Wireframing a website with text.

Over the last few weeks I've learned just how much I didn't know about web design and management, but I was also pleasantly surprised by just how much I do know. One of the things I learned is that it's easy to picture a site design in your head, but a little harder to actually explain it to someone without a wireframe. Enter Balsamiq Mockups, a tool that lets you have that "I designed it on a paper napkin" look even though you'd never touch a pencil to save your life because you're a total computer geek...

I also absolutely hate having to make up filler text for my test sites during the design. I remembered seeing the Lorem Impsum random text whenever someone wants to show off a site design or even a font, so a quick Google search turned up the Lorem Ipsum generator. Way faster than making up something funny for a wireframe.

ScribeFire

I recently read about a few tools that might make blogging just a bit easier, hence more likely to actually get done. For instance, I installed the ScribeFire Firefox extension. Pretty darn cool so far! Blog while you surf!

Mild Mannered, Not for Profit

So the old gig with the high-tech semiconductor intellectual property company is over. It was interesting for a while, but really started going downhill post-IPO when the goals changed from "let's do the best possible job we can and really make an impact!" to "OMG, we have to make the numbers this quarter!! Ship it!!".

My new gig is with a Not-for-Profit outfit trying to make the world a safer place. Conflict Prevention & Global Security are the new goals for me. It'll be both fun and fulfilling to start off with a small organization and lead them into the 21st century (technology-wise).

Wish me luck!

More RoR

Normally, vi is my IDE. But for RoR, I decided I wanted something that does syntax checking, suggestions, and hints. Aptana had a nice tool, but then I tried Netbeans... Netbeans is much, much nicer.

But I do suggest not downloading the entire thing. Instead, get the Ruby-only version from http://deadlock.netbeans.org/hudson/job/ruby - it's much smaller and somewhat faster, since it doesn't include all the Java support Netbeans is known for.

Ruby on Rails

I've been wanting to learn Ruby on Rails for a long time, so I'm finally getting around to it because I have an idea for a website. Maybe I'll talk about that concept later, but for now, Mum's the Word.

First impressions:
I have a pretty good programming background, but it's over 75% procedural. Ruby is 100% OO, so I have to get in that mindset. Not too difficult...

But the whole Model-View-Controller (MVC) layout of RoR is new to me... that's definitely taking me a bit longer to grasp. I think I'm starting to understand the elegance of it, though. But then again, I'm just reading books and watching RoR screencasts so far, playing with the demo scripts they offer.