tech

My Year of Living Dangerously

My Year of Living Dangerously: Being consistently broke this year has given me a great perspective though. I’m fascinated and disgusted at the same time by the people who use sites like Wesabe or Mint to tally, organize, count and recount their money over and over again. I mean, do you realize that more than half of the U.S. doesn’t have any savings beyond a 401k, and the bottom third has no savings at all and heaps of debt? From reading the echo-chamber on the blogs you’d think everyone would find these sites useful. They’re not, especially to the 100MM people in the U.S. that aren’t in the middle or upper class. Seriously, where are the online financial services that will let me schedule out a bunch of bills, and pick and choose among those I can afford to pay this month based on an income that’s less than the total debt payments? That’s what I – and the other 1/3rd in the U.S. – would like to see, believe me. [I had serious conversation about a product like this, although the focus was savings not bill schedule displacement. However, the important difference I see is that it is hard for that bottom third to gain enough access to computers to make the service worthwhile, and of course, they can’t pay for it directly, it would have to be ad based or collect bounties for steering people to other useful credit tools/services/etc. Not simple. I should add that I spent quite a few years being poor when I worked as a musician, and can feel his pain quiet acutely to this day.]

js-spec

js-spec: Want to do BDD in Javascript? This aims to clone rspec (http://rspec.rubyforge.org) in javascript.

For now it's very basic, but stuff like the following works.

describe("A newly created Tic-Tac-Toe", function() {
  with (this) {
    before("each", function() {
      this.game = new TicTacToe();
    });
	
    it("should have 9 empty cells", function() {
      game.cells.should( have(9, "items") );
      game.cells.each(function(cell) {
        cell.should( be(undefined) );
      });
    });
	
    it("should have 0 players", function() {
      game.should( have(0, "players") );
    });
  }
});

Stay tuned for more :)
Ask questions, make suggestions and post bugs at http://code.google.com/p/js-spec/issues/ [Nice to see BDD spreading…]
Source: Scripteka

Announcing SunSpider 0.9 (A New JavaScript Benchmark From the WebKit Team)

Announcing SunSpider 0.9: Incidentally, we’ve been doing a lot of work on JavaScript performance lately. If you’re interested in helping out, stop by the webkit-dev@webkit.org mailing list, or the #webkit IRC channel on chat.freenode.net and say hi. Our engine is highly hackable so it’s easier than you think to get started.[I so love it when others do performance work…]
Source: Surfin’ Safari

Rails 2.0.2: Some new defaults and a few fixes

Rails 2.0.2: Some new defaults and a few fixes: SQLite3 is the new default database

Most importantly is SQLite3 as the new database we’ll configure for by default when you run the rails generation command without any specification. This change comes as SQLite3 is simply an easier out of the box experience than MySQL. There’s no fussing with GRANTs and creates, the database is just there. This is especially so under OS X 10.5 Leopard, which ships with SQLite3 and the driver gems preinstalled as part of the development kit.

If you want to preconfigure your database for MySQL (or any of the other adapters), you simply do “rails -d mysql myapp” and everything is the same as before. But if you’re just playing with a new application or building a smallish internal tool, then I strongly recommend having a look at SQLite3. Thanks to the agnostic db/schema.rb, it’s as easy as changing your config/database.yml to switch from SQLite3 to MySQL (or another database) as soon as your load warrants it. [OK. Nice to the tweaks flowing…]
Source: Riding Rails

A New PickAxe

A New PickAxe:

Ruby3_cover_small

Ruby 1.9 is just around the corner, so it looks like a good time to create a new edition of Programming Ruby. So, I’m pleased to announce that the Third Edition of the PickAxe has just entered beta.

The book’s home page is at http://pragprog.com/titles/ruby3.

Although 1.9 is largely compatible with 1.8, there are definite differences. And it’s been an interesting ride getting the examples in the book to compile and run with the current 1.9 interpreter. The book pushes the envelope in many different areas, and includes example code designed to illustrate edge cases. When I find these, I’m flagging them in the text and (if they look like bugs) adding them to the tracking system. But, so far, 1.9 is looking like a big win for Ruby.

[The original guide, which so many used to get started with Ruby. Looking forward to 1.9, and now reviewing this edition.]
Source: PragDave

Google Knol – Google’s Play To Aggregate Knowledge Pages

Google Knol – Google’s Play To Aggregate Knowledge Pages (Danny Sullivan/Search Engine Land): Google Knol – Google’s Play To Aggregate Knowledge Pages  —  Move over Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, Mahalo, and Squidoo.  Maybe.  That’s because Google’s testing its own service to let people build a repository of knowledge.  In fact, knowledge forms the core of the service’s name: Google Knol. [Hmmm. If nothing else, congrats to Seth for having the Squidoo idea validated. Not that that’s helping at the moment…]
Source: tech.memeorandum

Fluid – Free Site Specific Browser for Mac OS X Leopard

Fluid – Free Site Specific Browser for Mac OS X Leopard: f so, Site Specific Browsers (SSBs) provide a great solution for your webapp woes. Using Fluid, you can create SSBs to run each of your favorite webapps as a separate desktop application. Fluid gives any webapp a home on your Mac OS X desktop complete with Dock icon, standard menu bar, and logical separation from your other web browsing activity. [Trying it now… early days, but it seems to work as advertised. Nice.]