neverblock for concurrent I/O in ruby

August 29th, 2008 tkadom

NeverBlock is a Ruby library that allows developers to write non-blocking, concurrent code in a transparent manner. Meaning that you will keep coding in your traditional ways while you get the benefit of non-blocking IO operations.

read about it here

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User Generated Mashups with Ubiquity

August 27th, 2008 tkadom

Incredibly cool technology being developped by mozilla.

 


Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

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Pickens Plan - Snow the public, silence the critics”

August 27th, 2008 tkadom

When I first saw the commercial that Mr. Pickens put out regarding American energy independence, I was intrigued.  So much so that I signed up for his site, where I got to read the plan first hand.  Mr. Pickens essentially is advocating that we harness wind energy, and migrate our vehicles to natural gas.  He cites studies which show the US midwest as the most abundant area in the world for harnessing wind energy.  He cites the dependence on foreign oil and the fact that the US currently creates 98% of its own natural gas as reason enough for moving our vehicles from oil to natural gas.

I posted in his forum questioning the logic behind these choices, and my post was deleted.  I believe it was a respectful post, and I wish that I had saved a copy, but in my experience energy activists rarely delete a post that questions their position, and spend their energy answering the questions instead.  The act of deleting my post gave me a pretty good insight into the mentality of his campaign.  "Snow the public, and silence the critics".  My post may be deleted, but my questions still remain, and I will now hijack my beloved blog to give them a permanence which mr. Pickens can not control.

Leave alone for a moment mr. pickens own financial interests in this campaign, which are well documented

1) How does migrating to natural gas solve our energy crisis, when we know that natural gas is not a renewable resource, and that the number one natural gas reserve is in the middle east? (Source) (The US has only 3% of the worlds natural gas reserves)

2) Wind energy has numerous issues outside of distribution that have prevented its adoption.  There is no conspiracy against Wind Power.  If it made economic sense it would already be a reality.  Nuclear power on the other hand is proven.  If you are ready to make the tough decision, then advocate for nuclear power.  It is the best option we have given current technology.

3) Assuming the advice of building the wind farms for generating electric power is followed, how does this reduce america’s dependence on oil.  The US currently only uses oil for 2 percent of its electric power production. (Electricity generation is the component which mr. pickens plan addresses.  There are no plans for industrial, residential, or commercial applications of wind power)  Additionally, wind generation is sporadic and seasonal.  People who advocate batteries for dampening the spikes in wind energy production neglect the seasonal components.

4) Why not advocate electric cars which can be powered by renewable energy as a replacement to our fossil fuel fleet?  if the goal is energy independence, then move to a vehicle fleet that is not reliant on a non renewable resource which will be harvested outside of the united states.  The answer as far as I can see is that Mr. Pickens is more interested in lining his own pockets than solving the energy problems of America.  He is a majority shareholder of Clean Energy the largest supplier of natural gas for transportation in america and stands to gain substantially from a mandated adoption. 

I have no problem with a billionare spending his own money to make more, and making the world a better place in the process.  The problem is his proposal does not make the world a better place, nor does it make america a better place.  We would still be dependent on non-renewable energy from abroad, and we would be no better off than we are today.  The only difference would be california tax payers footing the bill for mr. pickens next fortune.

Tim

 

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rspec stories from the trenches

August 26th, 2008 tkadom

I found this blog entry to be a very nice read on rspec stories.  if you are getting started with rspec, Joseph Wilk does a very nice job covering the subject.

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Getting Started with Ruby/Rails

August 8th, 2008 tkadom

 

One of the fun parts of working with Ruby is watching the meme spread to other people.  When people ask me about how to get started with ruby and rails, my answer usually varies with the seasons, and the current release of the rails framework.  So when I was recently asked by a friend, I figured the answer might help other lost souls out there…
 
First off, there are basically two things to learn with ruby on rails.  The ruby language, and the rails framework.  Most of the beginner tutorials start off with rails, because that is where you quickly build a website, and you hardly need to even understand the language to do it.  A great book for rails is "The Rails Way", and The oreilly book with the birds is great for a comprehensive guide to ruby.  But there are tremendous online resources, and you may want to take a look at those first.  A nice introduction is summarized here: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/gettingstartedwithrubyonrails
 
The fastest way to try ruby is http://tryruby.hobix.com/ .  It includes a little tutorial that just walks you some of the basic language concepts and syntax.  I would suggest you use that to get a flavor of ruby.  You can also check out rubylearning.com, and sign up for a free online class complete with instructor and lessons.  The current session is closed, but i think another one starts in september.  http://rubylearning.org/class/  His class is structured around his online book, and its fun to go through the excercises.  i can say from first hand experience, that the interaction with the instructors and other classmates is amazing, and having Satish offer up his time gratis is really a tremendous donation to the ruby community.
 
As far as rails goes, there are lots of 1.x tutorials out there that break under 2.0.  The is a decent blog walkthrough of a simple tutorial which assumes you are using linux (http://fairleads.blogspot.com/2007/12/rails-20-and-scaffolding-step-by-step.html). There is also a really awesome resource from Ryan Bates: www.railscasts.com.  Ryan bates stuff may be a bit more advanced, but its a great way to learn about the principles when your just kicking back with a coffee.
 
Tim
 

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