November 2012
1 post
4 tags
speakers.io will connect speakers and conferences
tl;dr: speakers.io is an app to connect speakers and conferences. It’s going to be awesome.
I’ve been a conference organizer for almost 6 years now (and a speaker for slightly longer), and year after year I’ve hit the same points of friction in my work. Seeing someone encounter the same thing with BritRuby made me realize that we could fix it! Partially, at least.
An aside...
April 2012
2 posts
On a positive note: I'm starting a positive...
I love surfing Twitter, checking Facebook, and hanging out on Reddit/Hacker News/etc. as much as the next person, but I’ve got to be honest: you guys can kind of be douchebags. Pair that with the constant cycle of terrible news being pumped out of CNN, FOXNews, and friends, it makes me feel pretty bad about the world when I go through my morning reading cycle.
Of course, the solution is...
On Railcar: an isolated Rails environment
Ever since launching Railcar, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about why I’m building it, how I’m approaching things, how people can help, and so on, so I thought I’d take a few minutes and share some things with you.
Why?
The main reason is that the Kickstarter pointed to a real need that I didn’t realize still existed. I’ve become so separated from...
March 2012
1 post
2 tags
Recruiters: why I'm kind of rude to them, why they...
I’ve been dealing with recruiters for a long time. Not the good kind that offer you awesome jobs, but the crappy kind that mailbomb you with irrelevant positions. I’ve been receiving their e-mails and such for years and years now, and eventually I decided I’d afford them the same courtesy they afford me and simply write a form response for the ones that annoy me. I posted it...
January 2012
2 posts
Let me work on-site for you! (For a few days...)
I’ve been tossing this idea around for a while, but now I’m at a point where I can actually do it thanks to things in life and business stabilizing a bit. I like to travel, I like work, and I’ve been wanting to hang out with more people in person (sitting in my office alone is great most of the time but other times it bites!), so I figure why not combine the three?
The...
Bad (or, my unfortunately unfavorable review of...
Uncle Bob Martin has had a lot of influence on the software development industry over his career. His books are heralded as “landmark” and “essential tome[s].” He is credited as “legendary” (ugh) in his author biography on Amazon. I don’t doubt that he’s an incredibly smart guy from what I’ve read from him. Some of his articles are...
November 2011
2 posts
Introducing gem_git: tiny tools for working with...
We’ve all been there. You’re plowing through your app, in your groove, then you notice an issue with a gem you’re using. In some cases you can work around it (or if you’re desperate/crazy, just monkey patch over it and move on), but more often than not, you want to fork and fix it and/or send a pull request back to the original author. Likewise, I’ve been hankering...
Attention API Provider: How to make people using...
At Arcturo, we’ve been working with a lot of remote API’s and big data lately. The more API’s from all over the web I work with, the more I realize how much some companies really get how to build an API that developers love and use all the time, but at the same time, I’m beginning to realize how little thought some teams really put into their API and how it will be used. ...
July 2011
1 post
The Hoedown 2011 Experience, Part 1: Lodging
Well, it’s that time of year again: another Ruby Hoedown coming at you. Registration is open, so head over and register now before we sell out (we’re not THAT far from doing it…).
When I started planning this year, I honestly didn’t know if I wanted to do it. This is the fifth year in a row that I’ve done this conference (and the seventh conference I’ve had...
June 2011
1 post
Authoring eBooks is on sale right now
I dropped the price of my eBook on writing eBooks Authoring eBooks to its lowest ever $19 today. Not sure how long I’ll keep it there, so grab it while it lasts!
May 2011
1 post
RubyRescue.tv - Answering Ruby questions live and...
If you don’t follow me on Twitter and hang on every word I tweet, you may not be aware of RubyRescue.tv (ignore the inaugural episode language; we were too lazy this week to change it ;)). We did an episode last week that went awesomely well.
So awesome, in fact, that we want to make sure this one is super awesome. Submit your questions today and tomorrow using one of the methods on...
March 2011
2 posts
The Compleat Rubyist is coming to Boston real soon
If you haven’t seen it, the training set that I do with David A. Black and Gregory Brown is called The Compleat Rubyist. Don’t let the word “training” conjure up images of boring lectures and spurious example problems that take you 30 seconds to complete. It’s an intimate, interactive experience wherein we do lecture, but we also provoke discussions, debate...
FREAK OUT (or, I quit my job and what I'm doing...
It’s my birthday today. I am now 26, and I’ve decided to have a quarter-life crisis.
Most people have these a little earlier in life, but I was too busy or missed out on some of the typical milestone triggers. I don’t drink, so I missed out on my first epic hangover at 21. I haven’t graduate college yet, so I missed out on that at 22. I was already married for 5 years...
February 2011
1 post
My books are on sale today!
Authoring eBooks is on sale for $15, and it will finally reach its full $49 price this weekend.
The Rails Upgrade Handbook is $6, and it will return to its full price of $12 this weekend.
These sales end TODAY, so you’d better snap them up if you want them.
January 2011
1 post
1 tag
MagicRuby is nearly full and the group room rate...
MagicRuby, the FREE Ruby conference at Walt Disney World Resort® on February 4-5, 2011, is nearly full! If you want to hang out with over 300 other Rubyists and see talks by Chad Fowler, Dave Thomas, Kyle Neath (Github), Gregg Pollack (Ruby5, Envy Labs, Rails for Zombies), and a host of other great speakers, all at a convention center literally steps from the Magic Kingdom park, then you’d...
December 2010
1 post
4 tags
Holy crap! I made $40,000 this year with my...
Caution: I am going to try to sell you something at the end of this post. If that offends you, skip the last few paragraphs. :)
When Rails 3 RC1 hit earlier this year, I also released my Rails 3 upgrade guide in its final form. I had been shopping it to a few people since early alphas/betas of Rails 3, but I finally let it out of the bag in early January. It’s been about a year since I...
November 2010
1 post
4 tags
Road to MagicRuby: Getting Here
I’ve heard from a few people who’d really like to make it to MagicRuby, but think that even though the conference is free, the travel might be killer. I traveled a lot to Orlando before moving here and travel to and fro quite a bit now, so I thought it’d be a great idea to put together a little guide for those who’d like to come join us in February.
TLDR: You can do it...
October 2010
2 posts
4 tags
Pay no attention to the code behind the curtain:...
tl;dr: Thanks for helping me win the Solo Division of the Rails Rumble! Also, the tech behind this is pretty sweet.
My last post talked a bit about the story behind the application, but this time, I want to give you guys and gals a little bit of detail on the tech behind the application.
The app
The application is a Rails 3.0.1 application. It has 3 controllers and 2 models, with almost...
6 tags
From tl;dr to Techcrunch: my Rumble app's story
tl;dr - Go vote for tldr.it on http://railsrumble.com!
(That’s the screen cast I was going to post where the “How it works” section is now on the page, but I didn’t have time. View it on Vimeo, if you’d like.)
So, wow, it’s really been a wild ride for my Rumble app so far. I thought maybe I’d share a little bit about the app’s story today,...
September 2010
1 post
$3 off The Rails Upgrade Handbook ENDS TODAY
In celebration of the release of Rails 3 stable, I’m running a sale on my upgrade handbook. Be sure to get it soon because the sale ends today.
Click here to get you some sweet, sweet discounted eBook action!
June 2010
1 post
Ruby Hoedown MMX is open for business (and talk...
Maybe one of these I’ll actually, seriously regularly blog. I had a few entries almost finished for Rails 3, but they now require some revision, so I’ll try to polish those up soon. I also have a few in the hopper related to tech writing, which should prove fun and interesting for all parties involved (OK, they’ll at least be informative!).
But my lack of blogging isn’t...
February 2010
6 posts
The Rails Upgrade Handbook is now available
The eBook I previously mentioned is now available! It’s only $12 at http://railsupgradehandbook.com.
Inside you’ll find…
Almost 120 pages of upgrade information
A step-by-step guide to upgrading your app to Rails 3
High-level discussion of what’s new in Rails 3
Practical tips on using Rails 3’s new features to improve your code
Real case studies of upgrading...
Content from my Rails 3 presentation today, and a...
Some people asked for the links and slides to be placed on my blog from my presentation upgrading to Rails 3, so here they are.
Download the slides
Links
Rails 3 Release Notes and Guides: http://guides.rails.info/
EdgeRails.info http://edgerails.info/
List of links from railslove.com: http://is.gd/8CZN2
List of links from mediumexposure.com: http://is.gd/8CZWn
Yehudaʼs blog:...
Coming very soon: The Rails Upgrade Handbook
I’ve been enjoying you guys’ feedback on my Rails 3 posts. I’ve gotten feedback both good and bad, and it’s been really helpful in the big project I’ve been working on, which I’m really glad to finally be able to talk about it a little bit. Most of the content I’ve posted about Rails 3 has been excerpted from my new eBook: The Rails 3 Upgrade Handbook.
...
4 tags
Improved validations in Rails 3
Quite sorry about not getting another post up sooner; I’ve been very busy lately with a few different things (some of which shall be revealed very soon!). Today I want to talk about validations. Validations received quite a bit of love in Rails 3, but if you don’t go looking for the new shiny features, you won’t find them. The old API is still around, so nothing will break if...
2 tags
The Path to Rails 3: Greenfielding new apps with...
Upgrading applications is good sport and all, but everyone knows that greenfielding is where the real fun is. At least, I love greenfielding stuff a lot more than dealing with old ghetto cruft that has 1,900 test failures (and 300 errors), 20,000 line controllers, and code that I’m pretty sure is actually a demon-brand of PHP.
Building a totally new app in Rails 3 is relatively simple...
rails-upgrade is now an official plugin
I apologize for not getting another Rails 3 upgrade post up this weekend, but I spent this weekend working on a few things. First, I contributed a few little pieces to the Rails 3 release notes, which should be showing up on the Rails blog soon (edit: or view them here right now), but most of my time was devoted to a bigger project.
My little gem rails-upgrade is now rails_upgrade, an...
January 2010
3 posts
rails-upgrade: Automating a portion of the Rails 3...
If you’re looking for more info on upgrading, don’t miss out on my other posts on Rails 3 starting here.
NOTE: This is now an official, blessed plugin, so use that rather than this gem. More info here.
I’ve been playing with upgrading some apps to Rails 3 (some open-source, some not), and I’ve sort of gotten some of the process down to a science. So what does a...
The Path to Rails 3: Approaching the upgrade
Now that we’ve looked at some of the core architecture, I’d like to shift my focus first to upgrading an application. Originally I had planned on writing about upgrading plugins first, but apparently that API isn’t quite stable. So, I figured rather than write a blog post that will be deprecated in 2 weeks, I’d rather write one that will be deprecated in 3-6 months...
1 tag
The Path to Rails 3: Introduction
Wow, over half a year with no blog post. That may be a new record for blog laziness for me, but fear not! This bout of sloth shall not last, and the dearth of blog entries shall come to and end! This cure should come partially because I’ve switched to Tumblr and can now compose my entries in Markdown, and partially because that’s part of my whole Get a Better Life New Year’s...
