Josh Sierres is giving a workshop on Ruby on Rails so I'm going to take notes more for my own benefit than for yours.

So, what's the big deal about Rails?
Most important point is that it gets out of your way. Lots of people refer to it as a boring framework because the people who start using it in real business apps find it gives them more time to focus on business logic and less time on implementation details.

Productivity. Gains are massive. Not necessary to put a number on it because it's not measurable.

Happiness. Productivity makes people happy, and happy people are productive. Very important point. Rails programmers have a little smirk on their face because things start working better.

Creativity. Lots of people from design and usability are now using rails as their gateway into implementing tings, getting things prototyped without depending on a programmers. Designers can do this, without knowing Ruby at all, and can build an entire app in a few weeks, and do the design themselves.

Lots of plug-ins, lots of people contributing, nice atmosphere in the community, and a lack of tension.

'Bad things', that stop people using it. Rails is not a silver bullet. Anyone who says one tools solves all problems is a salesman.

Ruby is a slow language. So people say 'does it scale?'. Yes. Share-nothing always scales, i.e. the type of architecture where you have no shared resources between instances of the application (see Cal's book about scaling Flickr). These always scale. But you have to have the right people to build them. So pointless to talk about scaling really.

Some e.g.s: 37 Signals, MOG, Robot Co-Op.

Few experts, but you only need one.

Rails is not ready for The Enterprise. It's missing internationalisation, composite foreign keys in the database natively, etc. But Ruby's a very powerful language and people can write plug-ins and add behaviour without getting in the way of the user, so there are plugins for both these and other issues.

But is The Enterprise ready for Rails? It comes with its own philosophy...

But.... all this doesn't matter. Rails is good for most web apps - most people most of the time will get what they need to get done quicker with Rails.

Risk. Use risk inherent in switching to a new technology, Rails, to make yourself more valuable. Can easily demonstrate new projects in Rails.

Opposite of risk is not safety, it's stagnation.

Rails is:
- a tool for getting stuff done faster
- maturing very quickly, more and more programmers using it
- sneaking its way into all types of businesses
- supportive of AJAX, Agile development, and other buzzwords

Rails has an edge because
- AJAX functionality is in Rails in a way that puts it into Ruby itself
- uses one language for everything
- gives you the ability to create natural language mini-framework on Ruby

And it creates happy programmers.

Rails does not stop you needing to understand HTML or SQL, but it reduces your dependance on repetition. So gives you tools to make your HTML cleaner, or writing SQL for basic queries.

It's not a high level set of components like user authentication or shopping carts. Push back against this type of components, because there are so many ways of implementing business logic, like log-in or shopping carts, that it is bad to force one way on people by creating these sorts of components.

It's not magic, but it feels like it for a while.

Power of Rails comes from the Ruby language.

More about rails...
It's an Models, Views and Controllers framework. The Model is how is should work, the View creates the thing you look at and the Controller joins those two together.

Can override conventions, but best not to otherwise you'll not get the productivity gains. Can automatically create views and controllers.

It lets you test everything inside your Rails app, with very few exceptions. Building these tests gives you a sense of security and a way to mitigate the risk in your app to prove that it works without troublesome too and fro with browser.

A few ways to get started. Can build out your database first, then build the app around it, or you can generate database files and create a 'migration' which controls the changes you make to the database.

(Had to break off here and go to a session I'd promised to be in.)

Last weekend I went to Brussels to take part in EuroFOO, a two day event held by O'Reilly to get together a diverse set of people so that cool and constructive conversations can happen. I have been publishing most of my notes over on Strange Attractor, but somehow it would seem wrong to publish these session notes there instead of here.

Because this session, run by Tor Nørretranders, was about chocolate. Here are my very rough notes taken during the session.


Chocolate is one of the few examples of a food whose full potential was first revealed in industrial manufacturing. Industrial age has resulted in a decline in food quality for most foodstuffs, except chocolate which was improved by better technology.

agriculture + industry = high glycemic index

Means converts to blood sugar very quickly. Problem is that it provokes hormone reactions, insulin, which removes blood sugar, so we eat and get hungry from eating. We now, on the whole, eat a lot of high GI food.

hi GI = metabolic syndrome

People becomes overweight, diabetes, high blood pressure, lots of problems particularly in the US are related to high GI food.

But chocolate is good for your health... even though chocolate is 'candy'.

Two studies published. Italians fed chocolate to people in labs and measured their insulin leavels. Dark chocolate makes your blood pressure go down and stabilises insulin levels. White chocolate does not.

Second study in Holland, free-living people (i.e. not in lab), one group didn't eat chocolate, one was normal, and the other had a high chocolate intake. High choc intake had half the mortality of the non-chocolate group.

The reason is that the chocolate bean is high in anti-oxidants, which are a self-defence mechanism for plants. 8% of cocoa powder is anti-oxidant. Good for blood vessels.

But bad for dogs and horses.

Choclate history (note: dates may be incorrect as I was hurriedly writing them down and I'm not good with numbers)

1000 - Mayans, use chocolate beans, to eat and as currency (cf gold chocolate coins!)

1528 - Introduced to Europe by Colombus, as a drink.

1815 - Changed it from a drink into a solid when the press was invented to create the coco mass, so that you can separate the butter and the powder.

1847 - Fry and Sons, discover that if you put more butter into the chocolate liquid it will becomes solid at room temperature.

1875 - Found you could add milk powder.

1878 - Lindt develops conching, which is a process of taking chocolate powder and mix it in the butter and the acids evaporate to increase quality.

1894 - Chocolate bar becomes commercial object.

Unusual edible substance: solid but will melt in the mouth. Never chew chocolate: Only amateurs chew. Storable yet edible, needs no preparation from the buyer, and can be stored at room temperature.

Has to do with anti-oxidants. Has shelf-life of a year.

Chocolate is a matrix of the butter and you can add othe rthings, i.e. small particles of cocoa and sugar or dried milk. So the butter will hold two or three other substances.

Cocoa powder expensive, sugar cheap, cocoa bitter, so... make it with lots of butter, or other vegetable fats, lots of sugar, not much chocolate powder, and it makes it cheap.

Can even make chocolate without cocoa powder - this is white chocolate. it has no powder at all, just butter. Low quality, no anti-oxidants because they are in the cocoa powder. don't want the sugar, don't have to worry about the fat because it's not bad for you.

1985 - a French company said there must be a market for quality chocolate.

1989 - Lindt introduced the percentage bar, 70% intro in 1989. Then the 85% and now even 99% (very bitter). So all companies are trying to put % signs, but others are trying to erode the meaning of the %.

Tor never eats lower than 85%, but found some of the 90% and 99% 'childishly easy to eat', but the % tells you how much is not sugar. So that doesn't tell you what the 85% is, so some companies are using cocoa butter, not cocoa powder, to fill in the 85%, and this results in lower quality chocolate.

So that corrupts the meaning of %.

You want a lot of powder, meaningful amount of fat, and something else than sugar. Can we put in something that's not sugar that we can put in chocolate? Stevia, perhaps, a mad sugary plant, can get it in powder. [Kevin says that Stevia behaves differently to sugar when it's cooked, so it's good for sweetening things like coffee, but it can't replace sugar in all circumstances.]

Bean types, and percentages of the bean crop:

1% Criollo - traditional cocoa bean, high quality
14% Trinitario - reasonable quality
85% Forastero - high yielding, stable, efficient crop that's not tasty, low quality.

Now you have chocolate snobbery.

But need to have better quality chocolate, and get more of the value chain happening in the producing countries, so that the producers make more money (currently the manufacturers in the West get most of the profit).


I have to say, I loved this session. Tor brought some different types of chocolate to taste, and it was amazing to tell the differences between the different brands and the different % chocolates. I don't think there was anyone who didn't enjoy the 85% Lindt, nor were there very many who liked the 99% because it was so bitter and, strangely, non-chocolatey. Fascinating stuff. I wish I had more time to investigate chocolate.

EuroFoo06

Like an idiot, I left my MacBook charger at the Corn Exchange in Brighton yesterday at d.Construct. If anyone picked it up, can you please email me?

UPDATE: I've been told that my charger was indeed found, and handed in. I shall ring the Corn Exchange tomorrow to see what I need to do next. Thanks for your help, everyone!

d.construct 2006, dconstruct06, idiot

I'm in San Francisco next week, and on Friday I am planning to go the Nova Bar at 555 2nd Street, to drink ludicrously large amounts of vodka. If you want to come, it's on Upcoming. See you there!

If anyone else wants to meet up pop me an email to the usual address.

I'm off to San Francisco at the end of August to attend the O'Reilly FooCamp - a weekend camp for geeks. I'm really looking forward to hanging out with some cool people, and getting to see San Francisco again. Due to peculiarities of flights, I'm going to be in town for a week and a half, so if you want to meet up, let me know.

Was the headline that I chose not to run with in today's Open Rights Group press release, despite the fact that's pretty much how I felt about it.

If you're a regular reader of either my or Neil's blog, you will of course already know that Neil's our Patron, but it's nice to finally fess up publicly about it. I'm pleased about it for a few reasons. Neil's very clued in when it comes to copyright, digital rights and authors' freedoms. He even won the Defender of Liberty Award* from the CBLDF in 97. It's wonderful to see someone whose creative processes are so very analogue - Neil writes his first drafts longhand with a nice pen and a Moleskine notebook - becoming so deeply immersed in the digital world.

It's also great because Neil and Cory Doctorow, who is on our Advisory Council, are the very people that the rights-grabbing publishing oligarchies claim that they are trying to 'protect' using that annoying DRM crap, plus they're the people that you are I are supposedly 'stealing' from every time we read their books more than once. I've always found Cory to be quite pleased to have his work downloaded, repurposed and redistributed (within the terms of his Creative Commons licence, of course). And I know for a fact, because he's said so on his blog, that Neil's very keen on people reading his works more than once, turning them into tattoos, and using them as inspiration for interpretative dance.

Plus, of course, and you know how much I love stating the blindingly obvious, I'm chuffed because I've been a huge fan of Neil's for a long time, and finally I have a good excuse to email him and ask for quotes. To wit:

"We're in a world in which digital rights, the world of the internet, and the exchange of information is getting more and more important and relevant to all our lives, wherever we are," said my new friend Neil. "I'm delighted that there's now a group of people committed to preserving and extending civil liberties in a digital world and to being sane and sensible as we careen into a digital future. I was honoured to be asked to be Patron of the Open Rights Group, and I look forward to working with them for years to come."

So, don't forget to sign up to support ORG, and especially don't forget that we have an evening of free drinks, nibbles and Cory Doctorow on Feb 7th.

* Hm... wonder if ORG should start a Defender of The Digital Realm awards...

The second Open Rights Group, featuring ubergeek Cory Doctorow, is set for the evening of Tuesday 7 Feb 2006.

Don't let Hollywood hijack your rights
Cory Doctorow

American entertainment companies say they're fighting piracy, but they're going at it by punishing the innocent to get at the guilty. A pan-European digital television restrictions proposal will turn the studios from companies that can control copying of movies into companies that can control the design of all digital TV devices, that get to define how big your family is allowed to be, that get to take away all the rights you get under copyright law and sell them back to you, one painful, expensive dribble at a time. It's not really a business plan: more like a urinary tract infection. Europe's coming Broadcast Flag will ban open source for digital TV, break the devices in your living room, and turn you into a truly captive audience. Get your torch and pitchfork, for this genuinely sucks -- and you shouldn't take it lying down!

This free event is open to digital rights campaigners, grassroots activists, the press and the general public, so please do send this information to anyone you think may be interested.

Refreshments and nibbles will be provided free of charge.

When: Tuesday 7 February 2006, 6pm–9pm
Where: 01Zero-One Hopkins Street (corner of Peter Street), Soho, London, W1F 0HS
Map: http://www.01zero-one.co.uk/map.htm

Note: 01Zero-One is sometimes a difficult venue to find if you've never been there before. On the corner of Hopkins and Peter Street, you'll see a featureless brick wall, with nothing but a black door in it. That anonymous black door is the one you want — just ring the buzzer and it'll be opened for you, if it's not propped open with a brick, that is.

Only 100 people can attend, so please book your place by signing up on the Open Rights Group wiki.

And no, I don't mean the pretty-boy chick-stealing Trojan but the great and beautiful capital of France, where I shall be for Les Blogs 2, where I am going to be telling Marc Canter and Hugh McLeod to shut the fuck up so that Anina can get a word in edgeways to talk about socialising in the year 2055. Some call it moderating, but I prefer to think of it as an opportunity to practice my golf swing.

If you're in France and you want to come to lunch on Sunday 4 December, let me know. No idea yet where, but it'll be somewhere near wherever it is that Les Blogs is at.

The emergence of new communications technologies has radically changed the civil rights landscape in our society. Privacy, intellectual property, and access to knowledge are just some of the areas where digital rights are being eroded by government and big business.

The Open Rights Group (ORG) would like to invite you to an evening of digital rights discussion, networking and wine at 01Zero-One Hopkins Street on Tuesday 29 November at 6pm to debate these issues.

This inaugural ORG event will begin with a short presentation by special guest speaker Jonathan Zittrain, Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University. Lloyd Davis from Perfect Path will then moderate an open discussion, asking: Which issues are a priority for you? And where would coalitions strengthen your hand? There'll also be plenty of time to meet and talk with fellow organisers and activists.

To reserve your place, please email events@openrightsgroup.org now. There are only 100 places available, so be quick!

This free event is open to digital rights campaigners, grassroots activists, the press and the general public, so please do forward this information to anyone you think may be interested.

Where: 01Zero-One Hopkins Street (corner of Peter Street), Soho, London, W1F 0HS
When: Tuesday 29 November, 6pm - 9pm
Guest Speaker: Jonathan Zittrain, Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation, Oxford University; Co-Founder, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
RSVP: events@openrightsgroup.org
Map: http://www.01zero-one.co.uk/map.htm

What is the Open Rights Group?
ORG is a new not-for-profit digital rights activist group, working to raise the profile of digital rights issues in the media and help other groups get their voices heard. For more information visit www.openrightsgroup.org or email Suw Charman, Executive Director, at suw@openrightsgroup.org.

This event is presented with the support of 01Zero-One's InSync Programme.

BlogOn 2005 is almost over. My talk went ok, I think, although I think maybe the pigeons went over people's heads. Pun intended. No apologies. I hope that the video will be put up online, and you can judge for yourself.

Have one last round-up panel to do, then it's all over.

I've had a really great time the last few days. The Guidewire Group guys and all the others organising this conference really pulled the rabbit out of the hat. I've had great feedback from the people in the audience, and I hope that they've enjoyed it half as much as I have.

Now I want to sleep for about a year. Maybe longer.

Ok, so I'm here at the Copa Copacabana, MC-ing the BlogOn 2005 Social Media Summit. I managed to get through my introduction without falling on my arse, freezing or swearing, so I am pretty happy that it's all going well here. Didn't feel at all nervous until I was actually there, ready to go on the stage, and then the dreaded iron-cold fist of fear gripped my belly.

Er, well, maybe not. I did get a few butterflies, but not as bad as orating at Speaker's Corner which routinely scares the crap out of me.

Really enjoying the conference, though. If you want, you can get into it all via the webcast or the IRC channel (freenode - #blogon).

I'm not taking a single note about any of the speakers, which is really weird for me because usually I am all over the collaborative note taking stuff, but I just have too much else to think about to even begin to try taking notes. I'm going to have to rely on someone else to do so.

blogon2005

At last, a moment where I'm not expected to be doing something else for someone else (hm, actually, that's a lie. I have my talk for Tuesday to write still, and notes to make for the intros to each session at BlogOn, but it's another 4 hours 17 minutes before my laptop battery dies, which is co-incidentally about the same time I have before we are due to land at JFK, meaning I can take a moment before either of those events become pressing) so it's really time I blogged something that's been open in my browser window for about a month.

(Yes, I really do keep things open in my browser windows that long. Actually, the Open Rights Group pledge on Pledgebank has been open continuously since July 23 when it was made. Browser tabs seem to multiply exponentially until I go through and have a ruthless cull, but even then there are some hardy survivors that seem to have built up resistance.)

Anyway, yes, Northern Voice. Although the urge is to say that Northern Voice was one of the best conferences I went to last year, the actual fact of the matter is that it was this year, it just feels like last year because so much appears to have happened in the interim. I'd never spoken in public before NV in February, but now I feel a bit like a veteran, I've done it so much, including four stints at Speaker's Corner which really does toughen one up.

Kris Krug, one of the organisers of next year's Northern Voice, pinged me a few weeks back with the news that they had the site up for the 2006 event, and I made the appropriate noises begging to be allowed to speak. I have to fill in the speaker submission form (I just checked, and there doesn't seem to be a closing date on it, which is a relief as I'd be gutted if I missed the deadline), although before that I actually have to think about what I want to talk about.

*thinks*

OK, I've got an idea. In fact, I have two. That's good. I didn't have any when I got on the plane, so I feel we're all the richer for this shared meditative experience.

Whether I speak or not, I will be going. I could not possibly pass up an opportunity to hang out with Richard, Boris, Kris, and all the other Vancouverites again. They are officially Good People - I had a fantastic time in February and can only imagine that MooseCamp will be an essential experience as well.

If you're vacillating about whether to go or not, then stop it and book now. You won't be sorry.

Well, it's 9.30am, and to be honest, if I hadn't slowed myself right down to a crawl, I would have been ready to leave for Heathrow half an hour ago. Instead, I put some make-up on (a waste of time as it'll all be off again before I get even as far as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge) and faffed about a bit.

So, I have my tickets, passport, money both £ and $. Laptop, power supply, phone, power supply, camera, battery charger and cable, ipod, battery charger, airport express, cat-5 cable, minijack-minijack cable (never know), belkin FM broadcasting widget, flash memory stick. Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near, for the plane (inscribed by author, who spelt my name correctly, thank you Ray). U-shaped pillow for plane. Clothes, oh yes, have some of them too but frankly they are far less important than making sure I've remembered my cat-5 cable.

I've turned the heating off. Made sure all the windows are closed. Washed up. Put the rubbish out. Ooh, just remembered I have to water the plants...

Ok, done.

And now I have an hour to kill.

La la la la la.

This is quite unheard of for me.

Got half my chapter written today. 1800 words. Could have been more - I'd been hoping to finish the first draft in one fell swoop - but I was feeling rather ropey this afternoon and found it hard to focus. With any luck, I'll polish off this draft tomorrow and then can let it sit for a few days.

Also have come up with a proposal for Etech 2006, officially The Conference I Most Want To Speak At. Very pleased with it, which probably means it's shite.

Now have just a half dozen more things to do before I can collapse gratefully into bed.

Neil Gaiman's coming to the UK. There will be signings. Which means there may well be queueings. And nerves. Maybe vomiting. Hopefully not. I nearly threw up on Martin Carr's feet once, but that was an unfortunate combination of nerves and food poisoning. At least, that's the story I've maintained for the last decade and I'm not changing it now.

You know, I'd much rather meet Neil in some sort of official capacity, as an equal not as a fan. It would be so much easier on my stomach, not to mention Neil's shoes. This is something I will have to carefully engineer, if not this time round then next. Hmm. Neil, you're not interested in being a patron of our new digital rights organisation at all, are you? You wouldn't have to do anything, just say what a terrifically good idea it all is and let me shake your hand and call you Neil as if I know you and then blush a furious shade of red whilst stammering that we were terrifically, terrifically pleased to have your support. Really very terrifically.

You know, (that's you, dear reader, not necessarily you, dear Neil, although maybe it is you if you happen to swing past on your way through to places more fascinating), I really should write one of these damn books I've been thinking about writing. I am in weekly discussions with my agent now, the truly terrific Neil Salkind from Studio B, about stuff, and I'm feeling particularly enthused about the whole concept of writing having just agreed to write a chapter for Uses of Blogs, ed. Axel Bruns and Joanne Jacobs.

It's been a while since I've felt the creeping need to write something big, but it's crawling through my veins as I type. And believe me, a 3500 word braindump on digital rights is merely a sticking plaster on the wound of auctorial ambition. No, I must begin a book, forthwith and henceforth.

After I've had some sleep.