Jefferson M. Stovall

Ruby On Rails

Ruby on Rails, one of the most exciting things to hit the web since “Web 2.0″ become an actual cliche, attracted me because of the elegance of the code itself. With the encouragement of a couple good friends (brilliant programmers in their own right), I thought learning my first programming language would finally be a fun, achievable project to pursue. Though my progress is slow and my time to dedicate to it is (frustratingly) minimal, I have enjoyed learning how this highly evolved language works and interacting with the fervent community that supports it.

I have a two-pronged approach to learning the language. The first is by following the third edition of Agile Web Development with Rails, a popular book in the Rails community. The second is by writing my own program, a solution to a particularly thorny issue with creating a large number of very similar reports from disparate sources. As I follow the book, I try to apply the lessons learned to my own program.

Updates categorized with “Rails” will appear on this page as I go along.

Some updates on progress

I’ve been going pretty hardcore on this site for the last day or two and learned a lot in the process. Let’s cover some of the hacking I’ve done:

• Installed, styled and troubleshot the dropdowns above via the Multi-level Navigation Plugin
• After trying it in several places, finally decided my flickr photostream would look best in the footer. Styled it so that it doesn’t look broken; still a ways to go with that. That’s been a real bear.
• Added lightbox functionality to my Photos page and my flickr photos tagged with “site.” Tried and tried again to get this integrated in the footer instead of the flickr badge but couldn’t seem to get it quite right. One problem is my footer’s not “widgetized” so the flickr Gallery plugin I’m using doesn’t work because it’s based on shortcodes.
• Added some blogroll items.
• Wrote some content (to be published at a later date).

Next steps related to the above:

• A couple troubleshooting items with my dropdowns. Sometimes they disappear on me…that should probably be fixed.
• Get some cool lightbox functionality going in the footer. I’m afraid this is going to involve more PHP than I really want to deal with…
• Figure out the smartest way of integrating catagories onto their own pages…
• Write more content.

The value of to do’s

One of the things I’m learning while building this site is the value of to do’s and a solid systems for managing one’s own work (as opposed to organization systems imposed by one’s workplace). Tonight is a great example–I sat down with the computer and wanted to tackle something, but realized that there’s thirty different directions I could go, and I simply got distracted with all the options.

I’m a great believer in the GTD system; I’m just still working to find the right degree of implementation. But, the busier I get, the more I realize that more time needs to be given to serious organization.

Of course, now that I’m writing this, I realize that I wanted to to:

• Find the PHP code for inline posts on a page
• Understand how dropdowns work on WP
• Research a simple forms plugin
• Map out a new idea on a sitemap for this site

Instead, I wrote this post about how I couldn’t remember anything…more to come on organization, obviously.