Rails Test Prescriptions Blog

Everything I know about the world of fine dining I know from watching Top Chef and from eating at Five Guys. But I do know this: chefs have the concept of mise en place (which does not mean Mice In Place), which is the idea that everything the chef is going to need to prepare [...]

If I don’t write about iOS editors every few months, then it’s harder for me to justify continuing to mess around with them… The thing that’s changed my editor use in the last couple of months is iaWriter Mac and iOS adding iCloud support, even more deeply integrated than Apple’s own applications. iaWriter is the [...]

I present to you two things that sound like they should be metaphors for project issues. Except for two things: They are real I have no idea what they might be metaphors for The Library Book Priority Conundrum I read a lot. In general, I purchase books I’m very excited about reading, and books that [...]

If I’m counting right, Ruby Midwest is my fifth conference this year, which is I guess one of the perks of having an employer that likes being involved in the community. It’s great – I like meeting all the smart people involved with Ruby, I learn things, and sometimes people ask me to sign my [...]

So, as threatened on Twitter, I decided to overreact to Vim users by trying out BBEdit for my Rails development. Expect a write up soon, but the first pass is that it’s clearly a very powerful program, but it also clearly was developed in response to a set of needs that are not completely congruent [...]

Hey, twice in one week. I might be actually getting back on a pattern here… 1. Popular Crime Catching up on books, I started off last month with Bill James’ Popular Crime. James, known mostly for his writing about baseball, has written a labor of love book about, well, popular crimes. There’s a whole ‘nother [...]

1. Annnd… We’re Back Okay, I’m trying the semi-regular daily links post again. Two changes from the last time I did this: a wider range of links beyond just Ruby, and it probably won’t quite be daily, but more when I build up five things that I have a short opinion on. Mostly, though, I [...]

So, apropos of nothing, and after RailsConf, some thoughts on public technical speaking. You’re not going to read about how to arrange your slides here, not least because I’m pretty bad at the fancy slide thing. Instead, I want to talk about working the room. This is what I try to do when I give [...]

A quick trip report seems like a good way to break up some weird mutant form of writer’s block that has been preventing me from finishing any of the six or so half-written blog posts I have in my queue. This was my third RailsConf (not 2010, but the two years previous), and it was [...]

I was fortunate to spend this Thursday and Friday at RedDirt RubyConf in Oklahoma City. Here’s a quick conference report, and random thoughts about single-track conferences in general. This is my second try at writing this post, excuse me if it’s a little disjointed (the first one was eaten by my writing tool — the [...]

I just gave my RedDirt RubyConf talk introducing a new gem for JavaScript testing from a Rails app called Summer Breeze. It makes you feel fine, blowing through the Jasmine in your mind. More specifically, Summer Breeze is a tool for generating fixture DOM output for Jasmine JavaScript tests directly from your Rails Views with [...]

Here are a few random tips that have come up while working on an application using Refinery CMS, Globalize, and who the heck knows what else… Extending stuff from Refinery Refinery is about as extendable as a Rails framework gets. Although it provides you with a lot of default behavior, it’s not that hard to [...]

Hey, guess what, I’ve got another iPad text editor or two to review. The thing is… I really like writing on the iPad, with or without the bluetooth keyboard. It’s a very lightweight, fun writing machine. But all the editors I’ve used have flaws that have been making them less than workable for me. I [...]

So, I’ve been writing technical books for about ten years. What can I say about that time overall? Here are two pie charts representing my published books to date. I’ve thrown in the Lulu version of Rails Test Prescriptions just for the heck of it. Care to guess what the pie charts represent?     Before [...]

When I say that I’m really bad at self-marketing, one of the things that I mean is that I’ve left this blog basically dark for almost a month. This was an especially good idea because a) the TextMate post on Feb 10 became the most read post on this site ever by a factor of [...]

I have a couple of upcoming conference and training appearances that I don’t think that I’ve mentioned on the blog before. March 16, I’ll be in Salt Lake City for Training Day, the day before the official start of MountainWestRubyConf. I’ll be doing a full day of training, the morning will be on Improving Your [...]

After a long time bouncing back and forth, I’ve come back to TextMate as my main editor. I realize that’s starting to sound almost old-school these days, but it still works the best for me. What I’ve come to realize about TextMate versus, say, Vim, or RubyMine is that a) this is a genuinely personal [...]

Among Others is an evocative, subtle, and mostly brilliant fantasy novel on the themes of dealing with loss, growing up, learning to live, and how amazing the new Heinlein novel is. People who grew up inhaling SF and fantasy books are, by and large, going to recognize themselves pretty strongly. Not surprisingly then, many SF [...]

I suppose I should get this on the blog… Rails Test Prescriptions was sent to the printer yesterday, actually a couple of days ahead of the schedule that we’ve been on through the last stages of production. Here are the dates, as I understand them… The book is scheduled to leave the printer on Thursday, [...]

I mentioned on Twitter the other day that I was starting to like using Haml and it was surprising me because I used to dislike it so much. Colin Harris asked me to elaborate, but Twitter was too short, so here goes. I assume that most people reading this have some idea of what Haml [...]

It’s been quiet on the Rails Test Prescription front. Those of you on the beta program should have gotten Beta 11 earlier this week. There are no major changes in this beta, but it does contain the final copyedit, a pass through the errata, and a couple of late-breaking reviewer comments. At the moment, the [...]

Very quick status update: Rails Test Prescriptions is out of copyedit. It should head for typesetting on Monday for a probably ship date in mid-February. Right now, we’re in the phase where I go over the copyedit and whine about things. Actually, this copyedit has been pretty clean, probably the cleanest I’ve ever had. By [...]