Category Archives: Ruby

Circling Back

Posted on October 10, 2007 by Bill

People have asked me quite a lot lately what I’m going to do now that I’m free and clear of Click Here and my pat answer has been one of two or three things: Find a product-oriented company with a … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Strategy, Java, Ruby, Ruby on Rails | Leave a comment

Preserve Semantics in Callbacks

Posted on August 7, 2007 by Bill

Many people tend to place logic within a method named for the callback (e.g. after_destroy).  This works fine, but tends to be less maintainable, in my opinion. You basically have a method called after_destroy (or whatever), but you don’t readily … Continue reading →

Posted in Ruby, Ruby on Rails | 1 Comment

Using Constants in Rails Models

Posted on August 6, 2007 by Bill

One of my pet peeves in code is the absence of constants and thus the prevalence of “magic numbers” in their place. Constants add a touch of readability and semantic meaning and magnify the maintainability of the code. As a … Continue reading →

Posted in Ruby, Ruby on Rails | 6 Comments

GeoKit Updates

Posted on June 4, 2007 by Bill

I have added a few features and made a few bug fixes to GeoKit. These are as follows: [FEATURE] Added timeout support for geocoder web service calls [FEATURE] Added proxy support for geocoder web service calls [FEATURE] Added support for … Continue reading →

Posted in GeoKit, Ruby, Ruby on Rails | 11 Comments

Your questions about hire.billeisenhauer.com

Posted on May 13, 2007 by Bill

A few people have asked about my “hire me” site, so I thought I’d answer them here for everyone. The first question was how did what I put together differ or distinguish me from what anyone could do with a … Continue reading →

Posted in Ruby, Ruby on Rails | Leave a comment

Job Seeking 2.0

Posted on May 3, 2007 by Bill

As many of you know, I’m looking for employment now while my Nokia days come to an end. I thought I would post some thoughts on how you find a job in the current job market. Nevermind that I don’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Strategy, Java, Ruby, Ruby on Rails | Leave a comment

Why Why?

Posted on April 26, 2007 by Bill

I have subscribed to Why the Lucky Stiff’s Redhanded blog for quite some time, but lately I’ve been unable to fight through the distractions.  I present to you his latest performance.  Is anyone else wishing he’d kill the noise, so … Continue reading →

Posted in Ruby | 2 Comments

AppConfig Plugin for Rails

Posted on April 26, 2007 by Bill

Its probably because I come from the Java world that I felt compelled to create an app configuration mechanism which enabled easy externalization of app properties.  This is not an Earth-shattering, whiz-bang plugin, so I’m not going to oversell it.  … Continue reading →

Posted in Ruby, Ruby on Rails | 1 Comment

Deploying CruiseControl.rb with Custom Tasks

Posted on March 19, 2007 by Bill

More and more work is being done by geographically disparate teams these days, so a continuous integration tool like CruiseControl.rb is quite useful. Andre and I could have used this when we were heads down with GeoKit. But better late … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Source, Ruby, Ruby on Rails | 4 Comments

GeoKit: A Tiny Update

Posted on March 12, 2007 by Bill

Its been a while since I tinkered with GeoKit, but when I read this post, I thought I’d take a look at a couple of things that were mentioned. James wrote that it would be nice to be able to … Continue reading →

Posted in GeoKit, Open Source, Ruby, Ruby on Rails | 4 Comments