Juixe Techknow

Recently, I gave myself the small task of going through all my Twitter retries and downloading each profile image from each Twitter user that replied to me. To access my Twitter replies I used the Twitter Ruby Gem. I am using Twitter gem version 0.4.1.

The script is small and pretty concise that it can speak for itself. I use my Twitter credential to log on and query for the 40 most recent replies. For each reply download the user’s profile image.

require 'rubygems'

gem 'twitter', '=0.4.1'

require 'twitter'
require 'open-uri'
require 'find'

twitter = Twitter::Base.new(username, password)
replies = twitter.replies(:count => 40)

replies.each do |status|
  user = status.user
  image_url = user.profile_image_url
  image_name = image_url.match(/([\w_]+).(\w\w\w)$/)
  file_path = "profile/#{image_name[1]}.#{image_name[2]}"

  # Did I already download this image?
  unless File.exists?(file_path)
    File.open(file_path, 'w') do |output|
      # Download image
      open(image_url) do |input|
        output << input.read
      end
    end
  end  
end

From time to time I just blast tweets about software development, project planning, team dynamics, or whatever else comes to mind. Here is a synopsis of recent tweets and rants. If you want to follow the conversation follow me at techknow and/or juixe and I’ll be sure to follow back.

Software Development

• One source of conflict with human computer interactions is that they unsure of themselves, we seek answers and they seek approval.
• What modern Operating Systems need is some level of artificial intelligence subsystem which all applications can use.
• I hate when each application asks the same question, "are you sure you want to exit?" The OS should help apps to be more opinionated.
• Computers prompt us all the time for what smart defaults would do just fine. Computers lack of inteligence is wasting mine.
• Programmers have a form of groupthink, Programmer Think. This is especially true if FUD becomes dogma and design choices are not tested.
• Break Programmer Think, test all assumptions, every design choice, every implementation, every third party library, every different scenario
• If you are testing, have spent two days on a single problem, look in the log file, especially that null pointer exception, chances are that’s the problem.
• Even with all this cloud computing we still can’t forecast the weather accurately!
• First there was the web, the the web 2.0, now the perpetual web beta.
• Going gang busters don’t scale.
• Everything is beta.

Team Leadership

• If you don’t agree on paper, you are not going to agree in code.
• When you don’t take any personal responsibility and make any proper planning, it is always someone else’s fault.
• Seen it happen… Your brains cells are inverse proportional to your climb up the corporate ladder and the resources you manage.
• Each solution comes with a free can of worms!
• OH: you would make a great manager, cause you make a grumpy developer.

Product Placement

• Google can’t commit to a version number that is why everything is in beta. Beta is like a philosophy at Google, testing like a religion.
• Google’s philosophy of the meaning of life, the universe and everything else: Beta.
• This Week in Tech does ads for their ads… to promote the fact that they need to take ads.
• Apple has sold 225 million iPods to date.
• Twitter: If you build it they will come, but if they all come you will epic fail.

Questions

• What happens when someone has buggy code in their test cases, how do you test the jUnit tests for bad test logic?
• Is Mono chasing .NET’s tail lights and .NET chasing Java’s tail light and Java is chasing Ruby’s tail light, …?
• Infinite Shakespeare Theorem: What would get if you have Shakespeare hitting a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time?
• All clicks being equal, is the Amazon affiliate program better than Google Adsense?
• What is your innovation quotient coefficient?
• What is your innovation quotient?
• What name/term has the most website related moniker/naming patterns? e-iComputroniiixr beta 2.0?
• Are social networking sites making you unsociable?
• Is it possible to burn the rice and still have it be under cook?
• Which do you prefer best, an uncomfortable truth or a flattering lie?
• If you can have any view from your back porch, what would it be?