At my workplace, we like to follow an Agile development methodology called Scrum. Turns out there is a bit of an issue… most issue trackers don’t allow us to organize tickets the way we need to. We’ve been using Trac for a long time (before we started using Scrum), and it’s one of the few tools that pretty much everyone likes. I’ve looked at other issue trackers (Bugzilla, Jira, Scarab, Roundup, etc), but they’re either costly, too heavyweight, or just plain don’t do what we need them to.

So, several weeks ago, I decided I’d make a dent in getting us closer to an ideal situation. I created a Trac plugin that allows you to prioritize your backlog using drag-and-drop in your browser. On top of that, it shows milestones on the side, and you can drag-and-drop tickets onto them to assign them into that milestone. It makes laying out your priorities and assigning them into sprints (milestones) a breeze.

For the little bit of actual code that comprises the plugin, it was a long road to get there. I cycled through 4 javascript toolkits before landing on Dojo. I learned quite a bit about Ajax—although I’m certain I have more to learn, and had to reacquaint myself with Genshi. In the end, it all works rather well and I’m fairly happy with the end result. I did learn that I’m terrible at web design, so it doesn’t look quite like the picture I have in my head, but it works. :-)

If you’re interested, I’ve released the plugin on Launchpad as trac-backlog.

A number of you who follow this blog also know that I’ve been using photography as a creative outlet, and a way to let my mind work on other things that don’t end up as source code on a computer. One of the guys I’ve been following for a while is Zack Arias. He’s well known for his OneLight Workshop, and has an amazing story about he came to be the photographer he is today.

He was asked to be a guest blogger for Scott Kelby’s blog a while back. Instead of writing an article, he put up a video called Transform. Often we all wear masks, and never show what’s happening behind them… but not Zack. He let us know about his personal struggle, and made a motivational video to encourage folks to keep trying.

That’s sparked an email, which led to a blog post called How Many Of You Are Standing On The Dock?. The outpouring of response has been phenomenal. Zack and B really struck a chord with folks, and the amount of positive energy it has created is almost overwhelming. Story after story after story… Amazing.

But it doesn’t end there. A convicted felon, Derrick, ended up knocking on Zack’s door, and it turned out, he had something to share… Dope, Soap, and Hope.

I think we all have a story like this. There’s a step we’d like to take, but it’s so far off course from where we’re at it seems impossible to get to our destination. Check out the links above, and prepare to be inspired! There are tons of amazing stories in there!

I’ve gathered the pertinent links here, for your browsing convenience:

• Transform
• How Many Of You Are Standing On The Dock?
• Dope, Soap, and Hope

Just caught wind of this article. Turns out the need for software developers to optimize can give away information. Take a look at how this article shows you how to determine the right cookie based on a timing attack. Great stuff, and once again, shows the real need to understand a problem before you go coding up solutions.

My cousin and I have been pushing ourselves to do more photography. I wanted more of a playground than my site here (which is really for the fam). If you’re following this at all, and are interested, you can find some of my latest work on my Flickr photostream.

BTW, if you’re thinking about putting some pics online, or you’re looking to get more involved in photography, Flickr is a great place to share and interact with many other people in the same shoes. Occasionally, you run into folks like Ed McGowan who have been taking pictures for about a year, but has incredible style. There’s a lot of great inspiration up there, and many of the “communities” seem to be very positive.

TTFN!

Did you see it? Yeah, that was the world growing just a little bit dimmer, as one of the most amazing people in the world passed away after a long struggle with cancer.

Kristen was a person of rare form. She had more compassion than should fit into one individual, and such a zest for life. The positive energy that flowed out of her was immense, and felt by everyone. She was incredibly smart, and had a way with people that few could match. One of her most amazing qualities, was that she was herself. There was no mask, and no frills. What you saw was who she was, and she was incredible. She was genuine.

I doubt there are many people in the world who could have put up the fight she did against cancer. I doubt that any of us are living life with half the vigor that she did while being treated. I doubt that any of us will forget her, that smile, or that laugh as she exits the world. We’ll miss you Kristen.

Go Jackets!

Charlie Nutter was kind enough to update pickjdk.sh to look in the right place for Mac OS X. Get it here.

So, in a previous post I said I’d likely chose git as my dvcs of choice. Well, it’s been almost 2 months and I find that while I’m very happy with the speed of git, it’s command line is more than I care to understand at the moment. I can get by with just a handful of commands, and on projects that are using git, I’ll do exactly that.

However, I’m really liking Bazaar, and the guys developing it and the plugins around it. QBzr is a spectacular front-end to Bazaar. I really enjoy being able to dig through the history, and it’s nice syntax highlighted views of source code. I also like the fact that I can write a plugin to extend the tool. I haven’t done that quite yet, but I hope to write one that’ll allow me to use a shorter syntax for referring to remote project urls. Plus, Jelmer is working integrating Bazaar with Mercurial (bzr-hg), and against git (bzr-git). So in the end, I can know one tool but work against any project of my choosing. If you haven’t taken the time to try out Bazaar, I highly recommend it.