Posts from BenCurtis.com...
Posted by Ben 7 days ago
I’ve been keeping busy on a number of projects, like the recently-released NextProof, a site that provides easy e-commerce for professional photographers.
I have still managed to find some time to add more awesome to the SaaS Rails Kit, though… this time in the form of support for Authorize.net CIM as a payment gateway. [...]
Posted by Ben 28 days ago
Over and over again I see people asking about how to do a search the “RESTful way” with Rails, and every time I do I just shake my head and wonder why we sometimes get so caught up in how we do something that it keeps from actually doing it. So, with that introduction, [...]
Posted by Ben 42 days ago
A number of Rails Kits customers asked for access to the git repository for the Kit they purchased, and I considered using GitHub for that, but this kind of usage doesn’t line up well with GitHub, since I have lots of users who need only read-only access to a few repositories. Since I already [...]
Posted by Ben 45 days ago
I just updated the SaaS Rails Kit for Rails 2.1, and added a couple new payment gateways, and I thought I’d mention a behavior change in Rails 2.1 that might catch you unawares.
The new behavior in Rails 2.1 for has_one is that Rails will now automatically validate the association for you, which can cause you [...]
Posted by Ben 45 days ago
Are you doing Ruby on Rails work in Seattle? Do you want more work? I have a number of clients, large and small, who are looking for both contractors and full-time developers who know Rails. I’d be happy to make a connection for you to get more work. If you’re interested, [...]
Posted by Ben 58 days ago
Some of my more popular blog posts are the ones detailing my work on modifying the acts_as_authenticated plugin to work with the open_id_authentication plugin, giving you both OpenID and username/password logins in your Rails application—here, here and here. After a few inquiries, I have now updated my sample OpenID application to work with the [...]
Posted by Ben 63 days ago
Last summer I had a client project that involved customers using a web application to create web sites that were themed (think hosted CMS or hosted blog), and the client wanted to provide screenshots of how the hosted site would look before the customer purchased the site and actually got access. My solution was [...]
Posted by Ben 84 days ago
I used to love the company Overnight Prints. They offer a great product at reasonable prices and with reasonable service. Until this week, I had no reservation about referring them to anyone who needed some printing done, and I saw no need to even shop around for any printing job I needed. [...]
Posted by Ben 93 days ago
A lot of us are building web applications that we sell (or hope to sell) to customers on a subscription basis, like Catch the Best. Every time you and I build one of those applications, we need to build a billing system to go along with it. I imagine you and I would [...]
Posted by Ben 119 days ago
Now Amazon’s EC2 supports static IP addresses that can be pointed at any of your instances on the fly. This is cool.
Posted by Ben 127 days ago
Many moons ago I wrote a quick status report on my first 100 days of Rails consulting. Now that it has been over a year since I joined the freelance world full time, I figured it was a good time to reflect again on that experience.
I said it then, and I’ll say it again—this [...]
Posted by Ben 134 days ago
I recently integrated the Scribd API with my resume management application, Catch the Best, so I thought I’d share a few details here about how I did that in case you are interested in using their great API.
To get started, first you need to install the rscribd gem and set up an account at Scribd [...]
Posted by Ben 136 days ago
This is cool… TaffyDB is an in-browser javascript database. This could be really useful for doing changes to a dataset without moving page to page, and then simply sending JSON back to a Rails or Merb app to save the changes.
Posted by Ben 145 days ago
Chris came up with this excellent little snippet, try, as seen on Ruby Inside.
That inspired me to a create a similarly sugary method for an idiom I use time and again:
class Object
##
# @person.name rescue nil
# vs
# @person.do_or_do_not(:name)
def do_or_do_not(method)
send method rescue nil
end
end
Posted by Ben 148 days ago
I am! According to Marcelo, who founded Sampa and blogs about the Seattle startup scene:
Most Influential Entrepreneur-Bloggers of Seattle
Thanks, Marcelo! My mom will be so proud. :)
Posted by Ben 155 days ago
I’ve had requests from time to time from other developers for the contract that I use with clients. Here’s the Terms section that I typically use. In addition to this section, I have sections that describe the work to be done, the payment schedule, and other info specific to each client.
Enjoy!
Sample Rails consulting [...]
Posted by Ben 178 days ago
I got an email from Amazon about their new WebStore by Amazon offering. Like Shopify, it’s a just-add-water storefront for people wanting to sell their products.
This seems like a natural step for Amazon, considering their recent product offerings like payment processing and fulfillment services.
Perhaps my days of building custom e-commerce [...]
Posted by Ben 178 days ago
Catch the Best got a mention in the Working Podcast, a great resource for career advice.
On a related note, StandoutJobs is getting a ton of coverage by virtue of being at DEMO, not to mention getting a $2 million investment. That should bring some welcome attention to the space addressed by hiring management tools [...]
Posted by Ben 182 days ago
Mark Stachiew, writing for the Montreal Gazette, mentioned Catch the Best in his latest Networthy column. Thanks, Mark!
Posted by Ben 205 days ago
Thanks to the contributions of a couple of people on the mailing list, and thanks to a client who wanted some Lorem Ipsum text to be generated, Faker 0.3.0 has been released.
Here are the changes:
Added Lorem to generate fake Latin
Added secondary_address to Address, and made inclusion of secondary address in street_address optional (false [...]
