all my websites.

So I started going through all my domains to find out which ones needed updates. Turns out I have a lot of websites that have been left to rot. I really didn't appreciate just how many I had.

It made me realize that I'm in need of some tools to help monitor and keep tabs on all my websites. Something to keep them in the front of my mind, and to make sure I'm aware if and when they break and when the content goes stale.

It seems like something that many people would have to deal with but I don't know of any tools out there to deal with it. Google isn't helping me finding anything today.

My first thought is to create a webpage that iframes all my other websites. so I can see them all in one glance. that's flexible but not very intelligent. There must be something better out there, but I haven't yet found it.

I have been reading about the benefits of standing desks off and on for a while. Then I found this article at Business Week Your Office Chair Is Killing You and am now convinced enough to test it out.

So I will be trying two things.

1. Standing to watch TV
2. Replacing my home computer desk with a standing desk.

Early testing with the TV revealed some interesting findings.

• Standing makes it easier to walk away during commercials to do things like tidy the apartment. An hour of TV is enough to clean the whole place.
• I'm more likely to walk away from a bad show than to go "meh, best thing on right now"
• It's surprisingly not tiring
• I feel noticeably happier standing

It's interesting how the couch and TV have become not only a focal point, but have also influenced the design of everything else. Remove the couch and chairs from the living room and suddenly everything is designed wrong. The coffee table is too low to be useful, the TV is probably below eye level.

It would be interesting to try installing bar height tables, removing the chairs and wall mounting the TV to see how it changes the dynamics of a living room. Would people avoid the room entirely? watch less TV? have more conversations?