Watching the UK freak out over the prospect of a hung Parliament and a (gasp) minority government, while amusing I have to admit I’m never going to be sad to see the end of simple two party political systems. While proportional representation failed in Canada, I think it’s a good idea to take a queue from John Cleese’s beautifully sarcastic short on PR.
While I’m not sure anything can save the UK after living there, this would be a good start.
I’m posting this because someone I did a Hack night with hadn’t yet checked out the awesome rvm in order to muck around with Rails 3. If you’re a Rail or Rubyista you need to install it and start messing around with 1.9.x and the wonders that are Rails 3. Here’s how.
Rails is now at beta 3 which means a release candidate is right around the corner. While fundamentally more complex under the hood than 2.x (though the devs claim it’s easier to understand now), 3 provides some fundamental advantages (and some key changes) you probably need to get up to speed with if you don’t want to be left behind.
Another absolutely fantastic infographic via Information is Beautiful from CXO magazine on both how strong your password is and a nice extra layer of sociological categorization.
Mind you, I don’t think the top one is strong enough IMHO. Mine’s better… ;-)
Fantastic infographic from Information is Beautiful cutting through all the crap to give a clear picture of what each political party is forwarding in order to cut Britain’s whopping £167B deficit if they get into power. Love it for its clarity and conciseness.
I need this sort of graphic for the Australian election as well.
You kinda have to love this sort of creative interactivity. Lurv.
Very music of the spheres-esque.
OMG, it is like a big audio hug.
Love the story behind it as well as how he managed to mix all the user submitted tracks. Very cool.
Long live the Sports Racers!
I have to admit to being in awe of people who can both code and whip up a kick ass looking design. Particularly one that looks good and has good user experience. While I can code backends, I’d say my design skills are pretty paltry, particularly when it comes to doing things like lightbox overlays, fades, zoom in overlays and other jQuery goodness. But I’m not proud about it. It’s something I’m kinda embarrassed about (and have a stack of reading material to deal with - that I’ll get through one day).
One of the things I really love about the ruby community is its inherent sense of fun. Beside the fact there are a lot of really smart, talented and very creative devs in it and at the RailsCamps (at least here in Aus), and some of the best stuff is just the things they whip up in their more whimsical moments.
One of these has to be rubywarrior (thanks to <Ritchie K. for introducing me to this one at Railcamp 7 in Canberra). Written by Railscasts stalwart Ryan Bates it’s there to teach you Ruby. And it rocks.
Well, since I don’t really ever plan to retire like a normal person, this may not be applicable, but apparently the [million dollars to retire goal] (https://www.thestreet.com/retirement/1-million-doesnt-cut-it-for-retirement-10701792 ) is no longer applicable according to most financial analysts. People in my age bracket should be looking to double retirement savings to $2M (Gen X::27-42). 22% of advisors suggested $3M.
Apparently, the blame lies with these online retirement calculators that often assume you’ll need 70%-80% of your work life income.
Watch this. It’s worth it. Listen to the Sagan.
Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; hopeful child; inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.