Not too much to say here.

On most weekdays when I’m not at work, spending time with my wife, or exercising I’m reading or programming. As much as I wish I could eliminate the first part of that equation, it is just a constraint that I have to work with for now.

I’ve been learning a lot about Rails. There is really no better way to learn that to just try to make something. For all that I read beforehand, I still had to reference the books tons, even for elementary things. I’m becoming more comfortable with it, but still have a ways to go.

One site I’ve been reading a lot lately is Mark Cuban’s blog. I think this guy is my hero.

Been fairly busy, but have been making some progress.

I started on a Rails site yesterday and I’m off to a nice start. It’s amazing how much of the syntax you forget when you go from reading about it to actually programming it. I constantly have to look up the most basic syntax issues, but hey, at least its actual progress.

Getting to experiment with the code to see how it affects the site is enjoyable.

I have about 4 hours of discretionary time each weekday. Some days I spend about 3 of that programming; others none. On average I get about 2 in by the time I eat, shower, and spend time with my wife.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a ping back on one of my recent blog posts originating from autocarsinsurance.net. I followed the link, curious why someone from an auto insurance domain would mention this site. The site didn’t load. I did a quick Google search for the domain and saw that there were lots of Ping Backs originating from the same domain. “Spam!”

I hate spam as much as the next guy, but I gotta commend them on their originality. Faking the Ping Back is a great way to lure bloggers to your spam site.

Next time, pick a more popular blog though… geeze…

I’m 90% of the way through Simply Rails 2. It’s an excellent book for someone like me who has no experience with Ruby or the Rails framework. I have about five SitePoint web development books now and all of them have been fantastic. The examples are practical, the explanations clear, and the they always excel at not bloating the book (which a lot of programming books do).

I also purchased Agile Web Development with Rails this evening, the original book on Rails. Althrough the third version of the book hasn’t been released yet you can buy an early PDF version here and they’ll ship you the paperback when its available in October.

I didn’t get much of a change to look through it, but it seems a lot more comprehensive than Simply Rails. That makes sense too, since it’s supposed to be the definitive text on the subject. Simply Rails is more of stepping stone into the more advanced concepts.

On unrelated subject, I found an old copy of Inc magazine this weekend. I try not to subscribe to too many magazines, since I rarely ever read them, but they had some great business articles including on on Twitter that was really interesting. Maybe I’ll actually read this one? ;)

TBD.