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James Adam » lazyatom

About me

I try to solve problems using simple solutions, often with software.

I work as part of Good Enough, a digital product development and prototyping studio.

I write and blog at interblah.net.

Projects

  • Right now
    • Good Enough, the digital product development and prototyping studio I am part of.
    • Ponder, a place for calm, thoughtful group discussion.
    • Yay.boo, a home for the weird web.
  • Social
    • Exciting, the home of a few projects and products that I spun out of:
    • Go Free Range, the software company I co-founded to explore better ways of working.
    • Ruby Manor, an attempt to steer conferences away from bloat and cargo-culting.
  • Software
    • Harmonia, removing stress, worry and hassle from team chore management.
    • Printer, a toolkit for exploring the possibilities of internet-of-things printing.
    • Vanilla.rb, the ‘bliki’ content system that runs interblah.net.
    • Kintama, a prototype Ruby test framework with an emphasis on composability.
    • Gem This, a very simple gem-creating tool that gets out of your way ASAP.
    • Engines, the original Rails Engines implementation.
    • Lots more on GitHub…

Conferences & Presentations

I co-organise Ruby Manor, and also help run LRUG.

I’ve also spoken at a few Ruby and Rails conferences:

  • RailsConf 2018 — Here's to the crazy ones slides video transcript
  • RubyConf 2015 — Why is nobody using Refinements? slides video transcript
  • Austin on Rails — Deploying Rails with Docker slides
  • IoT London — An open-source distributed platform for IoT printers slides
  • LRUG February 2011 Lightning Talks — An exploration of why nobody needs to write any more test frameworks video
  • Ruby Manor 2: Manor Harder — Gem That slides video
  • RailsConf 2009 — The Even Darker Art of Rails Engines slides
  • Future of Web Apps 2008 — Best practice techniques for Rails developers
  • @media 2008 — Rails + Django
  • Ruby Fools — The Dark Art of Developing Plugins slides
  • RailsConf 2007 — The Dark Art of Developing Plugins
  • QCon London 2007 — Extending Rails with Plugins slides
  • AjaxWorld 2006 — Plugging into Rails
  • Canada on Rails — Engines: Team Development with Rails slides

Background

I am from Scotland, lived and worked London for eight years, then moved to Austin, Texas for a little bit, and am now back in London.

I’ve been using Ruby since 2002, which is a relatively long time. I love using Ruby but I try and keep my eyes open for whatever else might come along in the future.

I am very interested in exploring the emergent behaviour of simple systems. My PhD thesis explored this within the context of simulated multi-agent systems, but projects like Good Enough, Go Free Range and Ruby Manor can also be interpreted as explorations of the simplest systems that may yield valuable behaviour and structure.