Hampton Catlin - Home

Credit Card Security Through Insanity

2010-02-22T13:22:00Z

How do we make credit card purchases secure? That is a question we have been asking ourselves since the instrument was first created. Traditionally, its been a signature panel on the back, plus a clerk maybe asking for photo identification if the purchase is large enough. Recently, things have gotten more advanced in most countries. In the UK in particular, they have gone all out with the “Chip and Pin” system.

Basically its a chip on your card that contains an encrypted version of your pin number… and you slot the card into the reader device and enter your pin. Some magical encryption things happen and BAM! Your purchase is done. 100% fool proof!

Anyone who knows anything about security knows that that isn’t true. Anytime you believe a system to be completely safe, it instantly makes it vulnerable. Any thinking person knows that actually comparing signatures is the dumbest thing in the world. My signature barely ever looks the same and with a little practice, someone could ape it pretty well. However, the clerks are responsible for figuring out if its your card. Things like looking at the name and comparing it to the person (male/female, etc), reading body language, seeing their demeanor, and of course… asking for ID if anything seems strange.

However, with chip and pin, the clerks aren’t responsible anymore. If you know the pin, then you aren’t questioned no matter how large the purchase! And get this… there are multiple ways to break into the chip and pin system. Just recently someone completely broke the system. That is, there is no security in chip and pin anymore which makes the following story even odder.

Today I had a singularly frustrating experience at the Game store (yes, that’s its name) in Cambridge’s Grand Arcade mall. Being an American, I don’t have a UK bank account yet. My business is run in the US and my income is in the US. So, I just stick with my US cards. My US cards are not “chip and pin”... and I feel pretty damn good about it (seeing as its completely insecure anyway). So, I go up to the counter to checkout and bring out my Amex. Here is the transcript:

Clerk: “Oh, sorry, we don’t take American Express”
Me: “No problem! I have a visa card too” [Hand him my US visa card]

Clerk: “This card isn’t signed”

Me: “Yeah, I know. Signing is such a bad way to do it, so I just always show ID. Here!”

[I hand him a top-security level EU identification card]

Clerk: “Doesn’t matter. If its not signed, then I can’t take it”

Me: “Ok, well then, I’ll sign it!”

Clerk: “You can’t do that”

Me: “Why not?”

Clerk: “You just can’t.”

Me: “Ok, well I have this EU id… and I have a US drivers license… so, you know… that has to be me!”

Clerk: “You could have stolen the card though”

Me: “Uhhh… right, but I have two forms of photo ID that match the card name. Are you saying I stole the card from someone with the exact same name?”

Clerk: “Yeah, but its not signed”

Me: “Right, but what does signing prove?”

Clerk: “It proves its your card”

Me: “No, the ID does that”

Clerk: “No, I need it to be signed. That’s our policy.”

Me: “Like I said, I’ll sign it”

Clerk: “No”

Me: “What if I sign it tonight and come back tomorrow?”

Clerk: “If you sign it and come back in 2 weeks, then you can use it”

Me: “Huh? So, I can steal a card, but if I’m just patient then I can use a stolen card”

Clerk: “That’s the policy. You are supposed to use Chip and Pin”

Me: “I’m a recent immigrant (obvious from my accent), and chip and pin is compromised. Its no longer secure at all, so I’m trying to give you my ID which is the best proof you could possibly have that its me.”

Clerk: “That doesn’t matter”

Me: “You know you can easily fake signatures, but not this shiny, new, official EU ID, right?”
Clerk: “But the card has to be signed”

He was polite, but it was like talking to an insane person.

The only system that works well is asking for ID and making sure that its good ID. That system works. Why are we trying to make machines do a job that humans are better at?

PleaseRobMe.com

2010-02-18T14:21:00Z

Something that’s been making the rounds today on the internet is PleaseRobMe.com. The basic gist is that when you tweet/foursquare/whatever your current location to the internet, you are putting yourself and your property at risk. Its an attempt to get people to remember that they are giving up a bit of privacy whenever they say where they are. And, they take it even further to say that location data says you aren’t at home and that someone could therefore know to rob you.

I see lots of people following this party line like sheep.

Stop and think about it. First lets get rid of the idea of robbing. Obviously criminals already know that people go to work during the day… so why not rob then? Also, it doesn’t mean you don’t have roommates, children, spouses, babysitters, etc. If someone actually attempted to rob someone based off the information simply that they weren’t home when they checked in last, I believe they would make a poor criminal.

Secondly, I hear this kind of paranoia all the time. This is a gem of a quote from their mission statement: “It gets even worse if you have “friends” who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address.. on the internet.. Now you know what to do when people reach for their phone as soon as they enter your home. That’s right, slap them across the face.”

Uhhh… “Your address… on the internet” Have these freaks never heard of a phone book? Here is a list of the addresses of everyone with the last name Catlin in NYC. Its on the Internet already you damn fools!

And who cares anyway? Sure if you are a security guard at a museum, then broadcasting your position every second might be bad. But this is just pure bullshit.

Bullshit. That’s what I said. Its all stupid people who don’t think about a problem enough to realize that there really isn’t a problem there at all.

Finally, if that site is a joke. Then why do all the comments on Techcrunch agree with the site’s manifesto?

Get over it people.

I live at 150 Hills Road, Cambridge, UK. CB2 8PB. And here is a picture of my flat.

Life filled with possible threats. Someone could stalk me. But all I did here is make it slightly easier for them. Now they don’t have to look it up in the phone book. If someone is going to harass you, they are going to do it anyway. If someone robs me or makes a threat, its still the same thing (I call the cops).

I’m not afraid of you knowing where I am. I’m not willing to live my life in fear that someone can go psycho. Sure, they might. But I’m not going to cower because of it. This is my home and now you know where it is.

Our information is already out there. Its been out there since at least the 1920’s in one way or another. And its really not that valuable.

Driving down a street and looking at homes is a much, much better way to rob someone.

A Letter to Apple

2010-01-29T13:54:00Z

Dear Apple,

First of all, sorry for all the angry people out there. I don’t know what’s up with them. I think the iPad is pretty cool and it simplifies the computing experience for those who find traditional computers a bit too complex. I know you can’t say it, but this thing rocks for the PC user parents of the world.

Anyhow, that’s not what this letter is about. Its about the developer stuff. I mean, first off, kudos on putting out the SDK. The masses can now start working on projects and that’s great. You did a really good job getting that out and mentioning us in you keynote.

However, you haven’t succeeded at everything. I have sold about 3 million copies of my various iPhone software. I am not selling as much as EA, but I am definitely one of the top selling app developers out there. Easily in the top 1,000 or so. Everyone in my camp has successful iPhone apps that are live on the iPhone and we are excited to follow you guys into the new device. However, we end up getting screwed on launch day. We have the SDK, but we can’t test our apps on a real device (multitouch, etc) with real speeds and real user experience work.

So, why not allow your top, most loyal developers the ability to buy one a bit early. We’ll even sign another NDA until the official launch. Me and my guys will work our butts off to get something awesome in the store for iPad launch day.

Our development efforts are what have made the iPhone awesome. You built the toy chest and we built the toys.

Don’t just help out EA… look to the medium sized developers too.

-Hampton Catlin.

H8ter

2010-01-08T18:51:00Z

Wow, so apparently I (drunkenly) posted this to Ruby Inside as a comment:

Bulllllllllllllllshit. The best developers don’t need to test. You test when you hire B level drone-workers under you. KNOW THE SOFTWARE. KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING! Testing is not an excuse for under-paid, under-trained workers.

Yish. I think I had just exploded from YAPATS (yet another post about testing software). Like, I see more software written for writing software, than I see other open source libraries that are tested. It seems libraries that do things are out of fashion, but ones that test that things do things are in.

Anyhow, that was obviously a stupid comment on my part. Sorry Peter Cooper! I still love you!

But, yowza! I love the feedback I got from this. Hopefully some of you will enjoy this.

@Hampton:You are bullshit.
Do you ever work for a customer? I doubt that. Can you imagine that requesites change while development? If that happens you can not simply change or add a feature without automated tests..sure if you’re doing simple apps for you family and friends to show how smart you are then you don’t need any technics to avoid mistakes.

But if you have a business then it’s interesting how you can handle systems with uncountable LOC without changing behaviour at the other end. But forgive me I forgot that you know your software..right. You are the only one who will ever read your code..sure. It’s written in stone,that have to be the ultimate truth and will never ever change..sure,sure.

You are that bitch who’s putting the shit together and I’am that guy who have to fix it because it never runs like it should. You use global flags and call it a switch-framework. You are the bitch who I have to convience to use classes,use attributes and not create temporary variables,or to use inheritance to avoid unnecassary control structures.

Sit down and study your odds instead of generalizing everything what you don’t understand, kido !

So, first of all. Obviously a dickish comment is going to get dickish comments back. But, I use my full name in comments for a reason. You could Google me for a half second and find out that I co-ran a development shop with 12 people for 3 years. It was (and is still) highly profitable and while I was there we never employed a sales person or got a gig because we did Ruby. I’ll just repeat those two. We never did sales and we never got a gig because of Ruby. How did we get jobs? Recommendations from past clients to other business people.

I think some of my hate of testing comes from what you can gleam from the bulk of this comment. He details many, many terrible coding practices. These have nothing to do with testing! You can test bad software all you want. The two are unrelated. Testing help you write good software, but it can also help you write bad software. I have definitely seen lots of bad software that was well tested… bad paradigms, bad naming, horrible architecture, everything.

And here comes the best comment I have gotten so far!

“You are just such an arrogant son of a bitch. Also, looking at your picture just fills me with a need to smash your face. You certainly have one of those faces—and your emo mohawk and hipster glasses certainly don’t help matters (oh, but they make you so unique! You and the hundred million other teenagers that lay around masturbating at night while listening to Dashboard Confessional.) Anyhow, enough of the rage fest. Just stumbled upon your comment at http://www.rubyinside.com/turbocharge-your-ruby-testing-with-parallel-specs-2121.html and immediately felt a need to beat your face. Evidently, you’ve never worked in any sort of production coding environment having more than a few developers working on a given project. No. You were too busy masturbating to Chris Carrabba’s lovely voice.”

Oh man. Such great flame-attempt! And once again, he came to my site but apparently didn’t even read the sidebar. “Evidently, you’ve never worked in any sort of production coding environment having more than a few developers working on a given project” Yeah. Uh huh. Wikipedia. Uh huh. Right. Yeah. Ok. You win. 3 billion pages served by my app. Yeah. So right. 20 contributors. Yup. No. I have no idea. You win. I give up.

Anyhow, I know my initial comment was dickish. I don’t even remember writing it. I guess I should stay off blogs when I am drinking. So, apologies for that comment. But, I think these other ones take the cake and I thought you might enjoy them!

City Bus Simulator 2010

2009-12-09T13:51:00Z

When everyone was a kid, we all had dreams. Some of us wanted to be firemen, some of us wanted to be princesses, some of us wanted to be pilots. Personally, I’ve kept the pilot dream alive and have owned myriad different airplane simulation games. You know, being thousands of feet up, going at hundreds of miles an hour… at least I can see something interesting about it.

However, apparently some other people have different dreams. Dreams of one day becoming a bus driver. Hence, we have “City Bus Simulator 2010.” I believe the developers of this originally wanted to be bus drivers, but couldn’t cut it. Therefore, they ended up in game development and yet continued on with their dream to become real life bus drivers.

Don’t get me wrong, being a bus driver is a fine job. It pays ok and it keeps our transport system running. So, good work on that. But, chances are most bus drivers aren’t intensely passionate about their job. I doubt they go home and talk about it for hours on end about their love of different bus routes. Well, maybe the good stories are of the type that any public-facing job would have (aka, crazy people). But, the job itself is pretty… well boring. You drive in a circle. You process tickets. You go home.

Let me quote to you some of the exciting bits of information on the site

The working day of a bus driver can be very entertaining and full of variety. This is where we have set the main focus.
A lively realization of the normal workday full of curious events. And you are in the middle of all this!

With our very first release from the “City Bus Simulator” series we will offer something COMPLETELY new for this genre.

May we introduce:
„Carlos“. A new member of the bus driver team, who just can´t wait to begin his service for the New York Bus Company. You will control your character „Carlos“ via keyboard and mouse. Ego or Third Person view can be selected. „Carlos“ is animated and comes with speech.

I can be Carlos! He is soooooo excited to be a bus driver!

Now, lets look at the feature list!

The 3d cockpit is being simulated realistically with all controls and rotatable view
Animated wipers
Animated wheelchair lift
Kneeling
Lights switchable in complete interior
The player slips into the role of „Carlos“, bus driver in Manhattan
Character is animated and controllable using keyboard and mouse.
Ego- or 3rd person view can be selected; voice output with subtitles (can be switched on/off)
We have the typical Nova RTS Bus in operation as well as a drivable service vehicle.

Ohhhhh!!! Animated wheelchair lifts get me soooooo pumped! I hope it has sound effects for that.

Now, on to the real winner here. Here is an amazing video of what playing the game is like:

RUN! BUY IT! NOW!

ginstall with gems

2009-12-02T17:05:00Z

So, I don’t know what changed. Apparently some ruby gems have a fancy new way of building themselves and it gives this lovely complaint on Snow Leopard:

make install
/opt/local/bin/ginstall -c -m 0755 nokogiri.bundle /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/nokogiri-1.4.0/lib/nokogiri
make: /opt/local/bin/ginstall: No such file or directory
make: *** [/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/nokogiri-1.4.0/lib/nokogiri/nokogiri.bundle] Error 1

Oh man.

BUT, I FIGURED IT OUT. So, after a crap load of Googling… ginstall is the same thing as install. Thusly this should solve your problem.

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/install /opt/local/bin/ginstall

Enjoy!

"Sorry, no drinks allowed!"

2009-11-24T05:55:00Z

I’m sure you’ve heard this before. Its a chilly day out, you just got yourself a hot latte and you are about to go into a store and do some shopping. A burly security guard comes up to you and says, “Sorry, no drinks allowed. You’ll have to keep that outside.” You look around in abject horror. Is there a trash can nearby? Can I set it on a table? Do I want to sacrifice this drink? Am I in trouble? Are people looking at me? My response has usually been to walk out the moment I realize that I am there to determine if I’d like to voluntarily give them money.

This just happened to me today at a store that just opened next to where I work called Clement Joscelyne. It is a furniture store and me and my husband were on the hunt for some high-end furniture. That is to say, we were their best customers at that moment; people with money to spend. I was a heat seeking missile of “I need a coffee table.”

However, I was turned back at the door by the burly security guard you can see in the picture above. I was a customer ready to spend and I’m basically kicked out by a security guard. Of course, he didn’t think of it as kicking me out, but no alternatives were given. If there isn’t a table to put drinks on, then you are effectively kicked out. Its embarrassing, weird, humiliating, and stressful. And, Clement Joscelyne made sure that those feelings were my first impression of their brand and store. When I think of their store, I think of humiliation and rejection.

A good retail (and consumer) experience is one of acceptance and improvement. “You can be like us.” Think of your favourite store. How does it make you feel to buy something there? Do you feel like you are joining a club? Do you feel like you’re improving yourself? Do you feel welcome and happy? Of course you do! That’s the whole point of modern retailing. Its no longer about snobby eliteness, its about being welcoming and cool. Starbucks and Apple are the kings of this kind of brand experience. There is a secret language at Starbucks that you have to use and the staff help you speak it. Its like a fun, warm, upper-end club to be part of. The message is: “Don’t worry. Give us your money and you can be cool too!”

The Apple Store, Hugo Boss, Bose, Harrods, Bloomingdales, and many more have never bothered me about having a drink. But, Clement Joscelyne totally alienated me. When I’m going to spend my pound, I’m going to go someplace that makes me feel cool instead of feeling like they consider me an untrustworthy child.

If they are so alienating, why do these policies exist? Its a simple fear of monetary loss from people who spill drinks on items and then don’t pay for them.

Let’s do some theoretical math for fun. I’d say that in an up market area, only 20% of people who did damage to an article would not be willing to pay to replace it. And, lets say that 1% of the time, someone spills their drink. And after that, I’d say its only 30% of those cases where it actually hits something that stains/damages. So, we’ve calculated for every customer that comes in with a drink, there is a 0.06% chance that they’ll cost the company any money.

If the % of customers who purchase an item isn’t higher than that, then you have a problem drinks or no drinks. How many items would the (assuming 15 drinks a day) 5,400 people you have bought? How many items get spilled on in a year? I assume only a couple.

Plus, its not just the 15 a day. There are indirect effects from those 15. A bad brand impression spreads much faster than a positive one.

I am very certain that Clement Joscelyne had a rash of spills in their flagship store that caused them to institute the policy. However, my arguement is that they are doing wayyyy more damage to the brand than those damaged items could have cost. You can’t treat customers like children and you can’t have their first impression of your store being such a strongly negative feeling. They lost my sale and have made an unhappy customer.

Let’s hope Clement Joscelyne changes their policy or at least provides a table for drinks. Or they very well may end up yet-another-closed-furniture-chain.

Culture Shock or: How I Stopped Worrying and Enjoyed the Culturgeddon

2009-10-21T09:59:00Z

(Note, everytime in this post I say America I mean Canamerica)

Ah, beautiful lovely England. And I don’t mean that sarcastically. England is an absolutely stunningly beautiful place. The more I look at it, the more I realize just how pretty it is. For those of you out of the loop, I’ve recently relocated to England. Cambridge to be exact. And CB2 8PB, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, East of England, England, Britain, United Kingdom. They sure do have lots of categories for naming, but that’s a subject for another posting all together.

Yes, its true. On the auspicious day of September the 11th, 2009, I followed my heart across the sea to live in a magical place known as England-town. I had no illusions before the move. I am no stranger to being a stranger in a new place. After being born and bred in Florida, I was shipped off to slightly chillier South Carolina where I got to enjoy the beautiful mountains. Then, I dropped out of school and shipped myself to the much chillier New York City. Then, I followed my heart to the much, much chillier Toronto. Each of those places makes you feel a little bit like a foreigner and in an increasing manner.

Now I’ve gone and done it. This time, I truly am a foreigner. Being an American in Canada is like being a Canadian. No one can detect a difference. I felt at home and blended in accordingly. However, here… it is a different story all together. Every word I speak I am instantly singled out as being “different”. Being a white male from America, I am not used to this. Sure, I’m gay, but you can’t really tell. I get to pick and choose when I’m different. Such is the luxury of being the dominant force in a culture. Being different is like a game. “When I go to this meeting, should I be different or not?”

But now I can’t even go to the store (shop) across the street without feeling like I’m wearing jean shorts to a cocktail party. I do my best to mask it. I say “cheers” under my breath. I attempt to say as little as I possibly can and see if they notice. For a short time, while in public, I attempted to speak quietly and in a slightly English accent as to attempt to fool passerby’s. Its not that I want to affect a British accent (I was warned many times before I left that I would be disowned for such treason). However, now I see why Madonna did it. You do spend enough time sounding different and you just want to sound the same. And you know Madonna did live in Britain married to a British guy. Luckily, my accent remains intact. I shall take my role as foreigner with some dignity.

Being an American is a unique position here. I’ve been shocked at exactly how much of America has been imported here. The local pizza place? Pizza hut. Want a sandwich? Subway. There is even an American-style Bowling Alley (they call it Ten-Pin... and yes modern bowling started in America). All of these places are within 1 block of my apartment. Did I mention that the cinema only runs American movies?

The reason this makes things so much harder is that most people here have strong ideas about Americans, but haven’t ever met one. They live with America as sort of a cultural ghost floating around everywhere they turn. Add to it that there are very, very few Americans living in England, and you end up being kind of an oddity. I think English people don’t really know what to make of America.

My feelings about being a Canamerican are hard to express properly. Because of the extremeness on both sides of my heart and head. On the one hand, I am critical of my country. On the other hand, I can’t think of anything more amazing than America. I think what people miss about America is the variety. There is no “American”. The idea of being American is a myth. Its just a collection of people who mostly speak English who believe in democracy, freedom, and business. That’s it. We’ve made those words lose meaning, but almost every American believes in those 3 words endlessly. They just interpret them differently. Is the business a co-op or a mega conglomerate? Is freedom social liberties or libertarian small goverment? America is just one big debate on what those three words mean.

Staring at Canamerica is like staring at the Sun. It is so vast, powerful, diverse, changing, swirling, horrible, and stunning. Those are equal compliments and statements of fear.

Canamerica is frightening. What do you make of that externally? How should you feel being on the outside staring at that wild beast across the Atlantic. A bit jealous and also a bit worried. I think that’s how people see Americans.

I keep trying to explain to people that being British in America means that you are an American. Ricky Gervaise can star in movies in America, about Americans, with his British accent, without any explanation, because it just seems fine. We assume Ricky’s character has moved to America and lives there. This assumption even works on British audiences watching his movies. It is never odd that a British person would be living in America. I think that’s really interesting. Anytime an American shows up on the “tele” here, it is explained why they are in England. And that simply makes me uncomfortable.

I don’t want to be a foreigner. I want to feel at home.

To be clear though, British people have been ridiculously nice and charming and interesting. This has more to do with my own brain and the way I function than anything else.

I know that this post is going on too long. I won’t promise to make it a series, but I will say I have a lot more to say. So many comments to make about the cultural differences.

I hope I can make a home here. Britain is wonderful, amazing, beautiful, charming, and calm. As Winston Churchill famously said, “Being born British is like winning the lottery of life.”

To conclude the personal news section. I have moved into a swanky flat in a cool area of town with lots of things to do. I have a killer view, no furniture (its on the ocean!), and have been doing my best to get work done, make friends, and stay sane. Oh, you can totally peak at my flat if you want. Second from the top. Mobile Wikipedia continues to grow. My iPhone businesses are booming. And I’m getting married on November 11th, to the most awesome guy in the universe (except me, obviously).

You should get an award for reading all this!

Hampton's 26th Year In Review

2009-09-02T20:41:00Z

My friends have a tradition where on our birthday, we write down everything we accomplished in the last year. And, you have to fill up one entry for every year of your life. Here is my list this year.

In no particular order:

Sold an app to Wikimedia and got a job there
Had two #1 apps in the iTunes store
Got engaged to @mlintorn
Moved from Canada to the US
Made a living off Dictionary!
Interviewed on about.com and Mobile Orchard
Visited: YYZ, JAX, LGW, SFO, LAX, MCO, LAS, DEN
Saw a huge tornado
Got mentioned in Time magazine
Launched Wikipedia Mobile with 182 million page views
Haml more popular than ever and Sass comes into its own with Compass
Had a relationship with 100% honesty
Visited theme parks in Orlando four times
Worked with @wycats
Became friends with Sara D and Kelly
Tried my hand at club promotion
Earned my parents’ respect
Fell in love with Wall St Bar in Jacksonville
Redesigned hamptoncatlin.com
Met @mlintorn
Went to MaxFunCon
Supported The Sound of Young America
Had a live video show with Steven Bristol
Hired my first Intern
Met Jesse Thorn
Made more money than parents
Reconnected with @adambeaugh

Where is _Why?

2009-08-20T15:28:00Z

_why has obviously decided to see if he can escape the world he created for himself online. I think its an interesting experiment and it happens to coincide with a similar experiment going on over at Wired with a contest to find Evan Ratliff. The whole contest is based on a really interesting article he wrote titled “Gone Forever: What Does It Take to Really Disappear?”

Is why trying this experiment himself? Why take down all the repos and actually hurt other people who were trying to use the software he wrote? Are all of us Open Source contributors and creators liable to keep our repos up?

_why has certainly put a lot of those questions to the forefront.

I think we are doing the right thing by not searching for him, but letting him be. If he wants to go away, let him. However, I also saw this posted in a Reddit comment chain.

$ host whytheluckystiff.net
  whytheluckystiff.net has address 72.232.19.34
$ curl 72.232.19.34
  curl: (7) couldn't connect to host
$ host 72.232.19.34
34.19.232.72.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer Cewki.com.
$ curl Cewki.com
<html>
    <head>
        <title>where's _why?</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1>where's _why?</h1>
        <p>see: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=773106">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=773106</p>
    </body>
</html>
$ whois Cewki.com
Registrant [350005]:
        Ken Jensen ken@softwaremasters.com
        P.O. Box 1592
        Ellicott City
        MD
        21784
        US

And then you can checkout SoftwareMasters.com.

Obviously, this is was a breadcrumb left for us. Does this reveal who _why is? Or does this reveal that someone found some fancy IP tricks?

Its hard to disappear.

Also, before I go. I wanted to say thanks to _why for shoes (which got me back into GUI development) and for markaby. Markaby came out before Haml and it inspired me to think outside the box. So, thanks _why. Enjoy the rest of your life and thanks for everything.

Amusing Wikimedia Feedback

2009-08-03T17:16:00Z

I posted an article over at Wikimedia Techblog about amusing feedback we’ve received.

GO READ IT NOW!

Lessions from Wikipedia, aka "Hampton Hates Psychic Scaling"

2009-07-25T01:12:00Z

Hampton Hates Psychic Scaling from Hampton Catlin on Vimeo.

Rhodes To Ruby

2009-02-14T21:04:00Z

Just kind of wanted to give a quick update about the work I’ve been doing at Wikimedia (aka, Wikipedia). First of all, we have beta launched the open web interface for browsing Wikipedia on your WebKit (or similar) based mobile device. You can check out en.m.wikipedia.org to see what I’m talking about. Its currently beta and represents the bit of code called wikimedia-mobile.

I was working on the iPhone native app and about to deploy it in late January, when I got contacted by Rhodes Mobile who have a framework they have developed that allows you to program a local “web server” like thing on a mobile device. The deal is, once you build it, it can basically run on iPhone, Android (soon), Blackberry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. Yes, you heard me right. Write once (in Ruby!) and run on all major smartphones.

I knew I didn’t have the free time to go learn a new framework and write something that would be up-to-par, so they graciously offered to build a basic app for Wikimedia and then release the copyright to us. Things are going very well with the development, and in the next few weeks we should be rolling out an official Wikipedia iPhone app and soon after that start hitting other platforms.

Not only do I get to only manage two projects and hit all the phones I wanted, but I get to do it in the same language.

We aren’t 100% committed to it yet (have to see the final result), but things are looking extremely promising. The framework definitely is robust and interesting, but it does lack some of the sleekness and simplicity that I look for in Ruby projects. However, I can’t really complain. The framework does more than I could have ever asked for.

I highly recommend checking them out if you are looking to deploy a remote-synchronized-data app and would like to deploy on more than one mobile OS.

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!