Sam Soffes

Old People and the Other Side

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Watching different people use software is fascinating to me. My mind works a lot differently than Average-Joe's does when it comes to using software so seeing how people interact with software is really intriguing to me.

I was just at the post office and this old lady in front of me was trying to buy a shipping label for her package. This is a very easy thing to do. There are lots of instructions, big buttons, and even instructional videos to help you if you want.

After two tries she gave up and went to go stand in the super long line to get someone to help her. (Why are the lines always stupid long in post offices? It was 2:30 in the afternoon. Why is there a line?)

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What I Do

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People as me a lot what I do. I generally say "I write software" and get a blank look. I think I'm going to start saying:

I type a lot and make stuff happen.

That sounds cool, right?

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Rejected for Cleverness

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The latest X3watch iPhone app update got rejected. Here some of the highlights from the rejection email:

We have reviewed your application and have found that it is accessing and displaying the contents of the iPhone OS filesystem outside of your designated container area. The iPhone Developer Program License Agreement provides specific guidelines about this behavior in section 3.2(e).

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Trying to Teach Web Development

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Lately I've been trying to teach an awesome friend front-end web development. It's so hard to even know where to begin.

I started writing HTML when I was 10 years old. Back then, it was easy. We were writing our tags in all caps (HOW AWFUL), not closing tags if we didn't feel like it, frames were regarded as professional, and the animated gif was cool (some would say it still is).

I remember when Javascript became popular and JavascriptKit.com was the place to get copy and paste scripts for your site. I can remember when CSS started to become popular and when table layouts finally died out. It was easy to pick stuff. The technologies evolved at the rate that I learned them (which was awesome).

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Moved To Heroku

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I posted a screencast on Heroku a few months ago. Since then, my company has moved all of their stuff to Heroku. It has been working really great for us.

I've had my blog on GitHub pages for awhile. I recently came across a good article on running Jekyll from the Ruby5 podcast. It was really easy to get setup. So far, I'm a fan of my new setup.

I'm still working on my Rails 3 version of my blog when I have time. Lately, I've been playing a lot of music and occasionally dabbling with Markdownr.com due to a recent spike in traffic (thanks to @defunkt).

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