jeremyweiland.com

This blog post coming to you from the train taking Tasha and me home from New York. I finally got the unlimited data plan on my cell, so I can use the ‘net without guilt!

Anyway, I had a pretty good stay in the city overall. The only thing I’ll say bad is that the subways go to shit on the weekends, especially for where we were staying (Wall Street, which is understandable, as that whole district kind of shuts down when the markets aren’t open). Trips on the subway took way too long, between waiting for trains, trains being rerouted and not going where they said they were, and trains suddenly only going in one way. I guess it’s something you get used to, but it makes it hard to enjoy yourself when you’re constantly having to be prepared to make a split second decision to jump off a train because - well whaddaya know!?!? - it’s the totally wrong choice, regardless of what the sign said.

On Saturday I escorted Tasha to her Etsy class / trunk show in Brooklyn, which was modestly successful. I then managed to get back to Manhattan to check out the Neue Gallery (all German/Austrian art) and the Met (only the Greek, Roman, Mayan, and African art, unfortunately - that place is just too big!). I then got horribly lost picking Tasha up, but was able to retrieve her, bring her back to the hotel, and take her to a great meal in Little Italy (thanks, nymag.com!).

Sunday, Tasha went to Etsy on her own while I sought out my friend Jamie. He lives in a cute part of Williamsburg and seems to like it there just fine. He spends his time between doing camera work for the Paula Dean show in Georgia and hanging in New York. We used to be in a band together, and it was cool to catch up and share tips on anime (looking forward to checking out more Samurai Champion).

Once pre-gaming was done we headed out to a local free show they had at a massive, unfilled pool. Band of Horses headlined and it was pretty good. Afterwards, Tasha and I ambled into a Polish restaurant that kicked ass - authentic, cheap, and delicious (the Ukranian borscht is to die for). I really think that was the point where I saw just how awesome it is to live in an area with that much variety in food.

All in all, great trip. I’m not sure if it’s the novelty or what, but New York ain’t as bad as I’ve always thought. Maybe that’s because we did it right this time - no driving - and I wasn’t on a class trip where I couldn’t do what I wanted. The train is nice - it’s longer, but chiller, and I can get work done without panicking about delayed flights and dumbass TSA employees. I was afraid I wouldn’t find anything to do in New York, but it ended up that there was far too much to do, even for somebody as boring as me. And now that we’re aware of two people with whom we can stay in the city, I’m all about heading up there again in the near future.

By the way, I highly recommend the place we stayed, Club Quarters at the intersection of William and Wall. Ridiculously cheap, clean and unobtrusive, and in a safe neighborhood (around the stock exchange with all the military guards). I’m very impressed - apparently it sells memberships to corporations and uses that to subsidize weekend travel for families. Now that’s the kind of subsidy this libertarian can dig!

All of my email addresses (jeremy@_______) have been restored. No thanks to my host or GoDaddy.

Well, I’ve finally got my first site moved to Slicehost – this one. For the first time I’m running my own server and configuring it from scratch. I’m trying to walk a middle ground between following tutorials in a rote manner and doing my own thang. I would only recommend this host to a power user, ideally somebody who has a very specific configuration in mind. Since I wanted a playground for Rails apps, though, I wanted full control of the server’s setup, so this is right up my alley. And hopefully this service will give me room to expand, as I have a few different projects going right now.

To all those whose address I wasn’t able to remember, we’re having a party and cookout at our place on Saturday, June 9 from 4:00 PM till whenever. If you’d like to come, please let me know via email.

If you’re looking to set up Mephisto on Dreamhost, look no further than these directions. Just don’t freeze to edge Rails.

I love these five albums. In no particular order. This is not a favorites list (I can’t do that, I’m too wishy washy) or a “these are the best albums evah” list. I’m just acknowledging these great works of art:

1. Anodyne by Uncle Tupelo
2. The Soft Bulletin by the Flaming Lips
3. Rift by Phish
4. The Life Pursuit by Belle and Sebastian
5. Deltron 3030 by Dan the Automator, Del the Funkee Homosapien, and Kid Koala (among others)

I thought it would be cool to just take five minutes and list five albums that I remember and that mean a lot to me. This ain’t no tagging spree, but I’d be interested in your answers. Like I said, this isn’t about the best albums or your favorite, but something in between that.

Oh, remind me to review the new Arcade Fire soon. And the new Son Volt.

Ryan Daigle spoke at the Central Virginia Ruby Enthusiasts Group March meeting on REST & ActiveResource. It was a great presentation that made many of the core concepts of REST far more concrete than they were before. You can download a PDF of the presentation here. Also, check out ContactsAPI, which is a project Ryan started to demonstrate the ways ActiveResource can be used to achieve RESTful Rails models. I’m hoping to have my Bookmarker project done in time for the April meeting so I can give a short announcement / demo so that people can start banging on it. There’s even talk of a training course and documentation materials for it. All I can say at this moment is that I’m trying to keep my eyes on the prize. Also, plan on attending May’s meeting, where CVREG will be partnering with the Richmond Java Users Group to host a presentation by Stu Halloway on the subject of his new book, Rails for Java Developers.

Tags: ryan daigle, contactsapi, activeresource

I’m a big fan of RadRails for doing Rails development. This is probably because I started out on my first Rails project using RDT in Eclipse, and coming from using Eclipse for Java development it already made sense. I like the idea of everything being one place: browser, testing, rake, generators, EVERYTHING. It’s the way I’d like to do development ideally.

Most Rails developers are wedded to TextMate (the fact that it’s Mac only and therefore automatically hip has nothing whatsoever to do with it). TextMate is a great text editor. It can do some cool Subversion stuff (though it pales in comparison to Subclipse). I’m using it for Bookmarker because it’s a great way to write code if that’s ALL you want to do with it. And a lot of Rails devvers have no problem going to the terminal or browser when needed, and that’s fine for them.

But I’m very attracted to the idea of an open source IDE. TextMate is not that, and RadRails is very close to being there (it’s got a lot of issues, such as flakiness with the Rake integration, not to mention the problems vanilla Eclipse has always had). Unfortunately, the RadRails guys aren’t going to be able to do a lot of work on it anymore. I’m going to put my name out there as a willing helper but I don’t know if I’ll be able to learn Eclipse dev quickly enough, or if I’ll even be able to commit to participating at all. I’ve got so many other projects to work on, but RadRails is important to me. So we’ll see.

The cool thing about Rails is that the need for an IDE, compared to other languages, is compartively minor. Yet I still like IDEs. I know there are other Rails IDEs out there, but if I’m going to leave RadRails, I’m probably going to convert to the Rails standard: TextMate. I think the whole reason I blogged this was to justify the fact that, even though I tried TextMate for 30 days for free and still prefer RadRails, I ended up buying it anyway. Oh well.

And of course, this whole post is a bit outdated even as I write it: RadRails has announced a deal with Aptana. So Aptana is taking over RadRails development and eventually integrating it into their Eclipse-based IDE. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out - especially since Aptana seems to have some cool javascript debugging features. In the meantime, I have a new text editor and still intend to use (and possibly help develop) RadRails.

Last year longtime BP fans were in crisis. Rick Lowenberg, the machine-like drummer who laid the foundation for the band’s sound with his frenetic jungle breaks and house beats, left the band to pursue a law career. At the time it was hard for us fans to see a future, even though the band immediately announced a new drummer: former OM Trio drummer Ilya Stemkovsky. More than most bands, BP was built on group dynamics, with interplay between the musicians playing an integral part in their performances. Even among the faithful, there was severe doubt the band could survive this. As theoretically perfect and technically competent a fit as Ilya was, the unique chemistry of BP - honed over six years of relentless touring and improvisatory electronica excursions - seemed likely to be stunted for the next year or so. Indeed, many of my fears were confirmed during the two shows I attended on last year’s fall tour. Still in the middle of learning both the extensive BP repertoire and fitting his style in with the other three players’, Ilya played well but had a hard time complementing the sound to which we fans have grown so attached. I even knew people who swore off the group out of abject despair. However, the awesome performance on Saturday night was undoubtedly the product of far more than simply low expectations. It was clear to this amateur musician that Ilya and the band had worked hard to refine his style into something resembling the more minimalist beats of his predecessor, while still demonstrating amazing chops that Rick never had. The cues were hit, the jams worked (Ilya nailed the four-to-the-floor riffs), old songs incorporated recomposed parts, and we even got three or four new songs. As a veteran musician, Ilya obviously was able to figure out the energy of BP and saw where he was needed. On Saturday he demonstrated more than just being a great replacement drummer for BP; he demonstrated a mastery of group performance and musical subtlety that confirms his legend. I am overjoyed to witness the return of my friends and favorite band, Brothers Past. With this newfound energy I look forward to another six years of the greatest songwriting and dance grooves out there - all in one convenient and unified package. Special kudos to Ilya for getting it.

Tags: live music, concert

Welp, in a terribly short time (February is already over, jeez) I’ll have been a Mac user for one month. I feel by now I can pass some sort of judgment on this Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.16 GHz machine. However, it’s entirely from the P.O.V. of a guy who uses his Mac for development day in and day out, so more casual users should keep that in mind.

I definitely get the sense that switching from Windows to Mac has substantially less adjustment pains than going in the opposite direction. Once you adopt the Mac way of doing things, it all makes sense. However, adopting the Mac way of doing things kind of sucks at first. It took me forever to figure out how to “right click” on things with the Mighty Mouse and I was always hitting the expose option unnecessarily. Without a doubt the most annoying thing about Mac is, well, two things:

1. Substituting the Command key for the Control key on all keystrokes I use (such as Cmd-C for copy)
2. Breaking the Home / End keys. I cannot overemphasize how much I miss being able to go to the start or finish of a line with one key. Mac uses Cmd-Arrow, but it’s not the same.

Other than that, I’m really enjoying this machine. Installing applications is a cinch, and I like how everything is based on BSD. I use a few cool gimmicks like Desktop Manager to enable multiple desktops between which I can easily switch (great for changing code and switching to a browser to check it) and Quicksilver (immediately access anything on your computer in a few keystrokes). One thing I need to do is boost the memory from 1 GB to 2GB (max memory is 3 GB for the Macbook Pro, but the 2 GB modules are far too expensive now) because I’ve noticed a bit of slowness at times - nothing remotely comparable to Windows, usually. I tend to have a lot of stuff running at the same time.

But most of the time this laptop is great; quiet, fast, and just what I need. Sometimes I think I’d have been just as well off buying a new laptop with a linux distro on it, but since I’m using this machine for development at work it is nice to have everything just function right. I’d definitely recommend this machine to web devleopers, since you can run any OS simultaneously with Parallels. For the person who surfs, does word processing, and stuff like that… it’s a bit pricey but you won’t be sorry.

Kind of thought I’d have more to say, oh well. Suffice to say: I’ve noticed the productivity boost just from not having to fuck with Windows. OS X doesn’t talk down to me and it doesn’t bother me with useless stuff. Nice and clean, the way I like it.