Rails 3: browse the source-code at railties/lib/rails/info.rb

Or see:

Rails 2: browse the source-code at railties/builtin/rails_info/rails/info.rb

Or see:

Till the next time…

Required Skills:
* Fluency in HTML and CSS
* Experience taking mockups and turning them into standards-compliant HTML/CSS
* Expertise in achieving cross-browser compatibility in IE, Firefox, and Safari
* Experience in implementing grid-based layouts in HTML/CSS
* Experience in an agile development environment

Pluses:
* Interest in user experience design and graphic design
* Experience in Javascript and Ruby on Rails
* History of side projects and interest in social media, browsers, and mobile web
* Obsession with new technologies and open source tools
* Experimental, user focused, and iterative
* Previous startup experience

I felt the Pluses section was very interesting, specially (you kinda see the others on Rails related job boards anyway):
* History of side projects and interest in social media, browsers, and mobile web
* Obsession with new technologies and open source tools

Shows how today’s start-ups value people who are really interested in what they do (and not just in for the money). An encouraging view of the world indeed – now I just have to get on it and get those much needed Plusses into my skills bag

Note to my employers, friends, well wishers and anyone else interested: This does not mean I am looking for a job! I love the job I have right now and am just happy to see the importance of “passion” in the world’s view of an ideal employee increasing!

And so far I am loving it. It’s better to read on compared to Kindle 1 (which, BTW, Ujwala had gifted to me last year) – and the native PDF support (and the search-anywhere) is awesome! The experimental browser that comes with the DX is much much improved compared to Kindle 1st Gen.

So I was reading more about Rails Routing in the rails-guides. And while I was in the bus today morning I wanted to read that on the Kindle (coz it is a pleasure to read on it). So I fired up the guides page on the experimental browser – it works, but reading a PDF or a Kindle-formatted book is so much better.

So I got this simple idea. Print the web page as a PDF and e-mail it to your Kindle. Here’s what I did:

1. Go to the site
2. Print – (PDF format “saved to file” instead of sending it to a printer). I was on Linux – Mac also has the “Print to PDF/PS support by default, for Windows you’ll need to get CutePDF installed)
3. e-mail it to your Kindle address (I also uploaded it to my dropbox – so I can get it later on) and you are done!

(BTW, dropbox is an amazing thing – if you use multiple computers/OS, you have to try this thing. If you are going to try it out (for free), help me out – use my Dropbox referral link)

So there you go – another easy way to get web-content for free on your Kindle. Go on enjoy the book now.

Blog-Notes

• Amazon Kindle DX
• Rails Guides – excellent info on the RubyOnRails framework
• CutePDF
• DropBox

One of the programs that I love and can’t go through the day without is GNU Screen. It’s like a Window manager, but only for your terminals. You know, like you are working with so many terminals/consoles/terminal-windows all the time (one to the DB, one with vim open, one to run the tests, one to run the program etc., one to watch the logs, a few to prod boxes etc.). And then you disconnect and then reconnect (from home, somewhere else) and you have to set-up all that again?

Yeah screen can help you with all that. My work pattern involves connecting to a screen session (and I get all the windows/context loaded). Whether I connect from work, home from somewhere else, all I have to say is:

$ screen -ls (to see what sessions I have running)
$ screen -R some-session-name

And it’s wicked-easy to switch between different windows, search through your history etc. You can also configure it to do a few “start-up” things every time. For example, at home, I have screen

1. configured to Open 4 windows when it starts up and
2. have window-0 go to my code dir (to teh root of my RubyOnRails part of the site)
3. start up auto-test on window-1
4. show the logs on window-2
5. ssh into the blue host (which hosts my site)

Since the windows are persisted, I don’t have to do all these things every time I connect (for a lazy programmer (and all programmers are lazy aren’t they?) that’s a lot of help). You can even share the screens with someone else (I have not tried that yet though).

Anyway, I hope you are sold by now. Even if you are not, spend some time (shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours) installing/configuring/running screen and you will soon reap the rewards. To get you started:

• The GNU Screen home-page: http://www.gnu.org/software/screen
• A good guide to installing/setting-up/using: http://magazine.redhat.com/2007/09/27/a-guide-to-gnu-screen
• Once you start liking it you’ll need a cheat-sheet: http://aperiodic.net/screen/quick_reference?do=show

A word about configuring: heard that Ubuntu will soon shipping with decent .screenrc (sane default configuration) so you don’t have to. Meanwhile you can configure it yourself (as in the Red Hat guide above) or look at these cool options: http://linux.dsplabs.com.au/gnu-screen-screenrc-configuration-file-p13/. Here is my .screenrc:

vbell off
vbell_msg "Ring"

# detach on hangup
autodetach on

# don't display copyright page
startup_message off

# scroll back
defscrollback 1000

# setup the caption
hardstatus alwayslastline "%{-b gk}%-w%{+b kg}%50>%n %t%{-b gk}%+w %=%C%< "

# right/left bindings
bindkey "^[[c" next
bindkey "^[[d" prev
bindkey "^[[b" focus

# Set the altscreen so that when you quit vi, it will go back to
# what it was before
altscreen on

And finally, my delicious links for screen.

Well yesterday I got a link (internal – so can’t share) in a mailing group in office. The URL was a shortened one (something like tinyurl, but used inside Amazon) and it did come with adequate warning about not opening it. But like a few other dumbos I did click it.

I have to share the link in this post – but be warned that I have warned you. It’s no virus r malicious software/code but clever Javascript play. Anyway if you happen to click know that you have no right to sue me whatsoever. And if you really do click – let me know, afterwards, how it goes.

Without further ado, it’s – http://www.rickrolling.com

I am assuming you know what RickRoll is – if not, you should – the wikipedia article on RickRoll explains it well (it has given me a lot of laughs till date and has robbed some producive hours too. I hope you enjoy it too ).

So, anyway, like a real dumbo, even after reading all the warnings I clicked on it. And bam… my browser is not mine anymore. It’s like one of those really annoying moments when you loose control of something you use all the time (maybe not a great analogy, think a driver loosing control of the steering wheel of his bus. Think a bus full of passengers. In this case, it causes no damage – so like, the bus not hitting any thing/body, but dancing around the street).

I had quite a few interesting tabs open on Firefox. And when it started dancing around, I really lost it. For a few seconds that is. Then the ubiquity idea came to me.

ALT+SHIFT. type “close-tab” (actually just type “clo” and hit tab) and then type “RICK ROLL”.
W00t! My browser is back. And my work is saved (the only other way would have been to kill firefox – after which if I restart and ask it to open All Tabs again, I am back to square-one. If I say “Start with no tabs” I loose all the other interesting ones. Of course you can kill FF, open up the FF tabs xml file (it’s nested inside your FF install dir) and delete this tab – but that’s a lot of work).

I have loved Ubiquity a lot and have evangelized it to a lot of people already. It gives you a really powerful browser (like just type “search Something”, or “email Hi to arnab” and you are done. No opening a tabs or another service even). It’s very liberating. My fav commands are search, wiki, weather, email, map, define and twitter.

But yesterday, for the first time I had the opportunity to really feel myself “Thank God I installed Ubiquity”.

If you have not already, give it a spin – here’s the page for the Ubiquity project

If you want more, watch this screencast (you can also find it on the Ubiquity page) -

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

If you are using it already, don’t you love it? If not using it yet – try it out and let me know how it goes. (Ubiquity is also on twitter – @mozillaubiquity)

So here goes – this is to claim my blog in Technorati -
Technorati Profile

Anyway, I always wanted to get my own domain. And play around with Rails, Capistrano etc. to launch it. So here it is. I did spend a lot of time creating it. But finally, I think I am going the low-hanging-fruit (agile?) way – so right now it’s the simple, easy and open source WordPress running on my host.

I am planning to add some dynamic mashup content (like my activity list from all the services I use, and some news that I feed in all mashed up). Let’s see where it goes.

A few of my early 2009 goals were to learn Dvorak, master vim and Rails and then use all that to prototype my site. Status

• Dvorak – home row + 4 top row keys done – progress is slow – but it’s good
• vim – well I have been using it for a couple of years now. But now I am really learning it. I really like Swaroop C H’s A Byte of Vim. And with some snazzy plugins (rails.vim, project.vim, surround.vim and fuzzyfind.vim it is really becoming the best editor ever)
• Rails – I have been using it for a year now. And I can do the “good stuff” – but now I am learning in-depth. Feels great to learn the details of the various components

Along the way, git came. And I got hooked to that too. But anyway, things are moving along and I am happy about that.

So one of my goals (getting my site working) is done. Here it is – www.arnab-deka.com (bye bye blogger – will miss you)

Now it’s up to improving it. Will keep you updated!

Sound like a nice idea – however redundancy was already a thought by the time I went to the Appstore to check it out. However I am spoilt by free iPhone app already – and seeing a tag of $0.99 I didn’t care to even try it. Here’s why -

1) There’s hardly any time I am coding Ruby/Rails I am not online. And there’s really great free doc (rubybrain, railsbrain, and the excellent one stop shop gotapi). When I have these at a keypress away, why will I turn to the iPhone?

2) I find myself copy-pasting most of the time I am looking up some obsecure Ruby functionality. Agreed, Ruby makes it concise. It’s not like you have to a) code up an Iterator, b) have a while loop to go thru it c) and finally iterate, like in some other languages – Ruby is good at being concise. But still, you gotta cut-paste sometimes right?

3) I find myself working with different Ruby/Rails versions all the time. Ruby 1.8.7/Rails 2.2 at home, Ruby 1.8.6/Rails 1.2 at work (don’t get it started on why) – so I find rubybrain/railsbrain very useful for this purpose. I haven’t tried RubyRef yet – but looking at the screenshots it probably supports one version. Especially with Rails evolving all the time, we definitely need something like that

4) I haven’t talked about ri/irb combo yet – I find them very useful for Ruby docs. Right in the shell, no context switch to move to the browser/phone. Even if you don’t use them, having a downloaded copy of the doc (from rubybrain for example) will probably be much more easier to refer to than the iPhone.

I mean, I don’t see myself coding Ruby/Rails without a computer (at least now). As long as I have a computer won’t ri/irb/rubybrain/downloaded-doc be easier to refer than the iPhone?

I had all the intentions of trying the app out – but given so many good, free alternatives I don’t think I’ll try a 99 cent app.

What about you?

Now I seriously didn’t expect this from Apple. I was so-waiting for the 2.1 update to iPhone – and iTunes couldn’t install it or me!

Go Apple!

Update after fighting for 20 min or so:
I did a restart of Windows and iTunes – still got the same error.

iTunes documentation says I might need to upgrade my iTunes. So I go and click Check for latest version – and hey I am already on the latest one (iTunes 8).

Then I tried to upgrade iPhone to 2.1 again – and this time it worked. I have to agree to one of my colleagues – is Apple going the Microsoft way???