Noel Rappin Writes Here

It’s been a while since I gave an update on the far-flung writing projects of Noel Rappin, inc. Here goes. Rails Test Prescriptions 2: The Refill is heading out for roughly 50% draft complete technical review this week. I believe the reviewers have already been contacted, thanks to all of you who volunteered. There probably will be another round. The review will probably take us through the end of March, at which time, I make any fixes suggested.

I need to say this off the bat: this is my own experience, and does not necessarily speak for or reflect the opinions of Ruby Central, or any of the other conductors who chose individual tracks. Also, I’m sure I’m leaving interesting things out, ask questions in the comments and I’ll answer. Are we good with that? Great. Here are some things I learned from scoring and choosing my little corner of the RailsConf program.

Quick and random: The book Ball Four) had a big impact on me as a kid. I stumbled across a copy when I was about 12. If you don’t know, Ball Four, written by Jim Bouton and published in 1970, was one of the first big athlete tell-alls (though it seems much tamer these days than it did when it came out…) Anyway, a lot of the book can be read as the story of an articulate outcast trying to understand and navigate the other teammates that he’s basically stuck with.

I’m going to be conducting a few of the tracks for this year’s RailsConf, specifically the Novice, Testing, and Crafting Code tracks. I’m very excited, this isn’t an opportunity I’ve had before. What I want from all of you is awesome proposals. I want to have to make hard decisions. I want to be inundated with all your amazingness. Because I want to hear from all of you, here are some opinions on how to best present yourself in a speaking proposal.

Monday Morning Me I’ve skipped a few Monday Morning Me’s due to Ruby DCamp and a couple of other things. DCamp was awesome, and maybe beyond my humble ability to do a trip report. In the meantime.. Rails Test Prescriptions Ground has been broken and progress is being made. Not a lot of ground, and not a lot of progress, but ground and progress nevertheless. So, yay, that. When last I wrote about this, I was debating whether to use MiniTest or RSpec as the main test framework for the book.

Here’s what’s going on. WindyCityRails Had another great time at WindyCityRails. I enjoyed the talks, and it was great to meet new people/see people I don’t see enough in person. As usual, Ray and the WCR team had the logistics of the event down (even the WiFi was pretty fast for a conference.) The venue is really nice, if maybe not perfectly arranged for the kinds of talks being given.

I’m pleased and more than a little surprised to be announcing the existence of Rails Test Prescriptions 2, (which may not be the final title). You have questions. Even if you don’t, I have answers. Can you give the news in the style of a movie poster tag line? Sure. Coming in 2014. It’s time to get your prescription… refilled. Rails Test Prescriptions 2: The re-prescriptioning. When did this happen? Really, just last week.

Here’s where we are at the moment. Master Space & Time With JavaScript: Ember I think I may have finally gotten my head around the Ember release plans. My current understanding is that: A 1.0 final release of core ember is imminent, possibly as soon as September 1. There’s another major overhaul of Ember-data (the “jj-abrams” reboot branch), which will become the master branch sometime between now and the 35th of Octvember.

Ongoing update and stuff I know, I haven’t been blogging much. I can always tell when I’m putting things off because the half-finished blog posts stack up. First, Master Space and Time In JavaScript is still on sale, and for the moment it’s still $15. Somebody using the twitter handle @shakerdev just called it a “great fucking read for JS devs.” So, I’ve got that going for me. The ongoing projects list looks like this:

Here is the state of the Master Space and Time With JavaScript Union as a I currently understand it. First, you can, you know, buy the book. Please. An update to the Ember book should be going out next Monday or so. It has about 10-15 page chapter walking through a routing example with outlets and nested routes and the like. That’s puts the Ember PDF at just over 90 pages (including the back matter and contents and stuff), which compares favorably with the lengths of the other three books (97, 97, and 120, I think).