Posted by larrywright
I’ve built up a big backlog of links. Here’s the first batch.
33 Pages of command line goodness. I’ve been rocking the command line
for almost a decade, but there’s a ton of stuff here I didn’t know.
Update : Hal Pomeranz, who created this document, sent me an email with a link to the PDF version of the document. You can find it here. Thanks Hal!
I want to experiment with both of these languages.
The title is self-descriptive, and as you would expect from Ruby
Inside there’s a lot of nice shortcuts here.
This has been pretty well publicized, but here it is in case you
missed it. Community Engine allows you to add social networking
capabilities (profiles, photos, blogs, forums, and more) to any
application simply by adding this plugin. Extracted from live
websites, so it is real-world tested.
Awaken is a slick little app for OS X that I picked up as part of the
MacHeist bundle. I’ve used it as a timer for those occassions when I
need to force myself to work on something for “Just 10 minutes”, but
here are some other uses.
Posted by larrywright
A list of random and assorted things I have found lately
“A blog about open source technology at The New York Times, written by and primarily for developers. This includes our own projects, our work with open-source technologies at nytimes.com, and other interesting topics in the open source and Web 2.0 worlds.”
There are a lot of nice posts in there, including one on how they used EC2 to convert their archives to PDF.
Desert is a component framework for Rails that allows you to seamlessly define in your plugins:
- Models
- Controllers
- Views
- Helpers
- Routes
- Migrations
- Plugin Dependencies
I’m going to check this out for something I’m about to start on.
Five Runs is conducting a series of 5-question interviews. So far they have interviewed Chad Fowler, Michael Cote and Peter Cooper.
Paul Graham has released Arc, his long-awaited Lisp dialect.
Arc is designed above all for exploratory programming: the kind where you decide what to write by writing it. A good medium for exploratory programming is one that makes programs brief and malleable, so that’s what we’ve aimed for. This is a medium for sketching software.
‘nuff said.
Posted by larrywright
A list of random and assorted things I have found lately
“A blog about open source technology at The New York Times, written by and primarily for developers. This includes our own projects, our work with open-source technologies at nytimes.com, and other interesting topics in the open source and Web 2.0 worlds.”
There are a lot of nice posts in there, including one on how they used EC2 to convert their archives to PDF.
Desert is a component framework for Rails that allows you to seamlessly define in your plugins:
- Models
- Controllers
- Views
- Helpers
- Routes
- Migrations
- Plugin Dependencies
I’m going to check this out for something I’m about to start on.
Five Runs is conducting a series of 5-question interviews. So far they have interviewed Chad Fowler, Michael Cote and Peter Cooper.
Paul Graham has released Arc, his long-awaited Lisp dialect.
Arc is designed above all for exploratory programming: the kind where you decide what to write by writing it. A good medium for exploratory programming is one that makes programs brief and malleable, so that’s what we’ve aimed for. This is a medium for sketching software.
Posted by larrywright
A plugin to do OpenID authentication in Rails, in a RESTful way.
Competition is good. Merb and the like provide that competition to Rails. This article runs through an alternative to the Rails stack. It’s always good to keep an eye on what else is out there.
Ok, this is a bonus link. Not at all Rails related, but relevent to you if you’re reading this. Rands nails the Nerd. I mean, really nails it.
Posted by larrywright
A new book from O’Reilly on troubleshooting Ruby (and Rails) apps. From the overview:
This short cut introduces key system diagnostic tools to Ruby developers creating and deploying web applications. When programmers develop a Ruby application they commonly experience complex problems which require some understanding of the underlying operating system to be solved. Difficult to diagnose, these problems can make the difference between a project’s failure or success. This short cut demonstrates how to leverage system tools available on Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, BSD or any other Unix flavor. You will learn how to leverage the raw power of tools such as lsof, strace or gdb to resolve problems that are difficult to diagnose with the standard Ruby development tools. You will also find concrete examples that illustrate how these tools solve real-life problems in Ruby development. This expertise will prove especially relevant during the deployment phase of your application. In this way, should your production Mongrel cluster freeze and stop serving HTTP requests, it will not take you 2 days to figure out why!
A nice, if a bit short, article on some of the changes that are coming in Rails 2.0. This is focused on what you will need to change in your application.
This is a beginner tutorial, specific to using Netbeans 6.0. I’ve not played much with the Rails support in Netbeans, but it looks impressive so far.
Posted by larrywright
A collection of Rails links
This is a nice step-by-step article on integrating PayPal with your Rails application, using ActiveMerchant.
I’ve only skimmed over the new features in the upcoming 2.0 release of Rails, but this looks like one of the nicest features. This is a good explanation of how it works and why it’s useful.
A bugfix release of Mongrel is out. Looks like 1.1 is due soon, and it looks interesting:
“Mongrel 1.1 is coming real soon now with JRuby support and a few other things.”
Being a bit of an Emacs junky, I’m not sure how I missed this. Looks mature, and very functional, and almost TextMate-like. The link has a nice flash video of Emacs on Rails in action.
Sitepoint’s book “Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications” is now free, at least for the next month. I’ve only skimmed it, but it looks like a decent introduction, and the price is certainly right.
Posted by larrywright
An assortment of tasty distractions.
A fun collection of classy insults. Here are a couple of choice ones:
“A modest little person, with much to be modest about.”
Winston Churchill
“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”
Clarence Darrow
What 120 calories looks like. Nice reminder. Via Jeremy Zawodny
A productivity tip from Jerry Seinfeld I really didn’t believe this until I read it. Good advice.
YUI 2.3.0: Six New Components and a Prettier Face
“We’re pleased to announce today the release of YUI version 2.3.0. This release features six new additions to the library as well as a new skinning architecture and a new visual treatment for most of our UI controls. All of this, plus 250 enhancements and bug fixes, is available for download immediately.”
One of the notable additions is a rich-text editor that is stated to work well across all of the YUI “A” browsers.
Posted by larrywright
I have a few articles I want to publish, but I’m holding off until I have this site moved over to Slicehost. In the meantime, here’s a kottke – style list of random things that have caught my eye lately.
How to Charm a Woman
I am(thankfully) long past dating, but just because you’ve convinced her to marry you doesn’t mean you don’t still need to charm her.
How YouTube scales
Summary of a Google Tech Talk on how YouTube scaled, both pre and post acquisition. With the massive storage requirements (they have servers dedicated just to serving thumbnails), this is certainly not a typical scaling story.
Catch The Best
Catch The Best is a new “applicant tracking and ranking system” from Ben Curtis, who is fairly well known in the Rails community. This looks promising. Ben is also looking for sample resumes to test his system out.
The Brand Called You
10 year old article by Tom Peters on the importance of developing a personal brand. Still very relevant.
