Is this you?

You understand the difference between websites and web applications, and you want to write apps that matter for people that care about them.

You’ll have a track record of working on completed projects. You’ll have a few years commercial experience, probably working as part of a team doing solid but under-appreciated work. You will have experience with Mac, Linux or UNIX, but it might not be your daily environment. Similarly you will have an opinion about vi vs. Emacs or Python vs. Ruby, but you’ll understand that they’re just opinions.

You’ll care about your tools and will take real, genuine pride in the quality of the code you create. You won’t consider automated testing and continuous integration as optional components of a project, and will appreciate automated deployment procedures too. Learning new programming languages and getting more out of the languages you already know will excite you. Efficiency will be important too, and you’ll be looking for ways to automate your workflow and push the repetition off to a script.

You’ll be confident in your programming ability, regardless of the language you prefer, yet humble enough to seek guidance when needed. You’ll know how JavaScript can be used to enhance the web, and will have demonstrated experience with a leading JavaScript library. You might even care about SASS and HAML, if you’re really cool.

Using the right tools is important and we realise that. We don’t have a parent company dictating how we do things or what our “standard operating environment” is – you’ll get to make those decisions with us. We all use MacBook Pros for development, but you might want a new iMac, for example. You’ll keep up to date with current trends and care about using modern techniques and practices, as well as tools and technologies.

What we give you

• Variable salary, dependent on position (Starting at $63,000 on probation)
• 9% superannuation (on top of salary)
• A MacBook Pro with SSD (yours to keep, replaced every two years) ~$3,500
• $1,000 travel allowance per year (parking, bike servicing, public transport)
• Internet and mobile allowance ($80 each per month)
• Current and relevant books, training, tools and gear
• Pay reviews every 6 months with no ceiling on earning potential
• Freedom to grow your role with our organisation

What you give us

• Agreed units of production (standard working week)
• Your creative genius and passion

How to apply

Send a short email to jobs@thefrontiergroup.com.au and reference your Github and Stack Overflow accounts, along with any Open Source projects you’re involved with. Include a resume if it’s three pages or less.

*International applicants are also welcome

FlyRight is a mobile app (with accompanying web site) designed to use the power of real-time services to help improve airline travel, allowing you to be heard by the airlines when you need to be: on the spot.

We want to help make travelling a smoother and more enjoyable experience by giving you power when you need it. If you want to be heard, FlyRight is for you.

We’ll have more updates soon so for now, register your interest at FlyRight to hear all about the launch. You can also keep up to date on FlyRight’s Twitter and Facebook page.

FlyRight is a joint venture between TFG and Resonate Social

Check out the latest writeup at Betakit

Even though NetApp has a phenomenal reputation – at a technical seminar last year, a sales engineer said that no NetApp customer has ever lost data due to a hardware failure – I still don’t feel comfortable without access to the BMC.

Access to the BMC (on other NetApp devices the LOM controller is called a Remote Management Controller, or RMC) is via SSH, using naroot as the username. From here you can move “up the chain” to a system console, and use CTRL-G to move “down the chain” back to the BMC.

mlambie@prime:~$ ssh naroot@ilca-netapp-bmc
naroot@ilca-netapp-bmc's password:
=== OEMCLP v1.0.0 BMC v1.2 ===
bmc shell ->
bmc shell -> system console
Press ^G to enter BMC command shell
Data ONTAP (ilca-netapp.thefrontiergroup.net.au)
login: root
Password:
ilca-netapp> Mon Mar 12 11:40:27 WST [console_login_mgr:info]: root logged in from console
ilca-netapp> <ctrl g>
=== OEMCLP v1.0.0 BMC v1.2 ===
bmc shell ->

The filer also allows management via SSH directly, and not through the BMC. I used this shell to restart the BMC.

ilca-netapp> bmc help status
bmc status
- Display status for a Baseboard Managment Controller (BMC).
ilca-netapp> bmc help reboot
bmc reboot
- Reboot the Baseboard Managment Controller (BMC)
ilca-netapp> bmc reboot
ilca-netapp> The BMC rebooted successfully

It looks like the SSH daemon was simply hung (it had an uptime of 270+ days prior to the reboot) and restarting the BMC through the management console in this way corrected the issues the monitoring systems were reporting.

Synaptor is changing the way SMEs in hazardous industries ensure the safety of their people and the environment with innovative mobile and web apps. We’re happy to have been involved in a project for a local company that is going to improve health and safety outcomes in hazardous industries.

We have put together a case study (Synaptor case study) to showcase the products, but here’s a sneak peek below:

Visit the Synaptor website to check out the project, or try out the mobile apps (iPhone/iPad) in the App Store (Observations & Maps)

There have been many updates in that time, and MailCatcher has picked up a bit of a following too. It’s still a great tool, so if you’re a developer you should check it out.

Here’s some feedback from around the web:

• “Ruby Mailcatcher should be deployed in every local development environment, regardless of whether you’re using Ruby.” – @brightball (link)
• “Learn about one of @srbiv’s favorite gems – http://mailcatcher.me our latest blog post:” – @highgroove (link)
• “MailCatcher is one of the better email testing gems I’ve seen.” – @hkarthik (link)

The latest version is 0.5.5 and can be accessed at MailCatcher.me or Github

A sprint is the basic unit of development in Agile. Sprints tend to last between one week and one month and are a “timeboxed” development effort of a constant length.

Our sprint planning session is broken down as follows:

• Product owner – prioritise and explain highest priority items in the product backlog (we use Pivotal Tracker). The team can ask questions at this point.
• Product owner – set a sprint goal (what are we achieving this sprint).
• Team – select Pivotal Tracker stories you can commit to, to attain that goal.
• Team – demonstrate a solution to each story in the sprint and ensure no outstanding questions.

Our Friday afternoon review session:

• Product Owner and Team  - demo all completed stories.
• Team – Review estimates from the sprint and note down how you went and how you can improve (if target not met).
• Team – Review points missed from the sprint and why, and how you can improve on that for next sprint.

If you’re running sprints in your organisation do you do things a little differently? Drop us a line in the comments.

You can see them by clicking the links below:

Australian Mines
Ramelius Resources
BatteryLimits

The Koans walk you along the path to enlightenment in order to learn Ruby. The goal is to learn the Ruby language, syntax, structure, and some common functions and libraries.

By manipulating and building upon Ruby’s TestUnit framework, the EdgeCase developers have created a step-by-step process for teaching Ruby through the practice of “Red, Green, Refactor.” They’ve added some simple game mechanics too, by showing your systematic progression through the 270+ challenges (puzzles). Reaching enlightenment results in a pretty ASCII graphic, and a legitimate sense of achievement.

Before you start with the koans though you’ll need a working Ruby installation. I recommend you take a look at the excellent rvm project, which will allow you to install multiple rubies (1.8.7 and 1.9.2 for example, alongside each other) and multiple gemsets in your home directory. Former Frontiersmen and 2011 Ruby Hero Award winner Darcy Laycock was heavily involved in this project as part of the 2010 Ruby Summer of Code, so we really like rvm at TFG.

The GitHub repository even includes a handy Keynote presentation, which I used as the basis for my talk about Ruby Koans at last week’s Ruby on Rails Oceania Perth meetup.

Lastly, if you’d like to have a play with the koans before diving in too deep, they’re available online through your web browser at Ruby Koans Online. This is a no-risk way of trying out Ruby (hint: team them up with why’s Try Ruby project) in your browser.

Is this you?

You understand the difference between websites and web applications, and you want to write apps that matter for people that care about them.

You’ll have a track record of working on completed projects, and if you’re a Development Manager, you’ll have delivered some of these projects personally. You’ll have a few years commercial experience, probably working as part of a team doing solid but under-appreciated work. You will have experience with Mac, Linux or UNIX, but it might not be your daily environment. Similarly you will have an opinion about vi vs. Emacs or Python vs. Ruby, but you’ll understand that they’re just opinions.

You’ll care about your tools and will take real, genuine pride in the quality of the code you create. You won’t consider automated testing and continuous integration as optional components of a project, and will appreciate automated deployment procedures too. Learning new programming languages and getting more out of the languages you already know will excite you. Efficiency will be important too, and you’ll be looking for ways to automate your workflow and push the repetition off to a script.

You’ll be confident in your programming ability, regardless of the language you prefer, yet humble enough to seek guidance when needed. You’ll know how JavaScript can be used to enhance the web, and will have demonstrated experience with a leading JavaScript library. You might even care about SASS and HAML, if you’re really cool.

Using the right tools is important and we realise that. We don’t have a parent company dictating how we do things or what our “standard operating environment” is – you’ll get to make those decisions with us. We all use MacBook Pros for development, but you might want a new iMac, for example. You’ll keep up to date with current trends and care about using modern techniques and practices, as well as tools and technologies.

What we give you

• Variable salary, dependent on position (Starting at $63,000 on probation)
• 9% superannuation (on top of salary)
• A MacBook Pro with SSD (yours to keep, replaced every two years) ~$3,500
• $1,000 travel allowance per year (parking, bike servicing, public transport)
• Internet and mobile allowance ($80 each per month)
• Current and relevant books, training, tools and gear
• Opportunities to work from home/flexi-time
• Pay reviews every 6 months with no ceiling on earning potential
• Freedom to grow your role with our organisation

What you give us

• Agreed units of production (standard working week)
• Your creative genius and passion

How to apply

Send a short email to jobs@thefrontiergroup.com.au and reference your Github and Stack Overflow accounts, along with any Open Source projects you’re involved with. Include a resume if it’s three pages or less.

*International applicants are also welcome