Michael has written up a guide on how to create and test patches with Git. A good read for anyone interested in contributing or following the development of Rails.

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Pratik’s documentation branch for Rails has moved to http://github.com/lifo/docrails. This branch is open for all to contribute to directly. Just send Pratik a note on Github asking for access and it shall be granted. There’s even a page for the conventions used on the branch.

This makes it easier than ever to help improve the documentation for Rails and harder than ever to just sit back and whine about it. Make something great!

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The 2nd annual Ruby Hoedown will be held August 8-9, 2008, in Huntsville, Alabama. This is the southeast’s regional Ruby Conference, and the conference this year is hosted by hsv.rb (the Huntsville area Ruby and Rails User Group) and sponsored by Engine Yard. The keynote speakers for this year’s conference will be David A. Black [...]
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Pete Rock and CL Smooth – They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)

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“ Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for. ”

Clay Shirky

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Happy Camper Studio’s own David Koontz will be part of an impressive Ruby panel at the upcoming Java CommunityOne

David will be joined by JRuby luminary Thomas Enebo (Sun Microsystems, Inc.), Rich Manalang (Oracle), Mark Driver (Gartner), and others.

All of us fellow Campers are damned proud of David’s pioneering work with Monkeybars, and if you’re at all interested in super-sweet cross-platform GUI application development you have to check it out.

David will be attending both CommunityOne and JavaOne, and if you’re also going be sure to catch the Ruby panel and then track him down to learn more about the future of Ruby desktop development

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@schwa btw, I added your MKart and Wii #s to my Wii today. My Wii & MKart #s were posted earlier ;) # @wii 4549-5803-2333-3515 # @wii Mario Kart 1203-9655-1983 # @gedeon as @schwa pointed me http://wiitransfer.com/codes/ (It chopped my Wii#, tho) # Powered by Twitter Tools.
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Threat level orange, guys! The release candidate for Rails 2.1 is drawing awfully close, so if you’ve been sitting on a patch that just must make it in now is the time to rise hell or high water to make it so. Once we cut the release candidate, we’ll be loathe to introduce anything but bug fixes to the features already there.

So get in your saddle, cowboy, and make that patch happen. Remember that the party has moved to Github and Lighthouse. Giddiyap!

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Bought MarioKart today; Wii Address 4549 5803 2333 3515; Mario Kart ID 1203 9655 1983 # @mWare don’t we both wish ;) # @mattgemmell Do you have MKart? # @mWare btw, ServerNorth.net *does* serve Toronto, right? # @marsedit I just tried Tumblr integration. It worked and I hadn’t even paid attention to see if it would. Wow. # @ch0wda amen. [...]
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IKEA room ideas

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The Getty Center

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Anything More

Spiritualized

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That Mitchell and Webb Look – Bronze Age Orientation Day

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I’m happy to announce that we finalized the keynote line-up for this year’s RailsConf and I can’t believe the great names we got (especially that last guy on the list, I hear he’s awesome :)):

• Kent Beck: Few people have had a bigger influence on the modern software industry principles, patterns, and practices. I’m reading his new book Implementation Patterns right now and can’t wait to hear him speak.
• Joel Spolsky: Joel on Software has always been a source of thought provoking, inspiring, and sometimes downright infuriating advice and opinion on software development. Joel is a great thinker and a lucid speaker on all things software and he’s been running his own software business for almost a decade to back it up.
• Jeremy Kemper: If Rails was an army, Jeremy would be the 5-star general who always made sure the job was done. He’s been a tireless force for improvement and implementation of the Rails framework since way back in the early days. Jeremy probably touched most of the features you enjoy in Rails every day. We’re finally getting him to talk about it too!
• David Heinemeier Hansson: Yes, I will most certainly be speaking at RailsConf again this year.

This lineup is of course in addition to the wealth of wonderful sessions planned. RailsConf ‘08 is shaping up really nicely. We have a brand-new version of Rails (2.1) scheduled to premiere not long in advance of the show and a whole year of collective learning to digest. It’s never been a better time to be programming with Ruby on Rails.

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Dog didn’t sleep last night. Meant I didn’t sleep well, either. :| # Powered by Twitter Tools.
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If a tweet is uttered with no followers, does it make a peep? I'm getting going with Twitter on http://twitter.com/d2h.

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之前提到用 Google Apps 提供的邮件服务有每个帐户每天 500 封的限制，有个 tricky 的解决办法是设 100 个帐户在程序中轮训发送，这样一天最多可以发 50000 封。 不过的确没想到在 Rails 中的好办法...
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@ryancoleman not sure what choice the executive has, when it lost the contract vote so badly. It’s a bad situation. # @ryancoleman I’m reading the Star’s take on it now (Globe next), and they’re saying it’s essentially a union power struggle. :( # Bringing Whiskey home. # Wondering where Creemore went; she’s not usually this well hidden. [...]
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less happy with Sympatico today than usual # Powered by Twitter Tools.
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又到周末了，由于CodeJam的原因，这已经是我连续第十二天的工作了，有些许疲惫。在这个即将到来的周末，要好好让自己放松一下。

这周开始了一个新的项目，一个Ruby on Rails的项目，一个让我期盼了很久的项目，也是我之前学习Rails的最重要原因。不过，Rails是我最近的blog中出现频率很高的字眼，所以，我并不打算在这里聊Rails的话题。

既然不谈技术，那就不妨聊一些与自己之前做项目不同的体验吧！

在我们这里开发的准确的说是这个项目的第二阶段，也就是这个项目已经有了很多东西，之前这个项目是由美国那边的团队来做，所以，我得到了一个观察国外的ThoughtWorker如何做事的机会。原来参与过的项目里面，更多的是中国这边的ThoughtWorker，所以，我饶有兴致去观察一下二者之间的差异。由于参与这个项目的ThoughtWorker大多是有经验的开发者，所以，很多方面做得成熟许多。

这个项目的自动化程度很高，显然，这些ThoughtWorker在开发之初做了很多工作，把许多可以自动化处理的部分都放到的Rakefile里面。所以，我们得以把更多的精力放在开发本身上，少了很多繁琐的操作。一个简单的例子是，我们提交代码只要简单敲一个命令，首先会到SVN进行更新，然后重做数据库，运行测试，随后，把增加的部分找出来添加到SVN中，最后，它会问我们Pair的人，Story的编号，以及做了哪些工作，以便生成SVN提交的日志。和大多数自动化的工作一样，这些工作本身没有任何技术难度，但有了这些之后，我们可以少敲一些命令，更关注开发本身。其实，之前的几个项目也有一些自动化，比如用Cruise Control做持续集成，但这个项目应该是我经历过的自动化程度最高的项目，差不多常见的重复性工作都自动化了，看看那长长的Rake任务列表便可见一斑。

每天早上，Standup之后，我们会把所有的Dev召集到一起，一起来看一下昨天的工作。我们用SVN diff把代码的差异列出来，大家一起来过。如果恰好是自己做的代码，编写代码的人就会站出来，为大家简单解释一下做了些什么。这样，这样保证大家都会了解到项目的进展。这样做还有另外一个原因，因为我们是一个分布式团队，除了我们在中国这边，还有几个人在美国开发，这样过代码，便可以大致了解到美国那边在我们睡觉的时候干了些什么。

这个项目还有一个做得我觉得不错的地方，就是Story做得很细致。我们在Mingle里面的Story，很多都会有完成这个Story要做哪些步骤的描述。我们只要按照这些步骤一步步做下去就可以了，每完成一个步骤，就做一个简单的标记，这样，几乎不会有遗漏。除了Mingle上的Story，我们还会有专门的文档对这个Story进行比较详细的解释，包括一些验收条件。显然，这个项目的BA做了大量的工作，让我们后续的开发更容易。

这个项目从美国过来了一个BA和两个Dev，而Pair的过程，让我不得不每一天都以英语进行交流。私下里，我经常说，我的英语水平代表了TW的最低水平。当年面试的时候，我自认为表现的最差的就是结对编程，因为一个英国同事高高兴兴搬了把椅子做在我边上，害得我不得不英语解释我在做什么，思路一下子就乱了。不过，少了面试的压力，这时候和人用英语Pair，效果还算可以接受，至少我还可以思考。实在不理解的，就让自己的Pair多解释几次，好在ThoughtWorker们都是很好的人，我的Pair总是不厌其烦的为我解释，直到我确切的直到了我们要干什么。

在这个项目里面，我很高兴的扮演起学生的角色。一方面，我们不是很了解需求，需要向“过来人”学习，另一方面，来这边工作的两个Dev确实都有很长时间的工作经验。和他们在一起工作，我乐得把控制权交到他们手上，自己虚心的观察他们如何思考，如何解决问题。和他们在一起工作，会让人感觉很放心。正如我在《与高手共事》中提到的，他们做的那些工作都很简单，经过一步步简单的工作，一个个Story就完成了。

对我来说，这个项目才开始一个星期，已经学到了不少的好东西，值！


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