So yeah, I haven't updated this in a long time. Really, I'd always considered this to be a Ruby on Rails demo, but the blog isn't exactly the most functional thing I've ever made. So, for the time being I'm switching over to Wordpress - consider this page site updates and check out the blog link for the goods.

Some amusing links today (at least I thought so). First, the "Hipster Olympics." Whether you love 'em or hate 'em (or even are a hipster) this one is great, and actually worth the 9 minutes of your time - a rarity on YouTube. Next comes a little gem courtesy of Graffiti, a local alternative newspaper here in West Virginia. I can't even describe this one. Just click it.

Well, the comments are working, which probably means its time to start on the calendar, and adding a little style to this dump. Feel free to leave any comments you want, but for all my dumb buddies - I have moderating power, and anyone can see this, so comment accordingly or you get axed.
The picture? Ronald getting arrested. I liked it.

Looks like Gov. Joe Manchin decided to actually listen to the public and change the ridiculous signs proclaiming West Virginia "Open for Business." (See above, as well as Live Free or Die Hard, for examples). The new slogan will be determined via a general poll. I'm for switching back to "Wild and Wonderful," which is infinitely better than the current one. Or with the new table games initiative, "WV casinos - trashier than vegas and atlantic city combined." What the hell, it has more truth to it than the current one.

New gear from Apple today, announced at a press event called "The Beat Goes On". New chubby nano, iPod with new facelift is now the "iPod Classic," and the iPhone without the phone - aka the iPod Touch. I'm digging the classic - well priced, new interface, thinner chassis, and up to 160 gigs (wow). The nano is ok - I'm not a fan of the squatty design, but it's a smart move on apple's part to introduce more functionality into their best-selling player. Since all those crazy kids these days are downloading singles instead of albums, this should be plenty of place for the casual listener, and have some room to spare for some tv shows.

Onto what I don't understand: the iPod Touch. Apple opted for Flash memory, which isn't quite ready for primetime. As a result, storage is only 8/16 gig. What we're left with is a player with, in my opinion, a fairly weak marketing position. Is it for high-end users? Well, it has video, wifi, the ungodly touchscreen interface from the iPhone, a huge screen, and Safari. In short, it's an iphone, without the phone, with more storage. It would seem to be aimed at the high end user, but what it comes down to is this - 16 gigs is not enough. I feel like the average high-end user is going to have at least that in music, and is going to want to watch videos on the gorgeous screen. It's not for low-end users either (see my thoughts on the nano above). Basically, it seems to me that the Touch is aimed at folks jonesing for an iPhone but are either unwilling to switch to Cingular or can't. I don't think this applies to a very wide demographic, but it doesn't matter - I doubt R&D costs for the iTouch were very high, considering its almost an exact replica of an iPhone. The final blow was Steve's obligatory "one more thing" - they're axing the 4gig iPhone and slashing the price on the 8gig by $200. That's 200 bucks folks, which means the iPhone is selling now for $399, which happens to be the price of the 16gig Touch. I'll be interested to see how the Touch does, but I'll be passing on it.

Still, these are bar-none the best media players around, and you gotta hand it to Steve for the sheer ability to create a buzz. Even my mom knew about the announcements, which she heard on the news, not an ad - now that's what I call PR.

One of the buzzwords I've heard flying around the interwebs these days is "Agile Web development." The term refers to a specific method of web project management, and is basically the antithesis of the more strictly structured Waterfall Model. I had been taught the Waterfall Model in class, but actually used Agile management in my web projects, without even knowing what I was doing had a technical name. Agile Web Development, in my opinion, is just a more natural way of doing things. In my experience, it seems Agile development naturally tends to favor an application with a relational database and some kind of content management system - that way, changes can happen quickly and easily without a catastrophic rewrite of code. But what happens when all that goes out the window?

My portfolio page happens. After searching for days for a quick and dirty plugin for Rails to manage a small photo album, all I was coming up with were fully developed apps for advanced photo galleries. While nice, I needed something that fit into my page nicely, deployed quickly and easily, and still had a little visual flair. Nothing. I started mocking up some code, but then it hit me - I was basically trying to dig a fencepost with a backhoe, and already had a shovel...HTML. As it turns out, I'm going to be updating the page fairly infrequently, and the initial time spent going the Agile route and creating a database-driven CMS was going to far surpass the extra time spent hand-coding HTML each time I updated. I could even get my eye candy with a Rails-based Lightbox called RedBox.

The moral of the story? It's not always good to think like a nerd. While the movie may argue otherwise, I'd like to side with our friend Ogre in the picture - sometimes brute force gets the job done, and makes everyone happier in the process.

Well, it's about that time. While there's still plenty of work to be done on the site, I'm bringing my latest revision of it live. Coding the site was actually not all that bad thanks to Rails. Active Record is really amazing, and makes working with a database actually intuitive, as opposed to writing queries with PHP. The site is going to be going up bit by bit over the next few days, so check for updates - things are starting off simple, but there's going to be some really fun stuff online before long. Until next time... Image from Victoria Wang's flickr