http://myconfplan.com/conferences/RailsConf2007/users/drnic

This is a new site called MyConfPlan, built using Hobo, on Rails. Hobo is awesome, but more on that another day.

MyConfPlan came about from the following thought sequence:

1. Stupid Railsconf schedule is too hard to read
2. Needs to be a table, yeah I should do that [Meanwhile, elsewhere on the InterWeb, another man tackles this problem too]
3. Oooh, it would be cool to click on the sessions and select them
4. And then I could show them off [as above]
5. And other people could do that too
6. And I’ll make MILLIONS OF DOLLARS!!!!

Going to RailsConf Europe? JavaOne? the local FooBarCamp or Unconference? You could use MyConfPlan to setup the schedules. If you’re organising an Unconf, soon you’ll be able to tick a box and all attendees can add/edit sessions. Neat indeed!

Going to RailsConf?

Use the comments below if you want to discuss Railsconf schedule or future MyConfPlan features. Or to adorn me with non-specific praise.

Not Going to RailsConf?

Be a devil – pretend to go to the conference. Click some buttons, select some sessions. You can cancel your attendance later.

It was brilliant to meet up with a dozen or so other Rails developers living in and around Amsterdam yesterday for coffee. Nearly everyone was using Rails professionally that I chatted with. Of those, most worked for small firms or themselves. Let’s skip straight past my ignorance of statistical methodology if we shall, and take away from this gathering, that Rails Rules in de Netherlands!

For anyone who nows comes to me as the source of all knowledge about Rails in the Netherlands, please be guided to the following list of local gurus in attendance:

• fngtps.com – Thijs and Manfred – the orchestrators of the gathering
• hollandonrails.nl (Dutch) – Chris, Chiel, and Stephan; English post here on the catchup
• rubyenrails.nl (Dutch) – Michiel, Remco, and Danny
• pinupgeek.com – Rodney
• juice10.com – Justin
• railsguru.com – Andy
• drnicwilliams.com – Dr Nic (moi)

A grand occasion. Hope there is another before I leave in 2 mths.

Ok, disclaimer. As of writing there aren’t exactly 100+ cheatsheets available on errtheblog’s wonderful new cheatsheet tool, but its only a matter of time til my title is correct. Then I will rewrite this introduction paragraph and I will be the earliest dating author to declare how large and wonderful cheat is.

“What is cheat?” All your cheatsheets on the command line – where you are already working.

Check this out:

>cheat sprintf
sprintf:
  %s => string
  %d => number
  %f => float

>cheat strftime
strftime:

  %a - The abbreviated weekday name (``Sun'')
  %A - The  full  weekday  name (``Sunday'')
  %b - The abbreviated month name (``Jan'')
  %B - The  full  month  name (``January'')
  %c - The preferred local date and time representation
  %d - Day of the month (01..31)
  %H - Hour of the day, 24-hour clock (00..23)
  %I - Hour of the day, 12-hour clock (01..12)
  %j - Day of the year (001..366)
  %m - Month of the year (01..12)
  %M - Minute of the hour (00..59)
  %p - Meridian indicator (``AM''  or  ``PM'')
  %S - Second of the minute (00..60)
  %U - Week  number  of the current year,
          starting with the first Sunday as the first
          day of the first week (00..53)
  %W - Week  number  of the current year,
          starting with the first Monday as the first
          day of the first week (00..53)
  %w - Day of the week (Sunday is 0, 0..6)
  %x - Preferred representation for the date alone, no time
  %X - Preferred representation for the time alone, no date
  %y - Year without a century (00..99)
  %Y - Year with century
  %Z - Time zone name
  %% - Literal ``%'' character

   t = Time.now
   t.strftime("Printed on %m/%d/%Y")   #=> "Printed on 04/09/2003"
   t.strftime("at %I:%M%p")            #=> "at 08:56AM"

All your cheatsheets are now available via the console.

“All of them”? Yes, well no, but yes. The cheatsheets are written up on a public wiki, and thecheat command retrieves the requested text, caches it locally, and fills your ASCII virtual world with the cheatsheet. So, want to add another cheatsheet? Create a new wiki page, insert cheatsheet, save, done.

“But what cheatsheets are available? How do I know what I can get my dirty, cheating hands on?”

Watch, young reader, and gasp with amazement:

>cheat sheets
All Cheat Sheets:
  assertions
  bash
  cheat
  environments
  iomodes
  migrations
  sprintf
  sti
  strftime
  validations

To my thinking, cheat is a next-generation man tool. Instead of bundling manual pages with your application/gem/library, you could now host a set of live manual pages. Perhaps errtheblog or RubyForge could provide a separate wiki + command line for gem manual pages (hint: gemman or mangem)?

Lord, I love thy software industry.

Yehuda is the creator of autoDB – the wonderful admin console for Rails – and Visual jQuery – a dazzling set of documentation for the jQuery javascript library. I think many Prototype/Scriptaculous/Rails users would like to see their documentation be as attractive and complete as the Visual jQuery docco. (Which is generated from the jQuery libraries and marked up via XLS translation).

Fortunately, he’s started a blog.

We’ve had lots of discussions together about many topics over recent times, and anyone who places me at the top of their blogroll, must be a good bloke.