Words strung into Sentences, by Kevin Munc

Overflowing Treasure Chest

2008-09-28T17:21:00.006-04:00

I've got a wealth of RubyGems installed. An embarrassment of riches, really.

Some I've played with; most I haven't. I've installed some almost as a way of 'bookmarking' them, presumably to mess around with them at some point in the future. It's sad, really. But when I hear of a cool one, it's hard not to grab it right away.

I have 255 gems installed. Wait, nope - I just updated and now it's 259. Yep.

Of course, the list grows merely from updating. Merb, for example, has gone from something like 2 to 14 or thereabouts.

Here's the list as of today:



*** LOCAL GEMS ***

abstract (1.0.0)
action_profiler (1.0.0)
actionmailer (2.1.1, 2.1.0)
actionpack (2.1.1, 2.1.0)
activerecord (2.1.1, 2.1.0)
activerecord-dbslayer-adapter (0.3.0)
ActiveRecord-JDBC (0.5)
activerecord-jdbc-adapter (0.8.2)
activerecord-jdbcderby-adapter (0.8.2)
activeresource (2.1.1, 2.1.0)
activesupport (2.1.1, 2.1.0)
acts_as_reportable (1.1.1)
addressable (1.0.4)
airake (0.4.5)
Antwrap (0.7.0)
anvil (0.0.1)
aquarium (0.4.2)
archive-tar-minitar (0.5.2)
arrayfields (4.6.0)
aspectr (0.3.7)
assistance (0.1.5)
aws-s3 (0.5.1)
backupgem (0.0.11)
blinkenlights (0.0.4)
BlueCloth (1.0.0)
builder (2.1.2)
buildr (1.3.2)
bus-scheme (0.7.6)
camping (1.5)
capistrano (2.5.0, 1.4.2)
capitate (0.3.6)
celerity (0.0.4)
cgi_multipart_eof_fix (2.5.0)
cheat (1.2.1)
chronic (0.2.3)
cmdparse (2.0.2)
color (1.4.0)
color-tools (1.3.0)
columnize (0.2)
daemons (1.0.10, 0.4.2)
data_objects (0.9.5)
datamapper (0.9.5)
dcov (0.2.2)
deprec (1.9.3)
diff-lcs (1.1.2)
ditz (0.5)
dm-aggregates (0.9.5)
dm-cli (0.9.5)
dm-core (0.9.5)
dm-is-tree (0.9.5)
dm-migrations (0.9.5)
dm-observer (0.9.5)
dm-serializer (0.9.5)
dm-timestamps (0.9.5)
dm-types (0.9.5)
dm-validations (0.9.5)
doodle (0.1.8)
dust (0.1.6)
english (0.3.1)
erubis (2.6.2)
excemel (0.0.1)
expectations (1.2.0)
extlib (0.9.6)
facets (2.4.4, 1.4.5)
faker (0.3.1)
fastercsv (1.4.0, 1.2.3)
fastri (0.3.1.1)
fastthread (1.0.1)
fattr (1.0.3)
flexmock (0.8.3)
flog (1.1.0)
fxri (0.3.7)
fxruby (1.6.16)
GData (0.0.4)
gem_plugin (0.2.3)
gen (0.41.0)
git (1.0.5)
glue (0.41.0)
grit (0.7.0)
halcyon (0.5.4)
haml (2.0.3)
heckle (1.4.1)
highline (1.4.0)
hobo (0.8.2)
hobofields (0.8.2)
hobosupport (0.8.2)
hoe (1.7.0, 1.6.0)
hpricot (0.6)
httparty (0.1.3)
ick (0.3.0)
jdbc-derby (10.3.2.1)
jrexml (0.5.3)
jrsplenda (0.1.0)
jruby-openssl (0.3)
json (1.1.1)
json_pure (1.1.3)
lilu (0.1.3)
linecache (0.43)
live_console (0.1.0)
log4r (1.0.5)
log_buddy (0.0.5)
madeleine (0.7.3)
mailfactory (1.4.0)
mailtrap (0.2.1)
main (2.8.2)
markaby (0.5)
maruku (0.5.9)
mechanize (0.8.3)
merb (0.9.7)
merb-action-args (0.9.7)
merb-assets (0.9.7)
merb-builder (0.9.7)
merb-cache (0.9.7)
merb-core (0.9.7)
merb-freezer (0.9.5)
merb-gen (0.9.7)
merb-haml (0.9.7)
merb-jquery (0.9.7)
merb-mailer (0.9.7)
merb-more (0.9.7)
merb-parts (0.9.7)
merb-slices (0.9.7)
metaid (1.0)
mime-types (1.15)
mislav-will_paginate (2.3.4)
mixology (0.1.0)
mocha (0.9.1)
mofo (0.2.16)
mongrel (1.1.5)
mongrel_config (0.3.1)
mongrel_service (0.3.4)
mongrel_status (0.2.3)
monkeybars (0.6.2)
mysql (2.7.3)
nearline (0.0.6)
needle (1.3.0)
net-scp (1.0.1)
net-sftp (2.0.1, 1.1.1)
net-ssh (2.0.4, 2.0.3, 1.1.2)
net-ssh-gateway (1.0.0)
newgem (0.27.0)
newjs (1.4.1)
nitro (0.41.0)
og (0.41.0)
oniguruma (1.1.0)
open4 (0.9.6)
paginator (1.1.1)
parseexcel (0.5.2)
ParseTree (2.2.0)
pdf-writer (1.1.8)
picnic (0.6.5)
piston (1.4.0)
Platform (0.4.0)
plist (3.0.0)
polyglot (0.2.3)
prawn (0.2.0)
production_log_analyzer (1.5.0)
ptools (1.1.6)
quietbacktrace (0.1.1)
rack (0.4.0)
radiant (0.6.9)
radius (0.5.1)
railroad (0.5.0)
rails (2.1.0)
rails_analyzer_tools (1.4.0)
rak (0.9)
rake (0.8.3, 0.8.1)
rapt (0.2.2)
raven (1.2.4)
rbehave (0.3.0)
rcov (0.8.1.2.0)
RedCloth (4.0.3)
redgreen (1.2.2)
rewrite (0.3.0)
rfacebook (0.9.8)
rjb (1.1.6, 1.1.2)
roo (1.2.0)
rspec (1.1.4)
rubigen (1.3.2)
ruby-breakpoint (0.5.1, 0.5.0)
ruby-debug (0.10.2)
ruby-debug-base (0.10.2)
ruby-debug-ide (0.3.0)
ruby-openid (2.1.2)
ruby-prof (0.6.0)
ruby-snarl (0.0.8)
ruby-units (1.1.3)
ruby2ruby (1.1.9)
rubycas-client (2.0.1)
rubycas-server (0.6.0)
rubyforge (1.0.0)
rubygems-update (1.3.0)
RubyInline (3.7.0)
rubyjs (0.8.0)
rubyscript2exe (0.5.3)
rubyzip (0.9.1)
runt (0.7.0)
ruport (1.6.1)
ruport-util (0.14.0)
rush (0.4.1)
Saikuro (1.1.0)
sequel (2.5.0)
sequel_core (2.2.0)
session (2.4.0)
sinatra (0.3.1)
slideshow (0.6.1)
snitch (0.1.4)
Soks (1.0.3)
sources (0.0.1)
sparklines (0.5.2)
sparklines_generator (0.2.2)
sql_dep_graph (1.0.0)
sqlite-ruby (2.2.3)
sqlite3-ruby (1.2.2)
statemachine (0.4.1)
syntax (1.0.0)
SyslogLogger (1.4.0)
tattle (1.0.3)
templater (0.2.1)
term-ansicolor (1.0.3)
test-spec (0.9.0)
test-unit (2.0.0)
textpow (0.10.1)
thor (0.9.6)
tidy (1.1.2)
tinder (1.1.7)
tmail (1.2.3.1)
transaction-simple (1.4.0)
treetop (1.2.4)
trollop (1.9)
twitter (0.3.7)
twitter4r (0.3.0)
ultraviolet (0.10.2)
unit_record (0.4.1)
utility_belt (1.1.0)
validatable (1.6.7)
vim-ruby (2007.05.07)
vlad (1.2.0)
warbler (0.9.11)
watir (1.5.6)
widget_wrapper (0.0.1)
will_paginate (2.2.2)
win32-api (1.2.0)
win32-clipboard (0.4.4)
win32-dir (0.3.2)
win32-eventlog (0.5.0)
win32-file (0.5.5)
win32-file-stat (1.3.1)
win32-process (0.5.9)
win32-sapi (0.1.4)
win32-service (0.6.1, 0.5.2)
win32-sound (0.4.1)
win32console (1.1.0)
windows-api (0.2.4)
windows-pr (0.9.4)
wirble (0.1.2)
wxruby (1.9.8)
xml-simple (1.0.11)
ZenTest (3.10.0)

I asked how many gems other people have installed and received replies from Tom Lieber (60), Scott Barron (95) and Ryan Briones (154). Their numbers are more reasonable than mine. By way of contrast, Joe O'Brien points out that Matz has only 6 installed!

How many do you have? Leave a comment and let me know.

Updates:
Adam McCrea weighs in with 106, and Jim Weirich counts 85. Michael Letterle volunteers 24.

No Fear - It was a good concert.

2007-03-13T01:28:00.000-04:00

This past Friday, I went to The No Fear Music Tour stop in Columbus, OH. The line up, in order of appearance, was He Is Legend, Chimaira, Dragonforce, and Killswitch Engage.

My friends and I got there just as the first band, He Is Legend, started the sold-out show. They were okay, which is the same reaction I got when I listed to samples of them on iTunes before the show. They seemed a little more "rock 'n' roll" than metalcore, to me. The singer reminded me, in the way he moved and the poses he struck, of the singer from Tesla, even though he doesn't really look like him. They ended with some of Pantera's "Broken" mixed into their final song.

Chimaira was up next. Mark Hunter, the vocalist, was visciously intense. The whole band was solid, grooving, and heavy. Their set list was great, with Resurrection, Pure Hatred and Nothing Remains all being hit up front.

During their set, with one pit about 10 feet in front of us, I found myself on the fringe of another pit for the first time in probably eight years, this time behind us (where I didn't see it coming). In the early-to-mid 1990s, I was in and around pits frequently, but I have since lost my "sea legs" for them; I got shoved from behind and a third of my drink ended up on the people in front of me. Sorry!

It was a shift in gears going from Chimaira to the next band up: Dragonforce. Dragonforce's sound harkens back to the power metal and guitar pyrotechnics of the late 1980s. It is uplifting music, with soaring vocals and frenetic instrumentation. I read a review once somewhere that described their sound as Journey at 10x speed, and there's some truth to that.

Killswitch Engage were the headliners, and when they took the stage, people got very excited, and Killswitch put on an appropriately good show. It turns out that, despite the band hailing from New England, the Killswitch singer, Howard Jones, is originally from Columbus, Ohio, so it was a sort of homecoming for him.

In the end, I thought Chimaira put on the best show of the night. They weren't as technical as Dragonforce, but they were intense, with sophisticated drumming, rock solid guitars and bass, nicely subtle keyboards and backing vocals, and the brutal Mark Hunter on lead vocals.

The concert was worth paying for all of that TicketMaster convenience.

At the show, my friend Jason and I discussed his observations on how people come to be fans of metal. Some come to it from the hardcore scene (his situation), while others come to it from other sub-genres. In my case, KISS was the start of my path to loving guitar-driven music. Before discovering KISS, I liked Elvis and Beatles, but once I heard (and saw photos of) KISS in about 1978, things would never be the same for me. That started me on a path that lead me to a show like this all these years later.

After the show, Jason and I met up backstage with my brother-in-law Casey (who went to high school with members of Chimaira), where we hung out with a handful of people including Jim LaMarca, bassist for Chimaira, and ZP Theart, singer for Dragonforce. It was an entertaining way to end the evening.

Little App, Big Joy

2007-03-12T01:27:00.000-04:00

I can't live without Launchy anymore!

I think I went through a pretty normal evolution to get here. Once upon a time I used the regular Windows Start|Programs to launch applications. Then I graduated to a BAT file to start up the apps I most commonly used. Then I switched to using the Quick Launch toolbar. I've used Start|Run for various things, or even an omni-present cmd.exe console. I've even looked at some other "application launch pad" apps before, but was never impressed enough to continue using them. Now that I've become hooked on Launchy, though, I'm going to give them another look. A good list of them can be found at Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen blog. It was in another one of his posts that I first came across Launchy, I think.

I started using Launchy (http://www.launchy.net/) a couple of months ago, and now I feel lost (and slow and frustrated) on the rare occassions when I have to manually find what I'm looking for under Start|Programs!

So, what is Launchy? It's a tiny app that allows you to launch programs or files very quickly, in a keyboard-driven way. Just type Alt-Space, and a text field appears mid-screen. Start typing, and matches appear. If you type enough for a single match, that's all you see.
If you type something with many matches, it will present a likely match first; then, if you don't select that match immediately, a selection list of more matches appears. It seems to remember what you've selected before and puts those items highest in the match list (or maybe that's a result of what I've usually typed, or else it's just my imagination. :-)

A feature I didn't realize it had at first was a form of pattern-matching. I can type 'itx' and it will match Internet Explorer (InTernet eXplorer), for example.

It quickly indexes your Start Menu/Programs, your Desktop, or whatever set of directories you want to match against. The ability to focus on a few places rather than the entire hard drive is nice; otherwise, you'd end up with too many matches, I think (unless other heuristics are involved, which some other similar apps appear to have).

It has some configuration options and alternate skins, accessible by right-clicking on the border of the text field. Disappointingly, most of the techniques described at http://www.launchy.net/#tips don't work for me. Hitting Tab only selects the text I've entered so far, which doesn't seem like what I expect should be happening.

There are other programs much like Launchy that I've come across since, but I've stuck with Launchy (version 1) so far. Once in a while it crashes on my laptop (running Windows XP SP2) and I have to (GASP!) go to Start|Programs to re-start it. I'll probably check out one or two alternative apps, then donate to support the one I end up using. I'll try to remember to post a comment or update this post with my final selection.

Resolution Update

2007-01-02T08:15:00.001-05:00

Resolution update: Well, I stayed up too late on day one. Not an auspicious start. (mobile post)

My New Year's Resolutions for 2007

2007-01-01T14:25:00.000-05:00

First, hug my wife and kids more frequently.

(Cliche? Yes, but still Resolution #1).

Second, go to bed earlier.

"Earlier" meaning by midnight most nights, as opposed to the 2am-4am time range I usually end up going to sleep at.

Third, try out GTD (Getting Things Done).

I've started reading the book.

Finally, 2007 is my year of the "Clean Sweep":

Getting rid of my archived "junk" and favoring a "less is more" or minimalist ethic for my piles and possessions, erring on the side of throwing something out I might need rather than keeping many things I'll probably never need.

This is a test of

2006-12-27T01:36:00.001-05:00

This is a test of the Blogger Mobile system. This only a test.

Rails Books

2006-11-10T00:52:00.000-05:00

There are more and more books available covering Ruby on Rails - I recently came across some ones that were new to me at Lulu publishing. The race to publish books on rails reminds me of the rise of the Struts framework, and that's a good thing.

It's a good thing because it means there is more documentation available (any variability in the quality of the offerings aside), it means that there are more Rails "experts" spreading the gospel, publishers are taking it seriously, and as a consequence businesses will take it more seriously.

If enough books are written about it, maybe someday the company I work for will ask me to write some Ruby! [fingers crossed]

New Metal Album and Concert

2006-10-16T22:42:00.000-04:00

Last night, I went to see the metal band Trivium. Sanctity, Protest the Hero and The Sword opened up for them - not bad for $15 (before the $7.25 Ticketmaster fees - BOO!). I didn't expect Sanctity to be there, but it was nice to see them since I had missed their performance at the recent Gigantour show. I was excited to see Protest the Hero, and they put on a good show, but I think most of the crowd - and especially the friends I was with - weren't ready for their hyperactive, time-shifting, young and quirky type of sound and show. The Sword put on a performance pretty much right in line with my expectations: heavy and grooving, if a bit monotonous at times.

Then came Trivium.

Trivium is the band that made me appreciate modern metal's rougher vocal styling, and indeed their previous (2nd) album, Ascendency, quickly became one of my favorites. Matt Heafy and crew are a talented bunch! Still, the early singles from their third album made me nervous - afraid that that very vocal style was abandoned, and along with it, some of their edge. When the new album, The Crusade, was released earlier in the week, those fears were largely realized. The new album sounds uncomfortably like Metallica.

Now, I LOVE the first three or four Metallica albums. Then began a decline that many long-time Metallica fans know all too well. It's not that newer Metallica output is awful, it's just nowhere near as good as they used to be. It is an archetypal tale of a band becoming popular, evolving its sound, and losing what made it special to its early fans.

Trivium's third album is _too early_ for that to happen! Maybe, since their first album was little known, and since they are still very young, this new album can be considered a 'sophomore slump' of sorts.

That said, the new album has killer guitar work, which is valuable to a guitarist like myself (enough to make me overlook the sometimes silly lyrics that are more frequent on this album). I imagine it will grow on me. The new songs certainly sounded good live! And really, I'm being hard on them because I like them so much and expect a great deal from them.

So, the concert rocked, and despite my reservations about the new album, I still think these guys are riddled with talent. Trivium R-O-C-Ks!

Fun with Swords

2006-10-16T21:37:00.000-04:00

My son has been pirate crazy lately, and this has only added to his interest in swords. He uses the bean pods from the neighbors catalpa tree as swords. Finally, when he started making swords out of Legos, only to have them fall apart on the first swoop through the air, I decided I needed to make him a small, safe, wooden sword. About an hour later, I was done, complete with an 'X' (his initial) burned in one side. It certiainly isn't an example of fine woodworking artistry, but it is sturdy and functional. That same day, my wife made him a belt with a magnetic closure and a loop to hold a sword - and with that, he was ready for follow in Captain Jack Sparrow's footsteps!

(I took the above picture with my new camera phone.)

A "Gigantic Tour" of Metal

2006-09-25T00:35:00.000-04:00

Last night I attended the Columbus Gigantour concert. How was it? It rocked.

I met friends beforehand at a local bar to watch the OSU/Penn State football game (GO BUCKS!), which I knew I'd miss the end of since doors opened at 4:30pm and the game started at 3:30pm. I wanted to see one of the opening bands, Into Eternity, so I headed over before my friends did, at about 5:30. By the time I got inside, the fourth band, Overkill, was already playing! How short were those sets?? At least I didn't miss any of the main stage bands.

Arch Enemy played a short but really good set (5 songs), follow by Opeth - the band I was most excited about seeing. Opeth's set was short, too, only allowing for four of their typically long songs, one each from their last four albums: The Grand Conjuration (Ghost Reveries), The Leper Affinity (Blackwater Park), Windowpane (Damnation), and Deliverance (Deliverance). I thought that Mikael Akerfeldt, their singer/guitarist, was particularly funny with his dry humor between songs.

Next up was Lamb of God - definitely a crowd favorite. Their set was longer and they played many songs from their newest album, Sacrament, which they thanked the crowd for helping to debut at #8 on the Billboard charts.

The headliner was metal legend, Megadeth. Dave Mustaine and group rocked the house with a range of their hits, plus a track from their upcoming album.

Bands signed autographs after their sets, but none of the bands were enough of a favorite for me to miss any performances for that. The set changes were quick enough that there was barely time to get a beverage between sets (Bud Light was the only beer choice - blech).

It was a really good show, well worth the $40 ticket price (thanks goes out to Ticketmaster for all of that "convenience" you get for $7.25). I was a little disappointed by the turnout, though. Ticketmaster said general admission was sold out, but it didn't look like it to me - and the stands were even more bare. There are a lot of metalheads in central Ohio - where were they?

The Sun Rises for JRuby

2006-09-13T01:52:00.000-04:00

Yeah, this is old news by now: the two core JRuby developers have been hired by Sun to work full-time on JRuby.

Still, I'm posting about this because I'm happy it, as a lover of both Java and Ruby (though, admittedly, I've done almost nothing with JRuby itself yet). But I'm also happy about it because it strengthens one of the rising stars in the "multiple languages on the JVM" world, and that strengthens Java as a platform (very similar in effect, of course, to the multiple language support of the .NET CLR).

I also think it is great that these guys get to focus on their pet project - and get paid to do it! Congrats on that!

In terms of Vendor interest in Ruby and/or Rails, apparently Adobe developers are making Flex Rails-friendly.

My Blog Title

2006-08-15T00:49:00.000-04:00

I knew when I named my blog that there was something familiar about it, but I couldn't find any existing blog with the name. Instead, it turns out that it comes from my teen years, when (as now) I listened to a lot of Metal. Megadeth's song "This Was My Life" from "Countdown To Extinction" has the line in the first stanza.

I'm sure that's where I got it from. If Megadeth wants me to change the title of my blog, I'd be willing to. As it is, I'm gonna leave it - as an indirect tribute to Megadeth and Heavy Metal.

I just attended a Rails Studio!

2006-08-15T00:10:00.000-04:00

I plopped down my own cash to attend a Pragmatic Programmers Pragmatic Studio, and I think it was money well spent. I attended the Columbus session of Rails Studio, and it was a solid three days of Ruby and Rails goodness.

Mike Clark and Dave Thomas are good instructors. I had seen Dave talk previously at a No Fluff, Just Stuff, so I knew I'd like him. Mike was really good, too -- they make a great team, actually. Of course, Mike's wife, Nicole Clark, seemed to be the real organizing force for the studio series.

Even before the course began, I could tell this would be a different experience than I had previously encountered in a training session. When I went to sign up online, I discovered there was no place to enter my credit card information. Instead, Nicole called me to ask a few questions --like if I had enough object-oriented programming experience-- to make sure I was ready for the course. I've never encountered a company that might turn away a student -- and their money. (In fact, their Advanced Rails Studio page says, "...you'll need to convince us that you're ready to attend.")

Sure enough, the class sold out. 35 spots. I think I got in one or maybe two days before it sold out. I knew that Columbus had quite a few Rails aficionados, that several Clevelanders had attended CRB meetings, and that Cincinnati had a healthy group, too (including a Rails committer - Jim Weirich [CORRECTION: Scott Baron is a committer from Cinci; Jim Weirich is the creator of Rake]), so selling out wasn't a surprise. At one point, Mike said something to the effect of, "I would say this is the hottest ruby community in the country... the most vibrant," in regard to Columbus specifically and Ohio in general. What did surprise me was that at least 15 of the 35 seats were people from elsewhere in the country, including Hawaii, and even one from England! I'm lucky I got in!

But the pre-class surprises didn't end there! They invited us to join a pre-class Yahoo! Group so attendees could share info and help each other with the pre-class homework. Yep: we had an assignment! It was to download and run a simple Rails app to let them know we had a working Rails environment installed. It also let us submit what size T-shirt we wanted (other goodies: we also received workshop source code, a binder with all of the slides, an alumni discount on Pragmatic books and events, a class completion certificate, and a "I'd rather be on Rails" bumper sticker; also, this week we should get invited to join a mailing list exclusively for Studio alumni, as well as a mailing list for Rails jobs).

I had recently had Windows XP reloaded on my laptop, and rather than re-install Ruby and MySQL again, I decided to go with the option recommended for the class: InstantRails. Like Uniform Server or EasyPHP, it is a self-contained, extract-it-don't-install-it package, containing Ruby, Rails, Apache, MySQL, and PhpMyAdmin. That's pretty sweet. It works really well (though I did add Ruby to my regular PATH so I could use it outside of InstantRails consoles).

In preparation for the class, I also had to decide what editor I wanted to use. I could go with a non-IDE editor (with syntax highlighting), but I wanted to go for something more substantial. I had already used RadRails before, and liked it. I am very familiar with the Eclipse environment, which RadRails is built on, so I like that. Besides, it is getting better and better. Despite that, I decided to go with jEdit with the Ruby Editor plugin, probably because I'm evaluating editors (for personal use as well as a future blog post). I have to say, jEdit has lots of great plugins, and the Ruby Editor plugin is really nice, but I'll have to work with it more before I feel comfortable enough with all of its features to recommend it above RadRails.

Of course, the instructors were using TextMate, but at the moment I'm stuck on Windows (saving for a MacBook), so I wasn't so lucky. Still, I jotted down notes when they gave quick sidebar tips for TextMate.

What about the actual class?!?

Class started with coverage of Ruby. The basics were quickly covered, and common idioms and conventions were pointed out as we went, which I appreciated. Control structures, object-orientation, blocks, symbols, data structures, modules, etc. Just going over this stuff in class made me feel like I grokked it better than I had after my previous readings and irb sessions.

At one point during all of this, Dave commented that, "Java is the blunt, rounded scissors of programming languages," to everyone's amusement. Now, I love Java, but I'm starting to grasp the beauty of Ruby, too. Learning something different from Java is my main motivation for taking this class. I have limited experience with several non-Java languages, but aside from JavaScript, most of my 8 year IT career has been spent working in Java.

This whirlwind tour of Ruby went fast, but was backed up by demos, exercises, and no less than 91 slides (nicely categorized types of slides, I might add).

Next, of course, came Rails. History, definition and philosophy were addressed, though most attendees were surely familiar with this already. The MVC (Model View Controller) pattern was covered and mapped to Rails. From there, Dispatch, Controllers, Views (rhtml) and Models (ActiveRecord) were elaborated upon.

The class was peppered with up-to-date information about Ruby and Rails. Of course, this was all the more emphasized since the class coincided with the security issue that precipitated Rails 1.1.5 and 1.1.6.

Coding exercises really picked up at this point. This was helped, in gradations, by sample code/apps that were provided. I must say that I really came to appreciate ActiveRecord Migrations during these exercises. First, I had never messed with Migrations before. Second, I've always felt that the schemas where I work were way too informally managed. Third, such an approach really lends itself to local databases for testing and development, which is another pain point where I work. Fourth, it gives a degree of RDBMS-agnosticism to DDL (and coming from the Java world, I appreciate anything that keeps me from being tied to a vendor).

Scaffolding was discussed and used, then the exercises moved beyond it. This was appropriate since Scaffolding, although nice and helpful --especially for prototyping--, is not a full lifecycle tool.

Another bit that I had never used before was the gem_server. I like gems! And this let's me view the RDoc for my locally installed gems. Speaking of which, RDoc is pretty nice - I especially like the inline source feature that Javadoc doesn't have (by default).

I also hadn't used Rake very much prior to the class. I have a lot of Ant experience, and a little bit of Maven experience, and I have to say that the Rake/Gems combination seems nicer to me.

ActiveRecord validation and finders, script/generate, sessions, web forms, partials, RJS, Ajax and troubleshooting were up next. After that, testing was the topic. It didn't get as much attention as I expected (given that Ruby and Rails both are so TDD-friendly. Still, the topic was at least touched on each day. Fixtures, Rake commands, Unit, Functional, and Integration tests were all covered.

The second night, many of the attendees went out to meet, eat and imbibe. I was unable to go out because my daughter had contracted pink eye really bad in one eye (coincidentally, before I knew this, I brought her home a pink, one-eyed foam ball - what are the chances?)

The third day, we started 30 minutes early so we could finish and allow more time for everyone with flights to catch to absorb the extended airport delays that the recent terror attempts were causing.

Model associations, as I expected, were a large topic. Transactions, more testing and mock objects, ActiveRecord life cycle hooks, routes, RESTful web services, UI helpers, and security were next in line.

After that, deployment was the topic. Session options (file, database, memcached), server options (WEBrick, FastCGI, Apache, lighttpd, and Mongrel), caching (page, action, fragment), freezing Rails, and Capistrano were also covered. I have to say that Capistrano is very impressive, as well. I wish I could use that at work! And it makes me think that a Virtual Private Server is the way to go for whenever I start needing hosting for my inevitably killer Rails apps.

A few items were put in the "parking lot", but we didn't have time for them. Speaking of which, that just reminded me - I don't think there was any mention of DamageControl (but it appears that it is no longer an active project). Watir is another Ruby tool that I would have liked to have seen covered (though Selenium is a similar tool that I will look more into first).

All in all, it was a fun and informative three solid days of RoR goodness. I was worried that I would be too tired for an all-day class, having been ill right before the studio and only getting between 2 and 5 hours sleep each night of the studio, but I never had to fight my eyelids once! I highly recommend attending a studio if you can!!

First JBoss, Now Rails

2006-08-11T00:00:00.000-04:00

Apple has been getting good about pre-installing developer goodies in OS X. Tomcat and JBoss are there for the Java crowd. Now they are at it again.

"It was reported this week that application development framework Ruby on Rails (rubyonrails.org) will ship with the next version of Apple's OS X, known as Leopard."

Also see this post on topic at the Riding Rails blog.

This makes me want a MacBook even more!

DB2 on Rails

2006-08-04T23:30:00.000-04:00

In case anyone has any DB2 databases they are itchin' to access, I just came across these references in the new issue of DB2 Magazine (Volume 11, Number 3; how did I get subscribed to that, anyway?):

http://alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/DB2onRails

and this:

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/db2/library/techarticle/dm-0606dumbill/.

I thought the attention from IBM, especially given their backing of PHP, was noteworthy.

RailsConf Keynote Videos

2006-07-24T23:26:00.000-04:00

I wasn't able to make it to RailsConf, but I've been viewing the keynote addresses as they become available at ScribeMedia.

There is some good stuff here (despite other viewers' comments slamming the format - I'm just thankful for the content). Thanks, ScribeMedia!

For those speakers with slides, at least some of these are available on their respective sites.

I've appreciated what most of the speakers had to say, though I am as yet unconvinced of the merits of DHH's suggestion that we (kludgily?) use HTTP's "verbs" (PUT and DELETE, in addition to the usual GET and POST) for CRUD invocations - using the identical URL for each. I prefer the URL being explicit (not to mention more easily invoked).

A Little R 'n' R: Ruby and Rails Resources

2006-05-26T04:44:00.000-04:00

I recently gathered some pointers to info on Ruby and Ruby On Rails for my manager, who is showing interest in RoR despite the fact that Java/JEE is The Standard in my company (yeay!). Here's what I sent to him.

Books