Second, I’m headed back to Edinburgh to speak at the Scottish Ruby Conference. I love this city, and the conference last year was very much above par. I’m excited to say I’ll be talking about JavaScript at a Ruby Conference. I’ve been working this talk out in my head for a long time, through lessons learned and taught to my colleagues and clients. There are also a lot of other great looking talks, including Tim Bray, Alexander Lang, Scott Chacon. Actually, the whole conference looks pretty incredible. I guarantee fun. As of writing this, there are still tickets available, so register now.

Third, and possibly most exciting, I’m very proud to be chosen to speak at JSConf 2010. I heard nothing but “AWESOME” about last years event, and I kept hitting myself for missing it. This year the esteemed Chris Williams is putting together what promises to be the best techincal conference ever. I can’t even say how excited I am to be a part of it. The status is that the conference is already sold out, but I would follow @jsconf with a watchful eye to see if there are any announcements. Chris is also a lover of beer, so I cant promise anything, but some very very rare bottles might sway his favor.

There are some other proposals out there as well, but these two confs were all I did this year, I’d be pretty happy.

Let’s just say it was a crazy October, and we’ll leave it at that. There are big things afoot for November, though. I’m headed west for a multi-stop tour of Northern California with my wife from Nov 12-23. It’s going to be part business/part pleasure, but every time I’ve gone in recent years theres been no shortage of fun. Though I wont be attending RubyConf, I’ll be in San Francisco during and around it Nov 19-23.

First, If any dev shops/teams/meetup groups want to hear me talk/present about Sammy.js or any other projects I’m involved in I’d be happy to come by and drop some knowledge.

Second, I would greatly appreciate anybody willing to let me office-crash and hang out with them in their workplaces.

Finally, I would love to meet up with fellow Rubyists, Javascripters and foodies to do any one (or many) of the following things:

• eat delicious food
• write fun code
• talk about the future of the web
• drink and sing karaoke

If you’re interested, just hit me up on twitter or email me at aaron at this domain.

The Hierarchy of the Ruby Community

As a Rubyist, I use the Ruby language almost every day. I know most of the stdlib and its methods without thinking. There are certain things I love about it and certain things I hate. Have I ever thought about submitting a patch to the Ruby language? No. There are a couple reasons for this: I don’t really know C; Ruby’s openness lets me change the stdlib without changing the language itself. Something I hadn’t really thought about before, though, is that I’m not a language implementer. In fact, this applies to basically every Rubyist outside of Japan. Rubyists in the US and the rest of the world fit into different parts of the Ruby Hierarchy. Japan, and Ruby Kaigi, however, is the home of language implementers. There’s something completely and utterly different about language vs framework vs plugin vs app. The discussions on a language level are on a much higher level. As Matz revealed in his keynote, there are a bunch of language feature branches that he’s been just toying with, some that have been sitting there for months. Most of them might never be part of Ruby. Thinking about the implications of a new feature, or a change in Ruby’s API, made me realize just how different the thought processes are within the different levels of the community.

When I thought about this more I realized that there a some pretty clear delineations between different groups within the community. It started to look something like this:

The size of the section represents the relative pct of people involved. Each section feeds off each other, but the general flow of information and code is downwards.

I’m sure people have theorized about this before. Yehuda Katz has talked similarly about different groups of Rails users, App Developers, Plugin Developers, and something in between. Personally, I’d consider myself as a plugin and app developer, which is nothing to be ashamed of, its just interesting to actually think about the fact that even above rails core, there’s the interpreter implementers and above them an even smaller group of the ruby core. I’m not really complaining about this at all, its just an interesting way to look at the community that I hadn’t before.

Being a fly on the wall to Yehuda talk to Matz about issues the Rails team is having refactoring, I was witness to an unfortunately rare moment. Knowledge traveling up the chain. This certainly happens to an extent already, but at the language level, for whatever reasons (language barrier, physical distance) the Japanese side of the Ruby community is doing some awesome things that we in the US don’t hear about and vice-versa. I’m hoping more people can make the trip out to the Kaigi and maybe more Japanese Rubyists could come to some of the conferences in the states or abroad.

Ruby for Fun Profit fun

Another theme that I heard again and again is that before Rails, Ruby was a language for hobbyists. Rails changed it, and the community into something else, driven by different needs and goals. I came in with the Rails crew so I cant speak to what Ruby was really like before, but I sensed a sort of dismay about this with some of the Japanese Rubyists. To a lot of them, Ruby may never be their full time jobs. While hacking away at COBOL during the day, Ruby is a wonderful escape. It seems trying to shove Ruby in to the enterprise any way you can, has resulted in a loss of the initial ingenious spark, to do this because its fun. I love that Ruby and Rails are primarily my day job, however, I think in order to stay motivated and continue to like what I do, its important to do some things just for the fun of it. Personally, I forget this a lot: the best way to get re-inspired is often to build something completely useless. Speed, security, unit-tests, and other features we consider important in production code are often the things that bog us down from creating inspired works of code. I think the community as a whole could benefit from a little more fucking around.

Matz told a story in his keynote about how is father gave him a very large sharp knife to bring to school to sharpen his pencils. Sure it was dangerous, but he quickly learned how to use it and it gave him a great advantage over other students. He likened this to not wanting to have to dumb down Ruby so people couldn’t hurt themselves. In the end its better to have a sharp knife and learn how to use it. I would go further and say its important to push the limits of your own comfort with the tool in order to better learn how to use it. As Rubyists of all levels of experience, its important to challenge ourselves and the community for the sake of the challenge and fun, without always worrying about ‘is this secure?’ or ‘hows the test coverage?’.

In general the trip was a great success, I met a lot of people, got to hang out with some good friends and travel around a beautiful country I had never seen before (pictures here). I strongly urge people to make the trip out for Ruby Kaigi ‘10!

• Sinatra-Sammy: Inspired half by potential usefulness and half by a dare from binary42 at the first meeting of NYC.js, sinatra-sammy is a sinatra module/plugin that includes sammy.js makes multi-page apps appear to be single page (with deep-linking etc) while maintaining the SEO and other benefits of a multi-paged, normal app. Make sense? No? Yeah, OK. I’m working on putting up a good example, for now you can clone the repo and checkout the included test app.
• Speaking of NYC.js, I was honored to be the first speaker and did a little presentation about Sammy. Slides are viewable here
• Vegas + Gembox are now windows friendly. It took a bunch of hacking, specifically around the daemon-ization (Kernel.fork is not natively implemented on win32) but windows users can now use Gembox just like their Unix based brethren. Windows users can now also, and should, make use of Vegas for creating Rack based executables.
• I’m giving an updated version of the talk I gave at GoGaRuCo “Sinatra: The Framework Within” at Ruby Kaigi. I’ve been hacking on a secret and useful project and hopefully I can wrap it up on the plane and present it at the conference.
• I got a new camera. I’ll be posting a lot of drool worthy food photography on flickr.

For anybody attending RubyKaigi, please come find me and lets hack/talk/eat ramen.

I haven’t even returned to NY yet – I’m writing this in Pivotal Labs SF - who were nice enough to let me steal a desk and some WIFI for an afternoon.

GoGaRuCo was amazing. Another awesome conference. Thanks to Josh Susser, Leah Silber, and the other organizers and volunteers for making a fantastic weekend of nerding out. I’m going to be posting my slides soon, and there should be a full video recording of it within the next couple of weeks. You can see a quick rundown (via live-blogging of my talk) at the Pivotal site.

(Some of) The highlights of the weekend:

• Getting a real explanation of CloudKit from Jon Crosby. Once I understood what it was – a fully compliant REST interface that abuses HTTP to create a standardized ‘appliance’ that sits on type of Rack. Think: Rack CouchDB.
• Talking to Yehuda Katz about why Javascript/jQuery is awesome and why the next version of rubygems will solve all my problems.
• Seeing Jaqui Maher talk about solving REAL problems with ruby/rails.
• Greg Borenstein blowing my mind with the knowledge that I could use Ruby to hack an Arduino.

Most importantly: I met some very cool, extremely friendly, and super-fun people in this beautiful city. I can’t wait to come back.

Update: I posted my slides from the talk at scribd

If people are interested, I’ve posted the slides online at scribd. I’ll post an update when the video is available, too.

Also here are all the libraries I mentioned in the talk.

http://code.quirkey.com/qadmin
http://code.quirkey.com/qcontent
http://github.com/nakajima/acts_as_fu

The first day of the conference was excellent. It’s been probably the best organized and best attended conferences I’ve been, too. Everyone seems to be in a great mood, and people are actually listening to the talks instead of tweeting about them. Like I said – unreal.

Excited for my talk tomorrow. I go on early. I’m going to attempt to do some live coding, so lets see how that goes. For those not there tomorrow, they are taping it, so hopefully it will be up soon for everyone to see. Also, I’ll post slides/links tomorrow night.

I’ve been here a day+ and I have yet to have a whiskey. I dont know how that happens, but I know I’m looking forward to having a couple more then one after the conference is over. Note: I have had copious amounts of bacon, so that makes it a little less of a crime.

I got to the site was about to put in my credit card info, but a quick check to my bank account made me think twice about making the purchase. The very same day I had spent more money then I haver had on clothes buying myself my first suit (I’m the programmer not the biz guy) for a wedding I’m attending on Sunday. So that quick check made me close my laptop and think about it for a sec. And for that I’m an idiot. I woke up the next morning, to the other announcement and all was moot.

Oh well . . . see you at RubyConf 0 7!

This past weekend, Kat and I traveled to Philadelphia to visit two of our best friends, Tal Ben-Yaacov and Asuka Goto, both extremely talented sculptors. Tal has his first real post-college show of his sculpture at in West Philadelphia at The Saturn Club, and we were happily obligated to be there to help set up and attend the opening.

He is showing five large sculptures in total, three completed in the last couple of months. Tal’s work is a mix of found objects, mainly metal car parts and organic plaster and wooden shapes. The metal pieces are brightly painted while the plaster often remains its natural pale white color.

I am of course partial, but I love Tal’s work. The lines are so clean, yet even the most clearly engineered metal objects are given the quality of life within the context of his complete pieces. The bright colors of his metal work, at first estrange the objects from any natural or organic interpretation, but when combined with the seemingly fluid plaster objects are given life. They would walk – they would hum – if you gave them the right push.

In his plaster works especially there is a dialogue about process and creation. The works are initially cast in plastic bags or with wooden forms. Then after being formed with drills and chisels, are given up to nature, being organically disintegrated by water (a stream in fairmont park). The end effect is an evocation of the original shape, including the taught-ness of the form, however, eroded, recreated, and reformed in a way that could only be the work of the chaotic and random nature of a water.

In this way, Tal’s work speaks of its own genesis. It’s about the reformation, the refactoring, of disparate energies and objects.

I’m trying to help him put together a website, but in the meantime you can see more pictures of his show at my flickr stream. If you’re interested in purchasing or commissioning work from him, or just finding out more info – you can email him at tbenyaacov at gmail.

They often use the term culture shock to describe the feeling of stepping off the airplane into a foreign place. Hong Kong didn’t shock me as much as it overwhelmed me like a double decker bus speeding to a stop right at your feet (think: the knight bus). Hong Kong sleeps – but when it wakes up it takes a healthy dose of amphetamines and a strong cup of tea. The constant flow of the city and the feeling your always being pushed somewhere is often disorienting (and this is coming from a New Yorker). At the same time the flow seems perfectly and organically organized, like a flock of migrating birds – everyone knows the turns, no one bumps into each other. My New York “Rules of Walking” didn’t apply. You must stop at a don’t walk sign (even if there are no cars). You cant cross in the middle of a block (on main streets they have fences to stop you). This might have been what threw me off the most. I always felt like I was not following an unwritten set of pedestrian laws.

My family got to see just about every thing we needed to see (or at least Fodor’s told us to see). I love sight-seeing, but I love sight-_eating_ more. Luckily, we did that, too. Of the culinary highlights, my favorite was probably Whole Fried Grouper [Fish] in Sweet and Sour sauce at the Red Pepper, a Szechwan place in Causeway Bay. Also, eating Dim Sum in a restaurant that was analogous to a New York Diner, with lots of mirrors and awesome Barbecue Pork buns.

Its probably going to be a while until I go back to the Far East. Next time – I’m flying first class.

The first thing you notice about Hong Kong is the signs. They’re everywhere and they hang down from the buildings like tree trunks. In the neighborhood we’re staying in, Sham Shui Po, they’re almost all in only chinese. When you get further into the city you see more english (and engrish). I could take a million pictures of all the signs and the awesome neon – but it wouldn’t do the density justice.
Thats what really stands out about every aspect of Hong Kong – density. The amounts of people; The narrowness of the buildings; the general layout. Dense.

The second thing I noticed was the scaffolding. What’s the big deal about scaffolding?, you ask. Easy – Its all bamboo. Even for this large inner city building, not a steal bar or PVC pipe in sight. All bamboo. And not only that but its everywhere. Hanging out over buildings, supporting heavy loads, incredible.

The next was the sheer verticality of the city. My brother described it really well. Imagine taking the island of Manhattan in between your hands and pushing towards the center. The buildings get taller and closer together. Central Park becomes a large mountain. And everything become tightly packed. That’s what Hong Kong Island is like. Everything is up.

You notice this especially when going from Central to the mid-levels. Though you can do this by bus – the easiest way is The Escalator. There is a series of many escalators going up one level at a time up the gradient of the hill that stands behind central Hong Kong. It’s quite surreal to think that for a large number of people a commute is the ride up and down a series of escalators. They run down for four hours in the morning (rush hour), and back up the rest of the day.

This all leads back to the fact that HK is a new city. Unlike NYC or Paris which have been big cities for a long time, Hong Kong became a metropolis much later. This allowed them to incorporate all these modern and really efficient municipal services, like the escalators and the very very modern and well designed subway (The MTR).

In this way HK is a paradox, though. It at once super modern and traditional. Its a constant clash between these two that make it so interesting.

I have much more to write – but I’m just still recovering from all the walking. I’ll keep posting pictures though. And I’ll write more very soon. I promise.

Chicago – 12:03 PM EST

We’re flying United on our big trip. First, La Guardia to Chicago O’Hare and then CHI to Hong Kong. I’m in O’Hare now at a Food Court – next to the only open outlet I could find in the whole concourse. Lame. Why is that? Where in the 21st Century People, come on! I assumed, incorrectly that there was going to be some sort of wifi here and also that Id at least be able to plug in my computer. Wrong.

I’m preparing myself for departure and stuffing myself into my 4 cubic feet of space on the plane. Didn’t they used to offer you meals? Weren’t the flight attendants nice and courteous at some point? Have times changed or have I just grown up to realize things I didn’t when I was younger. Either way this is not going to be too fun. But Ill do my best not to yak.

Excuse my bitterness, I’m tired and hungry – Im gonna go eat a $12 sandwhich.

Somewhere Over the Canadian Tundra – 6:40 PM EST

We’ve been on the plane for about 4 hrs now. Not even a third of the flight. It hasn’t been so bad. Besides the lady behind me giving me the evil eye every time i stand up to pee. Its been pretty easy. This is the first time I’ve pulled my computer out and I think Im going to spend my precious battery life doing some coding instead of blogging.

I just watched Walk the Line. Johnny Cash is great and the acting was good, but honestly it kinda sucked. After seeing Ray which was only slightly better, this just seemed a lot less interesting. I loved the music but still – kinda lame.

Also I was convinced that we were going to have personal screens – but not back here in steerage.

Skirting the North Pole – 8:52 PM EST

Wow, thats cool. (No pun intended [_isn’t it kind of dumb when people say that to point out the pun they just made?_])

Over the Chinese/Mongolian Border – 1:43 AM EST

We flew over some of the most amazing snow tundra I have ever seen – who am I kidding I’ve never seen snow tundra before. I got a bunch of great pictures out of the window. Think Hoth.

Im getting to the point of real restlessness. While the radio that they’re pumping through the different channels has variety and is actually entertaining its constantly skipping and I cant listen to it for more than fiver minutes at a time before the skipping drives me crazy.

With intermittent use somehow the battery on my powerbook has lasted me this long. Hooray. Outside the window is the Mongolian desert at midday. Its also quite breathtaking drifts of snow in these amazingly patterned nooks and crannies (_i must be hungry_)

We’re Here – 9:10 AM EST

The last couple hours were pretty hellish. My laptop battery died and then I just had nothing to do. Then when the last meal came, my mom started going a bit cooky. I got really ancy and just wanted to get off.

When we finally got off we waited silently at the baggage claim as 1,2,3 bags came off the conveyor. But where was my bag? No where to be found. Fucking great. So my parents got there three bags my one tiny duffel with all my clothes is still in Chicago. Thank you United Airlines.

I fell asleep in the cab to our apartment and missed the great view of our entrance to Hong Kong. We got the the apartment, which is Sham-Shui-Po, which my brother claims is one of the dirtiest neighborhoods in Kowloon (The peninsula part of HK). The apartment is kind of like an efficiency – but its not so bad – minus the fact that my bed is a little tiny. I’ll deal.

I just need to get to sleep. Tomorrow – Explorations! (and Peking Duck!)

I had wanted to buy Kat a pro account, but also wanted to get one for myself.

Solution: COMBINE

It makes the most sense since we do most everything together and also neither of us could use up 2 gigs of space in a month alone.
To wrap things up (because Im a little delusional now and Im afraid Im going to ramble incoherently) here is a link to our spanking new pro flickr account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/katandaq/

And for those savvy (and cool) enough here is a quick link to the RSS

So on this account I hope to first document my trip and soon after our move to Brooklyn.

This is going to be fun. We’ll see if I still think that when I land in Hong Kong after 24 hours of flying.

In less then 24 hours I’ll be on my way to Hong Kong. This is the first time I’ve been east of Israel, or west of California (depending on which way you look at it. Its probably also my last family trip. My parents are taking me with them to visit my younger bro, Dov, who’s spending a semester abroad in the SAR. My brother seems to be having a great time, an I really cant wait to join him.

Besides the obvious fun factor, this is going to be a big challenge for me for a number of reasons.

1. I’m in startup mode and I’m used to working 10 – 18 hours a day. Seriously. Its going to be great to get a way and refresh my energy – but I have a feeling the urge and push to work will overtake me on a daily basis.
2. Its going to be really hard to spend that much time with my family. I love my mother, father, and brother very much but I’m very much an adult now. We get along great – for an amount of time. The biggest problem is that all the men are too similar. We’re all stubborn and all get cranky when we’re hungry/tired. This is going to be interesting.
3. I’m very much accustomed to living and doing everything with Kat. As tough as it might be to be away from her for a weekend – I don’t even want to think about almost two weeks.

As I was typing this I noticed (in a quick self-refelctive way) that all of these issues stem from me being really comfortable in my life right now – or at least really used to the freedoms and habits that I’ve become accustomed.

So maybe this becomes a mission – to try to spend my time in Hong Kong and explore beyond the boundaries of my personal norms. That sounds kind of like the motivational tapes my mom listens to. It also sounds a tad bit cheesy but I think that’s OK.

Anyway, the real reason I wanted to write this was to let my (5) readers know that this blog is bound to only get more interesting over the 12 days. I’ll actually have something interesting to write about!

(rejoice)