Cymen Vig

Internal projects

The internal project I’ve been working on for quite a while with other apprentices at 8th Light has now been deployed! The project should help quite a bit with some of the regular business work that needs to be done (I’m not sure how much detail I can go into). There is still some work to do on the project but now that it will be in actual use it should help drive the direction of the project more effectively.

You may recall that I mentioned quite a while ago the internal project splitting into two projects. The other project hasn’t required as much work but there have been one or two things mentioned that could be added. This weekend I finally got around to adding one of those features and it was fun to work with CSS and jQuery animations. I changed the display of three columns with a toggle-able fourth into a fluid layout. That seemed to work better when adding another column as the fixed width was getting too narrow but I didn’t want to increase the fixed width. A fluid layout means resizing the browser resizes the content. I’m curious to see how it works out.

Another kata

I’ve been working on another kata that Doug has been interested in for some time. It’s always a struggle to get a video of it prepared in time for review before it’s time to actual do the kata. I originally planned on doing that this weekend but it was time for a break and the sand and surf of Warren Dunes in Michigan was too tempting to pass up. Instead I finished the video today. This time it is well within the allotted time limit and it should be straight forward to shave another minute.

Soon a pairing tour

This is my last regular week at 8th Light. The next three weeks after this one are scheduled to be touring weeks where I paired with craftsmen at 8th Light for two days at a time. I’m looking forward to this quite a bit except for one thing: vim configurations.

Everyone here who uses vim seems to have their own tweaks and bindings. It would be wonderful if there was an agreed upon standard pairing configuration that apprentices could use while coming on board and that craftsmen would agree to use while pairing with apprentices (and perhaps each other). One of the reasons I’ve avoided tweaking vim in the past is that quite often I’d be using vim on a system which had no configuration and which I was not allowed to or would not want to customize the configuration. That really is a minor thing but we’ll see how that goes!

The parts I’m looking forward to off hand are:

• seeing the types of projects being worked on
• the approach of the craftsmen to development
• the format of the stories being worked on and how they are verified as accepted

There is of course more that I’m missing. On the flip side, I too am likely under observation so it should prove to be an interesting experience.