Digital Bridge

I’ve been using both TextWrangler and vi for the last while, but all these Rails screencasts have got me interested in TextMate. I downloaded the trial version and it looks pretty cool, but I’ll have to do some real work with it before I decide. It’s really quite nice that it opens a new file when you switch back to it (if you don’t have a file open). However, it doesn’t seem to be as responsive when I’m typing fast. I’m not sure why. (By “fast” I mean 120-140wpm.) When editing plaintext like this, the autocompletion of parentheses and quotes without getting in the way is a very nice thing. I can see this one growing on me… Anyway, I’ll write more about it later.

Technorati Tags: TextMate, TextWrangler, vi, Rails

I’ll be spending more time learning Ruby on Rails now that I’ve sent the book to press, so I guess I’ll go back to reading Why’s Poignant Guide to Ruby. It doesn’t seem like it’ll be that hard to pick up, really. What I need is an idea for a Rails project that I’ll actually use. Hmm… Ah, I’ve got it: I send out a weekly newsletter to my ward and provide a list of date ideas in it. There are plenty of recurring events which I have to type in again and again, and so it’d be nice to store the events in a database and then just export the list each week when I need it. (I talked about an idea like this on Top of the Mountains last week.) You know, it may be good to expose the site to the ward members and give them access to add date ideas (and tag existing ones). It looks like I’ll need two tables: one for dates and one for users. Simple enough. Hmm, what other functionality will I need? From a user’s standpoint, I’d want to be able to search for dates and limit results by cost, time of day, category, etc. Would I need to bookmark dates? Probably not, since most people will be checking the site on a weekly basis and a week isn’t enough time to warrant more permanent links. It’d be nice to have an RSS feed for new date ideas… It’d also be nice to interface with Google Maps, either directly (like Frappr) or via normal links. Okay, I’d better get back to class, but I’ll write more about this later.

Technorati Tags: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Google Maps, Frappr

One or two weeks ago I asked my hosting company (BlueHost) if they’ll be supporting Ruby on Rails anytime soon, and they said no. But today I got a wonderful e-mail from them that said it’s going live next Monday. I am a happy man. I’ll be moving Blank Slate over to RoR when I get some time.

Technorati Tags: Ruby on Rails, Rails, Ruby, BlueHost

I found out today that my web hosting company (Bluehost.com) doesn’t support Ruby on Rails and doesn’t plan on supporting it in the foreseeable future. It is a sad day. I suppose I could still learn it by installing it on my Powerbook, but it’d be much more worth it to use it on a real site. ~sigh~ Someday, I guess. In the meantime, I’m going to focus my energy on becoming an expert Cocoa programmer. But before that I have to become an intermediate-level Cocoa programmer, and before that I have to become a beginning-level Cocoa programmer. Right now I’m a wannabe.

Technorati Tags: Ruby on Rails, Bluehost, Cocoa

I’m in the middle of reading Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby. It’s hilarious. But I think only those with a certain sense of humor will appreciate it. At any rate, it does a good job of introducing Ruby and I’m thoroughly enjoying myself. I’ll be writing more about Ruby and Rails as I continue on with my Blank Slate redesign project.

In other news, I spent some time on Monday hacking away at the examples in Aaron Hillegass’s Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X and I made a fair amount of progress. (Enough, in fact, that I was able to successfully complete three of the end-of-chapter challenges, which was a significant step forward.) Because Beyond (my genealogy software) will need some custom controls, I’m going to write smaller, simpler apps first, to get the hang of things. Coding for Cocoa has been harder to learn than any other language so far (though I can’t remember what it was like to learn C originally — too many years ago ), but right now I’m coming up over the first bump and can see part of the view in front of me. It’s a pretty cool sight.

Technorati Tags: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Objective-C, Cocoa, Mac, OS X