Noel Rappin Writes Here

I’ll say up front that I’m skeptical of claims of “distraction-free” writing environments, especially the super-precious over the top ones, for all the reasons that Merlin Mann has laid out in various easily findable places on the internet. That said, I think I really like iaWriter for Mac. And I say that even though I’ve basically abandoned iaWriter/iPad in lieu of somewhat more functional options, like Nebulous and Textastic. But on the Mac, I already have more functional options, and although I was originally skeptical of when I might use iaWriter, I think I have found a niche for it for quick writing tasks like blogging and taking notes.

1. Today’s News: Github for Mac Odds are you heard this one already, but the fine folks at GitHub announced a Mac desktop client. It differs from, say, GitX in that it attempts to be a front end to your entire GitHub account rather than one particular repo. I haven’t used it a ton yet, but a couple of quick impressions: I think we can now definitively say that Tweetie and Loren Brichter is to the current set of Mac applications what Delicious Library was to the batch a few years ago – the source of a widely used design aesthetic.

I’d like to pretend there was some thread connecting these things, but you and I both know there just isn’t… 1. Actual News: Cucumber 1.0 Starting with something approaching a real news story, Cucumber 1.0 was released today. According to that post from Aslak Hellesøy, the project has had nearly 750,000 downloads. Oh, and there’s a native JavaScript port in progress. I didn’t know that. Anyway, Cucumber 1.0 adds Rake 1.

Hey, twice in one week. I might be actually getting back on a pattern here… 1. Popular Crime Catching up on books, I started off last month with Bill James’ Popular Crime. James, known mostly for his writing about baseball, has written a labor of love book about, well, popular crimes. There’s a whole ‘nother essay to write about how the way James approached both writing about baseball and what you’d have to call the scientific method warped my brain way back when.

1. Annnd… We’re Back Okay, I’m trying the semi-regular daily links post again. Two changes from the last time I did this: a wider range of links beyond just Ruby, and it probably won’t quite be daily, but more when I build up five things that I have a short opinion on. Mostly, though, I need to get back in the habit of actually finishing posts, and realizing that I don’t need to write a 2000 word essay on something for it to be posted here.

So, apropos of nothing, and after RailsConf, some thoughts on public technical speaking. You’re not going to read about how to arrange your slides here, not least because I’m pretty bad at the fancy slide thing. Instead, I want to talk about working the room. This is what I try to do when I give a technical talk. You should think of this kind of presentation as a performance. You have a story to tell and information to share, and you want the audience to pay attention to you.

A quick trip report seems like a good way to break up some weird mutant form of writer’s block that has been preventing me from finishing any of the six or so half-written blog posts I have in my queue. This was my third RailsConf (not 2010, but the two years previous), and it was pretty easily the most fun. I know more people there now, and more people know me, that’s part of it.

I was fortunate to spend this Thursday and Friday at RedDirt RubyConf in Oklahoma City. Here’s a quick conference report, and random thoughts about single-track conferences in general. This is my second try at writing this post, excuse me if it’s a little disjointed (the first one was eaten by my writing tool – the dark side of continually trying out new writing app, but more on that later…) I want to make sure I say up front that James and the rest of the organizers did an outstanding job with the logistics of the conference.

I just gave my RedDirt RubyConf talk introducing a new gem for JavaScript testing from a Rails app called Summer Breeze. It makes you feel fine, blowing through the Jasmine in your mind. More specifically, Summer Breeze is a tool for generating fixture DOM output for Jasmine JavaScript tests directly from your Rails Views with a simple DSL for specifying fixtures Summer Breeze is based on work by JB Steadman and Jonathan Barnes that can be found at http://pivotallabs.

Here are a few random tips that have come up while working on an application using Refinery CMS, Globalize, and who the heck knows what else… Extending stuff from Refinery Refinery is about as extendable as a Rails framework gets. Although it provides you with a lot of default behavior, it’s not that hard to override. Refinery is made up of a collection of Rails Engines. For example, the main display of pages is in the refinerycms-pages sub-gem.