Author Archives: Kevin
Dear [Under-Capitalized Business-Guy who wants me to work on your site for 'equity'],
[Note: This was cut/pasted from an email response I sent an individual I had a meeting with. I did not enter into a business relationship with this person. I posted this here since it seemed to contain general advice that … Continue reading
Securing Cloud-Based Ruby on Rails Applications: Why I like Engine Yard.
A customer of mine referred me to an article on Cloud Deployment on Amazon Web Services’ EC2 platform that discussed common security holes users are leaving in their instances. The article, Amazon’s Cloud is Full of Holes, warned that poor … Continue reading
JQuery-UI verus SimpleForm for Rails Forms processing
Recently, I had a conversation with a colleague about using JQuery UI to layout form processing for a Ruby on Rails application. I cautioned them against it. In general, I’ve found more success using the simple_form library for generating form … Continue reading
How To Get Started with Ruby on Rails — Where should you start?
A friend of mine is beginning an effort to learn Ruby on Rails. He asked me where to start and I sent him a few links that I felt covered some of the key components of Rails that were critical … Continue reading
Interview with Eric S. Raymond – “Who Owns Unix?”
[This is a reprint of an interview I did with Eric Raymond a number of years ago that originally appeared in LinuxWorld Magazine (LWM, the initials you see in the article). I was Editor-in-Chief of the magazine at the time. … Continue reading
Interview with David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), Creator of Ruby on Rails.
[This article originally appeared as the cover story Linux Journal Issue #147, published in July of 2006 -- back when I was still just learning Ruby on Rails. -- Kevin Bedell] Kevin: For our readers who are unfamiliar with Ruby … Continue reading
Open Source Developers Are Rock Stars!
When I was a kid, all I wanted to be was a rock star. I wanted to play guitar, get up on stage, and have everyone scream while I cranked out some hard rockin’ tune. I wanted to see lighters … Continue reading
BarCamp Boston 6, April 9-10, 2011 Cambridge, MA
Make sure you don’t miss one of the best tech events of the year in the Boston Area: Barcamp Boston 6, April 9-10 in Cambridge, MA. From the site: “BarCamp Boston is Boston’s geek unconference, organized on the fly by … Continue reading
Example code for storing environment-specific configuration variables in rails
Here’s some example code I’ve used for storing configuration variables using Ruby on Rails. This code allows for defaults as well, so you only have to specify variables per environment if they override the default value. This first file should … Continue reading