Best tutorial I’ve found so far for setting up gitolite. Simple as pie.
Altering my habits
Switching jobs has done an interesting number on the way I work on code (and the tools I use to do so). I’ve gone from writing client/server .NET application code in a pure Windows environment to writing Ruby and web code in a 60%/40% Mac/Windows environment. I do all my development on a Mac now, I test on all major platforms and browsers (virtual machines make this easy). Seems like the tools I’m accustomed to using to write non-Windows code are changing, too.
Python to Ruby
I’ve been a big Python fan for a long time now; still am. But my job at Andrews McMeel is mostly Ruby (some Perl). This doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned Python. I’ve just begun to grow to love Ruby, too. But there are certain things about Ruby that nag at my Python habits… first and foremest the fact that there’s no offical style guide to the language. One of the things that make Python rock is PEP-8. All Ruby has is an unofficial style guide which I’ve only just found (and will adapt as soon as possible). Having code that looks clean and uniform, no matter who writes it, is important (to me). I’ve come across one-too-many projects that look more like an absolute cluster@#!$ of letters and symbols.
Ruby’s finally broken my fear of anonymous functions. Ruby has code blocks, which are the epitome of awesome… hopefully I’ll be able to turn around and not be afraid to use similar idioms in Python (wherever they may apply). Coming off of .NET, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to find something that matched abbreviated LINQ syntax. Using inline code blocks in Ruby (and various jQuery/Underscore.js functions) satisfy my itch quite happily.
Tools of the trade
Fare thee well, TextMate. I’ve been your bitch for far too long. You’ve kept me productive through college as a youngster writing code, but it’s time for me to grow up, explore new things. You’re never going to change. You keep telling me a new you is coming, but enough is enough. I’m leaving you for MacVim, thanks to janus and this post (this all goes without mentioning Visual Studio 2010; she wasn’t bad, but my heart wasn’t in it).
Oh, and I’ve traded in the diesel truck for a Porsche.
My current stack
Since I’m writing Rails applications, I get to use a very broad palette of technologies and plugins with it. My newest favorites are Haml, Sass, and CoffeeScript. My latest project has me enhancing one of our old Rails 2.3 sites, and while I’m at it, I’m putting a little extra elbow grease to upgrade it to Rails 3.1 (actually took me less than an hour), as well as…
- rearranging the JavaScript into CoffeeScript
- converting the CSS to Sass
- cleaning up the ERB templates by turning them into cleaner Haml ones
I plan to stick to these bits for as long as they serve me well (and it looks like they’ll be doing so for a long, long time).
Development aside, I’m fueled daily by Rdio and coffee. I’ve made the switch to Lion, and the only thing that I’m still having trouble getting used to is how Apple has shuffled around all my beloved Exposé gestures. I’m sure within a few days I’ll be crawling back to BetterTouchTool to reinstate my four-finger-swipe up for desktop and four-finger-swipe down for Mission Control.
Slowing down, speeding up
My blogging has died off a bit as of late, due to the new job switch and the business of it all (paired with trying to escape the summer heat). I’ll try to throw in a few excerpts from interesting things I read from time to time, but for now, this fat blog post is over.
Thoughts on Spotify vs. Rdio, so far
Disclaimer: my brother is on the Rdio development team, but I’ve been an Rdio subscriber prior to him joining the company.
Background
I loved Lala. I remember getting my invite. I remember importing all my music. I remember listening to it on hours on end at work. I remember Lala getting shut down. Then I was just told to patiently wait for Spotify. The wait was too long.
I found Rdio instead. They’ve got a similar model to Spotify (monthly subscription, unlimited streaming) and I love it. It’s very social; your activity shows up in your friends’ feeds, you can add all sorts of music to your ‘collection’, you can create and share playlists with friends, write comments and reviews about albums, and sync music to your mobile device for offline playback.
When I read a blog post a couple of months back about getting access to Spotify UK through a proxy, I went for it. I was still absolutely curious about what the company had to offer. Rdio’s catalog had been lacking at that point, missing a few great albums from the UK, so I checked it out. I starred some music, added it to my library, played around with it for a few days. I wasn’t a huge fan of the desktop app’s interface (it felt a little too unresponsive and restricted, compared to Rdio’s), and since I wasn’t in the UK, I couldn’t download the mobile app to my iPhone. I went back to Rdio after a few days.
Now that Spotify has launched stateside (as of today), I took the plunge again and moved my account to the US version and started it up again. Here’s a few of my initial impressions of the service, compared to what Rdio offers.
Catalog
First off is what people typically turn to first (including me): the music made available by the service. Rdio’s catalog is pretty strong now (they’ve been engaged in talks with distribution companies and labels for quite a while now). I went through and picked out a bunch of music that I prefer. I’ve got a pretty broad taste in music, so some of my stuff is very mainstream, and some of it is totally left of the dial. Anyway, here’s some stuff that Spotify has that Rdio does not.
- Hot Hot Heat - Elevator
- Abandoned Pools - a couple of new singles, Marigolds and In Silence
- Astronautalis - The Mighty Ocean and Nine Dark Theaters
- Augustana - All the Stars and Boulevards (I’m surprised Rdio still hasn’t picked this one up yet)
- Beirut - everything
Here’s a taste of what Spotify does not have that Rdio does.
- Adele - 21 (I was shocked they didn’t have this one, it’s top Billboard stuff)
- Alkaline Trio - From Here to Infirmary, Good Mourning (two of my favorite AT albums) and This Addiction
- Arcade Fire - everything
- Hot Hot Heat - Make Up the Breakdown
- Turin Brakes - The Optimist LP and Outbursts
- Christiansen - Emphasizing Function Over Design
- pretty much everything from Equal Vision Records
- Decibully - Sing Out America, World Travels Fast, and more
- Dredg - Chuckles and Mr. Squeezy
- Editors - An End Has a Start
- The Helio Sequence - all three albums
- Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Here’s what neither has.
- Metric - Fantasies
- Electric Soft Parade - Holes in the Wall and The American Adventure (Spotify has this in the UK)
- Biffy Clyro - Infinity Land
- Radiohead - In Rainbows
Winner: Rdio
Rdio’s got Spotify beat here, hands down. For at least what I listen to. Over time, I’m sure the catalogs will end up being comparable, but in the meantime, Spotify at least lets you bring in your iTunes collection… if you’re still willing to hang on to it.
Mac desktop application
Spotify’s desktop application is both a blessing and a curse. For those users that like to have their music from iTunes along with their music for streaming, it’s a godsend. It shows both, it mixes both, and you can throw both on your mobile device. This can make it a little jumbled however, if you’re looking at streaming to be your primary music source; you run into a lot of duplication issues. I turned it off because I hardly have any music in iTunes (I don’t want to use iTunes anymore, and I don’t want to have a local library anymore; to me, that’s the point of having a service such as Spotify or Rdio).
The application has a more ‘native’ feel to the Mac environment (more native UI controls throughout) than the Rdio desktop app (which has native playback controls with access to the web interface). Spotify’s interface is nice to look at but it can be a pain in the ass to use. Several actions I tried to click on (namely ‘starring’ things to add them to my library) simply just acted as if I hadn’t clicked on them and it took a couple of hits to get it to work; parts of the app were unresponsive. While Rdio’s desktop app can be a little slow to load music pages, I’ve rarely had any sort of unresponsive behavior from it. Spotify does support the swipe back/forth multitouch gestures, which is nice; Rdio still hasn’t added that in yet.
Songs launched from Spotify, however, are indeed fast. That’s thanks to Spotify’s peer-to-peer network. You can also sync music to the desktop app, which is something Rdio doesn’t have. I’ve wanted a feature like this once or twice, but I’m rarely without Internet access on my laptop (perhaps 1% of the time).
Winner: it’s sort of a tie
Each app has it’s own specialness about it. Spotify streams fast, if sometimes unresponsive to my clicks. Rdio gives me an easier interface to navigate, but sometimes web pages can be slow to load, and cold-starting a song usually takes a second or two to get started.
iOS mobile application
Spotify has a mobile app that supports streaming, playlist editing, offline syncing, and some other stuff. Rdio has their mobile app as well, which supports all those as well, in addition to being able to access your web queue, easily browse all top charts and new releases, see what your friends are up to, and browse their profiles. The one thing you can’t do from Rdio’s mobile app is share stuff to Twitter/Facebook, which you can do in Spotify’s. I hope this functionality is coming soon.
Another thing I do like about Spotify’s mobile app is that you can specify that you want to stream high quality vs. low bandwidth. Rdio doesn’t exactly let you do that; it automatically switches between high and low when you’re on wi-fi and when you’re on 3G. You can also read official album reviews from the Spotify mobile app.
One thing that really bugs me about Spotify’s mobile app is the Playing interface, and namely the progress bar. It’s at the bottom of the screen, right where the volume bar is in every other music app for the iPhone. To get to the volume bar, you have to tap the artwork to reveal some hidden controls. This drives me crazy that they’ve essentially switched these two.
Winner: Rdio
Rdio has more features on their mobile app, and it’s easier to use and navigate. The only thing it needs is the ability to share to Facebook/Twitter.
Pricing structure
Rdio and Spotify both offer a way to entice you into paying for their service. Rdio offers a free trial that lasts for a few days; during this free trial, you get access to all the same features that the top tier gets you: mobile syncing and playback on other devices besides the web/desktop. Spotify has a free tier that’s ad-supported, and they limit the amount of music you can listen to every month (as far as I know on this, however, is that they’ve yet to introduce music caps in the US; they’re waiting a few months before they start that, I think, as it caused quite a stir when they did it in the UK). Spotify has a much lower barrier to entry, and a better way of bolstering its user count. It doesn’t have a way to entice users to shell out for the top tier, though; Rdio introduces the user to the gamut of features from the get go.
Winner: Spotify
And clearly the winner for the masses; people love free, and this will be a major enticement for users to join the Spotify platform. Rdio’s ‘free’ only lasts for a few days.
Caveats on both sides
Spotify:
- I don’t like having to put albums in a playlist in order to sync them for offline; with Rdio, I can sync anything one-off.
- Having desktop and mobile apps are nice, but having a full web application to listen to music is nice, too — and that’s something Spotify falls short on.
- Having to ‘star’ things to get them in my library was very strange at first.
- Nice to have a continuous free program, but it’s rather limited (10 hours a month, play songs for a max of 5 times).
Rdio:
- Spotify seems to have Rdio beat on publishing high-quality (320) files; Rdio hasn’t published what bitrate their music is. For what it’s worth, my ears can’t tell the difference.
- Albums and singles are all listed together; Spotify separates them nicely (although some EPs are placed under singles).
- Has a free trial with unlimited access (including mobile), but only lasts for a few days.
Winner, so far: Rdio
Rdio emerges as the winner for me right now. It’s easier to navigate, has much better social features and interactivity, and has a much better catalog. The experience is much more pleasant.
The only field where Spotify trumps Rdio is their free tier. People love free, and they’re bound to sign up for a service where they’re not obligated to make any sort of a commitment to listen to music, other than sign up for an account.
Since I’ve had Rdio for a while and I really truly appreciate its interface and method of approach (which seems quite a bit different from where Spotify comes from), I’m gonna be sticking with it. Spotify brings a few great features to the market, and Rdio will likely need to be proactive in creating new ways to make their platform even better for subscribers. Either way… the consumer wins.
