Armando Fox, of the UC Berkeley RAD lab, has put together about six hours of instructive Rails material that have been made available as a series of public webcasts (6 parts). Check it out:

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=20854

I remember the RAD lab as my Dad's old stomping grounds. My cousin and I used to run around, trying not to break things, while my dad was working (likely stuffing punch cards into some room-sized computer).

Despite their history of making sufficiently destructive weapons, the RAD lab has always housed some pretty smart folks, doing very cool things. It's good to see that Rails is in their tool box these days.

A Chinese translation of my book is currently in the works. A few weeks ago I received a note from Liao Zhigang asking if I would say a few words to Chinese Rails developers. Here's what I came up with:

"The most I could ask of my Chinese translation would be for it to bring the developers of our two countries closer together. (We've seen Ruby do this between Japan and the United States.) The developers of the world need to work together. We need to set an example to our respective leaders showing them that we can build healthy worldwide communities that contribute to the greater good of humankind and the planet. The internet is our canvas, collective intelligence is our paint, and Rails is our paint brush.

You might ask, "How exactly can Rails make the world a better place?" I think that by focusing on people and the way they interact—their tendencies, strengths, and shortcomings—Rails and the practice of agile software development can make a significant impact in our lives.

For example, let's look at test driven development or TDD (which is fully supported by, and integrated into the Rails framework). TDD gets down to the bottom of how people actually design and write software. It's a practice that fully recognizes that writing bugs is human nature, as is fixing those bugs only to have them creep back into your system later, when you least expect it. By always writing tests, you ensure that fixed bugs stay fixed. Moreover, by writing tests first, you almost trick yourself into thinking about how your software needs to behave, before you start writing the code, which inherently leads to better design.

Tools that are honest about the human condition and both acknowledge our weaknesses and play to our strengths are ultimately what we need. I believe Rails is just such a tool. Let's use this tool and come together as a global community of developers, through the freedom of open source software, and make the world a better place.

(As an aside, I would love to visit China one day. Perhaps Rails can help me do that. :-)"

You are working on a Rails app and it communicates with a web service. You run into communication problems. To figure it out, you can spit out debugging information at either end or you can slog though a session of tcpdump and its hundreds of options.

Naw, you now know of a much simpler way: ngrep.

1: Go get and install it. http://ngrep.sourceforge.net/download.html

2: Use the command by passing it your interface name (-d lo0), and the port on which you want to watch traffic (port 3000).

sudo ngrep -Wbyline -d lo0 port 3000

Then, if needed, pipe to normal grep until you only see what you want:

sudo ngrep -Wbyline -d lo0 port 3000 | grep -v "noise" | grep "bad-ass unix tools"

Here's the output of a sample run. I'm running the command in a terminal window, while I post a form with my browser or Net:HTTP. The output is split into packets. Here's what you get:

Enjoy!

Double post tonight but if I sleep on this, I'll loose it.

Meet Elvin Jones. In this clip, he's driving the train. You should know that Elvin has perfect pitch and always knows the song as well or better then anyone else in the band. He actually sees the differen't [chord] changes, as different colors.

When I listen to him play, I hear what I call "controlled chaos." It's explosive. It's mean. Check it out:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=bXt6r-C5Wmo

Update (post title updated too):

I realized that I should clarify the larger idea that this post illustrates (to me, anyway). In college, I spent many hours searching for rare video clips of some of my favorite musicians. The frustrating thing was that I always knew that TONS of good video existed; but was just locked in some dusty archive, waiting to deteriorate.

Occasionally, partial clips would show up here or there, but that just made me realize how much more there must be. Anyway, it's all bubbling up to the surface now with free internet video and the good folks that keep uploading it. This really is a beneficial service to the overall good of humans. This part of our society/history urgently needs Interest Injection(TM).

Recursive debt is a term I thought of tonight that I think best describes what will happen to your average, fixed income, sub-prime loan holder who can't accommodate imminent rate increases (as their teaser rate expires).

It's what happens when all the layers that were precariously stacked to make a loan that shouldn't have been, unravel.

It's a never ending financial domino effect. (Actually, there's an ending called "foreclosure" but that's not as easy as it sounds.) If it happens to millions of people at once, it could be like nothing we've ever seen. Easily an economic party pooper.

Don't worry, it won't affect you if you're really creative. But stay on your toes.