Thomas On Rails

Sex! And social ills...

Posted by Codejoy Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:51:00 GMT

     Now that I got your attention with the Sex part, I would like to share a discussion I had with a friend this lunch hour. On the news was a report of a middle school offering the pill to students without parent consent. He asked what I thought of it, and I said I think its great! But I retracted quickly stating, I think the pill is the wrong thing to offer, ESPECIALLY without parent consent as it is a drug, it changes a woman’s body. Though in that same sentence I told him that I thought they should offer condoms in school. Well this is where the discussion started. I wish I could transcribe it word for word, but now it being almost an hour ago I will just state meat of the whole thing.

     Essentially, my friend had a huge problem with the idea that schools would offer condoms even without the parents consent. I thought it was a good idea and a step in perhaps bringing down teen pregnancy. His argument was that its not the job of the schools (And there by the government and taxpayers) to be telling kids what to do. To me just offering a way to do something they will probably do anyway safely was a great stop gap measure for a growing problem, and in no way is suggesting or telling kids how to behave. He insisted this isn't the case, and that schools shouldn't do that as their only job is to teach kids reading, math, science etc. While agree with him that schools only job should be that, in reality it isn't. A lot of kids go to school for 8 hours a day to get away from their crappy family lives, so schools have taken on a role unfortunately which they originally intended to do.

    He tried to use the argument that if they legalized weed then schools should provide weed to students cause "They are going to do that anyway", another analogy he used was putting brochures for Christianity and denominations within the counseling office as well, which he knew I would disagree with. I'm curious what others, that is you all think? No right or wrong answer, but just curious. I guess his biggest argument is that it takes away any and all say of the parent and government especially schools shouldn't do that. He also thinks its schools saying its okay to do stuff behind the parents back. I just don't see it that way. Thoughts???

Pro-Photographer Wannabe?

Posted by Codejoy Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:21:00 GMT

I found this through my feed today: Is a Pro Photographer Wannabe Cutting Into Your Business?

It speaks of Uncle-Joe Digitals cutting into the profitability of pro wedding photographers. I have studied this area a lot and one of the first things I learned is not to underbid what the rest of the community (other pro photographers) are charging for a wedding. Common mindset for anew photographer might be "well my portfolio isn't as fleshed out as others so I should charge less to just get jobs." This really pisses off other pro photographers cause under bidding takes jobs awy from them and in the end drives the market down cause its what prices people begin to expect. This is true I would say everywhere but where I live. I live in a city of modest size where high paying jobs seem to be very rare, therefore I suspect the majority of the populace here wouldn't have the $5,000 to spend on a wedding photographer (which is what I gather other pro wedding photographers are charging in areas with clients more likely and able to pay such a fee). But I digress, the entire article speaks briefly of underbidding and mostly just makes a point that anyone with a digital camera thinks they are a pro, or near pro. I have a digital camera? Am I pro? Or am I wannabe? Its almost like a foot-in-the-door catch 22, if getting your first paid gig that you turn out great work for makes you a pro, then at some point all pros were wannabes until they got that first gig.

Noobies first impression of his first RoR project.

Posted by Codejoy Mon, 14 Aug 2006 18:18:00 GMT

First of all, I have never done web programming before, and really never had the inclination. That all has changed with Ruby on Rails. For many reasons, first and foremost is the price of entry. It is relatively easy to get started in RoR and deployment to a webhost isn't to bad. My host is HostingRails.com. They have some sweet deals for free or near free web hosting and very helpful staff. I recomend them a great deal.

Warholit! was my first forray into Ruby on Rails. For the other newbie rails users, I would like to distribute some tips and lessons learned. (this is a lessons learned from warholit, mostly a stupid list of all the gotchas that I ran into while stepping into the Ruby on Rails waters with this project):

• Keep your development machine and webhosc always running at the same version
• Remember on your web host, if your application just doesnt seem to start from the web browser, try from the command prompt of your web host % >script/console
• Something in particular this project: RMagick has two modes Q8 and Q16, if you are doing an operation on your dev machine that looks funky on the web host, double check what version you have of RMagick and find a work around for converting.
• Multiple Applications can run on a single host usually, though you have to do funky stuff. I put this here cause i was never sure if this was true or not, it indeed ist rue and the host should help you to set that up. Typically it invovles haveing one RoR app that contains another ina subdirectory, the routes and perhaps some other stuff make setting this up difficult at times, but well worth it. I am currently running typo, and within that my RoR flickr toy "Warholit"

I would also like to take a moment to state that Typo (what powers this blog) is awesome. It's adminstrative functions are lovely and very web 2.0 :). So I guess my number one tip for those new to Ruby on Rails is first, spend some time developing simple and fun Ruby scripts. Then after that, find a great book that shows you Ruby on Rails, I hear "Ruby for Rails" is a great book (though I learned all my stuff using the "Agile web development with Rails" book (not so bad)). The biggest trouble I had when starting out was learning how to pass arguments from web page to Ruby script and back again. I will release some sourcecode to my warholit app after it has matured a bit more to demonstrate this. (I also found it quite difficult at first to figure out how to use check boxes and option boxes).

All in all I am happy with Ruby on Rails. It is a fun new way to code, and as someone who has always wanted to write web apps makes the barrier to entry very low. My biggest concern was how I was going to coax my webhost into allowing me to host multiple rails applictions (like this typo blog AND my warholit app) but with some help and some knowhow, it was a very doable thing at no extra cost. For those who have always wanted to try Web Development, I think ruby on rails is the way to go, but now I guess I am officially a biased opinion :)