http://derekperez.com/blog You've Reached My Internets. Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:27:36 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Linkedin just minutes ago announced they've thrown their hat in the "social application platform" ring! This is exciting news for people who are poised to bring innovative and interesting applications to the business and professional network. Read more about the press release here at TechCrunch. As of today, there is no ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/10/linkedin-announces-business-application-platform/ Listen to Dan Aykroyd discuss the importance of death and skulls in our world, and explain to you why he decided to embark on creating the "purest" vodka known to man. To be honest, this is actually a really really good vodka. I am no expert, but it tastes really ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/10/crystal-head-vodka/ I have been rolling around the idea of starting up more freelancing to try to bolster my savings for the coming years, so I've decided to take on more consulting work. For an indepth look at my work experience and skills, please visit my linkedin profile, here are some highlights. - ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/10/hire-me/ Today I was faced with an interesting dilemma, how does one programmatically define migrations into a plugin so you can essentially "plug-n-play". I did a little bit of research into Rails Engines, and I wasn't too terribly excited about the notion of having a dependency for such a small plugin, ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/09/programmatic-migrations-for-rails-plugins/ December 8th, 2008, I will be attending a 1 day course lecture and workshop on "Presenting Data and Information" by Edward Tufte. If you don't know a lot about Edward Tufte, he has written a series of fascinating books on unique and interesting ways to visualize and present data. The ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/09/edward-tufte-course-in-san-francisco/ Ask yourself, why are we still supporting Internet Explorer 6? Not as developers, but as people who use the Internet. If you are a web developer, you are one of the first people who will scream "I F#$@ this browser!" So I ask the question, why are we still supporting this ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/09/drop-ie6-support/ I am going to avoid using the word "stealth mode" for my startup and our product. Whenever I hear someone say their product is in "stealth mode" I interpret that as "I don't have anything worth showing to anyone, therefore I pretend its more important....mode". If you are involved in ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/09/lifting-the-cone-of-secrecy/ Flashback, it definitely seems more cultish now, right? http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/09/captain-planet-he-is-our-hero/ Normally, I stay the fuck out of conversations about politics in the public. But this is just too good to pass up. Mostly because most of the reasons that McCain supporters are happy about Palin are many of the things they've previously critisied in their opposing party. Jon Stewart, take it ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/09/double-standards/ Credit: here. http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/08/for-my-developer-homies-enjoy/ I love my AppleTV. One of the coolest home entertainment systems I've played with, but unfortunately it does lack some pretty important functionality like being able to play DivX/XVid, any sort of file storage capabilities, and no way to surf the web or anything cool like that. Well, it turns out, ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/08/making-appletv-better/ Thanks to the fellows over at Rails Envy for doing a quick spot on my SmartMonth plugin! I actually had never heard of Chronic until they had mentioned it. I could see how this would actually go very well with a gem like that! Speaking of SmartMonth, I have a couple ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/08/a-little-publicity-for-my-little-plugin/ Our big project at Panoctagon has a lot to do with time and dates, so we've been developing a series of Rails plugins that make our jobs easier. I had a lot of fun building this one, and I could see other people finding this interesting, so we decided to ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/08/my-first-rubyrails-contribution-smartmonth/ 10 points for most original title, ever. Lately, my company and I have been looking into the benefits of switching to Git for source code repository management. Its currently the new "hotness" of the hacker world, and with some of the claims that I've read, its pretty hard to ignore. Linus ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/08/got-github/ Recently I attended the first ever Start Conference here in San Francisco, CA. The last segment of the day they did was a "Pitch Off", which I thought was absolutely fantastic! Imagine American Idol + Startup Nerds + Hilarity, it was pretty much like that. I saw some really great ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/08/pushing-the-envelope-apture/ Yesterday I attended the first ever Start Conference, in San Francisco, CA. That conference was amazing, I will without a doubt be attending next year. I learned so much about the core of starting a business in ways that I found truly invaluable. It was a fantastic conference with a ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/08/forming-shapes-and-lines/ I am hooked on the religion that is known as GTD (Getting Things Done), and I have also become rather dependent on an application that follows the whole GTD way of, well, getting things done, known as Things. Its a fantastic application! But unfortunately, its not a finished work of ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/08/how-to-make-things-better/ I ran across a pretty amazing story about one of the most "hated" CEOs of the "dotcom" world, Julie Wainwright, CEO of pets.com (you know, the sock puppet company). Although she doesn't really go into why her company failed, she illustrates 5 mistakes that she had made in the last ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/07/falling-from-much-higher-than-here/ This year, I've been attending more conferences than I had originally expected to. Although, I was disappointed I was not able to attend cf.objective this year (probably will be next, though), I was able to find a ton of interesting conferences, without having to leave the Bay Area! Really, my ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/07/conferences/ When we first moved into our offices on Milvia street, we tried to keep costs low and used our cell phones insetad of buying into a couple of land lines w/ conventional phone service. This worked fine in the beginning, our needs were humble. For the most part, the cell ... http://derekperez.com/blog/2008/07/moving-into-the-21st-century-voip/