Flashblock plugin for Firefox is a nice thing.

• bullet
  A Rails plugin that will watch your queries while you develop your application and notify you when you should add eager loading (N+1 queries), when you’re using eager loading that isn’t necessary and when you should use counter cache. Cool.
• the update | gemcutter
  Gemcutter (soon to be rubygems.org) will become the default gem host for the ruby community, replacing rubyforge.
• White House opens Web site coding to all
  White House goes Drupal. I’m pretty sure this article was written by somebody with no clue what open source is. Some of the descriptions are nonsensical.
• Why seeding is important for random functions…
  or, How to Cheat at Bejeweled.
• and another thing… – Announcing Refraction
  Refraction is Rack middleware that can provide “mod_rewrite” type functionality using an easier to understand Ruby dsl. Some performance tradeoffs, but not as much as trying to use Rails routing.

Agonizing over whether to go desktop (27″ iMac) or laptop (17″ MBP) with my next computer purchase. Not that I have the cash for either at the moment. But if I did…

• jQote – client-side templating
  A nice jQuery-based way to do client side html templates. Thinking about using this for some customizable widgets I wrote.
• 55 Unconventional And Original Free Fonts For An Unique Design
  Some really nice fonts here. Not sure if this is 100% the case, but all of the ones I checked were free for commercial use as well.
• Browser support for CSS3 and HTML5
  Deep Blue Sky does some investigation into browser support for various CSS3 and HTML5 features. Good info.
• Devise
  A full stack Rails authentication engine built on top of Rack-based Warden that uses a strategy provider pattern. Use of Rack allows authentication to be shared across different types of applications (Rails, Sinatra, etc) and strategy pattern allows new, customizable strategies (i.e. Invitable) to be created and shared. Very interesting…
• Part II: We Just Undid Three Months of Dev work. Here’s What We Learned.
  I’m enjoying this series. If you are developing a customer-facing software service (or want to someday), you should follow along. Good tips.
• How We Made GitHub Fast
  Lots of red meat here.
• Introducing BERT and BERT-RPC
  More info and GitHub’s data serialization and RPC protocol. BERT and ernie – too funny.

It’s a no comment Monday.

• The myth of the page fold: evidence from user testing
  People don’t mind scrolling down.
• Learn more about robots.txt
  Informational video from Google employee, Matt Cutts, regarding how Google uses robots.txt, why urls sometimes show up when you blocked them, etc.
• How a 1-Engineer Rails Site Scaled to 10 Million Requests Per Day
  Rails Inside has the Cliff’s Notes version. Click through to find out the dirty details. Good info for all of us running 1-Engineer Rails sites.
• Prime Factors Kata (Rough) – Uploaded by unclebobmartin
  I love watching pros work – a great way to pick up tricks of the trade. Watch Uncle Bob work through the Prime Factors Kata.
• My Tools of the Trade – 2009
  Mike Gunderloy’s hardware setup and software tool choices. As with watching other pros work, I always find value in seeing what other pros use to perform their craft.

New math 101: At a big corporation it is mathematically possible (and quite normal) for one to be assigned to allocate 50% of their time to each of 3 or more projects.

• Dr Nic ’s Install any HTML theme/template into your Rails app
  Really interesting stuff from Dr. Nic.
• How to Gemify your Rails Plugins
  A good walkthrough of the steps you would take to turn your Rails plugin into a gem.
• mustache
  A new framework-agnostic view replacement. I’m admittedly a bit obtuse – I’m just not sure what makes this better than erb or haml (which i prefer these days due to the conciseness). But, I’m sure some will find this to be right up their alley.
• formtastic-sass
  sass mixins for use with the formtastic Rails plugin – a DSL for building Rails forms.
• Graph Paper | Konigi
  Cool printable graphs for sketching out your designs. Paper is divided into 24 columns (+ gutters in between), which is perfect for designing with grid frameworks like Blueprint.

I thought cloud computing was supposed to be the silver bullet for scalability. Now everybody wants to move to “real” servers. Me is confused.

• SlickMap CSS — A Visual Sitemapping Tool for Web Developers
  Creates a pretty nice looking site map for your website
• Ruby on Rails git pre-commit hook
  A quick look at how to setup hooks to run code (for verifying your tests/specs, updating documentation, etc) when you do a git commit.
• GitHub is Moving to Rackspace!
  GitHub makes the official announcement. Really interesting read of the technical details behind the move.
• Need serial key – CodeSmith Community
  An ignorant user asks for a “crack” serial code for a product IN THE OFFICIAL PRODUCT FORUMS. A company official with a sense of humor responds and geek hilarity ensues.
• 33 Killer Web Icon Sets for Free
  Because I am design-challenged, I’m always looking for good, free icons. Here’s a bunch.

Eight years, 2 home address changes, 2 office changes, 4 computers, 3 cars, 1 dog, 1 (and a half) kids, umpteen projects, countless sleepful and sleepless nights later, we still remember. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, but I remember 9/11/2001 like it was yesterday.

• Online innovation going strong in state
  Good stuff about the numerous online entrepreneurs/companies that reside or got their start in the great state of Oklahoma – including sites like Ping.fm and twitpic.
• Textmate: Re-Usable Command Basics
  Up your Textmate game and dive into this tutorial that shows how to really utilize Textmate and Unix to accomplish some nifty stuff.
• Animate Image Filling Up Using jQuery
  Incredibly cool demo. I could see some cool uses for this.
• fitter_happier
  A Rails plugin that adds uptime monitoring to your application. Came across this yesterday – looks interesting. More info here.
• To self. or not to self.
  The author discusses the merits of prefixing ruby public instance method calls with self. I tend to agree with his conclusion, but suppose I could be persuaded that it adds more noise than value.

• Railscasts – 7 Security Tips
  New railscast from this week shows common Rails security flaws and how to avoid them. Important.
• 15 CSS Tricks That Must be Learned
  I wouldn’t call these tricks so much as intermediate CSS techniques that you need to know if you don’t want your designs to look sloppy.
• Create a Funky Parallax Background Effect using jQuery
  Parallax backgrounds are neato, but hard to do right, and certainly can be overdone. This shows how to do it. Use sparingly.
• gsub with a block
  Did you know gsub can take a block? – I knew this (thanks to The Ruby Way), but it’s good to be reminded.
• If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers
  This was making the rounds the last few days. Pretty funny.

Hate it when I think something will only take half an hour and it costs me an evening. And by the way, note to future me, loading javascript and css files dynamically cross browser is HARD.

• Phiculator, the Golden Ratio calculator
  phi, considered the “golden ratio” and often used in architecture, art, etc can be a great way to make your design aesthetically pleasing. This tool helps you calculate the ratio.
• jQuery Tools 1.0.1 released
  A collection of jQuery plugins/tools from the folks that make flowplayer. I’ve used several of these previously and they are top notch. The overlay plugin addition looks really nice.
• Flowplayer 3.1.3 is out
  Speaking of flowplayer, looks like those guys have been busy, and have a new release of it as well. This is my go to flash player these days. Lots of really nice config options.
• SVGWeb Brings SVG Support to Internet Explorer
  Uses flash on IE to replicate and make SVG a viable cross-browser technology.
• Pretty checkboxes with jQuery
  A tutorial showing some pretty spruced up checkboxes.
• New OS, more pane! (Passenger preference pane v1.3)
  New Passenger pref pane for Snow Leopard.

Last month marked the three year anniversary of my purchase of Agile Development with Rails and the canonical “Pickaxe” for Ruby. Wow. Time flies doesn’t it.

• GitSharp
  Git for .NET. Head explodes as my two worlds collide.
• The bar for success in our industry is too low – (37signals)
  These days, “success” is defined as the potential to make a lot of money at some unspecified date (once we figure out the right business model of course). I agree with Jason and think it’s time we get back to listening to Grandpa’s advice – “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!”
• Hey, PAC man. Sup, subdomains !
  Good article on using subdomains (particularly locally) with Rails apps. Also introduces Rack::CustomDomain – rack middleware for switching on custom domains / CNAME support for your customers.
• Ruby on Rails Integration – compass
  Updated documentation + screencast added to show how to integrate compass (my favorite!) and Rails. If you haven’t tried this yet, you need to. Today.
• acts_without_database
  A plugin for using an ActiveRecord model without a backing database.
• A Wealth Of Ruby Loops And Iterators
  A bunch of examples here showing different ways to iterate in Ruby.
• Scott Hanselman’s 2009 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows
  Scott’s annual(?) tools list always has some great finds for a developer’s toolkit (particularly the .NET crowd). Very Windows-centric, but some good stuff here (web apps, etc) with crossover appeal.

Only took me 4 days to get my mac re-situated after upgrading to Snow Leopard. Re-situated may be overstating it, actually.

• app_store
  A Ruby module for fetching information from Apple’s App Store.
• James Edward Gray II — How to become a successful rubyist
  A nice interview with Oklahoma’s very own JEG2.
• jQTouch
  A jQuery plugin for mobile development (iPhone, Android, etc) using HTML5, CSS3, and javascript.
• Tweetie-style paging with pageSlider
  A nice-looking jQuery based slider plugin.
• 7 Stages of new language keyword grief
  Amusing. Although I admit having these feelings more with C# / ASP.NET than I do with open source technologies like Rails. There may be something to that…