John Topley’s Weblog

At the end of March I started to learn the Vim text editor and four months into my journey I thought it would be a useful experience for me to document the commands I have committed to memory so far. Please note that this isn’t particularly intended as an introduction to Vim or a tutorial, but if that’s what you’re looking for then there are many fine ones out there as well as some good screencasts. I’m writing this so that I have a record of what I know at this point.

I’ve just released my first ever RubyGem. It’s a simple gem named Manifesto that dynamically generates an HTML 5 cache manifest for offline application caching. I got the idea whilst developing my Truth Tables Sinatra micro web application. It returns a list of files within the specified directory and sub-directories.

One of the aspects of the world of software development that I find interesting is that as a group we seem to be constantly searching for the perfect metaphor or analogy to explain to non-software developers what it is we actually do. Some have said that writing software is like building a house, but others disagree and claim that it’s a more organic process akin to something like gardening.

As I mentioned previously, I’ve been having a lot of fun lately writing micro web applications using the Sinatra framework. I’ve found myself thinking of a simple idea for an application, developing it fairly quickly using Sinatra and some technologies or techniques that are new to me and then getting it out there running for free on Heroku. I’ve developed two other applications this way since blogging about my bespoke URL shortener jtblog.me: UUID Waster and Truth Tables.

On Sunday I returned from two days in Edinburgh for the inaugural Scottish Ruby Conference. The event has broadened its focus and rebranded from its previous Rails remit when it was Scotland on Rails. The venue this year was the splendid Royal College of Physicians, an imposing building with an ornate interior.

The Sitemap protocol was introduced by Google in 2005, but is now supported by all of the major search engines. Unrelated to a traditional website sitemap navigation page, it defines an XML schema for listing the URLs within a site, including metadata such as when a URL as last updated, therefore allowing search engines to crawl the site more intelligently.

I've been following the Web’s reaction to last week’s Apple iPad unveiling with great interest. It’s clear that this was no iPhone announcement, meeting with near universal acclaim. From watching the video of the event the applause seemed subdued in parts and any talk of game-changing was not unanimous.

With 2009 receeding to a distant dot in the rear-view mirror of life, I wanted to take a moment to record my favourite tweets of the past year. I think it’s particularly important to preserve them for posterity, as I read somewhere that Twitter don’t store tweets indefinitely.