Nearby Wikipedia articles for the Pebble

The Nearby API from Wikipedia has always fascinated me, so when I received the Pebble Time last month, I knew I had to use it to make an app for my wrist.

In the excitement of the Kickstarter campaign I had already started dabbling with the JavaScript SDK using Cloud Pebble. It took me a while to get started with the SDK on my computer because I couldn’t find a clear way to initialize a JS project. Things went smoothly once I realized that I had to clone the pebblejs repository first, and copy my files there.

The Pebble.js environment is still in beta and it shows. While the documented features work, I kept wishing for more, especially those that let me add color. I could get a few colors using textColor, and highlightTextColor, but couldn’t find any documentation on what was actually supported. I made my peace with the lack of colors and released the app on the Pebble app store.

splash

Analytics tells me that around 400 people are using this app and that makes me happy. The people are nice too — I got two emails reporting an issue on iPhone (I am working on it), both being informative and polite. This might not mean much, but I feel its an important litmus test for the community.

I hope more APIs get exposed to Pebble.js soon, until then feel free to contribute code and bug reports on Github.

The Year Without Pants

by Scott Berkun

This book is a form of participatory journalism where the author talks about his experience of being one of the first managers at Automattic (the company that runs WordPress.com) . He gives a commentary on the culture of the company as it moves from a flat to a hierarchical structure. He often contrasts it with his experience at Microsoft.

A Year Without Pants

This contrast isn’t as clear as Cathedral and Bazaar. The author even points out instances where WordPress’ culture tends towards cathedral and Microsoft’s towards bazaar. The quality and quantity of work done amidst the chaos of the open source project amazes him, and he attributes this success to the people at the organization – who are passionate about their work, and to Matt Mullenweg – who grants these people autonomy, and encourages them to experiment. He also talks about how he manages his team which is distributed across the world and sometimes even across timezones.

This is the first time I’ve read about open source culture from a manager’s viewpoint. His critique for the communication tools used at Automattic resonated deeply with me. Reading it I was able to look at the Wikimedia Foundation, its work, and my place in it through a new lens.

lucid

/หˆluหsษชd/

  • clear, easily understood
  • mentally rational, sane, especially between periods of confusion

— A lucid moment in his madness.

Reasons why my code sucks

  • I am lazy and I use a hack
  • I don’t read documentation properly
  • I don’t understand the problem fully before approaching it
  • I don’t always uphold the contract of an API, passing a boolean where a string is expected knowing that it’ll get typecasted
  • I get invested in a solution and become stubborn
  • I don’t read code review properly and don’t do my research right