Archive for the ‘Just Develop It’ Category
A few weeks back Jordan (designer @ Just Develop It) brought in his rubiks cube into the office and we were all amazed that he could complete the cube. The fact he could do it in under 5 minutes just added to the amazement. Between writing code and sleeping, Rich and myself found ourselves trying to solve the cube wondering what logic we could apply to come to a solution. After about a week not being able to complete more than the first 2 layers I cracked and looked around youtube.com for a way to complete the cube.
Much to my suprise, there was a logical way to solve the cube based on a few algorithms. Easy when you know how 
So, the youtube video I found was by pogobat and made the cube easy to understand. You can see the video here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HsQIoPyfQzM. The algorithms for the cube are as follows:
- Fi U Li Ui
- Ri Di R D
- U R Ui Ri Ui Fi U F
- Ui Li U L U F Ui Fi
- F R U Ri Ui Fi
- R U Ri U R U U Ri
- U R Ui Li U Ri Ui L
- Ri Di R D
Ok, the letters above dont mean very much unless you can watched the video. You always need to hold the cube in the same position for any of this to work
F = The face closest to you (Front)
U = The face on the top (Up)
L = The face in your left hand (Left)
R = The face in your right hand (Right)
D = The face on the bottom of the cube (Down)
There is also i. This stands for ‘inverted’ or ‘counter clockwise’
If you see Ri, you should turn the right face counter clockwise. Should you see R you should turn the right face clockwise. Be sure to only move that one face and not rotate the cube, else it will all end in disaster
Once I got to grips with the algorithms, everything slotted into place and I could complete the cube serveral times in one night. Its a very impressive skill to learn.
Get yourself onto youtube.com and watch the video linked above and learn the cube for yourself
After adding the status.justuptime.com feature last week, we in the JDI office have taken full advantage of the system and have it on our main development screen and I even have it on my docked iPhone (sorta like a third screen ).
Everyone in the office is able to keep an eye on all of our servers and someone can quickly jump onto fix any problems that come up. One of our servers was seen to be down earlier so I took a photo, the server was back up and running within 2 minutes of going down thanks to the quick response system we have setup at Just Host so all is good .
Why not get your website or servers into JustUptime.com and make life easy for yourself. Automate the way you monitor your uptime and get the reports you need to keep your eye on the ball.
Being the first friday in the month, I thought I should introduct a new item to the development room. We now have the ‘Friday Feature’ where we work on a ‘nice to have’ feature for one of our products. These features will generally be quick bits which add some ‘cool’ to our products.
Just Uptime was the first product to have the JDIFF, and I thought an iPhone site to check the status of all your checks within the system would be pretty cool. Any Just Uptime user is able to login to the new service which can be found at http://status.justuptime.com, this page can be viewed from any mobile device as well as your web browser, however, it was designed for the iPhone.
The service puts all checks found to be down at the top of the list making it easier for you to spot any problems as and when they come up and the page auto refreshes every 60 seconds.
I took some screenshots of the system so you can see it in action just below.
At Just Develop It we are always investing in new businesses and developing new products.
The picture above is a photo of the whiteboard in my office with a list of all our current JDI projects. The 2 lines with something missing are simply new projects which i decided to hide until we announce them