Peter Williams

Magnetic Coolness

These look like some cool magnetic toys.Via [Evilsoft.org](http://www.evilsoft.org/?p=51). Notice the warning about breaking bones? Makes you want to buy one just to find out if they really are that powerful. Super strong magnets do sound fun but I think my favorite is the MagnaView Fluid (below), which conforms to magnetic fields so that you can see them.

Wiki Refresher

I have been using wikis[^plural-form] for quite a while now. So long in fact that I had forgotten exactly how much better they are than the alternatives. I started my new job a few weeks ago and started evangelizing the wiki that had recently been installed. Last week the developer who sits next to me wrote up a bunch of notes about the current iteration in the wiki. After just an hour or so of using it she was totally convinced. It reminded me of how I felt the first time I used a wiki.

The low barrier of entry makes continuous documentation[^after-the-fact-docs] tenable. Prior to the wiki we were using Sharepoint, which as far as I can tell, goes out of it’s way to make documenting things as difficult as possible. Already there are things documented in the wiki that would never have been documented in Sharepoint because Sharepoint is just too painful. If your group does not already have a wiki you should set one up[^twiki]. Today. You will be glad you did.

New Job (Redux)

I have been at my new job for a little over a week now. Everything is still new and shiny but so far I am loving it. The small size of the team and simplicity of the environment mean that, even in my second week, I am able to make some real contributionsI wonder if I will still think that these are real contributions in a few months?. This is the first job I have ever had that I have actually written real code in the first week on the job.

I am still getting comfortable with Rails but I can see why it has the buzz it does. The speed with which we are creating an initial pass at the application is pretty impressive, especially since everyone on the team is learning Rails as we go.

Towards more RESTful Rails

Dan Kubb has created a Ruby on Rails controller supports RESTful interfacesVia [Sam Ruby](http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2005/11/16/RESTful-Rails) more directly than the current controller does. That is some very sweet meta-programming in it the cause of good architecture. This, or something like it, should definitely go into the Rails core.

Audrey Update

Audrey at two months old.

Audrey is two months old now, so I think it is time for an update. Audrey is such an easy baby. Before Audrey was born Catherine and I worried that we might have used all our easy baby karma on Elliot. However, I think Audrey might be even more easy going than Elliot was. She smiles all the time now, which is so cute. She has laughed a few times but it is not really a regular occurrence yet.

A couple of weeks ago she started rolling from front to back occasionally. This morning she rolled over several times so I think that she has figured out how to do it when ever she wants. Now she only needs to figure out rolling from front to back and she will be mobile.

She has not become attached to any particular toy yet. She enjoys playing the kick chimes on her play mat. Her favorite activity is playing with Elliot. He is really good with her and she would rather be near Elliot than do almostEating is the only thing she would rather do. She prefers eating to everything. anything else.