Even Disney starts with wireframes.

Someone’s tribute to the hacker way did upset a Facebook designer which lead him to release these posters under a Creative Commons license.

I’ll be heading up The Industry podcast as well as some biz dev and partnership opportunities. Get in touch if you’d like to work with us. The first episode will air this week.

Hello RVM

RVM is a tool that makes it super easy to install, manage and work with multiple versions of Ruby, interpreters and sets of gems. For example, with RVM you can have 1.8.7 and 1.9.2 live together without any issues. You can even swap back and forth from 1.8.7 to 1.9.2 as you see fit.

RVM Gemsets using .rvmrc

RVM’s gemset feature allows you to completely separate your various development environments on a per project basis. This makes gem conflicts a lot less common and makes it very easy to get a handle on the gem dependencies of your project.

To take advantage of RVM’s gemset feature in your project, all you need to do (besides having RVM installed) is add an .rvmrc file to the root of your project and set the ruby and gemset.

Here’s an example (as seen here):

rvm use ruby-1.9.2@sinatra-bootstrap

When you navigate into the project for the first time after adding the .rvmrc file you will get a notice to trust the file. Trusting the file means that whenever you cd into this directory, RVM will run this .rvmrc script in your shell. This is a good thing because we can use this to tell RVM to use a specific Ruby and gemset for this project. We can also check it into the project’s repo so that everyone using the project can have the same setup.

So for all new projects you can start checking in an .rvmrc file to make your life, and the developers working with your code, much easier!

Examples in practice

When you first start out, your gemset will be empty except for a copy of Rake. If you want to test this out run gem list to see what’s in your gemset. Also, an important note to make is that RVM doesn’t create the gemset for you, it just tries to use it upon execution of the .rvmrc file. You’ll need to create the gemset in the Ruby you want to use in order to use it.

For example, if our .rvmrc file was set to use ruby-1.9.2 and the gemset rvmrc-test but the gemset wasn’t created, we’d get an error like this:

ERROR: Gemset 'rvmrc-test' does not exist, rvm gemset create 'rvmrc-test' first.

We’d need to run this command first before we can use our new gemset.

rvm gemset create rvmrc-test

If you run this command, RVM will create the new rvmrc-test gemset and it should also show that you are now using ruby-1.9.2@rvmrc-test. Now you’re in gear to use your new gemset and add the gems you need for your project without any concern of conflicting with another project’s gems.

RVM Best Practices

It should also be known that what I covered here in this post is listed in the RVM Best Practices.

It’s official … The Web 2.0 Show is retired.

But there’s no reason to be sad. I started a new podcast called Founders Talk on Dan Benjamin’s internet broadcast network 5by5.

For most, the news of me starting Founders Talk on 5by5 is kinda old news (It was started October 2010). As for The Web 2.0 Show, in all honesty that show has been retired for quite a while now. I just haven’t been the best steward of this blog or the show’s site to let folks know. The last show was produced in April 2010 and featured Neil Patel of KISSmetrics.

So, what’s going to happen to the show’s website and archives?

Nothing. The show’s website and archives will remain online and freely accessible forever.

The Web 2.0 Show came online in 2005 and produced over 75 episodes with guests like:

• Andrew Mason of Groupon.com
• Mike McDerment of Freshbooks
• Eric Ries of Startup Lessons Learned
• Plus many, many more…

Founders Talk is launched

Founders Talk has been an idea I’ve had for a while, and to me it sums up what I love most about The Web 2.0 Show – conversations with founders about their stories, the up and downs, lessons learned and everything in between. So I extracted that out of The Web 2.0 Show, and pulled that into Founders Talk.

I also didn’t want Founders Talk to be too niche and “uber geek” focused. Not that that’s a bad thing, I mean that’s part of my DNA – I just wanted to cast a wider net. If that’s your thing, then listen to The Changelog (another podcast I produce) for a more tech focused podcast and blog. Founders Talk focuses less on the technologies being used and more on the story of the founders and how things got started. Sure, technology is still brought up, but the focus of the conversation is on their story, history, fails, successes, lessons learned, advice, etc. I also knew that there would come a day when the term “Web 2.0″ would no longer hold its value and would ultimately reflect poorly on the topics and content of the podcast.

I want to thank all of you who have listened to my podcasts and supported me over the years. I appreciate you.

Rakefile features:

• Clear and generate tasks that clear and generate new styles (via Compass)
• Preview, build tasks that preview and build the StaticMatic site using the default StaticMatic commands (I hate typing staticmatic over and over and over…)
• Deploy task using Rsync that clears the styles, generates new styles, builds the site, and finally deploys the site using Rsync

I also created a StaticMatic-Bootstrap that you are welcome to “watch” or “fork” on GitHub.

It supports: Haml, Sass, Compass and jQuery out of the box and comes with said Rakefile noted in this post.

Laziness is a trait of a good developer.

When I started to use WordPress again, I WAS NOT excited about using the FTP protocol to ship off changes to my theme. I wanted a simple and easy use process to deploy updates to my theme and also automate a few processes that I needed to support as part of using Sass and Compass to create my CSS styles.

What’s the alternative? FTP? Nope. Typing the rsync command by hand each time? Nope again.

This is a simple Rakefile I wrote that helps me to do all this in simple and concise manner.

Features:

• Clear and generate tasks that clear and generate new styles (via Compass)
• Deploy task that clears the styles, generates new styles and finally deploys the theme using Rsync

ssh_user = "user@domain.com" # for rsync deployment
remote_root = "~/path/to/remote/" # for rsync deployment

namespace :styles do
  desc "Clear styles"
  task :clear do
    puts "*** Clearing styles ***"
    system "compass clean"
  end
  desc "Generate styles"
  task :generate => [:clear] do
    puts "*** Generating styles ***"
    system "compass compile"
  end
end

desc "Clears the styles, generates new ones and then deploys the theme"
task :deploy => 'styles:generate' do
  puts "*** Deploying the site ***"
  system("rsync -avz --delete . #{ssh_user}:#{remote_root}")
end

It’s 21 lines and simple to use. Besides, rake deploy is much better than what most WordPress users are doing to deploy updates to their theme. Capistrano could work too, but IMO would be over-kill. Rsync is a much better fit, and using the --delete option ensures that you delete files that don’t exist on the sending side. Keeps it simple and clean.

This Rakefile is a bit opinionated and assumes you’re using Sass and Compass.

I love “people helping people”. I detest liars, thieves and those who choose to be dishonest and take for granted another person’s trust.

This is my humble little blog. It is a place that I will share my current thoughts on the web, podcasting, new media, insights and sometimes my personal life. These thoughts may appear in the form of links, pictures, audio, video or whatever media makes the most sense. Because I’m reluctant to share too much of my personal life with the general public, this blog will mostly contain my personal perspective on my professional life.

I’m the UX Designer at Pure Charity, I run RIZN Media, and I produce a few podcasts. Hopefully you’re a listener.

If you have feedback or would like to get in touch, email me at adam [at] mylastname [dot] com.