Spoken

Some Good Things: Anyway, yesterday we found out that the tumor in Susan’s hip is nasty and big enough that her hip’s in danger of fracturing; she needed to get on radiation pronto, in the hopes that we can shrink the tumor before her hip breaks. Cuz if the hip breaks, they have to operate to fix it, which would delay chemo. So we spent the morning getting Susan ready for that before I headed off to work. [It is with great sorrow that I read the difficulty facing these folks. I’ve had no chance to meet them, but I’ve often laughed at the writing, which includes family antics. I’ve learned that stats don’t count when it comes to cancer. Family friends who were written off 10 years ago are still with us and enjoying life. Most recently in the news, Roger Ebert displayed the incredible strength available to those who simply continue to do what they love to do. Roll your eye’s Roger, but you’ve joined the list cancer heros. To Susan & Eldon and family, may you be blessed with a speedy and complete recovery.]
Source: Fat Cyclist

[PLUGIN RELEASE] ActsAsSecure: Introduction

ActsAsSecure adds an ability to store ActiveRecord model’s fields encrypted in a DB. When a model is marked with acts_as_secure, the :binary type fields are recognized as needed to be stored encrypted. The plugin does before_save/after_save/after_find encryption/decryption thus making it transparent for a code using secured models.

The plugin supports a master key approach as well as individual records encryption keys. It does not contain any crypto provider but allows to plug in any external one as long as it supports encrypt/decrypt methods.

The fields are converted to a YAML form before encryption. After description they are restored via YAML.load. Since fields are stored encrypted, the find usage is very limited.[Keep ‘em coming…]
Source: Revolution On Rails

Marketing time: A contractor that prides himself on finishing every single job on the day it’s due, regardless of what it takes, is telling a powerful story, doing marketing that’s actually cheaper and more effective than advertising ever could be. [So true! Further, it ensures that you do not accept projects that you won’t care enough about to ensure that they are complete on time. There will always be issues around resources, scoping, less than clearly defined goals etc. So if you wish to live by this story, you have to be prepared to dig deep on each project. It is the sort of constraint that increases joy.]
Source: Seth’s Blog

Flex:Open Source - Adobe Labs: On April 26, Adobe announced strategic plans to move the development of Flex to an open source model. [A zig? Or a zag?]

Joel: stick with Windows XP: It is extremely frustrating how much you have to run in place just to keep where you were before with Microsoft’s products, where every recent release requires hacks, workarounds, and patches just to get to where you were before. I have started recommending to my friends that they stick with Windows XP, even on new computers, because the few new features on Vista just don’t justify the compatibility problems. [Join the crowd…]
Source: Joel on Software

Hackety Hack: An Amazing Ruby Environment for Beginners: Why The Lucky Stiff is set to guarantee himself a place in the Programming Hall of Fame with his new project, Hackety Hack, an uber-simple programming environment for kids, beginners, and amateur coders. It attempts to resolve a problem brought up in an old article of why’s, “The Little Coder’s Predicament”, which lamented the ability for kids to quickly get coding on modern platforms, unlike in the Commodore 64 days. [Lovely.]
Source: Ruby Inside

Thoughts about large Cocoa projects: I call it the Research Barrier, when an app is big enough that the developer sometimes has to do research to figure things out. (“Research” just means reading the code and following some paths of execution, sometimes running in the debugger.) [ Some interesting thoughts. I certainly agree with the notes on listeners… I came across it just yesterday.]
Source: inessential.com