Missed out on RailsConf? Me too. Here’s how I caught up

on May 17 in Asides, Ruby on Rails tagged david heinemeir hansson, Git, Github, merb, o'reilly, rails magazine, railsconf by John Dyer

I’m sure I’m not the only Rails developer who missed RailsConf 2009 due to a plethora of various reasons. Well, I didn’t let that hold me back from gaining as much information as possible from the Conference. Although these resources are pretty easy to find, I thought I would help you out by providing you with some links.

First is the official RailsConf site, hosted by O’Reilly. This would be an obvious first choice for people, but I am still going to restate that there is a great deal of free content available here. Most of the keynotes and speeches are now up in pretty high-quality video and slides are available in PDF form for both the keynotes and most of the tutorials.

Next, if you’re like most people, you might not have enough time to watch the hours of videos or sort through all the slideshows available over at the RailsConf site. Well, you’re still in a great position to learn from those keynotes, as Nick Quaranto attended a ton of events at RailsConf and took great notes, which he published here on his blog litany against fear. Some highlights include the David Heinemeier Hansson keynote on the future of Rails and the secret to being productive using Rails, some great keynotes about git and github, and a speech given about testing with Webrat. Definitely worth checking out.

The final resource I’m providing related to RailsConf is from Rails Magazine. They just published their second issue and it is a special edition for RailsConf. I really am trying my best to support this magazine because I think it would be great to see this magazine grow into something great (not that it isn’t already) and be avaialable at bookstores and news stands. The big article goes over what’s coming to Rails 3 and details about the Merb and Rails merge. Oh, did I mention this magazine is free in digital form?

And while I’m at it, I thought I’d also point you over to a very, very detailed article about the benefit of building websites for projects on github and how things should be documented. I think if this is more heavily adopted, it would make life easier for developers using a lot of various gems and plugins. But at the same time I understand that this does take effort to create and most people aren’t exactly overflowing with free time. Either way, a good read that I though I’d share. I hope these resources help you to understand what happened at RailsConf and hopefully taught you something new.

The World’s First Web Server and Disqus

on May 16 in Asides tagged aside, cern, first web server, geneva, NeXT by John Dyer

It’s hard to believe, but this little NeXT cube is the first web server ever. It always surprised me that the internet has changed so much, so quickly and computers are becoming smarter and smarter every day. The crazy thing is that the internet is now “evolving” at an exponential rate and some of the things that once looked impossible are now looking very, very possible. Enough of that though, just thought it was a cool picture with a ton of history behind it.

In other news, I changed the theme to the site around a bit and also added support for Disqus, Facebook Connect, and the ability to post from your Twitter account. I encourage anyone who wants to leave a comment to post via one of those methods as it allows for very organized discussion and tracking via twitter with a community sort of comment overview available here. Anyways, pretty soon I’ll have a lot of time free and probably be spending some more time working with some Rails plugins I’ve been working on. I’ll let you know once I have any code up on Github or anything like that.

As a little side note, has anyone done any work with Sproutcore? I was really interested in using it in a rails app and was wondering if it’s relatively easy to use inside of a rails app.

Mix Podcast Episode 008: May 8, 2009

on May 08 in Featured tagged dash berlin, dj eco, free music, progressive, trance, tritonal by John Dyer

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:39 — 58.6MB)

Mix number eight and bit of a change of pace. I’ve noticed that every summer for some reason I absolutely love vocal trance. This could be the beautiful weather outside or maybe it’s just that an insane amount of great vocal tracks come out this time of year. Anyways, this week there are some killer new vocal tracks from John O’Callaghan, Dash Berlin, and Tritonal. I ended the podcast with an epic trance monster CHOON of a song, Lost Angeles by DJ Eco.

As always, track listing after the jump! Enjoy

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Mix Podcast Episode 007: May 5, 2009

on May 05 in Podcast tagged free music, house, mix, Podcast, progressive, summer music, trance by John Dyer

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:07 — 66.1MB)

Mix number seven and definitely my favorite. Got a lot of unique tracks on it; some old, some new. I tried to bring a feel of summer to this mix as it is certainly impending. I think I’m gonna try to figure out a set schedule to release my podcast (not right now, but soon). It will probably end up being every other week, but if I feel like doing more I’ll definitely post them as well. So I hope you enjoy this mix as much as I do and leave some comments if you have any feedback, etc.

As always, track listing after the jump! Enjoy

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