(Mon May 12, 2008) [/Books] #
The paper book version of
Advanced Rails Recipes is
now shipping! If you bought the combo pack during beta (thanks!), you should be receiving your paper copy any day now if you haven't already. Dave surprised me with a copy at the beginning of a Studio last week. I'm really happy with the way everything turned out, and it feels good to finally have this one in circulation.
You might still be wondering what's inside the book. Reading the table of contents is a good start (and includes a couple freebies), but I thought you might also want to see a few recipes in action. So I put together a short (12 minute) screencast that highlights the results of 17 recipes with strong visual appeal. (Watch the screencast.)
Big shouts out to all the contributors! You guys rock.
I've always been fascinated by macro photography, but had never ventured into
that small world for fear of getting sucked in. Then I remembered that I'm
taking pictures simply because it's fun (and presents a good challenge). Why not try macro!
So last week I finally broke down and bought a macro lens (the Canon EF 100mm
F2.8) which arrived today. Now, the first thing you're supposed to do with a
macro lens is shoot a big hairy insect. Trust me, I'll get there. But bugs
don't just stand still, which is unfortunate when you're trying to practice
with a new lens. And it snowed overnight here, which means the springtime bugs
aren't out yet (but the ones that are definitely stand still!).
So instead of stalking insects, I thought I'd try a close-up of a fairly old
comic book. I know, you're supposed to shoot macro straight at the subject, but flat pages aren't very interesting. I like the way the pixels give it texture. Many thanks to Duncan for help with the color
correction in Lightroom. That's a whole different challenge in itself, though equally enjoyable.
All the photography books say this, and they're absolutely right: You need a
tripod
to do this. When you get dialed in on the details, you feel every little
vibration. I've also been using a shutter release cable to bump my odds of
getting tack-sharp shots. (Yeah, the mirror lock trick comes next.) In this
case, I switched over to manual focus because auto-focus was squirrelly.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. Comments in Flickr are always appreciated!
(Fri Mar 28, 2008) [/Rails] #
Part III of my three-part Apple Developer Connection series on Rails has been
posted. It's titled Deploying
Rails Applications on Mac OS X Leopard because it picks up where we left
off in Part II by deploying the application to Leopard Server using Capistrano.
I had a lot of fun writing this piece in particular because I got to play around with the new features in Leopard Server. It comes pre-installed with lots of Rails deployment goodies to streamline the process: Apache 2.2, mod_proxy_balancer, MySQL, Mongrel, Capistrano, and so on. As well, Apple created an enhanced version of mongrel_rails that, among other things, registers your Mongrel processes with Bonjour. The upshot is you can configure your Rails-powered web site right from Server Admin.
Enjoy!
For today's photo project, I played with pushing light around. It's surprisingly fun and easy. In this case, the background happens to be my cinema display turned off with white paper reflecting natural light from a window.
Happy Easter!
(Thu Mar 20, 2008) [/Rails] #
Part II of my three-part Apple Developer Connection series on Rails has been
posted. It's titled Customizing
Rails Applications on Mac OS X Leopard because it picks up where we left
off in Part I by working with views and web forms, adding AJAX support, and
supporting an iPhone interface.
Coincidentally, we're offering another back-to-back Studio combo in June:
Register by April 18th and save $300 on each Studio.
Enjoy!
(Thu Mar 06, 2008) [/Studio] #
Take a double-header (literally) with two back-to-back advanced Studios in one week. In May, we're offering an Advanced Rails Studio immediately followed by an Advanced Ruby Studio. Sign up for both and save yourself the time and expense of two trips!
Register by March 31st and save $200 on each Studio.
Thanks for your continued support. We hope to see you this spring!
(Tue Mar 04, 2008) [/Rails] #
My latest Apple Developer Connection article, titled Developing Rails Applications on Mac OS X Leopard, is the first in a three-part series on Rails. It takes you through how to build a basic RESTful app using Rails 2.0.2 and XCode.
Parts II and III go beyond the basics to customize the application and deploy it on Leopard Server. They've already been written, and they should be available soon.
This series has been a long time in the making, and I'm delighted that it's finally available. It's a major update to the Tiger version of the article. Leopard comes with a bunch of pre-installed goodies to help you start building (and deploying!) Rails applications without a lot of fuss. And although I still use TextMate, it's great to see Rails support making its way into XCode 3.0. Even if you're a Rails pro, you may want to follow this series to see what Leopard brings to the party.
(Sun Mar 02, 2008) [/Books] #
Advanced Rails Recipes is
recipe-complete! I snuck four more into the fourth beta revision that was
released today, for a final total of 84 recipes. That's a good round number, and this puppy needs to go to print soon, so the kitchen is officially closed. :-)
Here's what's new:
Thanks for submitting errata! We worked the list down for this beta revision,
and added a few new things here and there to the existing recipes based on
your input. For example, we expanded the Solr recipe to include more
information on the solr-ruby library. We also addressed a few corner cases in
the multi-model form recipe. Finally, we thought nested routes deserved their
own recipe. So we expanded nested routes into a new recipe in this revision,
and added a :member example to the recipe on adding custom RESTful
routes to keep it focused on non-nested routes.
Please keep the errata
coming. The book will go into production (copyedit, indexing, layout, etc.) in
a week, and I'd really appreciate a good scrub of all the recipes. If you only
have time to read through a couple, please go straight for the shiny new ones.
Thanks again for your continued support!
(Tue Feb 26, 2008) [/Books] #
That's 14 more get 'er done recipes, for a total of 81 in the third beta
revision of Advanced Rails
Recipes. Yeah, I know I promised 72 recipes. Sorry 'bout that. Y'all just
kept sending me more, and they were so good I simply couldn't resist. Anyway, I
hope you enjoy the extras.
Here's what's new:
-
Process Recurring Credit Card Payments
-
Support An iPhone Interface
-
Send E-mail via Gmail
-
Segregate Page Cache Storage with Nginx
-
Build a Sitemap
-
Full-Text Search with Sphinx
-
Customize Error Messages
-
Load Balance Around Your Mongrels' Health
-
Quick & Dirty Search
-
Use Fixtures For Canned Datasets
-
Cheap & Easy Caching (requires Edge Rails)
-
Drive a Feature with Integration Tests
-
Write Domain-Specific RSpec Matchers
-
Use DTrace for Profiling
Current recipe contributors include: Aaron Batalion, Adam Keys, Andre Lewis, Andrew Kappen, Ben Smith, Chris Bernard, Chris Haupt, Chris Wanstrath, Cody Fauser, Dan Benjamin, Dan Manges, Daniel Fischer, David Chelimsky, Erik Hatcher, Ezra Zygmuntowicz, Geoffrey Grosenbach, Giles Bowkett, Greg Hansen, Gregg Pollack, Hemant Kumar, Hugh Bien, Jamie Orchard-Hays, Jared Haworth, Jarkko Laine, Jason LaPier, Jay Fields, John Dewey, Jonathan Dahl, Josep Blanquer, Josh Stephenson, Josh Susser, Kevin Clark, Luke Francl, Mark Bates, Marty Haught, Matthew Bass, Michael Slater, Mike Hagedorn, Mike Mangino, Mike Naberezny, Mike Subelsky, Nathaniel Talbott, PJ Hyett, Patrick Reagan, Peter Marklund, Pierre-Alexandre Meyer, Ryan Bates, Scott Barron, Sean Mountcastle, Tony Primerano, and Warren Konkel.
Now, don't tell my editor (Hi, Dave!), but I may end up sneaking a couple more juicy recipes into the final revision. They're already in progress, but not quite ready for the beta.
The book will go into production (copyedit, layout, etc.) very soon, so if you
notice any problems and things that could use a bit more clarification, I'd
really appreciate it if you'd file errata. I'll work 'em
all off for the final revision.
Thanks to all the contributors for their fantastic work!
(Wed Feb 06, 2008) [/Misc] #
I hope one day to attend a TED conference.
It's highly unlikely given that attendance is by invitation only, but a guy
can dream. In the meantime, I thoroughly enjoy watching the TED talk videos.
What I like most about watching the videos is that they aren't all focused on
software or technology. For that matter, they aren't all focused on any one
thing. TED brings together the world's greatest thinkers and doers to give
inspiring talks on various themes: art, biology, climatology, design,
economics, invention, poverty, religion, technology, and so on.
Here's the interesting thing: It's a single-track conference. Everyone sees
the same talk at the same time. This seems inefficient because we're used to
conferences with sharp focus—the software geeks go one way, the climate
change experts go another, and consequently the folks trying to solve global
poverty issues don't immediately benefit from the advances made in software
and climatology.
But TED is in the idea-spreading business. And to efficiently spread ideas on
a grand scale, you need a wide-angle view. All this stuff is changing and,
more to the point, at some level it's all interconnected. So if you're looking
for inspiration, I highly recommend a steady intake of TED talks. Here are a
few of my favorites:
(You can also subscribe to the videos via
iTunes.)
Enjoy!
