Disqus - Latest Comments for agilous

Re: Jim Weirich

Bill Barnett — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 19:53:36 -0000

One of my fondest memories of Jim was one of my very first memories of him. Mark Windholtz had recently founded the Cincinnati eXtreme Programmers group through which I met four of the five people with whom I co-founded Gaslight.

Mark had us all working on eCal, a web-based calendaring app that we were going to code up as a team using TDD, CI and iterative design. We'd write some stories and then spend the remainder of the meeting ensuring everyone had Java and Tomcat installed, and reading up about how to write FitNesse tests.

Meanwhile, Jim would be off to one side of the room cranking out Ruby code while pairing with anyone curious enough to ask what he was doing. Mind you, this was in the Dark Ages before Rails (2002-2003 or so). Jim didn't have to stand in front of the room and demand we pay attention to him or to Ruby. All he had to do was crank out a half dozen stories in Ruby each meeting while the remainder of the attendees struggled to finish one in Java.

We never did launch eCal although Jim could easily have launched his Ruby version. Go figure! We were fortunate in Cincinnati to have Jim in easy reach for so long. I think we mourn his loss because it is our loss really. How does a community recover from such a loss? If it has any hope, and Jim certainly believed in our community, then it should strive to espouse the qualities Jim embodied so thoroughly; those being relentless pursuit of knowledge with child-like curiosity, the patience of a thousand Jobs, and a sense of humor and openness that put everyone at ease.

My condolences to Jim's family and friends.

Re: Bicycle. Bicycle!

Bill Barnett — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 16:28:12 -0000

Here's a great post about urban biking in Detroit from Shawn Crowley of Atomic Object:

http://spin.atomicobject.co...

Re: Gaslight: Michael Guterl: Nibbles and Gorillas

Bill Barnett — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:40:42 -0000

He's huge alright!

Re: Gaslight Blog, How I Sold Gaslight On Our New Brand

Bill Barnett — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 12:38:51 -0000

I'd like to chime in as the oldest of Gaslight's old guard and one of the Gaslight flame's staunchest defenders. I still like the old logo and disliked the new logo when I first saw it.

What I didn't understand, and what Kristin's skill and talent have subsequently taught me is that the brand is so much more than a logo. I can't see nor imagine how the old flame could have found the same utility as Kristin's design, and we all get the feeling that Kristin is just getting started.

Thanks Kristin for your patience and perseverance. Well done!

Re: Generating Cucumber Testing Infrastructure

Bill Barnett — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 21:58:45 -0000

Still not working for me in RubyMine 4.5. See the attached image. Attempts to run feature files result in the "Cucumber support disabled because 'cucumber-rails' gem or Cucumber Rails plugin are missing" despite the fact that the gem is installed as evidenced by the attached image.

Also the cucumber:install generator is broken as it passes invalid options.

For now I'm running my cukes via the command line although I'd prefer to run them in RubyMine as I do my unit/functional/integration tests.

Re: http://blog.gaslightsoftware.com/post/25026551294

Bill Barnett — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 21:57:24 -0000

Paul contacted us and I shared with him our thoughts about working with new entrepreneurs. It should be evident that we receive many such inquiries and my reply to Paul was just the latest version of a work that has seen many iterations. We think it's approaching product/market fit! :)

Re: Why Lean Canvas vs Business Model Canvas?

Bill Barnett — Mon, 28 May 2012 12:17:12 -0000

Thanks, this is validating something I'm experimenting with at present. I'm part of a software consultancy, a business model that is fairly well understood. I'm using the business model canvas as a tool to focus the team. Aside from typical consulting services we're creating products that seem a more natural fit for Ash's lean canvas.

Re: Mac OS X, Ruby, CGI without Rails

Bill Barnett — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 11:21:38 -0000

Can you post the relevant parts of /var/log/httpd/error_log?

Re: Giving stuff away - rubyist

Bill Barnett — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:37:24 -0000

For pricing strategies (and tons of other such minutia) hit up Rob in the morning. He can site you a couple of the studies I'm sure you'd find interesting.

Re: Mac OS X, Ruby, CGI without Rails

Bill Barnett — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 11:24:51 -0000

I assume that you have the sqlite3 gem installed since your script runs as expected via the command line. Is it installed globally (so that the user which runs your HTTP server can access it) or locally? That's my primary suspicion. Also, what is your HTTP server log telling you?

Have you seen gist.github.com? Could you paste your code there and share it here? Also, it would be helpful if you could paste any relevant log out into another file using the "Add another file..." link on the gist page.

Good luck.

Re: http://coachbrinkmann.tumblr.com/post/11723151066

Bill Barnett — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:51:50 -0000

We revisited the Rails generators too while getting the Regional Registration project under way. At this point, the key is to see how much the students are picking up since we're hitting them with a boatload of information. So far, we're very impressed with their performance.

Re: http://coachbrinkmann.tumblr.com/post/11456746449

Bill Barnett — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 22:04:01 -0000

Thanks for the post Spencer. We just brushed the surface on associations in Rails but you'll be learning more about them in coming sessions. Associations are the functionality within Rails that permits you to link objects (models) within the application, in this case, guests are "associated" with (or linked to) sellers via the form field you mention. Rails gives you the ability to easily configure the options the user sees that helps them determine which seller to associate a guest with when creating guests.

With regard to your laptop, are you able to bring it to school for one of our meetings? That would help us pinpoint the issue you're face.

Re: 4 Entrepreneurial Cities To Keep Your Eye On

Bill Barnett — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:58:34 -0000

All four cities sound like hotbeds of entrepreneurship but there's another great one just down I-74 from Indy, Cincinnati. Investors at Queen City Angels and Blue Chip Ventures help fund startups at The Brandery (seed stage accelerator) and CincyTech (incurabor for high growth startups). Cincinnati also has a vibrant tech community well documented by the TechLife Cincinnati meetup group which aggregates dozens of local tech meetup groups. Cincinnati has several coworking spaces, including the one I help found (Cincinnati Coworks) and one of the first lean startup circles in the country. Cincinnati continues to maintain its strong tradition of innovation.

Re: How To Turn Your Hobby Into A Profitable Business – With Chris Wanstrath

Bill Barnett — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 09:54:10 -0000

I've heard Chris speak many times but what resonated with me in this video was his use of the free level to build community. As entrepreneurs I think we sometimes under estimate the value of giving a portion of our product away and I mean on a grand scale like GitHub. To quote Chris on providing a free level of service; "it gets us a lot of users, it gets us a lot of good will, and it gets us a really, really great community."

Good stuff. Bright man.

Re: Aren't you just like ING?

Bill Barnett — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 01:35:14 -0000

Great post. At BudgetSketch we share BankSimple's "David versus Goliath" attitude and acronym although we give it a twist ("B$"). We're constantly being asked, "aren't you just like Mint?" If you can't see that we're not then you're not ready for BudgetSketch but BankSimple is an idea whose time has come. We wish them good fortune, literally.

Re: How We're Building a Better Bank: Negotiating Privacy & Utility

Bill Barnett — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:19:21 -0000

There is a ton of room for innovation in banking and this post highlights one example. Note to the international readers, this is good news for you because Banksimple appears willing to spoon feed you advice on how to innovate within your countries.

I know it is cliche but I'm encouraged that Banksimple appears to be attempting to tilt the balance back toward favoring Main Street instead of Madison Avenue and Wall Street who have held sway for too long. Cleverly disguised products like Mint.com and HelloWallet.com are simply more of the same from the latter with Web 2.0 spit and polish intended to lull the masses back to sleep as they spend themselves into oblivion.

I tend to be a bit more subversive about personal finance matters but I like what I've been reading from Banksimple so far and guess that it would be easy to make more than one close friend in their ranks. Only the future will tell what course they take. At present I feel that Americans are far better off placing their money in a credit union or community bank, far from the mischief it typically gets into in NYC and Washington DC.

Re: Servere Weather? Must Be the NHL Play-offs on NBC!

Bill Barnett — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:19:40 -0000

I hear you. My preference would be that the games air on ESPN like "the good ol' days." The Fox Sports network does such a poor job of pushing accurate programming information to DirecTV subscribers that they would be a distant second choice.

In this age of technology it still sucks to be a hockey fan in this city. Sad.

Re: I Need Some Help!

Bill Barnett — Sat, 30 May 2009 02:46:02 -0000

I'm not sure if you would need a vehicle this cheap but a fellow PF blogger over at Out Of Debt Christian has some excellent advice on why it is a good idea to trade down your vehicle when you're attacking your debt.

Re: Oops: Did Rudder Just Send Your Financial Data to Someone Else?

Bill Barnett — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:14:43 -0000

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am the vice president of Finagilous LLC, creators of BudgetSketch, a "competitor" of Rudder's, to the degree that BudgetSketch is only about creating a monthly zero balance budget and Rudder has budgeting management features.

Matt @ Thrive has summed up the salient points of this issue and I highly recommend that you read his remarks carefully.

With regard to Craig's comment, the manner in which data is imported into an app has nothing to do with the ill-conceived (IMHO) idea of sending sensitive financial information to users via unencrypted email messages. Rudder's failure goes beyond that inasmuch as it appears that some users received messages containing the financial data of other users, not only without the other users' consent, but containing a link that would grant the message recipient access to these other users' Rudder accounts.

I'm afraid that Rudder has handed skeptics like OMV a valid example upon which to base their arguably misguided view of technology.

Re: Rails on Windows

Bill Barnett — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:30:56 -0000

Rails installs the WEBrick (http://www.webrick.org/) HTTP server. Think of it as Apache Light implemented in Ruby. If you reply with the error you're receiving we'll see if we can help. Just copy and paste the command line output in your reply.

Good luck!

Re: What You can Learn from a 12 year old about Budgeting

Bill Barnett — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:53:03 -0000

One of the best budgeting posts I've read in a while (and I've read a lot)! Thanks for sharing. You were exceptionally driven for a (pre-)teen but your lesson should serve as an example for all ages. The bottom line is learning to delay pleasure, although at the rate you were "raking it in" it sounds like you weren't suffering too much! Again, great post.

Re: Budgeting versus Expense Tracking

Bill Barnett — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:43:03 -0000

Thanks Mrs. Micah!

Let me try another approach. What, financially, are your obligations? Here are mine. See if they don't align with yours.

1. Food
2. Shelter
3. Transportation (Gas & Insurance - No car payment, Woo hoo!)
4. A small amount of spending money
5. Utilities (Phone, Electricity, Water, Waste Collection)
6. Debt Obligations
7. Everything else

Your list may vary to a certain degree but that is fine. It is after all "your" list. Here is my list of financial priorities. It is short.

1. Get out of debt.
2. Do not return to debt.
3. Save for retirement.

Looking at my lists of obligations and priorities, it is trivial to create a budget. Here's how I do it.

1. Compute the minimum amount I can spend on obligations 1-5 each month so I can maximize payments to obligation 6.
2. Think (but don't obsess) about how cool it will be one day to get to obligation 7.
3. Follow the plan.

I can easily determine the cost of all of my obligations and if I want to be really nerdy about it I can look at past spending (expense tracking) to see if I am being reasonable but that seems like a lot of wasted effort (to a free spirit) when I can say, "I can buy 2 meals for the entire family every day at Happy Burger for $20 times 15 days equals $300 for food," or "I drive 15 miles round trip each day for work times 15 days at 20MPG and gas is $2/gal. equals $22.50 for gas."

When gas prices go back up, I'll be paying off less debt. It's as simple as that and I did it without tracking a single expense but that doesn't mean there is no room for tracking expenses. How else would I know that I was following my plan? However, the budget came first. It served as a declaration of my financial priorities and leads to financial freedom.

In the end, we may have to agree to disagree but to my way of thinking budgeting is a proactive plan and expense tracking is simply a progress report. For decades, all I had was a dismal progress report. Only after I created my first plan (budget) did I begin to see results.

All my best to you and all your readers with your financial goals however you find best to achieve them!

Re: 10 ways to stop worrying so much about money

Bill Barnett — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:36:56 -0000

Great post! I would add "focus on more important matters" which is difficult to conceive of in these trying times. It helps if you have cute kids or other loved ones to help you discover such things:

http://www.wheresourmoney.c...

Again, great post.

Re: Tree.com Acquires Mint Competitor Thrive

Bill Barnett — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:35:59 -0000

Matt, I sincerely believe every word you said. Your heart seems to be in the right place and I encourage you to follow it. Its hard. I know it.

The issue with Thrive and others like it is the "lead a horse by its tail" approach to budgeting. What Thrive and others call "budgeting" is accounting/spending tracking, looking backward, not forward. Budgeting is a plan on what you intend to do, not a snap shot of what you have done.

I hope readers do not misread my remarks which were targeted mainly at Mint and the like. My hope for Thrive quite possibly got lost in my rant, which seldom happens in blog comments!

Re: Tree.com Acquires Mint Competitor Thrive

Bill Barnett — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 11:02:17 -0000

Hilarious! The charade continues.

The best part? Mint "has identified more than $100 million in potential savings for its users." The key word being "potential" but would more honestly be worded as "unlikely" given the financial shell game most Americans play with credit, consolidating debt onto new "low introductory interest rate" cards so they can max out their existing account once more.

Of course, banks (AKA the investors of Mint et al) are quite aware of this behavior. They should be. They created it. Makes a great business plan, unless you have a soul.

If that's not where Tree.com is taking Thrive then hats off to them but if I were a betting man...

Pity. But what do I know? I'm just a "get out of debt and stay out of debt" kool-aid drinker.