Weekly Digest, 2-1-10
If you enjoy these links, you should follow me on GitHub here.iPhone / iPad icon PSD template
I’ve decided to work with my good friend, Sean Patrick O‘Brien to create a PSD based off the exact overlays, outlines, and masks the iPhone and iPad OS use to mask icons.
Sinatra-like JavaScript node.js web development framework -- insanely fast, insanely sexy
Introduce class_attribute to declare inheritable class attributes. Writing an attribute on a subclass behaves just like overriding the superclass reader method. Unifies and replaces most usage of cattr_accessor, class_inheritable_attribute, superclass_delegating_attribute, and extlib_inheritable_attribute.
(fab) is a lightweight (~2KB minified and gzipped) toolkit that makes it easy to build asynchronous web apps. It takes advantage of the flexibility of javascript to create a concise DSL without pre-compilation or magic scope hackery.
I recently moved off of Dreamhost in favor of Heroku. I have a few static sites I needed to move over and here's how I did it...
If the iPad and its successor devices free these people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people's perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with. I find it hard to believe that the loss of background processing isn't a price worth paying to have a computer that isn't frightening anymore.
Hacker News | Tinkerer’s Sunset
The iPad has really brought out a lot of old, crochety "well in my day" engineers that are now to the point where its embarassing. The iPad will draw more people towards software engineering, because for the first time we will have a general purpose computer that doesn't suck horribly for normal people.
iPad is an incredible opportunity for developers to re-imagine every single category of desktop and web software there is. Seriously, if you're a developer and you're not thinking about how your app could work better on the iPad and its descendants, you deserve to get left behind.
The JavaScript Code Quality Tool
jeffkreeftmeijer's navvy at master - GitHub
Simple Ruby background job processor inspired by delayed_job, but aiming for database agnosticism.
Most people have a computer at home. For some (like my mom), it’s an ancient Dell laptop they bought years ago. Others have bought into the netbook trend and invested a small amount of money into a machine that, for most people, can only be irritating to use (slow, small, ugly, and burns your lap – not a recipe for success). A few have actually paid good money for what was supposed to be a modern machine, and actually turned out to be yet another annoying slow, painful-to-use, Windows-based machine infested with trial software, spyware, and sometimes viruses.
Functional Programming Aid for Javascript. Works well with jQuery.
Browse and Manage your data using browser
The key to understanding it is how it interacts with git diff. Once you add something to the index (also referred to as staging it), it disappears off the diff. You can pass --cached to see what changes you have staged, but by default, it doesn’t show you the changes that you have asserted are ready for commit.
webrat alternative which aims to support all browser simulators
Generated scopes for ActiveRecord classes
Sammy is a tiny javascript framework built on top of jQuery, It's RESTful Evented Javascript.
New ActionMailer API in Rails 3.0
Action Mailer has long been the black sheep of the Rails family. Somehow, through many arguments, you get it doing exactly what you want. But it takes work! Well, we just fixed that. Action Mailer now has a new API.
Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner: David Heinemeier Hansson, 37signals - Unlearn Your MBA
David Heineimeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails and partner at 37signals in Chicago, says that planning is guessing, and for a start-up, the focus must be on today and not on tomorrow. He argues that constraints--fiscal, temporal, or otherwise--drive innovation and effective problem-solving. The most important thing, Hansson believes, is to make a dent in the universe with your company.
Bumps ahead as Vimeo, YouTube respond to HTML5 video demand
Although there are still a number of important problems to solve before open video can displace Flash-based video playback on the Web, it seems likely that we will see more progress now that the major players are all on board and the users are enthusiastically calling for better standards support.
Discovering Rails 3 generators
This weekend during Rails Bugmash I stumbled across some nice posts about Rails 3 generators which motivated me to share them and add some comments!
Active Record Query Interface 3.0
I’ve been working on revamping the Active Record query interface for the last few weeks ( while taking some time off in India from consulting work, before joining 37signals ), building on top of Emilio’s GSOC project of integrating ARel and ActiveRecord. So here’s an overview of how things are going to work in Rails 3.
Show and Sell: The Secret to Apple's Magic
Flash an exotic prototype, then—Presto!—get people to buy your more boring stuff. That kind of thinking still rules at most electronics companies. Apple under Steve Jobs only shows off actual products. The difference? Apple's arcane secret to success.
omgbloglol Rails 3 Introduction
This post is kicking off a series that I’m doing about moving your skills and migrating your code to Rails 3. I’ll be sharing some practical insights and covering some pretty in-depth topics as we go along (I’ve got some notes for entries about upgrading plugins, taking advantage of new features like the agnosticism, migrating applications, and so on), but before I go into a lot of specifics, I thought it might be useful to go over some of the high-level philosophical and architectural changes that have gone on in the Rails code between versions 2 and 3.
How A Spare Computer Became Twitpic
In 2008, Noah Everett wanted to share photos on Twitter. Since there was no way to do it, he grabbed an old server and created Twitpic as a side project... A $1.5+ Million A Year Twitter Success Story...
Server, database, and document level.
The web doesn't work with a 24-hour lag and neither should your analytics. Chartbeat gives you real-time analytics so that you know what's happening when it's happening. Control the story, track a product launch, exploit an opportunity from the moment they happen.
The Concept *is* the Execution
You cannot design a great service without an obsessional focus on the details.
Graffiti Analysis is an extensive ongoing study in the motion of graffiti. Custom software designed for graffiti writers creates visualizations of the often unseen motion involved in the creation of a tag.
How I solved email overload using gmail
It's simple. Every single email that arrives in my in-box is immediately put in a filter.