Here’s what I released:

1. Update to web app for client M
2. Update and open up for Twimmetry
3. Repurposing of a deployment script for use with Twimmetry

The web app update was straight-forward, although it presented a few small hassles.

Likewise the Twimmetry mods largely involved turning off the beta-user requirement (now anyone can use the site) and fixing a few bugs here and there. Technically I did two releases of Twimmetry over two days, but that didn’t sound fun to count toward my goal. My most embarrassing bug wasn’t actually a software bug at all. I misspelled “achieve”. ‘I’ before ‘E’, right? Terrible.

The toughest bit of code to release actually turned out to be the deployment script. That should have been the easiest, since I was totally cheating and just copying an existing deployment script and making a few small changes. Or so I thought. I’ll spare you the long version and just sum up by saying that I need better standardization on how I store my Django projects in Subversion and how they are structured for deployment. I also shouldn’t debug code at 2AM… ever.

I need to find a nice push-button, multi-platform deployment solution that works the way I think and doesn’t do a bunch of other crap like server admin which is nice but overkill for an apps shop like mine. One nice thing about the deployment scripts that I’m using is that they are totally customizable and they can reproduce any action that I take at the command line. (I’m using Python and pexpect if you’re wondering.) I pay a hefty price for that power sometimes though. Also, while I have crazy wizard-like powers at the command line, GUI-driven, non-Web Windows deployments are gumming me up. But I digress.

Next challenge: grow from 3 in 3 to 7 in 7. Although I may give myself a day off because my neighbors are currently reenacting the Revolution, the Civil War, and the Dresden bombings – simultaneously – in my neighborhood. It’s a tad difficult to concentrate.

Happy 4th!

I once read a short story about a circus performer who made a deal with the devil. In exchange for his immortal soul the performer would become the greatest acrobat in the world. I don’t remember many details, but the gist of the story was that the Devil could give him the ability to withstand a fall from any height. And sure enough, the Devil kept his word. The Devil offered no magic though, only training. The training was simple: To start with, the guy had to roll out of bed and fall onto the floor every morning when he woke up. After he’d done that for a week, the devil had him practice falling off a ladder until he could do that comfortably and without hurting himself. This pattern continued. Eventually the performer worked his way up to being able to fall from 30 feet without hurting himself.

“So what you’re saying is that you made a deal with the Devil and/or you want to be an acrobat?”

Uh… no. (wtf?)

What I’m saying is that I’d like to revisit my 30 in 30 project. Much like our circus performer, I aim to take baby steps. If you’ve been around me long enough you’ll eventually hear me go on and on about kaizen and baby steps. And that is the tool I’m whipping out here.

Excuse me while I whip this out.

I’m going to scale things down to a more manageable size via the time-honored Order of Magnitude reduction. That is to say, instead of 30 releases in 30 days, how about I shoot for 300 releases in 0.3 days?

Wait. Taps calculator.

How about 3 releases in 3 days?

Sounds fairly manageable. Same terms as before. Dirty tricks? Allowed? Hand waving? Totally cool. Victory declaration, regardless of outcome? Obligatory.

So. We’ll see.

So yeah, that didn’t work out so great.

“WTF?” you might ask.

Yeah, I know. Lame. But you know what? I just wasn’t into it. When I started on 30-in-30 the first time, back in March, I was gung ho. I was pumped. I knew what I wanted to do and how I was going to do it. Then – almost immediately – the doctors visits and tests started up (culminating in colonoscopy) and I didn’t think I’d be able to finish respectably.

Well I know better NOW, don’t I? Jeez. If I had kept my mouth shut I’d have had about 14 releases in that first 30 days. Personally, I expected to end up in the low 20s, so 14 wouldn’t have been too bad. Especially given the health stuff.

But this… restarting and then just flaming out? Ugh. Tres lame. And no excuses. I suck. I actually considered dropping the whole thing about two weeks ago, but I’m great at deluding myself. “I can still pull this off!” I said.

Obviously.

The biggest problem overall has been motivation. I just didn’t have the vision for 30-in-30 that I had back in March. Also, my focus changed. In March I figured I’d knock out a lot of little projects that had been piling up and maybe get a few larger projects off the ground, and it would all work out. When I came back at this in May I realized that I didn’t care about the little stuff. I could only think about the bigger projects.

I’m like that though, at least for my personal projects. Butterfly-brained. When there is a client or an employer there is external motivation, and often external scaffolding (coworkers, systems, tools, etc.) that make getting things done much easier. But when it’s my own personal interests, that’s where I falter. I am the cobbler. My personal projects go unshod.

That doesn’t mean I’m giving up though. I don’t generally like to stop when I fail. (Definition of crazy?) I tend to back up and go more slowly to see where I fucked up and to try to manage a little better.

So I’ll be taking another shot at this. I might just have to scale it down a bit. More later.

Do you ever want to allow a non-technical user to edit just a part of a webpage? Just one paragraph? Or just some text over in the corner? That’s what Snippetology is for. You create a named snippet of text in the database by using an editor in the Django Admin panel. Then in the the webpage template you include a little tag that retrieves that snippet by name from the database and displays it. From that point forward your user can edit the text in the Django Admin panel and their changes will appear in the part of the webpage that you let them control.

This is basic CMS stuff. Django, not being a CMS, does not do this for you. (Or at least it did not at the time I created this. Things are moving so fast with Django and the surrounding community that there could easily be a solution I’m unaware of.)

Like any good tool, there is an “advanced” use for it. Snippets can contain all sorts of things: tags for embedded videos or Flash animations, or behind the scenes stuff like CSS and Javascript. So anything can be in a snippet. Cool! (Well, cool as long as you trust your users. You DO trust your users, don’t you?)

Next I added a randomizing filter. What the filter does is select a random line from the text in a particular snippet. This makes for interesting possibilities. The randomizing feature was originally requested by a client for a tagline generator. But since then it has become clear that more uses exist. For instance, put a banner image tag with a link tag on each line and you’ve created your own ad rotator. And if you’ve been around the web for any length of time, you know that ad rotators get used for all sorts of oddball things. Which is kind of fun!

Snippetology is a dirt simple idea. It’s not a genius breakthrough type of thing. I think that’s part of why I like it so much. It’s got that Unix tools feel; it does one thing and does it well.

Actually, I take that back: It is now two tools that each do one thing well! I hope I see more opportunities in the future to create little tools like this. It’s fun and makes me think in new ways.

Update (May 14, 2009):
Other people like this idea. In fact, they like it so much that there are at least four other comparable projects out there that do the same thing! Clearly people aren’t finding solutions easily enough. It’s odd to think that this is a limitation of a large network. Yes, the Internet is huge, but you only can see what you can find or connect to. Things outside of your network (people you know, things you see, what you’re capable of finding with search) might as well not exist. How to solve this? I don’t know. It’s an interesting problem though.

Here’s a list of the other projects I’ve found so far that are like Snippetology:

• django-flatcontent
• django-chunks
• django-flatblocks
• django-generic-flatblocks

Twimmetry is proceeding into a gradual soft open and we’d love to have your beta tester input. Follow @twimmetry and watch for announcements requesting beta users.

Regarding my 30 in 30 project, I’m trying to decide the best way to rejoin the fight. Do I reset the clock and start over from scratch with a new 30 day block? Or do I pick up where I left off, about a week into things and behind schedule? I’m pondering this now. Do you have an opinion? Leave a comment. In the meantime I’m going to spin back up to prepare for another go at this. Hopefully I’ll get the clock (re)started this week.

Last week I had a medical issue pop up that I’m still addressing. Long story short, I’ve been sidelined for the past 10 days or so and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get back in action. So I’ve got to pause the 30 in 30 experiment/torture-test for the time being. I’m still able to code, it’s just that I had planned my time so I could work and also do 30 in 30. I had not planned on doctor’s visits and tests, etc., etc. So work and medical crud wins for now.

Around Christmas of 1998 I created a web framework similar to Ruby on Rails. I had serious confidence issues though, which meant I never gave my framework the real world testing it needed. Eventually I put my framework into production in a critical situation. Unfortunately that caused problems because of the lack of real world testing early on.

I learned that it’s not enough to execute, you’ve got to have some confidence too or your execution will be weak. It will be as though you never executed at all.

Speaking of things not executed, New Year’s Resolutions stink. Why not have a theme for the year instead? I do. My theme this year is “Increase Capability”. My 30 in 30 project is a direct result of that. I want to increase my software shipping capability.

It may seem egotistical but it’s actually the opposite. I have to set aside my ego and execute with confidence. (That’s hard!) Otherwise it’ll be like I ever shipped anything at all.

What I’m finding these past few days is that one of the worst blows to the ego is having to ship something that really isn’t awesome yet. For example, I’m rolling out StringTheory for Javascript today. It will be a great little tool eventually, but I’ve got to ship a first version that is literally about as minimal as you can go. It’s so minimal as to seem silly. Still, that is the deal. I’m shipping something, and it is up to me to have a vision for what I ship and to follow through and realize that vision over time.

Speaking of shipping things, here’s a status report:

Two more projects have rolled out. If you’re keeping track, I’m now at eight days and have shipped four projects. I told you it wasn’t natural to ship software like this!

Here are the projects:

Built Software website

Ordinarily I wouldn’t declare a website migration to be “software”, but the website is now rocking a shiny new Django home. Django is a great platform and I’m hoping to add new and interesting features to the site over time. WE GOTS PONIES Y’ALL!!!

One thing that is awesome about Django is that you have easy and total control over your URLs. So if you go to the new site and see a page with the extension “.shtml”, that’s not actually an html page. That’s Django pretending there’s actually a file with that name. I was able to pull over the site to the new environment without having to mess with the navigation. I think that’s a win. Over time I’ll migrate away from file names. I’ll also get a new look and feel going. I’m tired of looking at that site every day!

StringTheory for JavaScript

Back in 2002 or 2003 I rolled out what I thought was a viable commercial library called StringTheory™, which I called a “text engine”. Unfortunately I was high from sniffing glue or something, and no one ever bought it. I do think there were some good ideas there though, and even back then I wanted to do a Javascript version. So now I have. It’s very early stage, but it’s usable and I plan to make a proper open source project out of it soon. If you do a lot of text work in Javascript give it a look. More importantly, give me feedback. This is one of those projects that not enough people looked at early on. As a result a lot of useless cruft got piled onto the original Java version. I’d like this new release to be lean and mean, and I can’t do it without input from the people who might actually use it.

Thanks again for the encouragement.

Release 1: Web app for Client M.

This app was kind of like the MG of projects. Tiny as hell but still kind of fun. The client is a M$ shop, so it’s a .Net app in C#, and it’s main job is to handle uploads of large data files. In this case “large” means 30 MB to 1GB. Not the biggest files ever, but still enough to keep the browser idling uncomfortably long. I went digging around to see if anything could help. I had visions of end users trying to upload files, watching the spinning icon roll in Firefox and not knowing what the hell was going on. I wanted something friendly and understandable. A little searching found some Flash based solutions and some discussion of a Silverlight approach. I was indecisive as hell for a while. Every option came with a catch and tradeoffs! Then, just as I was about to roll my own Silverlight solution, I found SWFUpload. As the name implies, it’s a Flash-based solution. These days everyone has Flash except the tinfoil hat crowd, so I was game and I gave it a try. Like any other widget, there are learning curves and quirks. Even so, it turned out great and I’m very happy. Now my client’s users can see pretty upload bars and can upload a bunch of files at once. An unexpected dose of awesome.

Release 2: New version of Client M’s existing Windows app

“Existing Windows app”? If that sounds boring, you’re right, it is. This is an internal business app I created from client specs about 4 years ago and I’ve been maintaining ever since. New releases roll out about once a year. The app is a .Net/C# dealio than ties into a CRM system. This release added a new database reporting tool. Exciting right? Hey, I never promised to excite anyone with my releases. Hopefully the client will be excited. That’s all I can hope for.

Maybe my software releases would be more exciting if I was focusing on more exciting markets? I wonder what kind of software a nudie bar would need… Thoughts?

I’m going to do 30 software releases in 30 days.

To clarify, I’m not starting 30 companies or shipping 30 products. I’m shipping 30 software projects. Some of these projects I’d like to see pay off in some way. Some are for clients. Others are just for fun.

I have a few reasons for doing this. For starters, I never got my Christmas Wish.

For another thing, I’ve been so busy with work and family the past few years that every time I get an idea for a project (even a little one) I have to immediately shelve it. That gets depressing after a while. It also blocks further creativity. When you’ve got a lot of old “coulda/shoulda” ideas floating around in your head it is hard to get new ideas to grow. I’m hoping to exorcise some of those ideas and be free of them.

And frankly, I haven’t been satisfied with my development velocity lately. My inner prima donna has kicked in and I’ve been spending way too much time on how things should be instead of how things need to be to get out the door. In my last “regular job” I was doing late-stage R&D on a distributed system, so some prima donna action was warranted. But as a self-employed programmer that is bad business!

My software development business has recently slowed in the “New” New Economy, so I figured I might as well hone my skills and “sharpen the saw”. And the sword. And those axes over there…

Some thoughts:

1. It’s not natural to ship software like this. I will very likely fail.
2. That’s ok with me. The personal challenge and the experience are the main points.
3. 30 in 30 is an average. Some days I won’t release anything.
4. What I release will probably look and work like shit until I can refine and polish. No bitching!
5. These won’t be cookie cutter projects. I’ll certainly be reusing code opportunistically, but I intend to mix it up a bit and try some new things out.
6. I only have about 10 firm project ideas right now.
7. I will cheat and fight dirty. I reserve the right to redefine terms, be unoriginal, punch your mom, and declare myself successful at any point, even if all signs point to failure.
8. In fact, I’ve already cheated. I got a head start on this two days ago. I’m rolling out my second release tonight. So yeah, I’m already behind.
9. I’m going to blog brief descriptions of each thing I ship. If time allows I’ll also talk about technical hurdles and miscellaneous geekery.
10. Tempting as it may be, I’m not going to declare that every single build of a project is a new release. That would be bullshit. Then again I’m not going to declare hard and fast rules about what constitutes a release. Or a project. Or software, for that matter. Feel free to call bullshit at anytime in the comments. Just remember that my blog is not a democracy and we censor like Pravda around here.

Wish me luck!