Test Or Die
In which I beg the community to start testing if you aren’t or start helping others if you are.
Tokyo Tyrant is Awesome
If you are a hacker building a distributed system, drop what you are doing and go play with Tokyo Tyrant. I haven't been this excited about something since I first played with rails
I am serious, stop reading, start compiling.
ps: The tokyocabinet in macports is antique, build your own. Tokyo
Tyrant needs lua to be installed in /usr/local, annoying, but
survivable until patched to have a --with-lua.
My Setup and Software
In which I divulge the hardware and software that I use to get the job done.
Please Call Me a Fanboy
Reading the latest in Git fanboy criticism has felt like a time warp back to when I started learning about Rails. Just for fun here’s a quick run-down of my life for the last few years:
- Four years ago I was a J2EE webapp author when I discovered Rails. It turned out writing Ruby was way more fun; I told the world about it, was promptly dismissed as a fanboy, but I stuck with it.
- My Rails skills landed me a well-paying job.
- Last year I was a Subversion user when I discovered Git. It turned out using Git was way more fun; I told the world about it, was promptly dismissed as a fanboy, but I stuck with it.
- My Git skills landed me a spot in a successful startup (for those wondering, this was ultimately the goal after college).
I understand that your mileage may certainly vary jumping on bandwagons, but I don’t know why people are immediately dismissive when there are crowds of really enthusiastic developers.
Assuming their opinions are genuine, there’s a good chance there’s something to what they’re saying even if it isn’t always done with the greatest of tact.
This isn’t fashion design, when developers get excited about things, it normally means it’s helping them become better developers.
I’m a Rails fanboy and a Git fanboy and I don’t give a fuck who knows it.
HTTParty Goes Commando
In which I describe the new hot command line interface for HTTParty.
Welcome to the New Site
I’ve maintained a blog since sometime in May of 2005. As with many blogs, posting regularity varied. Sometimes it was daily, sometimes a month or two would go by with nothing new at all.
This is something different.
The content on the old site changed over time, just like it’s author. Interests come and go, technologies that were once shiny and new have lost some of their shine. I stopped writing short posts that were mostly links to other people’s content, and starting writing longer articles. I did some interviews, and a bunch of book reviews.
Then, as is prone to happen, I got busy. In the time I’ve been writing this I’ve gone from having one child to having three. My job responsibilities have changed. This site got a bit neglected as a result.
So a while back I started thinking about the site, and what I wanted it to really become. And I thought. And then I thought some more. My thoughts evolved over time, and I’ve settled on what I’m launching here today.
I’m a curious person, and always have been. My interests are varied, and change often.This site is a reflection of those facts. Some of the content from the old site has been migrated to here, much of it was not as it was either not relevant or didn’t fit well with the new site. The focus of this new site will be whatever happens to have my interest at the time: mostly technology, software development, and entrepreneurship, but extending into other areas as well. I will continue to do interviews and book reviews, and have several of both to publish in the very near future.
I hope to write here on a more consistent basis, but they will be longer articles and as such it’s not likely to exceed more than once or twice per week. I’ve created a new section just for links to interesting things, called Curiousities, and there will be content there daily.
Look at the Size of My Footer
In which I discuss the latest updates to RailsTips—a footer full of links and live preview of comments.
StaticMatic Update
StaticMatic has been in great need of love of late so I brushed off the old gem and gave it a bit of a spruce.
New Release: 0.10.0
The new release includes major improvements to error handling as well as internal refactoring in preparation for future work.
Code moves to github
I've been using git for the latest changes so this made sense. StaticMatic has its own account where I'll also be hosting gem plugins: github.com/staticmatic/staticmatic/tree/master.
On Twitter
Like all the cool kids: twitter.com/staticmatic.
Coming Soon
StaticMatic will be supporting multiple templating languages very shortly. More on this soon.
Lots of Rails Plugins
Since it’s the last day of 2008, it seems like a good time to take a quick look at the number of plugins in the Rails plugin directory. When I first created the plugin directory while at the Canada on Rails conference in April 2006, I started the database with 66 plugins scraped from [...]Tags: plugins, ruby_on_rails
Handling custom file attachments in Wordpress plugins
I’ve been working on a wordpress plugin to make it easy to set a banner image for any blog entry outside the post content. The current approach is flawed as it requires hacking at the form tag for the post edit page to allow file uploads, but while I look around for a better way [...]Move It To The Model and Use Tiny Methods
In which I show how much I use to suck and how to move business logic to the model and break it up into smaller, more easily testable methods.
Rails Studio in January
Mike just reminded me that the Early Bird discount is soon to expire for our January Rails Studio in Denver. If you’ve been thinking about attending a Rails Studio and work for a big company, here’s a tip I learned the hard way: corporations usually budget for training and then when it’s time to “save some dollars” in later quarters, they cut the training budget first. In my big corporate days, that bit me more than once, stopping me from going to conferences (OOPSLA) and training (XP Immersion, which I later eventually made it to).
So if you’re interested in doing any training this year, I’d recommend that you do it in the first quarter before the budget is pulled out from under you. Unless you work for an enlightened company with a healthy revenue stream.
The Rails Studio has the added advantage (for me) of being held at a beautiful, resort-like hotel with a bunch of really nice fitness facilities and excellent food. Last time we taught there, I was actually sad to go back to our full service gym at home.
If you’re coming and either into getting in shape or music, let me know. Maybe we can arrange some after-hours activities.
Contest: Free iPhone Oxford Dictionary
I’m not big on publicizing commercial works due to the obvious bias involved, but we’ve recently finished up the Oxford American College Dictionary and Thesaurus for the iPhone and our client was nice enough to give us a few free download codes. Never one to waste free stuff I thought I’d offer them up to my readers.
So here’s the deal – to distribute these free downloads of our Oxford Dictionary for the iPhone (appstore) I’m going to run a little contest: Post your favorite word in the comments along with your preferred usage of the word (like an example sentence). I’ll pick my favorite five entries after a week or so and will email you your promo codes (so be sure to leave your email address in the comment form). Note: I am a sucker for humor and wit, so be liberal in your application of them.
Most real iPhone dictionaries (from respected publications) go for upwards of $20 – $30 so this is a pretty decent value.
Now wow me with your vocabulary.
The winning words are: sesquipedalian, recidivist, floccinaucinihilipilification, obsequious (indirectly) and esquivalience You guys should be getting your promo codes in a few minutes. Thanks for the submissions everybody! (and, yes, all these words are in the dictionary app)
tags: iPhone, dictionary
I demand Freedom!
Freedom is an application that disables networking on an Apple computer for up to eight hours at a time. Freedom will free you from the distractions of the internet, allowing you time to code, write, or create. At the end of your selected offline period, Freedom re-enables your network, restoring everything as normal.Tags: tips_&_tools, freedom