Biography
Blog
May 03 2008
Back in March, I announced the Ruby Mendicant project after several readers of this blog encouraged me to pursue the idea. For those who didn't see the follow up details elsewhere, here's the readers digest version: Thanks to 70 donors,... read moreApril 28 2008
While working on Prawn, I ran into this (not-so) fun little gotcha: >> 1.to_sym => nil >> 101241.to_sym => nil Anyone cool enough to tell me what this feature is all about? Update: I guess it isn't totally clear what... read moreGobi: A Ruby Implementation for Go Enthusiasts
April 01 2008
Reposting from the official announcement on RubyTalk Gobi version 1.0.0 has been released! * http://gobi.stonecode.org * http://metametta.blogspot.com * gregory.t.brown@gmail.com I am happy to announce the first release of my new fork of Ruby called Gobi. The goal of Gobi is... read moreMarch 16 2008
Though I'm typing this from a Mac right now, I'm hardly a fan boy. I spend a little less than half of my time on OS X, the rest spent on cheap PC hardware and ArchLinux, and honestly, I'm happy... read moreMarch 14 2008
Though I'm typing this from a Mac right now, I'm hardly a fan boy. I spend a little less than half of my time on OS X, the rest spent on cheap PC hardware and ArchLinux, and honestly, I'm happy... read moreMarch 11 2008
When I wrote the post I'd love to quit my job! (sort of), I was mainly aiming to start a conversation. Still, enough people took me seriously, and now I can announce that the project is officially under way. I'm... read moreI'd love to quit my job! (sort of)
March 03 2008
UPDATE: Okay kids, now it's 50% fantasy. It's up to you to cover the other 50% by donating and spreading the word, after reading my proposal. Here's hoping for the best! UPDATE: Though my original post was 95% a fantasy,... read moreDo not question assert { 2.0 }
February 14 2008
Interesting: I asked a question on Phlip's last post about whether assert { 2.0 } was really necessary, given that it's mostly just assert_block from Test::Unit. I noticed this question disappeared from the post, because I guess it was offensive... read moreThe Ruby Community Is Dead, Long Live Ruby Communities
February 05 2008
The title of this post is the title of a talk I'll be giving at NYC Ruby on February 12th. Aside from blatent self promotion, I'm actually posting in search of opinions and thoughts to incorporate into this discussion, so... read moreRuby Conferences vs. Go Tournaments
January 22 2008
When I first got involved in free software development, I didn’t really know why I was doing it. It just seemed reasonably fun and challenging, which was enough to let it steal up every spare minute of my time in the form of a not-so-mini obsession. I didn’t so much… read moreZed's So #{@expletive} Awesome
January 01 2008
If you don’t mind ‘bad’ language and a little bit of hate, go check out Zed Shaw’s rant,Rails is a Ghetto. I’m not quite sure what his intent was with the article, I’m not sure that even matters. What I know is that it has shock value, it made me laugh,… read moreOpen Source, Books, and Open Source Books
December 21 2007
Some of you may know that I’ve been working on The Ruport Book, a free-content book about Ruby Reports. Mike Milner and I have really learned through trial by fire some of the pros and cons of DIY technical publishing in the last few months. I’d like to share some… read moreNovember 08 2007
The most important thing I’ve picked up with each RubyConf I’ve attended is a new outlook on my work. Each year the talks invite people to have their minds bent a bit, both technically and philosophically. Though I didn’t take notes and my attention span is usually too low to… read moreNovember 03 2007
I am a big fan of Ruby’s Struct class. It makes it trivial to build container objects, and then later expand them into full blown classes when needed. If you’ve not worked with them before, here’s an example: Person = Struct.new(:first_name,:last_name,:email) joe = Person.new joe.first_name = "Joe" joe.last_name = "Loop" joe.email = "joeloop@blah.com" class… read moreSeptember 24 2007
Anyone else think that Godwin’s Law should be amended to include Rails? Just a thought. read more