Geeky Stuff

Macs go Intel, then go Windows? (UPDATED)

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After the announcement in 2005 that Apple were going to change their Macintosh computers from the IBM/Motorola PowerPC range of processors to Intel's x86 line everyone thought they were nuts. Well it seems the insanity continues as Apple have just announced a program called Boot Camp that allows anyone with an Intel-based Mac to run Windows! Yowzers!

UPDATE: A 3rd party company has developed a $50 program called Parallels which lets your Intel Mac run a huge array of operating systems while you are still running OSX, i.e. no reboot required, thus giving you much more flexibility. While audio doesn't work and you can't access the CD/DVD drive, for standard applications I think this is a better way to go. Nifty.

Ruby on Rails 1.1 is out

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Just a quick mention that Ruby on Rails version 1.1 has just been released, adding some really awesome new features that will continue to make life even easier for web developers everywhere, yes, including even you. Some of the niceties include Javascript templates, to make your AJAX more swishy, JOINs and other fancy things have been added to ActiveRecord, and integration testing to help make your sites more solid - solid as a rock, you might say. Go forth and update, young padawan.

Ruby on Rails, Rails tutorials in British emag

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A British PDF magazine called ObjectiveView recently featured two pretty good articles in its ninth issue (2.2mb PDF), one on Ruby on Rails and another on Ruby itself. While neither article is aimed at beginners, anyone who's worked with other languages should be able to get a leg up with them. One aspect of the Rails tutorial I particularly liked was how it showed doing the database development using migrations, one of Rails' most powerful features. While the tutorials are good I also suggest taking a quick look at some of the instructional videos and other tutorials available on the main Rails site, and of course one of the many books available.

"Getting Real" on project development

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The folks behind Ruby on Rails, 37Signals, have compiled ninety essays on almost every aspect of project development and are making it available as a $19 PDF "book" called Getting Real. As a taster they have four essays available for free, which give a good idea of what to expect in the rest of the book, and so far it looks like it'll be well worth reading, just looking at the table of contents is enough to get me salivating.

MSFT looses brain learning AJAX

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While developing their competition for Google Maps, MSFT seem to have forgotten how to develop good applications and gone back to the philosophies they used to develop Bob. I present, to you, one of the worst pieces of crud ever:

While it is true that this maps application is still under development, there's almost no way they could turn this into something usable without throwing out probably two-thirds of its functionality, which I doubt they'll do. Yet another example of why MSFT drastically needs to learn the concepts of KISS, as others have to great effect: Google Maps and GMail, 37 Signals's Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack, TaDa List and Writeboard, Carson System's DropSend, etc, etc, etc.

Damien

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