Noel Rappin Writes Here

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Beep Repaired

I don’t know what this says about me, or anybody else for that matter… I’ve been a huge Tom Lehrer fan ever since my 8th Grade Social Studies teacher decided to warp all our minds by playing “That Was the Year That Was” during a reading period. (It was 1985, so it’s not like the recording was current or anything…) I was pretty instantly hooked, and a few years later when his albums were re-released on CD, bought them instantly, and have more-or-less memorized them.

The Average Programming Book

One weird aspect of being a published writer is that you get very little information about sales. You see your own numbers (several months after the fact), but there’s no larger context, and no sense of what a reasonable expectation of sales might be. Which is why I love it when O’Reilly Radar puts up one of their periodic looks at the computer book market. I haven’t pored over stat line like this since I collected baseball cards when I was ten.

iPhone SDK

I’m trying to figure out exactly why I’m so psyched by the Apple iPhone SDK announcement. The basic announcement wasn’t a surprise, and I don’t even own an iPhone. I did, however, dig out my Cocoa programming book and start studying. Further thoughts: The tools themselves seemed somewhat slicker than what was expected – a lot of Mac developers were pleasantly surprised that Interface Builder was included (although apparently it’s not in the first beta).

Pathfinder Post: Using Null Objects with ActiveRecord

Enjoy: http://blogs.pathf.com/agileajax/2008/03/using-the-null.html

Cuts Like A Knife

SF Movie Review: Battlestar Galactica: Razor (Continuing the enlargement of things I write about on this site, and I think this will be the last post containing a disclaimer about topics…) I’m not sure what this says about me or my relationship to this show, but the following is all true: I bought this DVD the day it came out (I don’t get Sci-Fi at the moment…) I then let it sit for three entire months while waiting for the right time to watch it in one sitting.

Using Active Record For Migrations

New post on the pathfinder blog: Using ActiveRecord to Migrate Legacy Data Enjoy!

Buy My Book! (Please?)

![223888 cover_df.pdf (3 pages).jpg](http://blogs.pathf.com/agileajax//223888 cover_df.pdf (3 pages).jpg)This week, my book Professional Ruby on Rails will be officially released. You can see sample chapters here, and you can buy the book at Amazon (affiliate link). This book is designed to meet the needs of an intermediate to advanced Ruby on Rails user. The first wave of Rails books could not assume that the user had any pre-existing knowledge of Rails. As a result, they spent a lot of time covering the basics.

10 Print Favorite Books, 2007

For my first real non-techy post on this site (I’m a little nervous about that….), here’s one of my favorite things to write about – a list of favorite books that I read in 2007. All the books on this list were published recently enough to qualify as “new”. I also group books in the same series more or less on whim. My tastes… well, they tend toward Fantasy and SF, beyond that, you’ll just have to infer from the list.

Shipping!?

Amazon is now saying that Professional Ruby On Rails is in stock! I haven’t seen my copies yet, and I suspect Amazon purchases will actually go out next week, but it’s a real page and everything. The link to purchase is right here. I’ve also added a [running list of errata and updates](https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=ah2szrczrmxv_26z j8npddd&hl=en). Check back on that every now and then. Much more on the book over the next week.

Lesser Known Test Processes

New post on the Pathfinder site. I had fun writing this one. It’s on some lesser known variants of test-driven development. http://blogs.pathf.com/agileajax/2008/02/lesser-known-te.html



Copyright 2024 Noel Rappin

All opinions and thoughts expressed or shared in this article or post are my own and are independent of and should not be attributed to my current employer, Chime Financial, Inc., or its subsidiaries.