Tarkblog

Just a quick announcement that my second book is now available:

http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ctelec/index.html

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A Peek at Computer Electronics

Are you a programmer or computer enthusiast? Do you feel comfortable with methods, functions, and variables? Do you wish you knew more about how the computer made it all work? Now you can. From basic electronics to advanced computer hardware, you’ll learn the magic behind the gear that makes it all run.

If you’re into tinkering, or ever thought about it, this book explains the basics of how it all works.

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My first book is still available too:

http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ctrubyqt/index.html

If you don’t care a bit about programming, then skip this.

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KDE.news has posted an interview with me about our company’s business decision to use Linux and KDE in our testing environment. The interview was actually conducted over a year ago, but stagnated due to lack of time to post it. It was revived a few weeks ago and I updated some of the information to say more about what we are doing now.

While it’s KDE centric, note that we make heavy use also of Gentoo Linux, Ruby, QtRuby and Ruby on Rails all for our test stands.

In particular, if anyone in the Ruby community is looking to get some specifics or metrics for our use of Ruby in the enterprise I’d be happy to share that information.

The fine Ruby loving gentlemen at the Pragmatic Studio have just announced a Chicago based studio for February 16-18th.

This is just a note that I am planning on attending this studio and look forward to meeting others in the Ruby community. While I feel pretty proficient in Rails already (our intranet is heavily dependent on a few internal Rails applications), some of the newer things that have emerged in the last few releases have slipped past me and I haven’t been able to keep up. Plus, why not spend a few days away from work on the company’s dime, ya know?

I also will be available to sign virtual PDF based autographs on your favorite QtRuby PDF book.

I’ve uploaded a QtRuby 1.0.11 to RubyForge, which should bring the whole thing up to date with all of the changes that have taken place in the past few months. Since there seemed to be some issues with 1.0.10, I used 1.0.9 as a basis for the update - hence, there shouldn’t be any issues with it. Please let me know if there are. I’ll update korundum later as well, but I can’t get it checked out of the subversion tree right now for some reason.

For the OS X folks out there, Reuben Grinberg has put together his steps for getting it installed - in case that proves helpful.

Still not using QtRuby? You should make it your new year’s resolution to learn! I hear that the Prag Progs have a great tutorial on it.

TT: qtruby, qt, korundum.