Keen to improve my running ability in 2010 has been further inspired by a free event organised by volunteers. I took part in the first ever Newcastle Parkrun on Saturday and really enjoyed it, despite the very wet and windy weather! If you’re looking for a free 5K timed event I would recommend you check it out.

Ava (our Dalmatian) even managed to get a small mention in the northern running news article covering the event. Even though she cost me some valuable time stopping twice to toilet I’ll be taking her again. She’s a great running partner, even if I get the impression she’s thinking “get a shift on Luke this is far too easy for me” as she trots along effortlessly and I’m gasping for air. Our time (now my PB) for the run was 22:53 giving a good target to try and beat next time.

I always try my best to write extremely neat code; even if I fail. I’m a complete stickler for it. I think it’s because as a programmer one of things that frustrates me most is looking at messy code. Before I can even begin to start solving or understanding the logic involved I often spend time sorting out the indention. Whilst doing that I’m usually thinking “this should already be done, not many clients are particularly willing to pay for time spent on this”. The idea of re-factoring bad code is a difficult sell; we’ve found explaining the long time benefits and future time saving can help.

I think my C programming tutor back at uni grilled it into me, that the code just has to be neat and well organised, even if it doesn’t work initially. Thinking back it was probably just to make her life easier, seeing as she had to review it all. But hey the result it’s had on me is hopefully a good thing, helpful to me and others who look at my code.

Building Rails applications daily does tend to help with many conventions; most of the code I pick up has that going for it, although staying DRY, useful comments, good documentation, sensible variable names and consistent indentation especially are often slightly lacking.

Everybody is probably guilty of thinking I’ll just get this working first, then I’ll organise it afterwards. The problem I’ve found with that approach is it very rarely gets sorted, leaving your perfect solution looking a little wilted, confusing and quite simply messy. If like me you feel you could improve and would like to perfect the readability of your own code, I suggest you checkout the Top 15+ Best Practices for Writing Super Readable Code article posted this morning. It’s a great tutorial; just imagine the hours we could save ourselves in the long run…

Today I was asked to create better looking buttons for the project I’m working on “just like those one on the Apple website”. To be fair my first attempt was looking pretty poor so I decided to correct it.

In the past I’ve gone down the route of creating a nice looking base image (which probably took me an age) and saving it out many times based on the text; but 50+ buttons later that soon became extremely annoying! I’ve used the sliding doors technical a couple of times but with the spans and links that just doesn’t sit with me, especially as buttons are a constant reoccurring element in our web applications.

After a quick Google I found this page by ZURB: Super Awesome Buttons with CSS3 and RGBA, a simple use of CCS3 and viola! The buttons look decent enough in IE and they’ve even gone to the effort of creating extra classes so basically you pick your size, colour and you’re done!

I’d be please to hear what techniques anybody else is using?

The thing I love about the iPhone is its shear diversity. Last Friday I was sitting in the lounge pondering over the busy week passed, at the same time I really wanted to listen to the Friday Floor Fillers, as you do…

Thinking back to what a mate once twittered, “I won’t get an iPhone it’s missing too many features, like a Radio” it got me thinking surely this is possible!

Seeing as I don’t have a radio anywhere near the lounge the docking station seemed to be staring right back at me. Straight away I tried the Radio One home page, but the listen live functionality requires a Flash player. The next step as usual was to trust in Google, which more or less lead me straight to this page:

http://www.bbcstreams.com

I downloaded the free FStream application from the App Store, entered the asx feed, plugged the iPhone into the docking station and there it was in seconds blasting away. Brilliant.

Finally it’s here, my blog has arrived! It’s been a busy few days getting things up and running. I’ve been transferring my domain to 123-reg, configuring DNS, finding an email provider, finalising the design, deploying to heroku and scrapping this first post together.

To get things up and running I’ve chosen to push everything up into the cloud. I’ve spent countless hours setting up servers in the past but to be honest, it’s really not where my passion lies. Heroku’s free plan suits my needs just fine for now and I must say I have been blown away at how easy those guys have made it to deploy rails apps, incredible!

I’ve opted for Google Apps to provide my email; the personal plan is free and easily provides me with what I need. Sending out emails will be a big requirement for the next project so I thought I’d get testing.
Anyways, here are a few ideas that spring to mind in terms of what I’m hoping to achieve with the site:

• Help other rails developers using examples from our development team’s experience.
• Hopefully improve my writing style. Simply by writing more.
• Keep the few people that care up to date with what’s going on in my life

Finally I’d like to thank the following, Lee Irving (informing about the management in 123-reg), David Wong (helping out with Google apps), David Elliott and Dave Kennedy for their expert DNS advice, Tom Tinsley for inspiring me to re-think my initial design (a backgroundlabs theme came to the rescue at the very last minute) and Leo Babauta with his book The Power of Less which inspired me to actually do something about my shockingly bad website that’s been hanging around.

I guess all that’s left to say is watch this space!