As Beavis & Butthead would say: Fire! Fire!

•17Sep08 • 2 Comments

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire. — Reggie Leach

master bath toilet
This is advice I appear to have taken a bit too literally. I resigned from Adobe a few weeks ago, and Monday was my last day. That was a big life change, but it was one I was looking forward to. I’ve got a startup idea I’m working on, and I’ve been talking to some really interesting startups.

Unfortunately, the powers that be decided that wouldn’t be quite enough upheaval, so they set my house on fire Sunday morning. Thankfully no one was home but my older dog, Ozzie, and he got out safely. But the damage is pretty extensive and we won’t be able to move back home for 2-4 months.

Still, it could have been a lot worse. Our house didn’t burn down completely – the firefighters told us another ten minutes and it would have been all over. Here are some pictures for the curious.

Continuous Integration and Continuous Testing

•31Aug08 • 1 Comment

I recently installed CruiseControl.rb on my MacBook Pro, and its been a great help. But I’ve also been looking at “Continuous Testing” tools like the autotest feature of ZenTest. I don’t find autotest to be a great fit for my laptop – it kills battery life if I forget to turn it off, and it makes the machine hot even when I’m plugged in.

I’m curious: what do other people do for Continuous Integration and/or Continuous Testing on their small team projects? What are the gotchas? Any wish lists?

Mock up your app with Balsamiq Mockups

•31Aug08 • Comments Off on Mock up your app with Balsamiq Mockups

This post is a plug for a great new tool: Mockups. It makes it brain-dead simple to create quick sketches of your application design, and it integrates with Jira and Confluence. I bought a copy to do the mockups of a new startup idea I had, and I love it.

The product is the first from a new company, Balsamiq, started by a good friend who worked on Acrobat.com. Check it out!

Mozilla TraceMonkey speeds javascript

•25Aug08 • Comments Off on Mozilla TraceMonkey speeds javascript

I think it is very cool how much progress is being made on Javascript performance in both Firefox and Safari – very exciting times. It will be interesting to see if/how/when Microsoft can step up to the bar.

It’s also cool how the Mozilla/Firefox effort was fueled in part by the donation of Tamarin and Tamarin Tracing to Mozilla. I hope this collaboration can continue to be productive.