Papered Thoughts

So I started looking at Ruby on Rails. I picked up a book "Simply Rails 2" by Patrick Lenz and have been reading solidly for the past 5 days or so. I also got sent a link to a bunch of Rails screencasts by Matthew Carriere from Black Ninja Software (he has a few good posts on installation and setup as well as a good screencast on learning Rails with Heroku) which can be found at his site.

So far my experience with Rails and Ruby has been very positive and I am super excited about this versatile and (so far) easy to learn, scalable environment.

I have been playing with a few ideas for websites and now I think that I will try to develop them (or at least one of them) with Ruby on Rails. I will keep posting about how this is going and if I find additional resources, I will post them on my site or create a Ruby resources page.

Just came home from a trip to Maui. A friend decided to have a wedding in a very beautiful setting. Stayed at the Royal Lahaina Resort and can recommend it, as long as you get the partial ocean view. The cottages are in the process of being renovated and looked like they needed it (also the reviews mentioned cockroaches).

There are numerous activities to do on this island, but the primary activity is snorkeling, so be prepared to spend lots of time in the water (unless you prefer basking). I saw loads of turtles (Honu), about 5 stingrays, several eels, 2 white tip reef sharks, a couple of squid (approximately 6 inches long) and loads of fish (triggerfish, wrasse, butterfly and puffer), with the Humuhumunukunuku apua'a (Picasso triggerfish) being one of my favorites.

The road to Hana is a trip worth doing. We visited a couple of the tourist traps, one being the Garden of Eden, which offered a good spot to take a rest from driving. Another stop was the Hana Lava Tube. This is a good spot to go into a cave as they provide flashlights and hard hats (not required to wear them). The Waianapanapa black sand beach is another interesting stop. The swimming here is a little rough, so beware if you aren't comfortable with reading the ocean. We missed the O'heo Gulch, which I heard was pretty cool, but we had to head back to the hotel.

Started to learn PHP so as to assist a colleague with his website. Looking forward to stretching some grey matter and getting a solid foundation.

It looks as though Ruby on Rails may be another tool to gain some experience in. Seems to me as though there is a growing market for these skills.

I have been looking at some books that may assist me in my learning, but the problem is always that of price vs value. Guess I need to start with searches for reviews, and some online tutorials.

Most of my family has come to join me in Vancouver, coming from as far away as South Africa. As a result I have been busy clambering over rocks, swimming in rivers and eating. I have not had much time to keep the site updated, but have been having so much fun that I cannot be too concerned about it.

We went to Whistler for a day and saw Canada's amazing display of fireworks after watching "A Comedy of Errors" at Bard on the Beach. We then spent some time in Courtenay (on Vancouver Island), kayaked and walked up Chinese Mountains on Quadra island.

There are some really nice swimming holes in the Comox Valley and we partook of their cool waters to simmer down from the heat that had been beating down on us.

Now it is time to do some more work before spending some more time with the family.

Progress is being made on the collections project ... had a meeting yesterday and set up some goals. Understandably there are a lot of collection frameworks out there. Our goal is not to provide a duplication of these, but to fill in the blanks and to add a twist (top secret right now, at least until we get a little work done on it).

I am setting up the required environment today and will be doing some work on job searches in between. Rather that should read: doing job searches and setting up the required IDE in between... oh and a stint at the gym... can't forget the physical excercise amongst all of the mental excercise. Have to set those priorities properly.

Moving along, I have added a few pages in regards to a project that I have finally started working on.

This is a collaborative effort and I won't go into much more detail than to add read more on the Projects page.

Wow, what a busy past few days. Family in town and a 30km bike ride to boot. Didn't think I'd survive the bike ride, but it actually worked out very well. It sure is beautiful riding around UBC. Looks like the riding will take a bit of a rest (raining a little heavily in Vancouver at the moment). Back to working on the Drupal site. Going to spend the day fixing up the site and working on the resume.

Learning the menu system in Drupal, it is quite easy to use with drag and drops being the main course of action. Experimenting with the book content layout, it seems a little less work adding menu items, but there does seem to be some linking / look and feel issues with it.

Starting to look into blocks for side content, and need to start examining how to add pictures for colour and diversity.

Hello World! ... why hello world you might ask, traditionally this is the first thing any programmer does when learning a new language. Now, while Drupal may not be a new language, this is my first excursion into building a website. Excitement builds!