I fly out to Chi-town tomorrow for RailsConf! Woot!
I guess there are supposed to be somewhere around 550 people there — not bad for the first year! (And of those 550, I get to be number 222 — yes!)
I can’t believe I’ll have gone to two web development conferences within a week of each other. I’m a lucky guy — thanks, MRM!
What’s new since last we chatted?
…Been doing a lot of freelance… I guess that’s not really new. Oh, but I am working on two sites in Rails right now, and I love it. It’s freaking amazing how productive I am with it, mostly because the environment is so well thought out (Ruby is a damn fine language, too). One site is for a personal project, and the other site is for a buddy of mine, Peter. I can’t talk too much about either right now, but I think Peter’s should still launch some time this year… mine may be quite a bit later than that.
…Saw X-Men 3 — and I was entertained. Obviously operates in a totally different universe than the canonical timeline, but it was still really enjoyable. Not as good as either 1 or 2, but still a good summer action flick with some characters I really dig.
…Weather’s been really hot up here. Almost Florida-like, actually. God I hate summer.
…I’m in a really bad mood at the moment — trying to prevent that from corrupting all the good things that have been going on lately.
…Saw Imogen Heap the Tuesday before last. Super, super fun show. I highly recommend her, as well as the Varsity Theater now. It’s a really nice venue I hadn’t been to before — very atmostpheric (if not a tad too non-air-conditioned), and decent sound. Also, it’s right next to the Loring Pasta Bar, which is the ultimate first date restaurant.
…Got my student reviews/evaluations back the other day. They had some very nice things to say, and, all in all, it was very positive. They want me to give them a bit more (or a lot more) detailed information in grading their projects. I promise I’ll work on that… wait… what is that smell? Do I sense another Rails app in the works? (Yeah, like I need another project…
…Taught Cristina and Juan Antonio some HTML and CSS goodness — they are super, super awesome people, by the way…
…Why are there no good, small, inexpensive, color, touch screen LCDs? Is that so much to ask for? (Apparently yes)
…I also promise to put some more art up too… but for now, you can watch my adventures into creating artificial fire (ah, the magic of Photoshop and a Wacom tablet).
I’ve been playing with Action Messenger lately. It’s pretty nice — it doesn’t do quite everything I want, since it was built with notification, rather than chat, in mind. But, it’s a good base, and satisfies my desires to play with Jabber in Ruby.
Yes, I’m a fricken geek. We already know this. For fun and pleasure I enjoy talking to computers and trying to convince them to do things. Lately I’ve been looking into Ruby, a very clean programming language that’s getting a lot of hype in the web dev community for it’s “killer app”, Ruby on Rails. Since Tanya has been doing a lot of yelling at me lately, trying to prompt me to get out of the house and interact with people more, I decided to go to the local Ruby Users Group meeting last Tuesday.
I have to say, I was quite surprised at the number of people there. There were probably close to twenty people, but I guess part of that is due to the good PR Ruby has been getting. About half of the people were really new to Ruby, some of them hadn’t even installed it yet. The other half seemed to consist of Java developers, and system and database admins.
There were two lectures/presentations. The first one was on JRuby, an implementation of Ruby in Java (similar to Jython, a project I was following for a while and even did a logo for). The second was about Watir, the Web Application Testing In Ruby framework. Very, very cool, I must say. Unfortunately, since it only currently works with IE on Windows, it doesn’t help me much. But, if you’re a Windows monkey and you work on web sites, this is definitely something to look into.
So, needless to say, I think I’ll try to hit the next one, the last Tuesday of February. They’re going to be building a site for a non-profit in the Twin Cities, which is really awesome… maybe I’ll try to contribute. I’m also thinking about making a presentation of my own about building Jabber bots with Ruby. What better way to learn something than force yourself to give a presentation on it. :)
UPDATE: The new Ruby Users of Minnesota site is at Ruby.MN
In less than 48 hours I will be in what will be perhaps the geekiest party I could ever dream up. I have invited 6 of my closest coworkers to, with me, examine and play with Ruby on Rails. Yes, I organized it. Yes, I researched it. Yes, I am a huge fucking geek. For those of you who read my blog and may be of the PHP persuasion, Rails is a framework well worth checking in to. Support for it is not nearly as widespread as PHP support (read: every fricken Linux box online), but it’s only been around for a year, so I would anticipate the numbers will only increase (especially if you buy into all the hype, which I do because I’m a fanboy).
Also, some insights I’ve made into the Ruby and Rails communities:
Well, I just woke up. It was nice to be able to sleep in on a weekend. It doesn’t happen often, so when it does I really cherish it. But I have a lot of catch up to do here, so here we go:
First, yesterday was the day. Another birthday come and gone. I’m officially at 25 now. There are only a couple of really significant things behind being 25: I can now rent cars without crazy additional fees, my car insurance rates will drop considerably, and I will never be able to join Fabrica or be on The Real World (I don’t need the drama of The Real World anyway). The party went well. It wasn’t tons and tons of people, but it was enough, and the people who were there made for a great time. I laughed a lot, I played some great video games, I ate some awesome cake and ice cream, and I got a lot of much-needed human contact and conversation.
Second, I’ve been meaning to write about the whirlwind trip to New York. Jamey and I flew out last Saturday morning, shot tons of photos for a freelance project we’re doing, and flew back that evening. We spent something like 6 1/2 hours in the city, and about 13 hours in planes or at an airport. It was quite fun though, and even more fun since I got to hook up with Aline to hang out during that time. It was great to see her: she looks awesome and seems really happy and at ease there (most of the time!). Thank you for the birthday presents, Aliney!
Third, I finally got an iPod. It makes me happy. My FM adapter just died though, so I need to kick some ass about that one: the damn thing didn’t even survive a month, and at $40 a pop, that’s not a “subscription model” I want to be a part of.
Fourth, I’m really digging on Ruby on Rails (and Ruby in general). Plus, the awesome friend that is Jen hooked me up with some space on her server that already has Rails installed, so I’ll be crushing on that for a while, I’m sure. Even though Flash 8 has some fricken sweet features, I think there may be fewer and fewer reasons for me to build SWFs when Rails has some beautiful Ajax support.
Fifth, another of my recent crushes is del.icio.us. I’ve known about it for a while, and always thought it sounded neat, but only recently have I witnessed the true power of that which is del.icio.us. If you have not checked it out, do yourself a favor.
Sixth and last, I’m building… something. It’s not art, it’s not software. But it’s cool, and I hope you’re going to want it. Stay tuned to our irregularly scheduled program…