jrmehle.com

Looking at my blog, I haven’t written here for over 2 weeks. Has it really been that long? It sure doesn’t feel like it.

Part of the reason I haven’t been blogging may be because I’ve had my head buried in a new language lately, Ruby. For those in the know, I’ve succumb to the buzzwords and taken the plunge into Ruby on Rails.

I guess I should be thanking (blaming?) Jeff, TheHoneymoon’s lead developer for pushing me over the edge. I’d opened the door to Ruby on Rails and poked my head around, but that was as far as I’d taken things. Recently, Jeff (and the other dev types at TheHoneymoon) have been mulling over leaving Java for Ruby on Rails and the last two weeks saw us jump ship entirely.

Two weeks ago, I was given Agile Web Development with Rails and so I set off working my way through building the book’s sample application. When I had finished, I didn’t feel like a Rubyist yet, but I had gained enough knowledge to do some damage.

If anything, I learned that I don’t care if I ever see another line of Java again. I’d even say it takes my preference over PHP. I figured out the reason I really liked PHP was because it reinforced my bad programming habits. I was never all that good at Java which at least enforced object-oriented principles on me. PHP, on the other hand, let me be lazy and code things I pretty much already knew how to do. Sure, you can do OO-PHP, but for me that would require a lot of relearning. Not efficient in the least.
While I was reading, I even tried to take a stab at developing Decoymusic in Rails. I’ve stopped, scraped what I had, and restarted a couple times already (because I keep learning better ways to do things), but I think my decision will still be to rewrite the entire thing in Rails when I get the chance. The current site is pretty hacked together. It works, but it’s got many shortcomings. I think if I can present a core set of features to a few people, it won’t be too hard to convince them this is where we need to go. The hardest thing I’ll probably have to do is convince our web hosting guys to install Rails on our server. Frankly, if I used OO-PHP it would probably be just as good, but this gives me an excuse to further learn Ruby on Rails.

To go with the new programming language, I should be receiving a Macbook Pro in the mail tomorrow. It’s a first generation (Core Duo, not Core 2 Duo) model, but I can’t complain because work bought it for me. We also ordered 2GB of memory from another vendor to max the thing out, but that probably won’t get here for a few more days. I can’t wait. Tomorrow will be like Christmas morning when I was eight years old. It’s funny how the only thing that’s really changed is the pricetag of my toys. Once a gadget-nut, always a gadget-nut.

If you’re at all in tune with the gaming world, you know right now is about as exciting as it gets. The newest consoles (PS3 and Wii) are all being released and the anticipation couldn’t be much higher.

I haven’t been a console gamer since the days of NES and SNES, but my roommate, Rick is throughly invested in the console market with his Xbox 360. I can’t say I mind one bit. Yesterday, he came bought Gears of War.

The game has garnered perfect or close to perfect ratings on every site I’ve read about it on. The graphics, the controls, the gameplay, all unparalleled. It’s the first game to take full advantage of the 360’s hardware and I’ve read articles explaining that it only scratches the surface of what the 360 is capable of. Those are pretty impressive accolades.
In recent years, first generation games for new consoles tend to be only marginally better than their predecessors. Developers usually just add higher resolution textures and maybe some more robust programming to the games and then ship them. Granted they’ve usually been working on less-than-ideal developer boxes which are nothing more than standard PC’s with a few extra pieces of software and hardware. Look at Halo compared to Halo 2. The difference is readily apparent to even the non-gamer.
What do I personally think about Gears of War? It SO lives up to all the hype! Rick and I had a chance to sit down for maybe an hour and a half total last night to play and I loved every second of it. The first few minutes were kind of tough getting used to the gameplay and controls, but after that it was so good. The game really wastes no time in immersing you in the storyline.

What really sets the game apart from other shooters is the tactical side of things. You can’t just run and gun solo like you can do in Halo or Unreal Tournament. You have to take cover and stay hidden most of the time. If you’re out in the open, you’re a dead man. This would be aggravating for all but the most adept of players in other games, but not Gears of War. There’s plenty of debris and other places to hide and the controls make it really easy to move from a covered position to a firing position. The camera is in a 3rd person position rather than a first person position and it makes it a lot easier to keep track of what’s going on around the battlefield.

So if I don’t ever come back, you can just assume I’m holed up in the basement taking down Locusts.

I’m a sucker for destructive science, hence my obsession with anything Mythbusters. The other day during my daily perusing of Digg.com, I stumbled across a headline I just had to click on, “Will It Blend?” It’s a title that just screams waste of time, but you can’t help clicking on it to see the commotion yourself.

The item in question happened to be a handful of marbles. In case you were wondering, yes they did blend. Though, I it wouldn’t be a good idea to eat or inhale pulverized glass. It has the not-so-surprising potential to rip up your insides.

What was more intriguing was that this YouTube video wasn’t some dorm room experiment, it was a commercial posted by the folks at Blendtec. As it turns out, there are half a dozen of these such videos where they pit their top of the line blender (MSRP $825!) against various items such as rake handle, a meal from McDonalds, and a can of Coke, can included.

It is a clever use of YouTube for commercial purposes. While most people would balk at such a thought of voluntarily watching a commercial on YouTube, in this instance it doesn’t seem so bad. You can’t go wrong with putting things in blenders that you aren’t supposed to and seeing if they’ll blend.

And for your viewing pleasure, here is a handful of marbles being blended.

I’ve been a last.fm user for quite some time now. I’ve actually been using the service since it was called Audioscrobbler mainly to track my music listening habits. I’m a dork, I like numbers and stats. Gimmie a break.

Recently, the service was relaunched with a few new features one of which is a Flash-based player. From what I remember, the player has been a part of last.fm for most of it’s existance, but it was always a download. I gave it a shot and it wasn’t work too well in Linux (probably because Linux only has Flash 7 when Windows has Flash 9).

I was surprised to find that Ubuntu’s repositories contains the last.fm player package. I installed it just to check it out and it’s been fairly good so far.

I fired up the “metalcore” tag station because I figured that would contain a lot of the music I like. It has been pretty close to what I would actually listen to. I wonder if it looks at my listening stats and makes selections based on that. It hasn’t been foolproof though. There’s quite a few bands I’ve heard that I would not consider metalcore at all and in one instance Britany Spears came up.

There’s also a few other flaws I’ve been dealing with. There is no volume leveling, so you end up listening to a really quiet song and turning the volume up only to have your speakers blasting when the next track starts. There’s also been quite a bit of skipping. It’s most noticable right away when the song starts (presumably when it’s doing most of the downloading). My experience would probably fair better on my home Internet connection as it is 3-4 times as fast as the connection at work.

After trying the last.fm player, I can say I’d recommend it. At the very least, it gives me a little hope for not having to sit through an entire work day in silence if I happen to forget my iPod. It doesn’t limit the amount of songs you can skip like Pandora