I’m sitting here twiddling my thumbs right now while my application deploys itself.

Rails has completely changed the way I work on the internet. Before I used to manually push individual files up via ftp. I made manual backups of my files using my own proprietary naming schema’s. If there where problems I had to run through a checklist of things I could have done wrong. Sometimes I’d have to go thorough the entire process again to get the darn thing working right.

Up until this last project I even did this with my Rails work. I will never go back!

I’m using a set of tools now including Radrails (my IDE of choice), Subversion (versioning and repository/backup) and Capistrano (Deployment). To deploy I select my updated files in Radrails and commit them to Subversion by right clicking and selecting commit. Once the files have been I go to a console navigate to my project and type “cap deploy”. This kicks of Capistrano and all I have to do now is wait.

Configuring all these tools can be a pain the first couple times, but I only have to go through that process once per project. After that they pretty much deploy themselves. You can even write variable deployment recipe’s for deploying to different test environments.

If this goes over your head, don’t worry. If you need to know it give it some time and exposure. If you don’t have a practical use nod and move on with life. There is a world of magic and mystery here that most lay people should probably remain distanced from.

This morning I had the pleasure of waking up with a phone call from my SSL provider trying to upsell me on EV certificates. You know someone is trying too hard when you can barely squeeze in short affirmations while they go on and on about how great their product is and how much money they’re going to save you.

The pitch began by rebuking me for not having put their security badge on the EV Certs (Extended Validation) are.

I have a technical background, and I know that once data is encrypted that creates a barrier against attackers. Once the encryption is in place the biggest whole in the system is human, and there’s no way to encrypt the security risks that individuals pose. Data encryption also reassures customers of a sites validity (not that they understand much about what is actually going on). So this new EV format is basically a marketing gimmick. They’ll give surfers an even greater sense of security by changing the browsers url bar green and charge an arm and a leg for something that doesn’t really add significantly to the actual security of the system itself.

The old feel good marketing tactic. I only wish there weren’t any merit in the customer assurance angle, then I could justify disregarding the whole matter out of hand. While born of good ideas and good intentions, I can’t help but feel like this is a high profile scam being perpetrated by a handful of high profile businesses to make money in a field that has become overly competitive.