I am thrilled to announce that I am now a GitHubber.

A quick tidbit on how to use net-ssh-gateway in your Ruby scripts to tunnel to a remote server.

I have used HAML on several client projects, and every time it drives me nuts. While there are certainly some things that are nice about it, overall it is a net loss.

If you want to fund the next great software company, then take an idea—any idea because it doesn’t really matter—and partner with someone that can execute.

I recently rolled out SSL support on Gaug.es. Gaug.es is a fairly simple Sinatra application. Most of the app requires authentication, but there are a few public URLs that are unauthenticated. Here’s how I implemented it.

Along with the release of Speaker Deck, we released Qu, a Ruby library for queuing and processing background jobs. Why another queuing library? I briefly explain why I wrote Qu in the README, so read that first. But I wanted to give a little more of the backstory.

My setup for overcoming bundle exec fatigue.

Using floats between 0 and 1 to specify manual sort order in a key-value data store.

Use toystore and adapter-git to work with the hottest new NoSQL database.

We used Redis to queue up notifications to send to Pusher and an EventMachine process to send them in near real-time on Gaug.es.

My struggle with rhythm distracts me from pursing the things that I can master.

I invite anyone in the greater West Michigan area to meet up for the Rails 3.1 hackfest on July 23.

A simple implementation of live search in knockout.js.

Winning friends and influencing people is, most of all, about understanding their wants, needs and desires and helping achieve them.

We all like to hear affirmation. When someone notices our hard work and shows appreciation for it, we become even more motivated.

It doesn’t solve the problem and only makes the people you’re criticizing have to justify themselves.

I finally read the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People over vacation a few weeks ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Only add validation errors on fields that you give your user the opportunity to correct.

Good creative works have a way of convincing me that they are inevitable.

A lot of people are doing amazing things and making insane amounts of money from bad software.

Add a note to a commit without changing the commit SHA.

Run JSLint with your Jasmine suite.

ActiveSupport::Concern is simple but full of trickery. Here’s a look at how it works.

Slides from my Introduction to HTML5 presentation.

A pattern for implementing ETags