I didn’t take this advice. I feel that StackOverflow has a bias towards Microsoft technologies. To even things out, I’d rather have a moderator that works on non-Microsoft technologies. So, I visited each potential moderator’s page and eliminated candidates based on that criteria by looking at their most used tags. I ended up with candidates that I would like to see become moderators, solely based on their subject matter:

• John Topley
• Dave DeLong
• Jonathan Sampson

—

I’ve made another gem! It’s called Trendy, and it is a simple wrapper for the Twitter Search API, but the only the part of it that concerns trending topics.

I’ve initially made it pretty simple, so I was able to learn a lot about jeweler and rspec – because I developed this gem using Behaviour/Test Driven Development – that is: I wrote failing tests first, then wrote the code, got it passing, then refactored the code.

Right now, Trendy only works with current topics; in the future, it will support past trending topics.

Here are the profiles I linked to:

• GitHub
• StackOverflow
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Last.fm

I didn’t link to:

• LinkedIn
• Digg

I don’t use my LinkedIn account. I wasn’t sure if I should link to my digg account. Nor was I sure if I should link my Last.fm account, but I did because what music I like feels much more anecdotal than the kinds of stories I like. For some reason, my digg profile feels much more revealing. That’s my current comfort level.

Is there any advice out there regarding this?

Visit the GitHub source here (github.com)

—

I’ve finally created a gem for Ruby on Rails apps. It’s called YamlSeeder, and its at version 0.0.1, naturally.

YamlSeeder takes foxy-fixture-like YAML files and seeds them into your Rails app, using ActiveRecord.

Why I Made It

Originally, I stored all my seed data in YAML fixture files, and loaded them using Fixtures.create_fixtures.  This had the benefit of being easy to work with, and easy to maintain.  The downside was that it directly inserted the fixtures by SQL into the database’s tables.  But I wanted to use the callbacks and validation methods provided by ActiveRecord when seeding.  (For example, I wanted to generate a permalink field when saving using “before_save”.)

I modeled YamlSeeder after Fixtures.create_fixtures in ActiveRecord.  It supports the belongs_to association, but no other – this will come in a future release.

How Do I Get It?

the easiest way is to type:

gem install yaml_seeder

But for more information, download the gem here.  For the current source code, visit my GitHub here.

Case in point: the introductory tutorial for the “bible” of Ruby on Rails development became out of date when Rails 2.0 came out.  (We’re still waiting for an new edition of the book, which no doubt will be out of date by the time it prints.)  Instead of preserving older functionality, the development team removes it, which is fine, but they either need to slow down to let the students catch up, or provide a way for students to learn Rails without changing so much so frequently.

As a student of Ruby on Rails, I don’t want to be constantly looking to see what has been “deprecated” since the time my book or article was posted.

Any body have any ideas on how to cope with this?

I’ve googled around for some suggestions about what to do.  I found the “iPod Death Clock” which tells you how long you have left on your iPod according to the average life spans.  After entering my iPod’s serial number, it told me to cherish every moment I have with my iPod, as it’s due to die soon.  Not good news. I found another blog suggesting that I bang it on the table.  I’m only going to try that once I’ve exhausted all other avenues.

It’s not just a material possession for me.

I first ordered my iPod online in late November 2004, and had it shipped to a friend’s in the US.  I was living in Finland at the time, but I was planning on going home to Canada for Christmas.  On the phone, I had asked my father to go get the iPod from next door, where my neighbour had dropped it off.  It was the last thing I ever said to my father, as he died suddenly a few days later.  And I think about it a lot.

Nearly every time I turn on the iPod I think of my father.  And now the iPod doesn’t work properly any more, and soon I’ll stop turning it on.

what I intend to write about

I’m a generalist, and I’ll make no apologies for it.  It’s hard for me to choose a topic and stick to it, I’m quite fickle that way, but I also know that I don’t want to blog like I’ve done previously.  I want to write topical entries that don’t chronicle the daily weird things in my life.  I want it to matter. I want my writing to improve, and I want to present well-researched ideas.