Posted about 1 hour back at RailsTips.org - Home
In which I divulge the hardware and software that I use to get the job done.
The other day I read Alex Payne’s interview on what hardware and software he uses and thought it was interesting. I typically find posts like this intriguing because everyone is a bit different and you can learn so much from those differences. I decided I would take the time to post on my setup and how I get things done.
What hardware?
Below is a picture of my desk. I try to keep it as minimal as possible and everything that goes on it has a purpose. If you head over to flickr, you can see all the annotations I added explaining the various items.
I use a Macbook Air as my only machine. It has a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of RAM. Occasionally, I wish for more power but it is such a sexy machine that I just overlook the deficiencies. Previously, I had a 17” Macbook Pro with 4GB of RAM so it was quite a switch going to a 2GB and a 13” screen. Thankfully I have a 24” Dell monitor that I work on most of the time so screen real estate is not an issue.
One of my favorite pieces on the desk above (other than my iPhone) is the Apple Wireless keyboard. I’ve always used ergonomic keyboards so i was hesitant to switch to something flat but I am in love. When I type on it, I feel like I’m in a beautiful meadow with gazelle’s dancing past me. It’s true.
I have a pair of Logitech speakers, nothing fancy but they sound good and allow me to occasionally crank up the music. I currently also use a Logitech corded mouse as I am having issues with the responsiveness of my Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse. I would be lost without my iPhone 3G and it truly follows me everywhere I go in my left front pocket. I feel naked when it is not there.
When I am on the go, I have a pair of Bose around ear headphones. They are truly the best pair of headphones I have ever owned. Music sounds magical in them.
For backups, I have a Western Digital Passport 120GB. I use Time Machine and try to backup every couple days.
And What Software?
Like Alex, I spend most of my time in Textmate, Terminal and Safari. No, I am not jumping on the Emacs bandwagon. Aesthetic is too important to me. Yes, I said it. Emacs looks ugly to me. Firefox is also ugly. That is all.
I have a gmail address that I’ve used for several years. It now forwards to my MobileMe account. I use Mail.app and my iPhone to check the MobileMe account and I use Gmail for SMTP so that it backs up all my sent messages as well. I use the inbox for things I need to do as soon as I get time. I have an archive folder that I archive all messages worth keeping and a waiting folder for items that I need to do someday but not right now. All the rest of my mail gets deleted. My inbox rarely gets over 5-10 emails.
I use iCal even though I hate it simply because it syncs with my iPhone beautifully. Syncing is also the reason I use Apple’s Address Book. I use iChat for IM (AIM and Jabber) and mostly my iPhone and occasionally the command line for Twitter. To keep up with tweets on the iPhone, I use text messages, Tweetie and Summizer (one of my favorite apps), occasionally opening up Twitter’s mobile version. I use iTunes for playing music and last.fm for tracking it.
I love TextPander for email signatures and phone numbers. I use growl for iTunes, autotest notifications and various other things. We use DropBox for sharing files at Ordered List and I often keep current working files there just to have them automatically backed up offsite. I use Skitch for screenshots and iShowU for screencasts.
For tickets, we (Ordered List) use Lighthouse and are keeping our eye on Sifter (even have a paid account because we think it is going to be great, just waiting on an API). For code, I use GitHub and love it. I use Hoptoad for exceptions and New Relic for performance monitoring. For invoicing, we (Ordered List) use Freshbooks. It gets the job done. I also like Blinksale for invoicing.
Probably my most coveted web app is a simple note application that I created. My wife and I use it a lot but it is not really public as of yet. She uses it for recipes and I use it as my digital brain. I keep track of all the millions of ideas that I have in it and use it almost hourly.
As far as the social internet is concerned, I use Twitter, Flickr, and Delicious almost every day.
Enough about me. What software, hardware and web apps do you use? If you have a blog, post an article and link to it in the comments. If not, a comment with some details will do. I’m curious to see how others go about their business.
Posted about 2 hours back at A Fresh Cup
I’ve got two major announcements to make affecting my professional life this month. Today the first of them is ready to go live: I’ve accepted a position with the new Ruby on Rails Activists team. Probably the easiest way to explain what that means is to quote from the blog entry announcing our existence:
The mission of the Rails Activists is to empower and support the worldwide network of Ruby on Rails users. We do this by publicizing Rails, making adoption easier, and enhancing developer support.
Generally speaking, the Activists will be working alongside the Rails Core team, with the intent of helping publicize Rails and pull together efforts from all parts of the Rails ecosystem. We have a lot of ideas about what this could translate to in terms of concrete initiatives, but I’d like to emphasize that we’re here to support the rest of the community, not to direct it. If you want to get involved with promoting Rails and improving things, feel free to contact any one of us to discuss how we can help out. I’m easy to find:
mikeg1 on Twitter
MikeG1@larkfarm.com via email
mikeg1a on IRC (freenode.net, almost always in #rubyonrails)
It’s also important to note that although there are four of us who are now in some sense authorized to speak on behalf of Rails, this does not mean that everything we say is an Official Statement. We all have our own businesses and blogs and so on, and we have lives beyond Rails activism, shocking though that may be. For example, just because I link something on this weblog doesn’t mean it’s gotten some official stamp of approval.
We also intend for the communication to flow in as many directions as possible - one of our roles is to serve as ombudsmen for the Rails community. If for any reason you’re feeling frustrated in an attempt to talk to the core team (though personally, I’ve found them very approachable), do get in touch to see if we can help.
As some of you have probably guessed, the new team owes something to the much-discussed merger of Rails and Merb. In addition to picking up the best ideas from Merb, Rails is also working on picking up some of the best patterns from the Merb community. Just as Rails isn’t throwing out all of its old code to become a copy of Merb, we’re not throwing out all of our old activities (such as the Rails Guides) to copy Merb’s ecosystem. What we are doing is trying to incorporate some of the energy from the combined communities to revitalize both of them as they become one.
So stay tuned to see what initiatives emerge from this new group and its interactions with the wider Rails community. If you have any questions, I’ll be more than happy to address them in comments here or privately.
Posted about 2 hours back at Rails Envy - Home
Lately I???ve met several software developers who are good at both coding and maintaining open source software. Sometimes, but not often, these people are also good at publicizing what they create, supporting their developer base, and leading a community.
Here in the Rails community I feel we???ve been lucky enough to have several great coders who are also great leaders. I???m not just talking about the people on the Rails core, I???m talking about people who create educational media such as rails blogs, tutorials, books, classes, screencasts, podcasts. I???m also talking about anyone who has taken the time to release a Rails Plugin or Gem, support new Rails developers (like on mailing lists, forums, or IRC), or run events promoting Rails or Ruby.
Doing this sort of community development (as you may already know), can often be a thankless job. It may feel like the people at the top (or in our case, the core developers) get all the credit. Just like I???ve heard people say ???Why bother coding a Rails patch, it won???t get accepted??? in regards to code, I???ve also heard ???Why bother producing this Rails content, if it won???t be appreciated or recognized??? in regards to community development. Thus, I???ve personally done my best to recognize and publicize these people, either by promoting them in the Rails Envy Podcast or through the Ruby Hero Awards, but sometimes I wish I could do more.
I wish I could empower more people to create more media, write more books, create more events, and support new Rails developers and give these people the recognition they deserve. So, how might I do that?
Introducing the Rails Activists
As Rails has grown it???s become increasingly clear that the framework might benefit from having official team designated to work on the Public Relations side of the framework. These people, called the Rails Activists, will be the official point of contact for media, support, and community building. Official Announcement Here
Matt Aimonetti was the first Activist brought onto the team by DHH. I shortly followed, then Ryan Bates, and Mike Gunderloy. I’m quite honored to be on the team amongst these other guys. I???m sure there will be additional members brought onto the team in the next few months, but I think this is a good start.
Our responsibilities are as follows:
1. Help maintain and develop the documentation and RubyonRails.org website
This makes me the most excited, because I know there are people out there who would love to further develop Rails docs as well as the website and make it a better resource. We???d love to hear from you, see below on how you can help.
2. Help with public relations
Do you or your company create something for Rails developers that you want help publicizing? Are you launching a large Rails website, and want some help with publicity? Does it belong on RubyOnRails.org or the official blog? contact us.
I love helping people publicize their work (as you know by now), so email us. Worst case scenario, it ends up on the Rails Envy Podcast. ;-)
3. Empower people to do good work
If you want to help with the documentation, you have an idea for a new resource, or you want to completely redo the wiki, let us know. Come to us with your ideas on how you can support the community on the internet or even in your local neighborhood. Lets figure out how we can help you spread the word.
4. Figurehead
Do you need someone to come to your company or conference to speak on Rails as an official member of the Rails team? Yeah, yeah, it???s just a title, but well??? It???ll sound good to your boss.
5. Let the Rails Core team focus on what they do best
Programming! Yes, I???m sure they’re good at other things, but personally I???d rather have the Rails core team coding Rails 3 then organizing the community and doing publicity. ;-)
6. Listen to the Community
I care a great deal about growing Rails in 2009, and pushing it deeper into the enterprise. Each of the Activists has their own initiatives and projects to help do this, but we’re going to need community involvement to attack some of the bigger issues. Two examples of this might include fixing the Wiki, and the creation of some sort of Rails Book.
Interested in Helping Us?
We want to hear your ideas about what the Rails Team should focus on. To voice your ideas and cast your vote, please take a moment to go to the
If you’d like to get more involved with our initiatives, then you also might want to join the:
I’m really excited to see what our team can accomplish over the next few months. 2009 is going to be great year for Rails, that much is obvious.
Flickr Credits: come my tiny metal children,
Why I’m Going to Work for Zooomr,
Helping Hand
Posted about 2 hours back at Rails Envy - Home
Lately I’ve met several software developers who are good at both coding and maintaining open source software. Sometimes, but not often, these people are also good at publicizing what they create, supporting their developer base, and leading a community.
Here in the Rails community I feel we’ve been lucky enough to have several great coders who are also great leaders. I’m not just talking about the people on the Rails core, I’m talking about people who create educational media such as rails blogs, tutorials, books, classes, screencasts, podcasts. I’m also talking about anyone who has taken the time to release a Rails Plugin or Gem, support new Rails developers (like on mailing lists, forums, or IRC), or run events promoting Rails or Ruby.
Doing this sort of community development (as you may already know), can often be a thankless job. It may feel like the people at the top (or in our case, the core developers) get all the credit. Just like I’ve heard people say “Why bother coding a Rails patch, it won’t get accepted” in regards to code, I’ve also heard “Why bother producing this Rails content, if it won’t be appreciated or recognized” in regards to community development. Thus, I’ve personally done my best to recognize and publicize these people, either by promoting them in the Rails Envy Podcast or through the Ruby Hero Awards, but sometimes I wish I could do more.
I wish I could empower more people to create more media, write more books, create more events, and support new Rails developers and give these people the recognition they deserve. So, how might I do that?
Introducing the Rails Activists
As Rails has grown it’s become increasingly clear that the framework might benefit from having official team designated to work on the Public Relations side of the framework. These people, called the Rails Activists, will be the official point of contact for media, support, and community building. Official Announcement Here
Matt Aimonetti was the first Activist brought onto the team by DHH. I shortly followed, then Ryan Bates, and Mike Gunderloy. I’m quite honored to be on the team amongst these other guys. I’m sure there will be additional members brought onto the team in the next few months, but I think this is a good start.
Our responsibilities are as follows:
1. Help maintain and develop the documentation and RubyonRails.org website
This makes me the most excited, because I know there are people out there who would love to further develop Rails docs as well as the website and make it a better resource. We’d love to hear from you, see below on how you can help.
2. Help with public relations
Do you or your company create something for Rails developers that you want help publicizing? Are you launching a large Rails website, and want some help with publicity? Does it belong on RubyOnRails.org or the official blog? contact us.
I love helping people publicize their work (as you know by now), so email us. Worst case scenario, it ends up on the Rails Envy Podcast. ;-)
3. Empower people to do good work
If you want to help with the documentation, you have an idea for a new resource, or you want to completely redo the wiki, let us know. Come to us with your ideas on how you can support the community on the internet or even in your local neighborhood. Lets figure out how we can help you spread the word.
4. Figurehead
Do you need someone to come to your company or conference to speak on Rails as an official member of the Rails team? Yeah, yeah, it’s just a title, but well… It’ll sound good to your boss.
5. Let the Rails Core team focus on what they do best
Programming! Yes, I’m sure they’re good at other things, but personally I’d rather have the Rails core team coding Rails 3 then organizing the community and doing publicity. ;-)
6. Listen to the Community
I care a great deal about growing Rails in 2009, and pushing it deeper into the enterprise. Each of the Activists has their own initiatives and projects to help do this, but we’re going to need community involvement to attack some of the bigger issues. Two examples of this might include fixing the Wiki, and the creation of some sort of Rails Book.
Interested in Helping Us?
We want to hear your ideas about what the Rails Team should focus on. To voice your ideas and cast your vote, please take a moment to go to the
If you’d like to get more involved with our initiatives, then you also might want to join the:
I’m really excited to see what our team can accomplish over the next few months. 2009 is going to be great year for Rails, that much is obvious.
Flickr Credits: come my tiny metal children,
Why I’m Going to Work for Zooomr,
Helping Hand
Posted about 4 hours back at Riding Rails - home
Bringing Rails and Merb together is about more than just merging the respective code. We’re also picking up the best ideas from both communities beyond the code. Following on Merb’s success in offering a strong evangelism effort, we’re pleased to announce the creation of the Rails activists:
The mission of the Rails activists is to empower and support the worldwide network of Ruby on Rails users. We do this by publicizing Rails, making adoption easier, and enhancing developer support.
At launch, we’ve identified seven areas where the Rails activists can contribute to the Rails ecosystem:
- Public Relations with media of all sizes
- Ombudsman work to ensure good user-to-user support
- Community Leadership at events and conferences
- Media Organization to help create good promotional opportunities
- Website maintenance
- Documentation efforts
- Developer support
The initial members of the Rails activists are Gregg Pollack, Matt Aimonetti, Ryan Bates, and Mike Gunderloy. But we can’t do all this alone, nor do we want to! Our vision includes a large and vibrant Rails network composed of other activists, bloggers, event hosts, authors, and developers. Our intent is to provide connections, resources, and support to help the entire ecosystem to grow. To start things off, we’re bringing in a lot of our own projects, including videos, screencasts, case studies, Rails documentation, and more – we’re a working group, and we hope you’ll work with us.
If you have ideas about improving the Rails community, projects you want to participate in, or are just looking for ways to get involved, get in touch with us! There are a lot of ways to do that:
We look forward to hearing from you!
For additional perspectives from the activists, see the posts by Gregg Pollack, Matt Aimonetti, and Mike Gunderloy.
Photo by Flickr user caravinagre
Posted about 4 hours back at Riding Rails - home
Bringing Rails and Merb together is about more than just merging the respective code. We’re also picking up the best ideas from both communities beyond the code. Following on Merb’s success in offering a strong evangelism effort, we’re pleased to announce the creation of the Rails activists:
The mission of the Rails activists is to empower and support the worldwide network of Ruby on Rails users. We do this by publicizing Rails, making adoption easier, and enhancing developer support.
At launch, we’ve identified seven areas where the Rails activists can contribute to the Rails ecosystem:
- Public Relations with media of all sizes
- Ombudsman work to ensure good user-to-user support
- Community Leadership at events and conferences
- Media Organization to help create good promotional opportunities
- Website maintenance
- Documentation efforts
- Developer support
The initial members of the Rails activists are Gregg Pollack, Matt Aimonetti, Ryan Bates, and Mike Gunderloy. But we can’t do all this alone, nor do we want to! Our vision includes a large and vibrant Rails network composed of other activists, bloggers, event hosts, authors, and developers. Our intent is to provide connections, resources, and support to help the entire ecosystem to grow. To start things off, we’re bringing in a lot of our own projects, including videos, screencasts, case studies, Rails documentation, and more – we’re a working group, and we hope you’ll work with us.
If you have ideas about improving the Rails community, projects you want to participate in, or are just looking for ways to get involved, get in touch with us! There are a lot of ways to do that:
We look forward to hearing from you!
For additional perspectives from the activists, see the posts by Gregg Pollack, Matt Aimonetti, and Mike Gunderloy.
Photo by Flickr user caravinagre
Posted about 4 hours back at Rails Inside
Already itching to attend another Rails event? 2008 had some good ones and a few are coming back again already early in the year.
acts_as_conference 2009 - February 6 & 7, 2009 - Orlando, Florida, USA
acts_as_conference is a Florida-based Rails conference. Last year was a success - selling out all 150 tickets. The 2009 conference is now all ready to go. 175 tickets will be up for grabs this time (costing just $125!) - the venue will be even better than in 2008 and breakfast and lunch will be supplied on both days of the conference - can't say fairer than that. Speakers include David Heinemeier Hansson, Bryan Liles, Jim Weirich, Gregg Pollack and Jason Seifer.
Scotland on Rails - March 26-28, 2009 - Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
The United Kingdom lacked its own Rails conference until last year when Scotland on Rails launched. It went so well that it's coming back for another year. It takes place from March 26 to 28 at the University of Edinburgh. Quite a few big names in the Ruby world went last year and part-time werewolf Chad Fowler and Marcel Molina Jnr will be giving a charity tutorial day this time around. As an aside, Jeremy McAnally wants to attend the conference and is accepting donations to help him on his way.
RailsConf 2009 - May 4-7, 2009 - Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
The premier Rails conference returns for another year, though this time it's not in Portland, Oregon but at the Las Vegas Hilton! David Heinemeier Hansson has said that he hopes for much of the Rails 3 / Rails & Merb merger work to be worked out by then, so it could be a pretty interesting event with both Merb and Rails crews in the world's most happening desert city.
Please comment if you have other events to mention - people will see them, and we can probably mention them on the next post.
Posted about 5 hours back at Eribium
I’ve been working on an open source SaaS solution for Rails over Christmas called Saasy (pronouced “sarrsy” - using a posh voice).
Saasy provides:
- Subscription management
- Recurring billing
- Credit card management
- User authentication and SSO
- Mailers for invoices etc
(more…)
Posted about 6 hours back at Ruby Inside
If you're developing a snippets or pastie-type system or another form of CMS where source code might be stored, it'd be incredibly useful to automatically detect what language a provided source is in so that you can style it appropriately.
Chris Lowis' SourceClassifier (or Github repo) library does just that, using a Bayesian classifier trained on source code from the Alioth Shootouts. Out of the box it has support for C, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python and Ruby, but you can train it to recognize others (CSS and HTML seem like notable omissions to me).
Posted about 6 hours back at InfoQ Personalized Feed for unregistered user - Register to upgrade!
In this article, Alois Reitbauer, a Performance Architect for dynaTrace Software, specifies several architectural anti-patterns which can downgrade an application’s performance. Knowing those anti-patterns and proactively designing the application to avoid them will keep away certain snags that can impact application’s performance. By Abel Avram
Posted about 8 hours back at Ruby, Rails, Web2.0
Happy New Year to everyone! I have been totally off the grid for the past 2 weeks, just getting back to work (several hundreds of e-mails in my inbox, ugh) so just a really quick blurb on Rails + Merb (I guess everyone is sick of the topic by now anyways ;-). I am still dizzy after all the eating/drinking/pushing wii fit to the edge/doing nothing/… for 2 weeks, so get ready for some nonsensical rambling :-).
My gut reaction to the very first article on the merger:
Someone thought it is funny to post April’s fools articles under the XMas tree.
After seeing about 3 more articles of the same kind:
Oh wow, there is a post-some-BS-which-is-a-bad-joke-even-for-april’s-fools meme going on! How amusing!
After actually reading the articles and digging around some more:
FUCK this is for real!!!
After calming down a bit and thinking it through:
This totally sucks. RIP Merb (2006-2008)
Sorry guys, I just can’t join the grandiose Rails+merb merger celebration just yet (I’ll pop a few bottles after Rails 3 will hit the streets AND it will (mostly) work as promised though - but I am skeptical). I was happy that there is a new community which is different from the Rails one (of which I consider myself part of, by the way) - I joined the merb irc and voilà - everyone was 100% helpful (no exceptions) even with the smallest things, and even beyond merb (I remember a great discussion on some fake data generators/factory girl style fixture replacement plugins which was started just because I asked a quick question on something totally different). How about the Rails irc? I don’t really know as I joined just once about 1.5 years ago but was turned down quickly by abrasive comments and overall behavior (e.g. a comment along the lines of “dude if you are still using habtm anywhere (and not has-many-through), get a life and/or go back to your java thingy” - I don’t even agree with this statement by the way, but that’s a different story). Of course I am not saying the rails irc is always like this, and/or that all the rails guys are douchebags (I am not, for example 
but I heard similar stories from more people, unfortunately.
Just for the record - I am still a Ruby and Rails fanatic (please no comments like ‘it is maybe time to check out django’ - no, it’s definitely not, the rails climate has never been better), I am doing all my professional work with Rails since 2 years, own tons of Rails books, sleeping in DHH pajamas etc. so I am not attacking Rails in any way. From that perspective I couldn’t be happier - Rails will become faster, more modular, less bloated etc. (I am sure you know all the bullet points from the other articles) and I have no doubt this is more or less going to happen. I am mourning over merb. The community. The influx of new ideas which maybe look bullshit when uttered/prototyped but have a chance to get into the framework because there is almost no bureaucracy. The competition. The monoculture (will Rails eventually eat Sinatra too?). The very fact that something like this just happened - a true black swan, in my opinion.
Of course, I am aware of the huge benefits too - first of all, the reverse ‘divide et impere’ effect, turning enemies into allies - who wouldn’t like to have Yehuda Katz (which indirectly means Engine Yard, to some extent), Matt Aimonetti and a ton of other kick-ass coders/evangelists in their ranks? Not to talk about the other great things - you obviously read about it all over the web already, so I am not going to duplicate that information again. However, in spite of all this awesomeness, something just does not feel right… this is not how it should have happened.
Just in case anyone cares what I am doing in this situation: I am packing my bags. Porting over Bob the Biller(tm), my first serious merb code to Rails. Advising my clients not to start merb projects from now on. Sorry merb, not long ago it felt like a beginning of a beautiful friendship - too bad you passed away prematurely. Rails, here I come again!
Posted about 11 hours back at PJ Hyett
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 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 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 of 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.
Posted about 11 hours back at PJ Hyett
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.
Posted about 12 hours back at InfoQ Personalized Feed for unregistered user - Register to upgrade!
SSL-based security using X509 certificates from certain CA's opens a vulnerability to sites masquerading under a forged X509 certificate, even in a "secure" connection. This was demonstrated recently at the Chaos Conference in Berlin by spoofing a real certificate. By Charlie Martin
1 2 3 ... 634
