The Ruby Reflector

2. Here's a fucking clue Giles, marketing is lying, but it's also about presentation and optimization.

Zed's got a good point when he says that good documentation is good marketing, but this idea:

marketing is lying

is utter horseshit.

I want to address this because it's a pernicious and common misconception, because I've blogged about it before , and because it's where this whole thing started.

Marketing is like The Force; it's powerful, …

• Topics: Zed, Marketing, Giles Bowkett
• Litany Against Fear: RailsConf 2009 The Future of Deployment
• Ruby on Rails Podcast: Zed Shaw - Ruby on Rails Podcast

Michael Harrison misquotes me :

Bullshit, Giles

So, back to Giles. Here's one passage that made me see red:

The valuable things people take away from college are interactions with great minds (usually professors who actually teach and actually care) and non-class activities that shape them as people.

I'm going to use some of Giles' own close reading attack techniques against him.

How I wish somebody would use my close reading techniques against me! Or indeed …

• Topics: Harrison, Harvard, Seth Godin, Giles Bowkett
• A Fresh Cup: Double Shot #664
• Talk Like A Duck: Of Procs, Blocks, and Dancing Angels
• Rails on Edge: The Ruby Hoedown
• Global Nerdy: CUSEC 2010 Keynote: Pete Forde - "NSFW"

And what about your need for software development?

Vagrant - Automated creation and provisioning of VirtualBox VMs.

Programmers: What To Do If You Get Fired - Giles is hawking his latest product, but it still makes for amusing reading, especially if you want to hunt a new job. Of course I'll tell you how to be happier with no job .

Bundler: Oh the fail I know - Another developer steps up to complain of the foibles of bundler.

• Topics: Automated, VirtualBox, VMs, Mike Gunderloy
• Nikos D.: Urban tales of programming

…"The Ruby Programming language" and I posted a comment in support of Giles after Yehuda pushed back maintaining his view that there was no difference.

Yehuda followed up with another article, Which prompted this article.

Let me start by saying that I'm not interested in starting a war here. First, I've nothing but respect for Yehuda, and I'm very impressed by his body of work, particularly the refactoring of Rails from Rails 2 to Rails…

• Topics: Proc, Yehuda Katz, Ruby on Rails, VM, Ruby
• p.latyp.us: Rails' distributed asset hosts
• AdaRuby: Ruby Quick Reference
• The Code Pilgrim's Progress: Code Blocks in Ruby
• time to bleed by Joe Damato: What is a ruby object? (introducing Memprof.dump)
• : Rack::Rewrite for Site Maintenance and Downtime
• Katz Got Your Tongue?: Ruby is NOT a Callable Oriented Language

I believe that Giles called them " Weasel-brained muppetfuckers"

Giles quotes Steve Jobs: "Real artists ship"

My advice on dating websites: "Don't make them"

On Marketing

I've mentioned Seth Godin many times already

Sometimes his books have 3 pages of insight buried in 100 pages - I supposed it's a case of "The Devil's in the details"

Read The Dip , skip Tribes

In Tribes , Godin says …

• Topics: Ruby, Unspace, Seth Godin, Steve Jobs, Pete
• Rethink - Home: The Fruits of Unspace Labour
• Hampton Catlin - Home: ByteClub.tv
• SD Ruby Podcast: Episode 069: Rails 3: From Vaporware to Awesomeness in 12 Months
• Luigi Montanez: Liveblogging the Development of Defogger
• Robby on Rails: RailsOnPg released
• MicroISV on a Shoestring: The Solo Founder (Startup) Rap

…his talk is...an assault on the senses...such an entertaining speaker...massively successful talk... Giles Fucking Bowkett Ruled The World

When I give presentations, this happens to me all the time, and the important thing to realize is that it's not some magical talent that the angels blessed me with on the day I was born. First, I read a bunch of books on neuroscience, because I thought it was interesting, and then I used what I learned to make great presentations. When I say …

• Topics: Google, New Mexico, GitHub, Ryan Davis, Community
• Ruby Inside: Google PageRank In Five Lines Of Ruby
• Giles Bowkett: Is That An App In Your Pants Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?
• A Fresh Cup: Double Shot #664
• Giles Bowkett: Another Happy Customer
• ricroberts: Create Your Own Semantic Web-enabled Blog
• MetaSpring Blog: Marketer's Guide to Google Alerts

…Google's PageRank algorithm.

I'm making this video available very soon. I'm also going to launch an interesting new business where you can get videos from me on a regular basis. Think of it like PeepCode on acid, or Giles TV.

Here's an excerpt where I explain PageRank and translate it from the abstract mathematics of the original Google white paper into five lines of Ruby.

• Topics: Google, PageRank, Rings, PeepCode, Television
• Software by Rob: Passion as a Competitive Advantage

Somebody said about me the other day "I think Giles is a person who likes a lot of structure" and it just floored me to hear that. I could name countless people whose minds would just boggle at that statement, because at many, many times, it would have been an utterly inaccurate characterization.

But it's actually become true over the last few months. I turned into a hyper-organized person almost overnight and I still can't totally explain it. Here's an attempt.

The …

• Topics: Television, Sherlock, Giles Bowkett, MP3
• Rails on Edge: The Ruby Hoedown
• Rails Envy » Home: Reports of This Podcasts Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

You might be like, "yeah, Giles, but that's because you don't know movie stars." Guess what? It's true for movie stars too. Robert Downey Jr. had to fight like hell to get the lead role in Iron Man . In the 80s, Sean Young showed up on a studio lot wearing a Catwoman costume and spent all day trying to find director Tim Burton, who wasn't even there, because she wanted to convince him that she was perfect for Catwoman in the next Batman movie. You …

• Topics: TechCrunch, Obie, Network News Transfer Protocol, Hacker, Hollywood
• Giles Bowkett: One Blog Post, Five Business Models
• Giles Bowkett: Does Paul Graham Read Hacker News?
• Ruby Inside: The Ruby Community's Information Marketing Mania
• Software by Rob: Highlights from the 2009 Business of Software Conference
• SKORKS: It's Not About The Duct Tape It's About The People (And More)
• Vineet Gupta | Computer Programmer: Usability - Part 1 - Research Findings

…"hey look, this internet marketing thing is something - TechCrunch is talking about it, Giles is talking about it, I mean this guy Yanik Silver is hanging out with Richard Branson!"

So yes, it's true, this guy is hanging out with Richard Branson, and I have to tell you, he also comes endorsed by this guy Dan Kennedy, who wrote a bunch of great books, but I can't endorse him. I bought one of his PDFs and it really just didn't seem to contain anything I couldn't …

• Topics: TechCrunch, PDFs, VC, Giles Bowkett, San Francisco