jpreardon.com

I first heard about Adhearsion at GoRuCo ‘07. Jay’s talk at GoRuCo was great and I think it got a lot of people excited about VoIP. Since then, he has really polished his presentation. At the Ruby Hoedown, he introduced Otto, übergeek and Asterisk neophyte. Having the fictional Otto in the first part of the presentation demonstrates the benefits of Adhearsion quickly and in a way the audience can relate to. Well done Jay.

You can check out Jay’s Adhearsion presentation at Ruby Hoedown 2007 on Confreaks.

As a side note, the presentation of, well, presentations on Confreaks is great. The 2-up display of the the speaker and the slides is much better than only being able to see one at a time.

NYU and Time’s Up! are working together to reclaim and repair bikes that are abandoned on the NYU campus. NYU sophomore, Emily Allen, and others won a $5,000 grant from NYU to start the program. The grant money goes towards buying parts used by Time’s Up! volunteers to get the bicycles road ready. Half of the refurbished bikes are sent back to the University to be given to students. I’m not sure what happens to the other bikes which are retained by Time’s Up. I assume they are used as parts or donated to people in need of transportation.

This is a great program that will keep some bikes out of the dump while encouraging cycling at the school. Nice work!

By the way, Time’s Up! will be loosing their East Houston Street meeting space in a few months. They are currently looking a new space, if you can help in any way, send an email to timesupspace@gmail.com.

Rails Envy has a great screencast tutorial on ActiveRecord. Gregg does a great job explaining a couple concepts that can be difficult to grasp like has many :through and polymorphic relationships. This is well worth watching for anyone new to Ruby and Rails. Even if you are not working with Ruby, it is a good way to see how Object-relational Mapping is achieved in Ruby with ActiveRecord.

via Ruby Inside

This is an ongoing list of things I’ve learned to bring along on longer motorcycle trips. Most of the things listed here are luxury items that one can certainly do without. I, however, prefer not to rough it too much. For an exhaustive packing list along with some great moto-camping recommendations, I suggest Bill Johns’ Excellent Motorcycle Camping Guide Also, Hellen Twowheels has some great packing tips.

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Curious about which plugs you’ll need to connect your electronic gear to the grid in another country? Check out Electricity Around the World which covers pretty much everything you need to know. All countries are listed along with the voltage and plug types they use.

About a year ago, my curiosity was piqued by Ruby on Rails. I picked up a copy of Agile Web Development with Rails and built a quick sample site. But, I realized that more than a cursory knowledge of Ruby would help move things along faster and make Rails development more enjoyable. Unfortunately, I did not have the spare time to devote to a new language, so I set it aside.

A couple weeks ago, I decided the time was right, so I got a copy of the essential Pick Axe book and started in earnest. What I found was an elegant language that lives up to the excitement that emanates from Ruby developers. The tutorials in the pick axe are adequate, enough to demonstrate the points the authors are making, but not very exciting. It is impossible to really learn a programming language with tutorials alone anyway. As with spoken language, the only way to become fluent is to use it.

My first two little exercises were little indeed. First, I wanted to run through this site and update all the self referring URLs to they were correct as there had been some URL changes over the years. This was really simple and only required hooking in to the database that runs the site and changing some URLs. This was all accomplished with ActiveRecord, some regular expressions and very few lines of code. The second exercise was to check the integrity of all the external links on this site. This was also trivial in Ruby. Most of the work with this exercise was in fixing the bad links which had nothing to do with Ruby. One would hope that a fair amount of the link fixing could be done programmatically but, unfortunately, that wasn’t what I found.

Now, I feel like I’m ready to dive back into Rails. I’m also happy to be using an elegant language that has a passionate community behind it. If you are contemplating the use of Ruby, I suggest trying one or two tasks with it. I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

You know about object-oriented programming and all its goodness. Now, step up to abject-oriented programming. Learning to work in an abject-oriented (AO) environment is important since there is a high demand for people that can maintain existing abject code (there is a lot of it out there). Greg Jorgensen’s Introduction to Abject-Oriented Programming will get you started by touching on some of the high points of AO. Here’s an excerpt that describes an AO best practice:

A good time to write documentation is when someone in the department gives two-weeks notice: use that time to make sure the departing team member documents all of their code.

Make sure you peruse the comments on that post. Its amazing how many people disagree with abject-oriented practices.

via Simon Willison’s Weblog

Amsterdam is a wonderful city that I never seem to tire of. It has been several years since my last visit and my notes are terrible so, I have only a couple actual recommendations listed below. My best advice is to try to get a sense of the city on your own. In short, spend a lot of time being lost–Amsterdam is the perfect city for it. Get away from the most tourist oriented areas (Dam Square, Red Light District, The Leidseplein etc.) and explore the other parts of the city. Amsterdam’s canal district is not all that expansive, so you’ll be spending some time in these areas for sure. But, even within the canal district, there are certain places that don’t feel overrun by tourists. Be sure to check out some of the neighborhoods outside of the canal district as well.

When you roll into town, the first thing to do is rent a bike. Walk around in the Jordaan to find a low key bike place and get a more traditional black bike rather than the bright red or yellow ones available in the more touristic areas. There are a lot of bike shops around and most of them rent bikes. You’ll want a bike that looks like the one pictured to the right. You’ll still look like a tourist, but at least you’re not riding a bike covered with advertisements. Now that you have a feits, you’ll be able to cover a lot of ground in true Dutch style. Follow the numerous bike paths and see where they take you.

Here’s a map that plots this short list of recommendations.

All day Saturday, there is a nice outdoor food market in the Jordaan. Noordermarkt has a nice selection of fresh cheeses, meats, pastries, fruits and vegetables. This is a great place to shop if you are planning on packing a lunch to go. Here are a few pictures to give you an idea of what you might see: 1, 2, 3, & 4.

Villa Zeezicht has some of the best apple cake in town. I always make it a point to stop by at least once when I am in town. This small café is no one trick pony, the coffee and other offerings are good as well. They open early, so this is also a good spot to start if you are staying nearby. The location on the relaxed corner of Singel and Torensteeg is perfect for planning your day.

Villa Zeezicht
Torensteeg 7
Amsterdam
Tel: 020 – 626 74 33

Bordewijk is quite popular. So much so that I’ve never been able to get a reservation. This has more to do with poor planning on my part than a long waiting list though. If you are in the mood for a nice dinner, this place might fit the bill. Just make sure you call more than an ten minutes in advance for a reservation on popular nights.

Bordewijk
Noordermarkt 7
1015 MV Amsterdam
Tel: 020 – 624 38 99
Open 18:30 – 22:30
Closed Mondays

If you have the mind to check out a museum, try taking in the Van Gogh Museum on a Friday Night. Also, The Rijksmuseum, while not open on Friday evenings, it is worth checking out during regular hours. The paintings are impressive, especially given the time they were created. The building that houses all of this art is also impressive. Make sure you don’t miss the massive pipe organ.

If you’ve been to Amsterdam and have any recommendations, I’d love to hear them. Please leave them in the comments.

Safe travels!

Amazon has added payments to its stable of web services. The Amazon Flexible Payments Service (FPS) gives developers a way to send and receive payments between credit cards, bank or Amazon accounts. In addition to making basic payment transactions, developers can also set up complex payment rules and standing transactions. There no requirements for the developer to set up an account beyond having an AWS login. This will be a welcome change for anyone who has dealt with Authorize.Net. Of course, all of this magic is built on Amazon’s payment system so existing Amazon customers (everybody) can log in and make payments with the information and preferences they already have on file with Amazon.