I read an O'Reilly OnLAMP article about Ruby on Rails. It is nothing short of amazing. Ruby's a pretty cool language; I remember reading about some socket programming stuff two or three years ago in Dr. Dobbs on the way back from Kalgoorlie. It seemed really straight-forward yet powerful. Looking at it is on my list just after Python, though with Rails being so wicked it might be creeping up.

I won't rehash the article, but for those that are too slack to read it I'll explain what Rails is. It's a framework for developing web-applications. What makes it really cool though is that from a database structure it will create all the necessary methods for interacting with the data, and the webforms all by itself. It has a cool "scaffold" feature that puts the standard create/edit/delete/list/view web forms and pages together. This means that you can prototype an idea in a matter of minutes.

It uses a templating system so that later when you have nice HTML (like what Jimmy designs, for example) you simply replace the 'guts' with some Ruby tags and update the classes to reference your methods rather than the scaffold ones.

Bruce Perens wrote a step-by-step guide to installing Ruby and Rails on Debian Unstable (which is the same instructions as Sarge/Testing). It was really un-nerving correcting a minor mistake and adding my own tip to his wiki article. He's a former Debian project leader, and one of my most respected community and industry figures. A nerd-god ;)

I followed his steps and it all worked fine, and change the server IP config so it didn't start on 127.0.0.1. I got the "congratulations" message. Now I want to try out the above-mentioned OnLAMP article and see how that works out.

If it's as good as I'm expecting, you might see me switch from PHP to Ruby! Stay tuned ;)

My brother recently bought the same phone as me, a Nokia 6230. This is a sweet little device, and has some cool (but almost standard now) features including MP3 playback. I've had Kylie as my ringtone for sometime now as a result, and just switched over to The Chemical Brothers... but I digress.

When I was out shopping today I ended up at JB in Cannington swapping some DVDs that I bought in the city store yesterday. I got some TDK DVD-R (instead of +R which the Xbox will apparently have trouble reading) and also an adjustable AC adapter, which I'll use on my thin clients. Ahh... I'm digressing again.

In Cannington I went to WA Salvage to get a new showerhead and wandered next door to another dodgy discount shop. I bought a plastic tray thingo to go under my bed and hold my dirty clothes; it beats the floor. At this shop I also bought a 13-in-1 flash card reader. It was a cheapo brand and only cost me $25 but what I liked was it said on the pack it was supported in the Linux kernel 2.4.0 and above. Wicked!

I plugged it in at home and it was recognised immediately. I put my MMC card from my phone into it and it mounted the card and I could access the photos and videos that I had saved. This got me thinking. It wasn't a real inconvenience to power the phone down and rip the card out, so how much would a larger capacity card cost?

I've got a Bluetooth dongle (gee, I love that word) but there's issues with it under Linux. It claims to be supported, and others have got it working in the past, but I get symbol errors when I try and load the module. Maybe it will be fixed under Hoary.

Kingston make a 512MB card for $88 and a 1GB for $149 (both wholesale prices). Seeing as my iPod dealy-oh fell through, maybe this would be a cheaper alternative? The only hassle I have is that the headset that comes with the Nokia has hard ear bud headphones which I don't like, and hurt after a few minutes. My next project will be to saw them off, and replace them with a jack that I can plug my Sony headphones into.

Interesting... Steve just called me and the MP3 player stopped, and it began to ring. I pressed the pickup button and could hear him clear-as, and after the call he hung up and it went straight back to the part of the tune I was listening to. I've never used a headset like this before so I'm impressed it was intuitive, and good quality.

Time to find my soldering iron, some chopping tools and a headphone jack I think. Then if it works as planned I can get a bigger card and have a portable audio device for a smidge of what it would cost otherwise. If I find that I actually end up using and liking it, then I might consider getting a dedicated MP3 player.

Paul Graham is a renowned Computer Scientist that makes quite a lot of social commentry regsrding art, growing up and the hacker lifestyle. Some of his past essays have been amazing reads, and I'm ordering his book Hackers and Painters from Amazon in a few weeks.

His latest writing, What You Wish You'd Known has been referenced by several Planets I read. It was written initially as a graduation speech for a highschool year group, but when the teachers read it they decided they didn't like what he was saying, and cancelled his appearance. Personally, whilst some of this stuff is old news (heck, the navy used "find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life" as a recruitment slogan a few years back) there's quite a lot of interesting information and guidance to be taken from it. Because it was targetted at highschool kids doesn't make it less meaningful to ourselves; as Rich's shown, (re)aligning your career with your passion and interest is crucial to success.

Lastly, even though Paul's a computer guy, there's very little reference to computing in the essay, so don't let that put you off.

I got a toolbox from Maggie's mum as a gift when Maggie and I moved in together. I keep on a shelf it in the cupboard in the server room, which means that any time I need a screwdriver, pliers, gaffer tape or whatever I know exactly where it is. It's amazingly efficient at storing tools :)

Update: 22/01/2005 - 3:16PM
I just used my wicked toolbox (and my mad plumbing skillz) to replace a broken showerhead. I even used teflon tape to waterproof the join.

Arrived.

I will wear one of them tonight to impress the masses.