Favorite Ruby Feeds

I have been busy developing a couple different Rails applications lately and wanted to share some of my favorite Ruby feeds that I follow daily in case it is of interest to fellow Ruby developers:

• Ruby Inside - Get the inside scoop on Ruby news.
• RubyFlow - A great site for picking up new Ruby resources to add to your development repertoire.
• Talk Like a Duck - Digs into the depths of the Ruby language.
• Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots - Good development tips and tricks, mostly related to Rails.
• Rails Inside - Get the inside scoop on Rails news.
• Rails Spikes - A multi-authored site of Ruby developers discussing news, tips, code, etc.
• Ruby on Rails Security Project - A good place to read up on security issues or at least keep your mind in it.
• Rails Envy - An entertaining and informative weekly podcast dedicated to Ruby, Rails, and web framework news.
• Rails Podcasts - Ruby/Rails podcasts by Geoffrey Grosenbach of PeepCode fame.

BTW, you can find this list and more on my Ruby page. While I don’t broadcast my page updates anymore I do update that page on a weekly basis.

Twitter in Plain English

The talent at CommonCraft have done it again and created an excellent video that explains Twitter for those who might not understand it yet. You can watch it below:

You can find me on Twitter, learn how I use of Twitter, and study more about Twitter on my Twitter page if you want to learn more.

Tags: Twitter

stackoverflow

stackoverflow, if you haven’t discovered it already, is a website and podcast that has the goal of being a place for programming discussions as well as a repository of code snippets and examples. In essence, a great place for us in the programming community to hang out and learn.

The site is being hosted by Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood and is only a week or two old. I applaud what these guys are doing and look forward to seeing how the site matures.

Aeonscope Categories Widget 1.0.0

Documentation

Visit the main page for more info.

Enhancements

• Surfaced functionality as found in the wp_list_categories WordPress function. This allows you customize how your categories are displayed as part of your site theme. For an example of this widget in action, take a look at how it is being used on this site.

Fixes

• None at the moment.

Downloads

• 1.0.0 (Downloads: 88)

Twitter Workflow

© Twitter

I admit that I wasn’t the first get into Twitter. Even now I use it in moderation. That being said, I do enjoy Twitter and wish that more people that I know would make use of it. At least for me, sharing what you are up to and what you are learning can be quite educational.

Here is how I have integrated Twitter into my daily workflow.

Subscribing

I don’t follow, I subscribe. Yeah, instead of following people on Twitter, which is the default behavior, I just subscribe to the syndicated feed at the bottom of a person’s Twitter page. Like so:

Reading

Every day, during lunch, I check my syndicated feeds…

…using a feed reader, like Vienna, to see what is new. Occasionally, I’ll do a quick pulse check in the morning and evening but that’s about it.

Writing

As for posting new content to Twitter, I’ll use the following MacOS dashboard widgets:

(Top widget: Twidget, bottom widget: TinyURL - sorry, I forget where I got this but can e-mail it to you.)

If mobile, I’ll compose an SMS text message from my iPhone.

Rules of Thumb

1. Never subscribe to someone that averages more than 15 tweets a day unless they are really good. You’ve got other stuff to read and at a certain point it just becomes noise.
2. Never post more than 15 tweets a day with occasional exceptions for those special moments. Hey, you are just one voice out of many that someone might be paying attention to, so try to make your stuff worthwhile.

Related Resources

Check out my Twitter and Mac OS pages to learn more.

Tags: Twitter

Aeonscope Core Java Library 1.1.0

Documentation

• Main Page
• Javadoc

New requirements have been added for Apache Commons Collections and Codec. These details can be found on the main page.

Enhancements

• Chrono - Added this class as a way to record the duration of time with the ability to start, stop, and reset time.
• MeasurementKit - Added centering for int and float values.
• GraphicKit - Added this utility class for dealing with screen resolutions and the resizing of rectangles.
• Log4jKit - Added this utility class to aid in the logging of messages.
• FileInfo - Added this class as a way to surface human readable information about files such as file size, date, time, checksum, and a few other conveniences.
• JDOMKit - Added methods to aid in acquiring the XML document or root element objects from a XML file. Optional validation support is included as well. Also added methods that can write a collection of element producers to file and print documents and elements to the system console.

Fixes

• None at the moment.

Downloads

• 1.1.0 (binary) (Downloads: 89)
• 1.1.0 (source) (Downloads: 101)

WordPress 2.5

WordPress 2.5 is finally out and I spent some time over the weekend upgrading this site from 2.2 to 2.5 (yeah, I’m a slacker). Not only did I upgrade this site to 2.5 but I also migrated from MySQL 4.0 to 5.0 (finally!). It was a painless process and I think things seem to be working fairly well on this site.

As for Wordpress 2.5, there are many interesting things to check out. I might write more about WordPress 2.5 in the future but, for now, here is the latest news:

• WordPress 2.5 - The official WordPress news.
• 10 Things You Need To Know About WordPress 2.5.
• WordPress 2.5 Object Cache Improvements.
• WordPress 2.5 Plugin Settings Pages Style Guide
• Wordpress 2.5 F.A.Q., Version 1
• Wordpress 2.5 F.A.Q., Version 2

By the way, if you like WordPress and want to learn more about it, you can find more information on my WordPress page.

Tags: WordPress

JarScan

JarScan is a tool that can aid in resolving import errors when you have a Java library missing from your classpath. This assumes you have the Java library on your system somewhere but don’t know where it is located or what is it named as.

Download and run “java -jar jarscan.jar -help” from the command line to learn how to use it. For example, a command like:

java -jar jarscan.jar -dir <directory to search> -zip -package javax.media

…can search a directory and sub-directories for the “javax.media” package in all JAR and ZIP files.

There is also an online version of this tool as well.

VMWare Time Synchronization for Windows

This might seem obvious but it is not enough to simply put a check in the “Time Synchronization” options box for VMWare as shown here:

You also need to make sure that your Windows VM “Date & Time” properties are set properly:

Having both the Windows VM and your host computer (the one running the Windows VM) perform time synchronization can cause Windows to report the wrong time. Instead, just let the host computer do all the work.

Tags: VMWare Fusion

Aeonscope Tools Java Library 1.0.0

Overview

This Java library is a collection tools I have written in the evenings and weekends to solve interesting problems that I have come across. Maybe you will find these tools useful as well. This library builds upon my other Java library: Aeonscope Core Library.

Enhancements

• File Stubber - Allows one to create a duplicate but lightweight file structure for testing purposes.
• Eclipse User Library Generator - A tool for creating an Eclipse user library (XML file) on a series of sub-directories that contain third-party Java libraries. This tool assumes you have working knowledge of the Eclipse IDE.

Fixes

• None at the moment, this is the initial release.

Documentation

• Main Page
• Javadoc

Downloads

• Binary (Downloads: 75)
• Source (Downloads: 84)