Planet Argon is hiring
Planet Argon is hiring
Planet Argon Blog
Just a quick update to let you know that I’ll be moving more of my business-related topics to the Planet Argon Blog. I invite you to subscribe to that feed as well. :-)
p.s. We just published Episode 4 of the Planet Argon Podcast, which was on the topic of Hiring designers.
Installing Ruby on Rails, Passenger, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oh My Zsh on Snow Leopard, Fourth Edition
Welcome to what seems like my tenth installment (actually, it’s the fourth) of showing you how I setup my development environment on a fresh OSX install. In this case, I’m actually getting a MacBook setup for a new employee with Snow Leopard.
Over the years, I’ve evolved these following steps and they’ve helped our team maintain...
Launching Ruby on Rails projects, the video
For those of you who didn’t make it to Rails Underground in July to witness my mind-blowing talk, Launching Ruby on Rails projects , it appears that Skills Matter has finally posted a video of it online. :-)
The sound levels are really low… but hopefully you’ll find it helpful.
You can also
Tracking AJAX-driven events in Ruby on Rails for Google Analytics conversion goals
Tracking your KPI’s is extremely important in your online venture. At a minimum, you should be using something like Google Analytics to track conversions in your application. Setting up goals is actually quite simple, especially if you’re just tracking that specific pages are loaded. However, if some of your conversion points occur through...
The 8-Hour Rails Code Audit
While our team is typically focused on larger client and internal projects, we do get an opportunity to assist businesses on a much smaller scale. Whether this be through retainer-based consulting or through code audits, we have seen a lot of Ruby on Rails code over what has nearly been… five years!? We’ve been able...
Ch-ch-ch-changes at Planet Argon
Now that the cat is out of the bag, I can share some recent news with you. Earlier today, we announced that Blue Box Group had acquired Rails Boxcar, our kickass deployment solution for Ruby on Rails applications.
Our team has been offering hosting services for over six years. When I made the decision...
Slides from my Rails Underground 2009 talk
Hello from London!
Am currently enjoying the talks at Rails Underground 2009 in London and had the pleasure to be one of the first speakers at the conference. My talk covered a collection of what our team considers best practices. Best practices that aid in the successful launch of a web application and covered a few...
Speaking at Rails Underground 2009
It’s time to find my passport again…
I’ve been invited to speak at Rails Underground, which is being held in London, UK from July 24-25th.
My talk, which is tentatively titled, “Launching Ruby on Rails projects, a checklist”,...
Email. Twice daily. No more, no less.
On a recent trip to Las Vegas, I picked up The Four Hour Workweek for my Amazon Kindle to read on my flight. When I came back from my short vacation, I decided that I was going to change how I approach email on a daily basis. In my position, I receive a lot...
Estimating versus Timeboxing, part 1
As if delivering projects wasn’t hard enough. Delivering projects on time is even harder. As practitioners, we’re all responsible for measuring up the obstacles in front of us and are accountable to those measurements. At least, we should be.
One of those measurements is time. Time is a funny thing. People have a lot of


