For many of us, databases are no fun… surely not as fun as ActiveRecord or Rails in general. Every railers I know love the “dot notation” offered by ActiveRecord associations immensely… while refering to the vast majority of raw SQL queries as “Some ugly non-sense gibberish that we would all prefer not know the [...]

Oh, my… God. What is this? First post in a century? What’s going on here Fleebie? Our beloved readers are going to stop respecting us, and for good reasons. For those who care, I am not dead, I am not sick… I am just working like crazy on Azanka, the company I started with Dan recently. Ok now [...]

Today I will take a break from the IM integration with XMPP4r series and write about something completely different. Writing about XMPP4r just for the heck of it would become boring for everyone quite fast. Let me dim the light, start some sentimental music, light some candles, make an exaggerated smile so I can become intimate [...]

In this 3rd part we’re going to be concrete but a little bit less technical. Here are 2 big mistakes you have to avoid when trying to setup an IM based application (Sorry for those who wanted more technical info about xmpp4r… maybe in the next one). The #1 mistake : Trying to run XMPP4r under [...]

In the first part, we talked less about XMPP4r and more about XMPP, this time it will be the other way around. Now that we know that XMPP messages are XML bits of information exchanged between a client and a server via a TCP connection, we are more able to understand the purpose of XMPP4r. What is [...]

It’s been a while since the last edition of Rubyize this. I have waited all this time because I like when people become impatient. I have received 254 939 emails from desperate people asking me : “When will you post your 5th edition?”, “Is it hard to be that excellent?”, “You rock Frank. Warm kisses… [...]

I really would have like to finish part 2 of IM Integration with XMPP4r before Christmas but I wasn’t able to make it, sorry. I didn’t want to rush it neither and it would have been stupid to do so. I just want to wish you a merry Christmas. Have a good time with your loved [...]

I’m proud to present you my latest project : Mrs. Pratt ! Who is Mrs. Pratt? Mrs. Pratt is a super woman who will help you remember where you things are! The idea is simple : You tell Mrs. Pratt whenever you lend something to someone. Say for example that you lent your Bing Crosby Christmas album to [...]

Some of you might be aware that I worked on a project called TimmyOnTime. It is a product that allow you to track your time using your Instant Messaging application only. How we did it exactly? Where’s the code? Nice try! But I won’t tell you… however I will help you getting start with XMPP4r [...]

Documenting used to be a pain This will stay between you and me I promise : How many of you take the time to write complete and meaningful documentation for your applications? It seems to always be the last thing we want to work on or think about. There are many reasons for that, but the [...]