Monthly Archives: November 2009

Link LinkedIn into your next Ruby application

Published: November 29th, 2009
LinkedIn launched its new API last week, allowing any developer brave enough to implement OAuth to integrate with one of the largest social networks around. Seeking an opportunity to really understand OAuth more fully and play around with the LinkedIn API at the same time, I created the LinkedIn Ruby Gem.

Rubyists I’m thankful for this year

Published: November 25th, 2009
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I also like what’s become a blogging trend of stopping and giving thanks for a few things. This year, I focus on some Rubyists that I feel don’t get enough praise for the great work they do.

Plan your Nextstop from Ruby — or Twitter!

Published: November 19th, 2009
I stumbled across Nextstop this week, a community driven travel site where users can post destination guides and recommend places to explore, eat & drink, or just sleep. Since I’m an API junkie, when they announced their new API this week, I just had to write a Ruby wrapper.

Fork you? No, no, no – Fork Queue.

Published: November 18th, 2009
You don’t have to be a Dr. Nic with his 100+ public repos to appreciate the Github Fork Queue and how it streamlines accepting patches for your open source projects.

Twitter gem updates: So long Mash, hello Hashie

Published: November 17th, 2009
A couple of quick updates on the Twitter gem. Due to some conflicts with extlib, we’ve swapped out Mash in favor of Hashie. Michael’s blog post has the low down on the move. Thanks to hassox for the patch!

What makes a good API wrapper?

Published: November 16th, 2009
As cool new RESTful services crop up practically each day, I find myself using or writing a lot of Ruby API wrappers. So much that I’ve seen some common approaches emerge, each with their own pros and cons.

A new Ruby gem for the Readernaut API

Published: November 14th, 2009
I was so happy to discover Readernaut this weekend. It’s got a lot of features and the interface seems much more intuitive than Shelfari or Good Reads. Since John Nunemaker’s HTTParty makes writing API wrappers in Ruby so much fun, I knocked out readernaut.

@font-face-off: Typekit vs. Font Squirrel

Published: November 12th, 2009
Now that the curtain has come down and now Typekit is available to all, let’s see how Typekit and the previously mentioned Font Squirrel stack up head-to-head.

Rubyists: Meet Underscore.js, your new favorite Javascript library

Published: November 9th, 2009
One of my favorite aspects of developing in Rails is the console. The ability to load and interact with my Ruby objects without using the browser is powerful. Thanks to Firebug for Firefox and Web Inspector for Webkit, I also have a console for my client-side JavaScript. I wish jQuery were as powerful when traversing [...]

Sass up your WordPress themes with Compass

Published: November 7th, 2009
I’m a Rubyist. But I’m also a pragmatic front-end developer. When I have to write a full-stack solution, I pick Rails or Sinatra because writing Ruby is a joy and the Ruby ecosystem is so darn cool. But when I have to create a CMS-based site for myself or a client I love the usability [...]