Edd Dumbill's Weblog: 'me' articles

Obvious mail productivity tip

Edd Dumbill — 2008-03-25T10:57:02Z

From the department of So Obvious I Can't Believe I Didn't Do This Earlier...

I'm pretty compulsive about organizing all my mail. On my IMAP account I have about 270 different folders. The folders sit in hierarchies, cataloguing my work and personal life, mailing lists and projects.

Unfortunately when I'm dealing with email this means some time spent trying to find the right place to file each message. Apple's Mail lacks any way to quickly find the folder I want, and I suspect I'm in a minority for being so organized and having this many folders.

Today it occurred to me that I should stop worrying about keeping the hierarchy for my current projects, and file them away when I'm done. This was so stupidly obvious—I do this in real life with paper files—that I can't believe I didn't do it before.

So, may I present my easy-access to current mail folders:

Everything in my current working set now lives in the @CURRENT folder right near the top, meaning minimum time taken to find where to file things.

I share this only in the hope that anyone who is as blind to the obvious as I was might benefit.

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Life as a novel

Edd Dumbill — 2007-11-19T10:44:53Z

Over breakfast this morning, I was reflecting on the unruly collection of intractable situations life presents to me right now. Many of these are sufficiently outrageous that they would make excellent material for a novel. Yet were I to write about the current crop of gremlins, any competent editor would throw it out for poor plotting and a desperately confusing array of characters.

If one were to insist on full disclosure of the intricacies of real life, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings would seem a mere novella. Of course a novel must entertain more than merely describe, and a good story is made more by what is omitted than included.

For me, one work of fiction excels in holding the balance well between detail and narrative pace. Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time is a 12-volume sequence of novels following the life of Nicholas Jenkins, and his associated friends and family, spanning most of the twentieth century from 1914 to 1971.

Looked at crudely, a lot of not very much happens throughout Dance. But it is just this that is so evocative. The sequence follows Jenkins and the other characters through every stage of life. Powell captures well the way in which certain experiences or acquaintances become symbols of portions of our lives, while others become a recurring thread interwoven through our entire existence.

I read Dance at least once every decade, each time finding it increasingly poignant as my own life proceeds. While some fiction is fantastic escapism, it is the realism of Dance that entrances me. Its characters surprise, disappoint and frustrate in turn, none of them just caricatures. In it you won't find a hero, but you may well find yourself.

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The best Christmas present

Edd Dumbill — 2006-12-23T18:52:31Z

My wife Rachael and I are pleased to announce the birth of our first children, Thomas James and Katherine Elizabeth, born on Friday 22 December at 9.02pm and 9.12pm.

Katherine (l), Thomas (r)

The twins and their mother are all doing very well, and I'm enjoying learning some new skills. I can't think of a better way to start Christmas.

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Three things I would be doing if we had Thanksgiving in the UK

Edd Dumbill — 2006-11-22T11:59:02Z

Working as much with the US as with the UK, Thanksgiving is always a noticeable holiday for me, even if I still have to work. If I had the luxury of the holiday this year, I'd be

Staying up all night to follow The Ashes. Sporting competitions founded in the 1880s don't have much regard for television and radio audience hours, alas.
Going to evensong at York Minster. The intimate and historic choir is an amazing experience at this time of year, as the candles take over from the weak winter sun.
Encouraging people to use the holiday to prepare their submissions for XTech 2007. Springtime in Paris and top technology seems like something to look forward to.

As it happens, I'll do No. 3 anyway and reluctantly miss out on the others. Happy Thanksgiving to my friends and colleagues in the US.

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Living and coding on a Mac

Edd Dumbill — 2006-10-03T17:15:01Z

For most of this year I've been working mainly on a Macbook Pro, having deserted my Ubuntu desktop. Somebody wrote to me recently, kindly enquiring how this life was going, and asking some questions in particular.

Although of limited interest to some, I decided to answer the mail here, if for nothing else to record my views for future reference.

Q: How is developing on a Mac? Is TextMate really that good?

Developing Rails applications on a Mac is sweet, and yes, TextMate really is that good. My jilted .emacs languishes in lonely misery.

Developing other (non-Mac) stuff on a Mac is a real pain however, because nothing's where you'd expect it after years of Linux use. Like several other developers I've seen, I run Ubuntu Linux in a virtual machine under Parallels for such work.

It's not just that Macs lack apt-get (as you can get it with fink), it's that they lack the reliability of Debian or Ubuntu's package repositories to underpin it. Running Linux in a virtual machine is far easier.

On the subject of TextMate, perhaps the best compliment I can pay it is that using it reminds me of the last text editors I really felt at home in, CygnusEd and then FrexxEd on the Amiga. TextMate's most serious flaw is the inability to create split views, however. It seems to me that's a key programmers' feature, to be able to read from one source file at the same time as editing another.

Q: Is the hype about Ruby on Rails true?

I still think so. I resisted it for 6 months because I tend to be averse to anything that gets such a large amount of publicity, but then stepped aboard the train around the time of Rails 0.13.

I've not really looked back after my initial experiments seemed to bear out the claim of developing "ten times faster than PHP". I'll admit I find it hard to keep up with all the extra developments that get added at the Rails cutting edge, but then again I don't really need them. Most of those additions are refinements, rather than core changes. Constraints on my time mean I tend to write in a common Rails subset, as opposed to flexing my muscles with the obscure but clever bits.

Even if your taste isn't for Rails, then the trend that Rails, Django and friends have started is improving the web development playing field for all.

Q: What makes you happy and sad about the Mac?

The things that the Mac still scores on are:

Fonts, fonts, fonts. Despite all my many efforts at getting good letterforms on Linux, I still couldn't make it as good as OS X.
Productivity applications. I love my OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner. I'm salivating over the prospect of OmniFocus, and Quicksilver rocks my world.
Hardware. Suspend/resume without worry, video conferencing that works.

The interesting thing to me is that none of these are very difficult to surmount, for want of a little resource. The day of the Linux desktop, so perennially around the corner, will yet come.

As a balancing postscript, I will mention that there are some things that are Mac irritants to a sensible Linux person, which include filesystem case sensitivity, lack of decent SSH agent (yes, I've tried them all), not knowing what to kill -9 when things go pear-shaped, Apple's arrogance, crippled nature of some default apps (iChat won't put multiple accounts in the same window, Safari doesn't support keyboard navigation at all well, Quicktime player won't play movies fullscreen).

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Euro(star|FOO|OSCON)

Edd Dumbill — 2006-09-16T21:15:16Z

Today I'm travelling to Belgium to take my part in the orgy of elitist conspiracy that is O'Reilly's European Foo Camp and open source convention. I've elected to undertake the journey by train.

It is difficult to overemphasize how magnificent a thing the Eurostar service is. Were it left to our drab and utilitarian government alone, such a thing would never exist.

Instead, in two and a half hours of clean, comfortable carriages and more than tolerable coffee I will be in Brussels, just a short tram ride away from my hotel. With the increasing difficulty and odiousness of air travel, things could hardly be more of a contrast.

The price seems to me insanely cheap. My journey to Brussels and back costs under £60, less than my journey down to London from York in the first place.

It almost makes you wish for the heady days of the Major government's flirtation with Europe. Life seemed simpler then. (We even had a prime minister who understood cricket, but that's another story.)

EuroFOO

Foo Camp is an event where O'Reilly Media invite a bunch of people to create an ad-hoc conference. For O'Reilly, it's a great way to take the pulse of earlier-than-thou early adopters and mad inventors, which in turn feeds their business. For the invitees, it's a great way to meet others, put your ideas out there, and get your mind expanded. For those outside the fold, exclusion has taken on an importance far out of proportion to its actual significance, which appears sadly inevitable.

Although I was present at the US Foo a few weeks ago, illness meant I missed the bulk of it while recovering in a darkened room. So, I'm looking forward this time to playing a bigger part.

One of the themes I'm seeing developing, and for which we intend to focus on at XTech 2007, is that of the increasing connectivity and blurring of distinction between the web and the world. Things to watch include Second Life, Thinglink, mobile, geotagging, ubiquitous computing.

I'm also looking forward to hearing the low-down on Railsconf Europe from those who went. Sadly pressure of time meant I couldn't go, but the write-ups I've been seeing make it sound like an excellent event, and a great progression from the Chicago one.

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Ten things you need to know about me

Edd Dumbill — 2006-08-13T12:18:25Z

To keep you reading all the way through, the best one's at the end.

1. I'm striking back out on my own again

After a couple of years working full time in an office, I've decided it's the right time to take my own business, the Useful Information Company, further on. As the rest of this post illustrates, we'll be involved in web technology conferences, our own products, and Rails-based software development. I'm always looking for collaborators, comment and customers, so get in touch if any of this lot grabs you.

2. I'm organising an amazing web developer event in London, late October

Useful's first venture is XTech WebDev London. This is the first of a new type of event for XTech: a focused one-day training event for web developers. The idea is to focus on the best practice in web development that emerges from the cutting-edge work demonstrated in the regular XTech conference.

This year, that means: Ajax, web standards, open data, REST and Ruby on Rails. Any web developer wanting inspiration and a view of the future should come along. London, UK. October 31, 2006. You can reserve your place now. (We're right-priced for your training budget, and start late enough that folks could make it from all over the UK and beyond without staying a night.)

3. The pace is hotting up for XTech 2007 in Paris

Meanwhile, I'm busy putting together the call for participation and programme committee for XTech 2007, in Paris, France. Our theme is "The Ubiquitous Web." As keynotes, I'm pleased to welcome Adam Greenfield, Matt Webb and Jack Schulze.

4. I'll be off travelling shortly and reconnect with old and new friends

Though a little daunted by the new face of air travel, I'm heading out to O'Reilly in Sebastopol at the end of this month to take part in FooCamp. One of my main aims is to seek out the ingredients required for a successful professional online community. In September I'll be putting in some time at EuroOSCON. Both visits will let me hook up with friends, many of whom I've not seen for a couple of years.

5. I'm on the programme committee for O'Reilly's Emerging Technologies 2007 conference

This one has me interested and engaged. Rael Dornfest is due to unveil the call for participation in a couple of weeks' time, and I'll give my take on the conference then. The show itself is March 26-29, 2007.

6. I have an exciting startup under the covers, in the area of conference and event management

One of the things I've done a lot of over the last half-decade is organise, coax and bully people into presenting at conferences. I'm pouring what I've learned, and more besides, into a great product. You'll soon be bored of me talking about it.

7. I'm involved in taking Pharmalicensing into an exciting new phase

Pharmalicensing is an online exchange for intellectual property in the biotech and pharmaceutical world. I was part of its foundation in 1998, and am still involved. I will be part of a newly energized team of people pushing it forward into 2007.

8. I'm having a bit of a clean-out of projects

Alas, with so much going on, I need to cut out a few existing commitments. One of these things will be Monopod, my Mono-based podcast client for Linux. If I can't find anybody interested in its maintenance, I'll just hang the source code out there for anyone to pick up.

9. I want to get more energy put into DOAP

One of my long term projects I definitely don't want to cut out is DOAP, my project to describe software projects in RDF. It's had a slow but sure take-up over the last few years, and is finding its way into some significant projects. However, I do need a bit more energy for it, and one or two collaborators would certainly help.

10. Around Christmas-time, I'm going to become a father to twins

I've still not recovered from the shock. Rachael and I are going to be the proud, stunned, parents of a couple of bright shiny bundles of Human 2.0. Completely awesome, and I've absolutely no idea what to do! For now, we're just concentrating on throwing enough junk out to make room for them.

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