Stuff Adam Makes

I was lucky enough be invited to speak at EuroPython 2016 where I spoke on the subject of code review.

The slides are available on SlideShare.
The presenter notes are on Pastebin.
And the video is on YouTube.

I talked about what code review is, how to do it, and what can go wrong.

I also offer training and consulting on code review as well as testing (including TDD) and technical interviewing and hiring practices.

I owe a lot to jml’s “Your code sucks, and I hate you, The Social Dynamics of Code Reviews” and the Magnetic platform guidelines.

I just got a lovely recommendation on LinkedIn and it included:

Adam introduced the team to a property-based testing tool in python and it significantly improved the quality and quantity of the tests we write, helping us improve test coverage considerably.

I can’t think of a much better endorsement for Hypothesis.

I’ve been really busy at work over the last year but I have got a couple of things to show off from that time. My major side-project has been Lettertap, a tool which is built to help people with certain disabilities communicate. I have made a prototype for someone in particular with Progressive supranuclear palsy to use but I think that when it is more mature it could be suitable for a larger audience. You can contribute to Lettertap and see a more detailed explanation from its GitHub page.

The gist of Lettertap that it is a jQuery Mobile-based web page designed for iPad which shows one letter at a time. Almost the whole screen is tappable and will add the current letter to a list. Lettertap is designed for those who have difficulty communicating, but can perform a recognisable action. This action could be tapping the screen to add a letter, or even blinking to let a carer know to tap the screen. A carer has control over the speed at which the letters change, and over which alphabet to use (current options include the A-Z, a frequency-based alphabet and a “Yes / No” alphabet). Get in touch if you have a friend or relative with a similar disability and I will do my best to accommodate their needs into Lettertap if it is suitable.

Thanks go to Bristol Web Folk for kicking me into action on this, and providing me some nice prizes too. Thank you also to the other Meetup-ers who provided documentation and vision.

I’ve also written some blog posts for Delib and HybridCluster, on Agile (http://www.delib.net/dblog/delib-goes-agiler/) and dealing with feature requests (http://www.hybridcluster.com/blog/dealing-with-feature-requests/).

Download Who Directed? for Alfred Powerpack to show the director of any film. Thanks go to Zac Ioannidis for TerminalMDB which I have modified slightly. In Alfred simply type direct Life of Pi to see the below:

I have wrapped a TUAW script to check for Mountain Lion into an Alfred extension here. It just tells you whether Mountain Lion is available yet.

URL Expander for Alfred Powerpack expands shortened URLs (googl, cl.ly, bit.ly etc.). Type expand http://goo.gl/xdpj7 for example to get the full URL copied to your clipboard. Thanks go to Unshorten.It! for the API.

Relaunch (download filter here and extension here, both needed) relaunches applications from Alfred Powerpack 1.1+. Simply type relaunch Safari for example.

The most popular extension on this site is Time Somewhere which was helped greatly by @jdfwarrior‘s WolframAlpha extension. He also made Extension Updater which my shell script extensions now support (everything but Relaunch, Consider Unpausing and Windows Booter). Just install the Extension Updater extension and type update check to check for updates or update to check for and install updates. Check out his Tumblr for more great extensions.

Download Consider Unpausing for Alfred Powerpack. Basically I often pause iTunes to, for example, watch a quick clip on YouTube and then I forget to unpause and spend the next hour in silence. Now I just type cons into Alfred and after 5 minutes I get this notification:

You can also specify a number of minutes until you are reminded. If you don’t enter anything then 5 minutes will be used.

Download Snap for Alfred Powerpack extension to take a picture using your iSight / FaceTime camera. Just type snap into Alfred and you’ll have your picture taken and saved tp the desktop in the same format as screenshots are – Something like “Snap 2011-11-23 at 00.43.51.png”.

Update: Download this as an Alfred 2 Workflow

Download the London Tube extension for Alfred Powerpack that displays the status of the London tube lines. Thanks go to Ben Dodson for the TFL data. Just type tube into Alfred and you’ll get this:

Update: David Ferguson has made an Alfred 2 workflow which performs the same job, but even better. See this thread for details.

Download Windows Booter for Alfred Powerpack to restart just this time into a Boot Camp partition.

You can simply type win and then you will be prompted with this box

Alternatively you can type win your_password and no box will be shown.

Note that Tuxera NTFS will stop this extension working (Paragon NTFS won’t though).

Download Time Somewhere for Alfred Powerpack. It tells you the time somewhere in the world by typing

time in location

For example typing

will give you