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How not to deal with stress

I’m going out of my mind.

Stress. Stress stress stress. Stress

I’m even worrying about stress which in turn makes me more stress (and thats recursive which can’t be good).

I’m on holiday at the moment, in one of the sleepiest parts of the uk, somerset, to try and get a break from work and what ever it is that is constantly nagging at me. I don’t seem to be able to put my finger on any one thing that is stressing me out, it’s like a big ball of everything smooshed together and stuck to my forehead.

But the holiday is not helping, the lack of 3g access is not helping either, I’m still as stressed as I was last week when I was making myself ill and snapping at anyone and everyone, heck I’m even quiting my job at Greenvoice, something is not right.

And the worst thing is that I don’t know how to fix it.

I’m constantly thinking about it, worrying that I’m not doing enough or doing the right thing or doing too much or making a mistake or being taken for granted or missing the point entirely.

It’s easy to say “Don’t worry about it” but how do you not worry, I feel like I’ve lost the ability to let things go over my head or under the bridge.

What can I do to combat stress?
The photo is just a random flickr find, it made me smile

Ruby on Rails 2.0 Preview Release

sudo gem install rails --source http://gems.rubyonrails.org

To tryout the latest and greatest version of everybody’s favourite framework (well mine anyway) just put that like of code into your terminal.

This blog post has most of the new features summed up and this Peepcode PDF goes into more detail about all the tasty new improvements.

There is so much demand for rails developers at the moment you wouldn’t believe, and with this release it’s going to make development of websites and web apps even faster and less painful.

If you haven’t tried Rails yet then this is a perfect time to get your feet wet, I’d be happy to help out anyone who isn’t sure how to get started or gets stuck on anything.

And if you are already riding the rails train then you’ll want to check out this blog post to get your apps ready for 2.0 as soon as possible!

Diggfeedr is now Feeddit.com

I’ve had to rename Diggfeedr.com to Feeddit.com due to "Trademark infringement" thanks to digg.

But the feed link remains the same so apart from a little downtime most users should not be affected by the change. I’ve gained some good traction with Diggfeedr, hopefully the name change won’t affect it too much.

Initial Stats

Here are some of the stats for the first 20 days of Diggfeedr:

519,330 Hits on the Feed
12,200 Results Pages on a Google search for “Diggfeedr” (39,000 at peak)
3,348 Hits on the Index page
568 Regular Subscribers

I’ve had lots of people suggest I put advertising in the feed, feedburner makes it really simple too.

But so far I have held off for a number of reasons, mainly because if someone else had made it, I prolly wouldn’t use myself and it’s not costing me any money to host it.

Getting Ready for Rails 2.0

So Ruby on Rails 2.0 is coming up very soon and I’ve been converting all of my applications ready for it.

If your not already on edge rails then you should be getting ready to upgrade too, since I’ve done about 4 apps now I’m getting into a nice flow so I thought i’d provide a little help in the form of a list:

1. Upgrade to Rails 1.2.4 - The first thing to do is update your version of rails to 1.2.4, this is like the final bugfix-stopgap before the big jump, it can handle most of the rails 2.0 changes but also works with 1.2.3 and moans loudly about code that won’t work in 2.0.

   You can read more about Rails 1.2.4 here

2. Check for Deprecated code - Download a copy of this pastie: http://pastie.caboo.se/private/krcevozww61drdeza13e3a, call it r2check.rb, put it in the root of your app and run it:

   ruby r2check.rb

   This will tell you about all of the changes that may effect you in the change to 2.0 and how to fix them as well as which files have the offending code, make sure that everything on the list is fixed and you should be good to go.

3. Convert your .rhtml files to .html.erb - 2.0 is changing view templates slightly, instead of .rhtml and .rxml extensions they are now .html.erb and .xml.builder, you don’t have to use this convention but everyone else is and it’s really simple to change it that I think you should.

   I’ve taken this rake task and modified it slightly so that it works for partials as well, Download it from this pastie: http://pastie.caboo.se/105340 and save it in your lib/tasks directory, then just run:

   rake views:rename

   And it will run through your whole app changing all the filenames and even doing the svn mv as it goes, sit back and enjoy!

   Don’t forget to do a find-all for ‘.rhtml’ over your whole app incase your any of your controller/helper code has .rhtml hardcoded into it.

4. Ensure all of your plugins and gems are up to date - If you’ve install plugins a while ago they may have been updated to work better for Rails 2.0, you may as well check all of your installed plugins and gems at the same time. You might even get some performance and security upgrades in the process.

   sudo gem update

   I use Piston for my plugins which gives similar functionality to gems with updates and management in a nice way, if you are not using it you’ll have to manually go through your plugins and upgrade them all, otherwise use:

   piston up

So things should be looking pretty rosey, make sure all your tests are still passing (if you have any) and fingers crossed you’ll be ok when 2.0 rolls in the door, but as always be sure to check your app completely before deploying it to production.

You can read more about the upcoming Rails 2.0 and all the lovely new improvements here: http://weblog.rubyonrails.com/2007/9/30/rails-2-0-0-preview-release

Hope this helps everyone keep up to date with the hottest version of Rails so far!

Update: Rails 1.2.5 is out with more bug fixes and more backporting of Rails 2.0 features, you should get this one instead of 1.2.4

FOWA aftermath

On Wednesday I spent the whole day at the Excel Center for the Future of Web Apps Conference and it was simply awesome!

I paid only £5 for a ticket which granted me access to the expo floor where all the stands are, and of course the Live Diggnation filming afterwards but not access to any of the talks.

The Conference

One of the most surprising things of the conference was the amount of companies using Ruby on Rails, at least half of the people we spoke to were using it including Wakoopa, Meecard, AOL, Kickapps and New Bamboo to name a few.

Every body else was using either PHP or ASP.net except Zoho.. when I asked what technology they were using I was told “HTML and CSS”…

Of course I was handing out TeaBass Moo Cards left, right and center (mainly because I want to order some new ones with the new style header on it)

I also met up with Nik (from TUAW/Download Squad/RealMac Software fame) at the conference, he managed to get us in with the AOL guys and scored us some free drinks at the Diggnation aftershow party.

Diggnation

The Live Diggnation Filming was by far the highlight of the day, diggnation is great anyway but the guys were stoked about being in London and infront of the largest Live crowd ever, loads of great jokes and right at the end the camera began to run out of tape (this was after over an hour of filming) and a panto-like “look behind you” sequence by everyone kicked off, damn funny!

I snapped a couple of photos and the one above was definitely the money shot, it got dugg as well.

The rest of the photos are in this set.

A great time was had by all and I can’t wait for the next conference which is Mac Live Expo at the end of the month, see you there!

Update: The Diggnation Episode is now available for download.