Hello. My name is Harry Wolff.

I am a web developer working at GetGlue.

I enjoy tweeting, taking pictures, and making movies.

This is where I write.

Funny Animated gif Sites on Tumblr

Posted on 05/17/2012 by Harry

For the past week I’ve become slightly obsessed with animated .gif sites on Tumblr.

Two in particular have been consuming my idle time, with some posts causing me to laugh louder than a hyena.

Running a Startup has posts that reflect on life at a start-up. If you’ve lived the moments the blog posts about then you’ll be cracking up right alongside me.

#whatshouldwecallme I believe is written by a young lady in law school (as some posts are specific to that subject). Some posts I don’t find particularly funny, whereas others I’ve shared with every person I know. Two of my favorites are this one and this one, which is easily the best animated gif ever created..

Know of any other funny animated gif sites?

Fearful of Productivity, Proud of Inaction

Posted on 05/15/2012 by Harry

There is nothing stopping me from writing but myself. Not one little thought exists that has such a persuasive pull as to jerk me from my keyboard (physical or otherwise). It’s only me. Little introverted me that continuously stops my creative flow.

It saddens me. I have so much I want to say yet nothing is written. In my head I see myself stall. I’ll look straight ahead, think “We’re going to write”, and then…nothing. I never get past the thought. I never start writing or brainstorming. I just stop.

Sometimes I’ll distract myself. Usually I just do nothing. I stare straight ahead and keep staring. I stare at points that don’t exist, willing them to apparate, waiting for anything to break my concentration.

The energy I use thinking about writing is inevitably diverted to non productive gestures. It’s funneled, pruned, puréed, and expunged. I just stare and stare till my eyes sting and my forehead creases.

Then I give up. I find something easy to do and forget my urge to write. I push it down and away. Disowned, abandoned, forgotten.

Better to remember a past without failed attempts. Better for my heart, not for my soul.

And so nothing is written, nothing is said, nothing is shared. My eyes burn, my mind churns.

Thankfully I’ve saved myself the shame of failure. The only cost was passivity. Inert and unproductive, yet wildly successful.

Understanding Python’s yield keyword, decorators, and metaclasses

Posted on 05/09/2012 by Harry

I’m slowly but surely learning how to code like a proper Pythonista. However there are a few subjects that still cause my eyes to glaze over.

Fortunately a wonderful individual over at StackOverflow has written out some amazing answers to some advanced Python topics.

The Python yield keyword explained

Understanding Python decorators

What is a metaclass in Python?

I found the Python decorator article to be quite illuminating. Coming from JavaScript where functions are also first-class citizens I found it surprising to find the same was true in Python. I think Python’s white space confused me, it made all the function definitions look too neat and pretty to be equated with JavaScript function’s curly braces.

My Experience with Ruby On Rails as a PHP Developer

Posted on 05/06/2012 by Harry

Note: This post is an extension of my previous post about developing with PHP frameworks.

Recently I created a new web app using Ruby on Rails. By trade I’m a PHP and JavaScript developer so this foray into RoR broke new ground for me.

I went with Rails over a PHP framework mostly because I wanted to try something new. I wanted to try something different and with its popularity Rails was a great pick.

In brief I found my experience developing with Ruby on Rails to be both frustrating and effortless.

Frustrating: because I was new to RoR I didn’t know all of its tricks and how to do things the Rails Way. As a result I felt like I was coding at a slower pace than I usually do. Really that’s the performance hit anyone experiences when trying something new.

Effortless: once I learned some Railisms and began to get the swing of how Rails works coding went smoothly. Using Rails’ ActiveRecord was magic once I understood how and why I should use it. Also Rails’ form helpers made form handling a joy to work with. Again: this was after I picked up some understanding of how these things worked. Before understanding I was close to pulling out my hair.

So what follows is a run through of my thoughts and experiences while I used Ruby on Rails to create Dates & Pairs.

Disclaimer: I am in no way a Rails or Ruby expert so if something written is incorrect please let me know and I will update the post to reflect the correct information. Continue reading →

Permalink Structure Update

Posted on 05/02/2012 by Harry

I’ve just updated the permalink structure of the URLs for this blog.

Previously I was using the ‘month and name’ configuration for each post, i.e. this post would be “/2012/05/post-name”.

My main problem with this structure was the impersonal tone it set for each post. Rather than each post being unique, important, and self-contained, the numerical structure set a very ordered tone for the posts. That being that each post was sequential and the order held some importance, when in reality that was far from true.

Keeping the URL scheme as just “/post-name” will now put the focus on the content and not the blog as a whole. Often-times I update posts and at that point I always ask myself, “Should I update the URL as well?”. Also I find it much more important to know when a post was last updated than when it was first created. Look to a theme change to reflect that desire.

On a technical note I used the following post by Yoast to help with my URL migration. This way old URLs won’t point to dead 404 pages and users will still be able to see the content they requested.

Blogging Is Harder Than You Think

Posted on 04/30/2012 by Harry

When I began to blog I wasn’t aware of the challenges I would be facing. ’So many people blog all the time, it can’t be that hard!’. I could not have been more wrong.

How do you start blogging?

The first (non) challenge of blogging is what software or service to use. The most popular choices are WordPress and Blogger. Some may go the self-hosted route which opens up many more options, no decision objectively better than the rest.

After selecting your blogging engine of choice the real challenge begins. You have to write.

What do you write about? Guess what, only you know. You’re blogging because you want to. No one told you to blog or what to blog about. As a result the topics at your disposal are limitless.

At least at first. You should probably figure out what your dominant subject will be. It could be blogging about things you know intimately, or you could chronicle your foray into new experiences.

Or you could be like me and refuse to choose. Honestly it’s a stupid decision, one that causes me to curse my stubbornness daily.

Again, it’s up to you what you want to write about.

Have you chosen what it is yet?

Now start writing.

How often should you write?

Again, this is up to you. You’re blogging because you want to right?

I suggest setting an attainable goal for yourself to hit. When I started blogging I promised myself to post at least once per week. It was a goal I felt confident I could keep without burning myself out.

Write as often as you feel comfortable. Only you know the pace you can maintain. But above all else…

Write.

Write, write, write.

So now you’re writing.

Congratulations! Keep it up! Keep going! It doesn’t get easier but you do become more experienced.

With that experience you learn more about yourself as a blogger. You’ll learn that you blog best in the morning, or while on the train.

You’ll learn the posts that you enjoy writing most and the ones people love reading most.

Along the way you’ll pick up some comments, each one just as exciting as the first.

I yelped after I got my first comment on this blog, and I still do. It’s a joy to know my words bring joys to others.

So stop reading and get writing!

And for starters you can write me a nice comment.

Version 0.3 of HarryWolff WordPress Theme In Use

Posted on 04/25/2012 by Harry

Well, look what we have here!

If you would be so kind as to look around you’ll notice that this blog has a new paint of coat. This paint of coat is one that I’m particularly happy with as it’s the first WordPress theme I’ve used for this blog that I created myself.

I shouldn’t take all the credit. This theme is still a child-theme of the already excellent Twenty Eleven theme (which was the theme I was using previously). However this child-theme has enough design of my own making that I feel comfortably calling it my own theme.

But wait! There’s more!

Along with creating this new theme I’ve also begun to develop it openly. You can view the source code for this theme on its GitHub page. Any changes that you see appear on this blog will appear in that repo. Watch it for fun, or ignore it for glee.

There’s still a few things left that I need to do with this redesign. I need to add a few more splotches of color (somewhere, not really sure where) and also fix up any other styling issues that might pop up. But I was so eager to start using this theme that I figured there was nothing to lose by switching over to it today.

Development Notes

In case you’re curious I grabbed the background repeating pattern from Subtle Patterns. It’s a great design resource to add just that right hint of flavor to the background. I might try a few different backgrounds but for now I’m quite pleased with ‘furley_bg’.

Also I’ve started an important practice while developing this theme: using a local dev environment. This is awesome for two very important reasons:

Any changes I make to my local environment don’t affect my live blog.
The workflow is much, much faster. Since all files are local the time it takes to refresh the page to see how my changes look is close to nil.

I’ve also kept my ‘wp-content’ folder out of my local WordPress installation. It was getting lost amidst the rest of WordPress files so I moved it into my root directory, which you can see in my GitHub repo.

I followed the information given here on how to move your wp-content and you can see how it looks in my wp-config.php file on my repo. This made the entire dev process much more enjoyable.

And as they say, a happy dev is a productive dev.

What Happens When I Don’t Post?

Posted on 04/19/2012 by Harry

This is the first time in two years that I have gone more than a week without a blog post. On one hand I feel very shitty about this. I feel like I should be beating myself up for not being more proactive in writing a post.

On the other hand I feel quite liberated.

I think I didn’t post anything as a mild act of self-rebellion. For two years I’ve diligently pushed out a blog post, never mind the quality. However that behavior has began to pale for me. I don’t want to read shitty things so I shouldn’t be writing and posting shitty things.

Also I had an excuse.

I’ve come down with a god-awful cold these past two weeks. Last weekend I was all but couch-ridden, watching movie after tv show letting the sickness run its course. (Quick movie recap: *Immortals*: Stupid movie, fun action. *We Bought a Zoo*: Anticipated mushiness, but was a quality film for all ages. Highly recommended.)

So with my cold in my back pocket I let these two weeks ride, watching my blog sit and collect a little dust. I expected my view counts to drop as no new material was being written.

But they didn’t.

They kept strong, with my previously top read posts remaining my top read posts. It seems like some of my pages are high up in some Google searches as they’re constantly hit and read.

It was during these two weeks that I realized that I don’t need to mindlessly push out posts of any quality, but take my time with topics that I care about. Then write about them, take my time and when published their quality should speak for themselves.

Or they’ll just be ignored. At least I tried.

The Ideal Home Entertainment Setup

Posted on 04/08/2012 by Harry

I love TV and movies. I love watching new shows and I love kicking back to old favorites. I think it would be fair to call myself an entertainment junkie.

To supplement this large diet of TV and movies I’ve taken it upon myself to create a home entertainment setup that I would be proud to call my own. At long last I have found the winning combination of hardware and software that now make up my setup.

I thought it would be helpful to the internet at large if I shared what I’ve learned along the way. I’ve gone through a few rounds of trial and error before arriving at my current setup, and hopefully you’ll be able to benefit from my mistakes.

Continue reading →

Music: new Dirty Projectors and The Walkmen Albums Coming This Year

Posted on 03/31/2012 by Harry

I’m beyond words to describe my excitement right now.

Two of my favorite artists are putting out new albums this year.

Dirty Projectors is finally releasing the follow-up to their amazing “Bitte Orca”. They just posted a video for the upcoming single off the new album and it is awesome. Groovy drum beat, thumping bass line, and the always amazing vocals.

Watch and listen to the new single from the Dirty Projectors now.

Even more exciting than that…my all time favorite band The Walkmen are putting out a new album this year as well. Titled “Heaven” it’s due out later this year. From Pitchfork:

The followup to 2010′s Lisbon was recorded with noted indie rock producer Phil Ek (Fleet Foxes, the Shins, Modest Mouse) at his Seattle-area studio in the woods. Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold sings on the track “No One Ever Sleeps”.

So that was enough to make me start dancing. But what really threw me over the moon was the music playing in their newly released trailer for “Heaven”.

Watch the trailer for The Walkmen’s upcoming album “Heaven” now.

This is going to be an amazing year for music.