Double Shot #169
All of a sudden my plate is very full again. But good full: interesting projects, friendly clients. So I'm not complaining.
- Our Most Fulfilling Web Service Yet - Amazon continues to expose more of its underlying business via web services. I'll bet we see this one wrapped for Rails pretty quickly.
- Big Name Companies Using Ruby on Rails - While this sort of list is nice to crow about (how many times have you seen "our software is in use by 450 of the Fortune 500"?), it's ultimately uninformative unless you know what "using" means. A huge company has lots of corners where a single Rails project can sneak in without meaning jack about corporate acceptance.
- Google Visualization API - It's a good day for big companies to be opening access to useful code. There are some neat ways to display data available here with relatively low pain.
Double Shot #168
Remember, if you declare yourself to be an expert, most people will believe you. Of course, then you might have to actually deliver some time.
- Ebb 0.1.0 - This alternative lightweight web server has moved over to git and bumped up a version.
- For attaching files, use Paperclip - A new alternative to file_upload and the like.
Double Shot #167
Ran into my first git problem last night - fixable, but annoying. I think I haven't found the right workflow for use with this system yet.
- Gitnub - OS X client for browsing git repositories.
- Everybody Meet Lovd, Lovd Meet Everybody - Open source scaffolding for social network sites, written in Rails.
- Eclipse Announces New Runtime Initiative around Equinox - For the love of God, Montressor, do we really need another runtime?
- Generate Ruby on Rails CHM Documentation - Notes on how to do it, together with a handy pre-built 2.0.2 CHM so you don't have to go messing around on Windows yourself. Yeah, the real developers use an API site online. I find local searchability trumps that for usability.
- UUIDtools - Gem to generate GUIDs and UUIDs in Ruby. I found this one via Using UUID/GUID as Primary Key in Rails (though that's not what I need to do with UUIDs at the moment).
Double Shot #166
Back to my regularly scheduled program of Rails work today.
- Open Source Licensing: Obsolete or Of Importance? - A good run-down of some of the current issues from RedMonk's Stephen O'Grady.
- Rails Search Benchmarks - Evan Weaver compares sphinx, ferret, and solr. Sphinx comes out ahead. I've not had a chance to use sphinx (the one client I have doing massive search refuses to look at it due to a perception of missing features), but I think I'll be trying it for an app I'm starting to work on.
- Ruby on Rails: the Duplo Generation - Matt Aimonetti complains about developers who just use a ton of plugins to create things, complain without giving back, and don't understand the Rails internals. I think I disagree; much as I try to avoid mindless reuse in my own applications, I think that enabling this sort of easy development by less-talented or less-committed developers is a necessary part of building a popular platform. Of course, it's clear that some core Rails folks don't want Rails to be a popular platform.
- can_flag plugin sees the light of day - Support from Courtenay to allow users to flag objectionable content from other users.
Double Shot #165
Tomorrow I give my first set of conference talks in a while...3 hours on beginning LSL. Virtually.
- Attributes in the migration generator - A Rails 2.0 change I'd missed until just recently, but which comes in very handy.
- rsync 3.0.0 - Major version bump released this month. Timely for me, as I need to get an rsync server set up.
Double Shot #164
The problem with social networks is that they force you to be social :)
- Microsoft Activities for Firefox - New Version - Didn't take the open source community long to clone that feature.
- Integrating Scribd with your Rails application - Ben Curtis has some details.
- RadRails 1.0 - This open source IDE (now integrated with Aptana) has reached release. Looks pretty nice. Peter Cooper from Ruby Inside likes it.
- Living on the edge (of Rails) #11 - Summary of another week in development land.
- QGit - Replacement for gitk built on Qt.
Double Shot #163
I really don't like being in a situation where I don't know whether the tests are bad or the code is bad.
- Use attr_protected or we will hack you - How to tighten up security on your user models.
- A three finger salute to git - Combining the latest "swipe" gestures on Mac touchpads with git commands.
- iPhone SDK Bug Filing - Rogue Amoeba appears to be leading the charge to make the iPhone a more open system. Good luck with that.
- SVN Externals are Evil; Use Piston or Braid - Why you don't want to keep your plugins in your repo as externals.
- Braid - Like piston, but can handle SVN or git repos.
Double Shot #162
Having fun ramping up to a higher level of RSpec use, though it still makes my brain hurt sometimes.
- Firefox 3 Beta 4 - Just in time for me to hope that it fixes some CPU-spiking issues I was having recently with beta 3. Release notes are here.
Double Shot #161
Today is going to include code in Cocoa, Ruby, and LSL. I hope my brain can keep them sorted out.
- Komodo IDE 4.3 - ActiveState's IDE now includes unit testing integration. I'm still happy with TextMate, but if I was going to switch to an IDE, this is the one I've liked best so far.
- TextMate Tip: HTML Tags - Chris Kaukis at ADS has been doing a series of these. So far they've been useful.
- UNA - New tool for real-time long-distance collaborative software development, combining a multi-user IDE and chat with a client-server backbone. Looks interesting.
- Low Pro: Unobtrusive Scripting For Prototype - I knew this was out there, but I just had to hunt up a copy for a plugin that wanted it. More to learn...
- TMail 1.2.2 - The mail handler used by Rails is now compatible with Ruby 1.9, and the documentation has been improved to boot.
- Delta Indexing Support in Ultrasphinx - More progress on the Rails full-text index front.
- Automatic Asset Minimization and Packaging with Rails 2.0.x - A good idea from Dave Troy, with implementation.
Double Shot #160
It's safe to say that I'm not looking for more work at this point. When it rains, it pours.
- SCO: Will the Fat Lady Ever Sing? - Now that I'm writing for OStatic, I had a chance to get my own kicks in on the rotting corpse of SCO.
- iPhone Dev Center - Even though I have no concrete ideas, yesterday's announcements made me interested in iPhone programming. Probably the effect of the reality distortion field combined with the $100 million number. But hey, I did just learn XCode and Cocoa.
Double Shot #159
Sick kids at least mean I can get to work a bit early. Because, of course, they got me up in the middle of the night.
- Merb-0.9.1 Developer release - The API is stabilizing, they say.
- RVG and SVuGy: create vector graphic with Ruby - Not that I actually know anything about SVG, but this looks potentially useful.
- Living on the edge (of Rails) #10 - Looks like it's been another quiet week out at the edge.
- Mac GNU Privacy Guard - I just needed to install GPG. This turned out to be the easy way. And GPGMail was also very useful.
- rscribd gem - Library for the Scribd API.
Double Shot #158
Today I need to buckle down and churn out some code.
- Tutorial: Publishing RubyGems with Hoe - I had occasion to look at Hoe last night. This was a good starter.
- OStatic - New open source news site from GigaOm. Looks like I'll be doing some writing there.
Double Shot #157
Looks like my dance card may be filling up nicely again. Still, don't hesitate to get in touch if you'd like to chat about work. I can always squeeze in a few more hours somewhere.
- attribute_fu - Plugin to make building multi-model forms in Rails a bit easier. I could have used this a while ago. (via Tim Haines)
- Ebb - Yet another web server alternative for Rails apps, this one written in C for higher performance. (via Ruby Inside)
- Compiling Ruby, RubyGems and Rails on Ubuntu - I've had to install this stack a few times, and there's always been a certain amount of thrashing involved. Here's some guidance from the FiveRuns guys.
- Ascribe - a Case Study on View Specs - I've shied away from testing views, but here's some evidence that such testing is a Good Thing.
- How to use github and submit a patch - Another run down on the sexy new source code control system.
Double Shot #156
Another weekend of slinging Rails code - but I made the deadline.
- Gemedit - Gem to make it easy to edit the source code of other gems. Useful for learning.
- Developing Rails Applications on Mac OS X Leopard - Very basic article from the Apple Developer folks, but it does show how to use XCode for Rails development if you don't have another preferred project editor.
- Howto use the Ext JS Treeview (Ext.tree) with Ruby on Rails - And with lazy loading, to boot.
- jQuery plugin: Treeview - Plugin for the jQuery JavaScript framework. Useful to me, since I just had to implement a treeview in a Rails project that was already using jQuery.
Double Shot #155
And so another month draws to a close. Hope you're being productive on the extra day.
- Rush - Unix shell that uses Ruby syntax for its commands. (via Phil Crissman)
- Capistrano 2.2.0 - Now released to the masses.
- GitHub - Secure Git repository hosting.
- Living on the edge (of Rails) #9 - the sleeper edition - Not much going on in the main development line this week.
Double Shot #154
Moving back to more Rails work for the rest of the week, it looks like.
- git'ing started with RSpec - Pat Maddox shows how to use RSpec directly from the git repository.
- Default Routes Considered Harmful, and Other Rails SEO Tips - Rails for the URL structure obsessed. Personally, I'm not one of them, but I know that a lot of folks are.
- count vs length vs size - Josh Susser explains the difference in terms of Active Record.
- Testing in Rails: Part 11 - Running Unit Tests - More testing for fun and profit.
- Merbful Authentication Initial Merb 0.9 Support - Ready for use, apparently.
Double Shot #153
Looks like I've got some hours free starting in March, so if you're looking to hire a developer who gets things done, drop me a line.
- The Ruby Programming Language - New book covering Ruby 1.8 and 1.9. Peter Cooper recommends it as the best Ruby book for newcomers.
- Advanced Rails Recipes +14: This new Rails 2.0 book is coming along too. You can already buy it in beta form (as I have).
- Git: Start as a Superior SVN, then Leverage Even More - Chris Bailey explains what's so special about Git.
Double Shot #152
Turning my attention back to some Rails work today, I think.
- Rails Multisite Plugin Ready For Prime Time - Good news for me, I think, because I'm involved in cooking up a site that will be able to make good use of this.
- Staying Alive with Thin! - New release of the up-and-coming Thin ruby web server.
Double Shot #151
I actually have a working Cocoa app that implements all the "must have" features. Moving on to the "nice to have" features now.
- Cocoa JSON Framework - I'm going to have to swap some data between the Cocoa app and a merb site. Looks like this makes it easy, since merb can do native JSON output of anything. I looked into using YAML, but the only existing Cocoa YAML code doesn't seem to have been revised in several years. I could use a ruby class to do the import, but why not stick to all native Objective C?
- Mac Help Writer - The help authoring scene on OS X is much bleaker than on Windows. This is the best one I've found; it builds nice-looking standard help files for the Mac, but I can tell I'm going to be hand-editing HTML files to do anything tricky, as it hits its limits quickly. I looked at several other applications that run on OS X, but they're all cross-platform, building help files that look like WinHelp in an OS X container. That's a fail.
- Capistrano 2.2.0 Preview - Eek, I'm not done grokking 2.0 yet. Fortunately the changes are minimal, mainly better git support.
- scope-out-rails - Plugin for adding easy scopes to your models.
Double Shot #150
QuickTime portion of the Cocoa app is working now. Today's task: figure out the FTP portion.
- Embedded Cocoa Frameworks - Video tutorial showing how to get a private framework to actually embed itself in your compiled app. I'm sure this information is somewhere in the copious Apple docs, but darned if I could find it.
- Connection Kit - Open-source Cocoa framework bringing some sanity to FTP, SFTP, WebDav, Amazon S3, and some other network protocols. (via Matt Long)
- CoRD - Open source RDP client for the Mac. One less reason to visit the Windows desktop. (I may some day get rid of the remote Windows servers, but for the moment I'm stuck with them).
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