We just posted a position to our website today for a writing position at Thunder Data. We are seeking an intern to write articles and blog posts for ThunderTix, a ticketing software to help manage events for small venues to sell tickets. We are looking for a talented writer to…
Using PHP’s preg_match() to Parse Credit Card Data from Magnetic Swipe Readers
Credit card data read from magnetic swipe card readers can be parsed using PHP’s preg_match and regular expressions. Learn how in this tutorial.
10 Steps to Capistrano and Plesk Subdomains Deployment
Plesk and Capistrano for subdomains is easily handled in this 10 step setup tutorial.
Magnets in a Digital World: Credit Card Swipe Processing
In a traditional store, paying by credit card involves swiping the card through a swipe machine, which reads the data stored on a credit card’s magnetic stripe. The data includes a few key bits of information, namely: The account number and expiration date of the card The account holder’s name…
Marketing in Down Times
I’m always pleasantly surprised when I stumble upon the result of a company’s marketing efforts and realize how perfectly they succeeded in directing their message. My favorite, a television ad campaign for Prego, used music to drive home the old-world style of their spaghetti sauce and succeeded beautifully. In yesterday’s…
Can Management Understand Employee Needs?
During a conversation with a large national client, two of their staff members made the implication that their “boss”, the executive director, was out of touch with what was going on in the trenches, and he should not be consulted on important decisions.  Though I agree that the director may…
Altering Course: Development Team and Client Relationships
Today, we received a client request to improve a page’s load time while in the midst of making major aesthetic improvements to another site. When I suggested we switch gears to help the client, I was met with resistance in the form of frustration that the new project was being…
RailsConf Retrospectives, Part 1: Testing
The Thunder Data dev team was represented at this year’s RailsConf in Las Vegas, and we learned quite a bit. We’re starting a series of RailsConf Retrospectives to delve into some of the topics covered at the conference. Testing One of the most pervasive themes at RailsConf was that of…
Fixing a Dysfunctional Team
Every Monday morning our team engages in a sprint planning meeting. Starting with a retrospective of the prior week, we discuss problems, successes, and ideas from individually posted notes on each topic Intended to be frank discussions, we are openly enthusiastic about the good things that occur, but our challenges…