blackleafmedia

To IDE or not to IDE

Patrick — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 16:01:49 +0000

I’ve been looking into investing into a Ruby On Rails IDE, despite the fact there are quite a few free ones out there (RadRails, Netbeans). Does anyone have experience with any good one, paid or free? I understand a lot of people tend to use their particular platform’s text editor, but it seems that and IDE can help with some of the console tasks, etc. I look forward to hear what you guys have to say!

The Jump-Off

Patrick — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 19:27:45 +0000

So I’m thinking about starting a usergroup for Northwest Pennsylvania for Ruby on Rails. Am I nuts? Motivated? Both?

My Favorite Song Lyric

Patrick — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:35:08 +0000

Just a little bit of encouragement for the day: “Nothing can hold you back when you’re not holding back anything.”

Atreyu – “Honor”

Oh Testing, You So Crazy

Patrick — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 18:25:18 +0000

So love it or hate it, testing your code is practically wrapped up nice and tight into Ruby on Rails. At first I was a little annoyed at this, being that most of my coding experience has been from self-teaching, and viewed this as a very large waste of time.

Well, I do see the positives of test-driven development now: it really forces you to THINK about what you are doing. I know this sounds stupid and incredibly “duh”; however you tend to think about the “why” about what you are doing. Plus, let’s face it: it is just good practice.

I do wish that was more common in the PHP world. Yes, it exists, but no one learns how to properly test as they are learning PHP. I learned PHP in the “cowboy” sense of the term, and just sort of sucked up what I needed to know, and learned about new things as they needed them. I am certainly learning Ruby on Rails in a much more academic way, and in turn I am picking up the language and the culture extremely fast.

That being said, Ruby can still be a pain just to get running. Getting a proper testing suite is like pulling teeth without novacaine. However, it is worth it in the end.

Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby Soho

Patrick — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 01:40:18 +0000

So I have begun to really dig into Ruby on Rails and finally giving it more of a go than I ever have before. It does make some things much easier to do by realizing that some tedious things are better off to be put on “rails”; that is that certain conventions usually hold true and you can assume this default configuration will at least get you off the launch pad quickly.

Yes, PHP has frameworks that do the same thing.

Yes, getting a server to use PHP is easy. Ruby on Rails, not so much.

But Ruby on Rails does force you to write cleaner – despite the extra code baggage that comes with a framework.

I’ve started to write a simple blog engine and will release it on GitHub when it is a bit more functional. Why reinvent the wheel? Easy to plan and compare how I solved a particular problem compared to others.

Wish me luck!

A New Hope

Patrick — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:03:58 +0000

: child whit 3d glasses from Crestock Stock Photos

So I have decided that I need to blog, period. I’ve always had a blog, probably for 10 years now. But I never use it, I’m going to make it a thing to post every single day no matter how short or silly it is.

I’ve started programming with Ruby on Rails, I’ll post about that. I have opinions about everything. I’ll post about that. This is going to be a personal blog. I have no aspirations of this ever becoming more. What comes of it is all cool. no matter what it is.

Here is a stock photo of a kid with cracker-jack 3D glasses.

One uploader to rule them all

Patrick — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 22:10:38 +0000

I came across an absolutely awesome image/text/code uploader called ZScreen today. It lets you share just about anything be it pictures, screenshots, files, etc. It also gives you the option of what service to upload it to. And, its free and open-source.

: A screenshot from zscreen

The System Is Down

Patrick — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 02:51:38 +0000

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Musicbee: A Great New Media Player

Patrick — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:40:22 +0000

I am always on the look for a better way to manage my media. I do not download a large amount of video, although I stream/watch quite a good deal of it. I do have lots of mp3 files and tons of podcasts. There are so many choices in this area and not all of them are a good fit for everyone.

I had been using MediaMonkey for a while but the interface is way too cluttered, and just acted weird most of the time. Windows Media Player doesn’t download podcasts. iTunes is bloated. foobar2000 is too simple. Musicbee is a great new player that is aimed at people who want a good deal of customization and choice, but not too much to make it overly complicated. The auto-tagging features work better than any media manager I have used. The creator is very active on the forums and is lightning quick about listening to suggestions and making fixes.

I recommend it to anyone who is looking for a better solution to managing their music library.

Starting Fresh

Patrick — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:06:53 +0000

Well here we go again. I’ve decided to start from scratch and keep this blog as completely all over the place as I can. I am not sticking to any one subject and it is guaranteed to have a little bit of everything.