Hello, I am James Adam.

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.

Contact

• @james@lazyatom.social and @james@ruby.social on Mastodon
• @lazyatom on Twitter X, if you are still active on that hell-site
• You can send me a message!
• lazyatom on most other things.

Projects

• Right now
  • Good Enough, the digital product development and prototyping studio I am part of.
  • Jelly, a shared inbox; the best way for a team to jam on email.
  • 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.