Majestic Sea Creature

New comment system

Gregory Brown — Wed Aug 06 12:16:06 -0400 2008

I give in to prospective spammers and haters

Bringing Back The Real

Gregory Brown — Tue Aug 05 17:18:42 -0400 2008

I finally bit the bullet and wrote my own blog software, and did the styling and design myself. Though you may not exactly appreciate the early 90's feel, I am really enjoying the fact that this blog is made mostly from my own efforts, rather than a cookie cutter that fits the cool kid in all of us. As building your own blog software is a geek rite of passage, I might as well take a quick walk through the features of Blaag, and also give folks a sense of the purpose behind this new blog.

ICFP Partial Scores Released

Gregory Brown — Tue Aug 12 23:18:25 -0400 2008

The results for the first seven heats of ICFP Contest 2008, and amazingly our team (Five of Six) has managed to stay alive! With nearly 300 teams starting and a little over 70 remaining, that puts us in the top 25% of those who entered a solution.

Prawn moves to test-spec / Mocha from RSpec

Gregory Brown — Thu Aug 07 14:04:45 -0400 2008

When I started Prawn, I wanted to use the latest and greatest tools available. For that reason, I chose to write the specs in RSpec. However, Prawn has a higher goal of maintaining Ruby 1.9 compatibility. RSpec is still not quite up to speed with Ruby 1.9, it seems, so we've jumped ship in hope of a more stable rig on top of test-spec and Mocha. Surprisingly, the conversion wasn't that much work.

Webby, I wish I knew you a week ago

Gregory Brown — Mon Aug 11 20:18:11 -0400 2008

It looks like others have already solved the 'I'm too lazy for dynamic web pages' problem in a much more elegant way than I did. Of course, I already knew about a few of them, but I wish I knew about Tim Pease's Webby earlier, as it does pretty much everything I need.

Prawn's Second Release (0.2)

Gregory Brown — Sat Sep 13 14:57:17 -0400 2008

After putting it off for what seemed like far too long, Prawn has finally seen its second major release. Along with it comes bug fixes, new features, and the introduction of new bugs. There are also some interesting shifts in the development plan, so if you're interested in catching up on all things Prawn, keep reading.

Solution to Project Euler #67

Gregory Brown — Wed Oct 15 00:50:50 -0400 2008

Jia and I have been working on Project Euler, using a combination of Matlab, Ruby, and Erlang. I wanted to share the solution to #67 because it sort of dawned on me by accident.

A Trivial Dow Jones Ticker

Gregory Brown — Thu Oct 02 14:33:04 -0400 2008

I've been watching the economic crisis, not because I've got any interest in stocks, but because of the spectacle. In this post, I show a trivial script that gives me up to the minute Dow Jones change listings.

Mooch, a GitHub downloader / vendorer / thingie

Gregory Brown — Sat Oct 18 12:37:19 -0400 2008

I've made a quick and dirty hack that I'll probably work on over time that solves a trivial problem: Downloading and vendoring libraries from GitHub. Yeah, yeah, I know Rails folks have their plugin installers and whatnot, but us Ruby kids like to be lazy too.

[ANN] Prawn 0.2.2 Released

Gregory Brown — Fri Oct 17 14:43:47 -0400 2008

The latest Prawn release has just been pushed out to RubyForge. This contains a few bug fixes and a couple new features that have been added due to popular demand.

Prawn 0.4 Released

Gregory Brown — Sat Jan 17 20:38:33 -0500 2009

Notes about what to expect in the 4th major release of Prawn, the most ass-kicking PDF library you can find in Ruby.

Why you should use Ruby 1.9 with Prawn

Gregory Brown — Fri Jan 30 14:07:21 -0500 2009

In celebration of the first stable release of Ruby 1.9, I briefly talk about the benefits of using it with Prawn, including some basic examples.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Gregory Brown — Sun Feb 01 20:06:34 -0500 2009

I found out through Jamis Buck that the statistics I posted about the Ruby 1.8 vs. Ruby 1.9 comparison for Prawn were skewed by mismatching compile time optimizations. Here, I set the record straight.

HOWTO: Give a good presentation on Prawn

Gregory Brown — Tue Feb 10 14:20:55 -0500 2009

I stumbled across a slide deck this morning that essentially regurgitated one of my Prawn articles into Keynote so that it could pass as a conference talk. Since I think the community deserves better than that, and because I rather turn my irritation into something positive, I've put together a short post on how to give a good Prawn talk. Most of the ideas apply to talking about other open source projects as well, so if you're thinking of giving a talk at a conference or local user's group, check this out and let me know what you think.

What You'll Find in "Ruby Best Practices"

Gregory Brown — Fri Feb 06 14:33:44 -0500 2009

For the better part of a year, my book Ruby Best Practices has been operating in stealth mode. Though Rough Cut readers have gained access to the latest drafts as soon as they were ready for public consumption, only a handful of people have caught a glimpse of the full book outline. Now that I'm pretty confident in how things will turn out, I can finally drop the veil of secrecy. This post fills in all the juicy details, for those who've been wondering what to expect

Help me build a collaborative blog at rubybestpractices.com

Gregory Brown — Sat Mar 28 13:50:56 -0400 2009

A while ago I registered rubybestpractices.com, but I'd like to do more with it than just redirect to a ordering page for my book. I am trying to get together some volunteers (maybe 5 or 6) to work on a collaborative, themed Ruby blog with me. If you're interested, read on.

Stand and Be Counted

Gregory Brown — Fri May 01 00:30:26 -0400 2009

My short response to the call to "Stand and Be Counted" on the issues of gender, community openness, and other rough spots that are hitting the Ruby and Rails communities hard right now.

About.com Fail

Gregory Brown — Fri May 15 10:33:39 -0400 2009

When advertisement click-through becomes more important than social responsibilities.