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Archive for April, 2007

Have you tried BlogPulse charts and graphs to track and analyze what’s behind the buzzwords?

Here is an example showing the keywords python, ruby, and wordpress (time-line is the past 6 months). Looks like the WordPress spike is beginning to fade, and I wonder what that means?

Here is another BlogPulse trend chart showing what everyone was talking about last week. Keywords/Phrases : Virginia Tech, Cho, gun control.

Now that we are on this topic, let me say that my deepest sympathy goes out to all the families affected by this horrific tragedy (mass murder, suicide); my prayers for peace and love continue unto God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, and I recommend that everyone read and meditate on Psalm 4 and Psalm 23 this week.

Have you checked out the new Yahoo Pipes!

It is a like an “RSS feeds on steroids”. Pipes is an interactive feed agregator and manipulator. Using Pipes, you can create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant.

CMS Wire is reporting live from RubyConf and covers a few talks delivered at RubyConf. Sounds like the conference is buzzing with excitement and here a few items I gleaned…. Checkout Ruby on Rails Cheat Sheets, great little documentation things that help you get your work done… kind of like MAN pages, but a little more dynamic.

The PeepCode ScreenCasts are also highly recommended… “PeepCode Screencasts are a high-intensity way to learn Ruby on Rails website development”.

Wait a minute!!! That RubyConf is not the REAL RailsConf — which will happen May 17 to 20, 2007 — check it out on the RailsConf website.

Huw Collingbourne has published a nice Recommended Ruby Reading List — it has 6 “essential books” about Ruby and Ruby on Rails, 3 “other books” about the Ruby Language and Ruby on Rails, and provides links to 4 FREE books (PDFs) about programming ruby (that you can download). for a total of 13 books about Ruby. I downloaded a bunch of the PDF books, but the only other one I own is Programming Ruby, The Pragmatic Programmers’ Guide (second edition) which a lot of folks seem to agree is truly the essential book about Ruby.

Huw recommends The Ruby Way, by Hal Fulton, as the “second great tome” (after pick-axe) which is published by Addison Wesley, and is also now in it’s second edition. A free example chapter about “Working with Strings” is provided.