Kindle Thoughts
I received my new Amazon Kindle 3 (3G version) last week. This is the first Kindle to be released in the UK. I'd never used an e-reader before but I've been finding e-books more convenient, especially for technical books. I like being able to have my book instantly, it being searchable, and not having to make space on my bookshelf for a huge tome of knowledge that would be outdated in a year. What I didn't like was having to sit in front of my computer and read from a backlit screen. I spend enough time sat here already.
I'd looked at ordering a Kindle from the USA a year before but I found the price a bit steep for a device that I wasn't sure I would like, and would most likely have a few annoyances such as the incompatible power supply and no UK shop. Then last month I went on to Amazon and found that the new version would be native to the UK, and set at a price that I was more than happy to pay. I've had my Kindle for just under a week and so far am really happy with it.
Know your computer history - part 2
After writing my first list of computer documentaries I started remembering other great documentaries that I've watched and thought I should list them too. As it's been a while since I've watched these I'll not be able to give as much detail on them but I remember them being worth the watch.
Using expire_fragment with rake and as a model only observer
One of the websites I'm working at the moment uses a lot of caching. I'd gotten the caching working and made a basic sweeper that worked via the controllers. Last night I decided to finish the sweeper properly. I had two things I wanted to do
- Make the sweeper an active record observer instead of working from the controllers
- Clear the cache using the sweeper every 24 hours
Simple! An easy task. Surely hundreds, nay, thousands must have done something similar before me. An hours work at most...
I didn't get to bed until 4am :-(
Know your computer history
A few years back I had an insatiable appetite for computer related documentaries. I found them immensely useful in getting a better understanding of the computer industry. The difficult part was finding them. I decided it would be good idea to list some of them to help out anyone in the same situation, so here goes...
Lisa's Wedding
The episode included lots of ideas about how the future would turn out. I always loved when TV and movies did this. It was fun to think ahead and try and turn out what cool devices we'd have in the future. It's also fun to look back and see how accurate those predictions turned out to be, even if most were made in jest. Lets have have a look at a few of these "future" inventions.
WorldPay iadmin gem
WorldPay has a nice (but rather limited) remote administration api. For some reason they like to keep it hidden away and you'll need to contact them to activate it. It will allow to perform some management tasks on your FuturePay agreements (cancellations, modify price, set dates). I created a class for my own use and packaged it into a gem. Check out the Rdocs for installation and usage instructions.