RadRails is an IDE for Ruby on Rails, built in Eclipse. It offers editor views for Ruby, RHTML, RJS, JavaScript and more. It has CVS/Subversion integration, an integrated debugger and development server, and integrated unit test runners. Looks very slick. And the latest release is a Universal Binary on the Mac.

Oracle has an article on setting up Rails to work with Oracle on their site. Moreover, it’s written by the guy who literally wrote the book on Enterprise Java Beans (as well as JMS). Check out some of the praise he gives:

Ruby represents the culmination of 10 years of development without the tampering of commercial interests. As a result, Ruby is a delight to work with and, in many cases, is an order of magnitude more productive than Java, C, or Microsoft .NET languages.

TiVo is in a court battle against EchoStar, trying to enforce its PVR patents. If it wins, that will make them able to go after other infringers more easily. If they lose, they’re done. It’s good to see patents finally working the way they’re supposed to, for once.

Ruby on Rails 1.1 is out in final form now. I did a pretty decent-sized refactoring over the weekend to clean up a part of the code base for a new feature that I want to play with that’ll use some of the cool AJAX-y features. As soon as the new stuff was released, I updated, ran the unit tests (which passed) and deployed. Smooth as buttah.

As always, lemme know if you see something that broke.

Check out the cool REST (Web Service) and JavaScript (for AJAX) response implementation in the upcoming Rails 1.1.

Integration testing has been added to the Rails test framework in 1.1. Pretty cool stuff.

Folks with Series2 TiVos will soon be able to program a show to record with a Verizon cell phone. That’s pretty cool, although they didn’t plan a media event for this one. Hell, almost anything’s worth a media event if the KidZone was. ;)

Apple has a pretty complete intro tutorial to Ruby on Rails on its website. While this is strange on one hand (Apple has its own web development toolkit), it’s also sort of fitting (each of the core Rails committers use Macs).

The tutorial uses the recently released Rails 1.0, so it’s a pretty good way to try it out, complete with Mac-specific things you’ll want to do along the way.

Berry Stevens has posted the work schedule for Water Dog this year. Here it is:

Here it is, hot off the press, or at least, my fingertips. The NEW Trail Work Schedule For Water Dog Lake, in Belmont. The Land Manager is friendly and appreciative, it's close & easy to get to and we're building trails with our interests & needs in mind. It's a cozy place, but full of destination quality trails. Come out & help make this season's project a reality and then come out & ride it. We will be working on Sundays this year and will be meeting at 9:00 AM.

Schedule as follows: Feb 19, March 4, March 26, April 16, April 30, May 14

Please e-mail Berry Stevens to sign up for the date of your choice, or call him, with questions or your eager desire to volunteer.

I didn’t see this when it was first posted, but it appears there was some pretty severe flooding in Downieville a couple of weeks ago. The hotel that most of the people we went up with got flooded out. Ouch. At least the trails are doing well….

For those who remember the old Doctor Who series from way back, they brought the show back from “hiatus” (it was taken off the air in 1989) last year. The new series (which was quirky, but good) was named Best Drama Series in the UK.

The show has been picked up by the SciFi Channel, and will show starting on July 4.

TiVo’s going to be rolling out a new undelete deleted shows feature.

Embarrassingly enough, I got my first bike ride of the year in this morning. Beau and I managed to get our asses out of bed and out into the cold and enjoy a nice easy ride at Water Dog. The place isn’t too muddy, although it was enough to get Beau’s previously pristine bike dirty. :)

Despite getting my crap together last night, I still managed to forget my mountain bike shoes, but still rode. Riding in the wet/mud with Keens isn’t recommended, but I didn’t fall.

We rode up Fatboy/Upper Ridge to Car/Rambler. At the split, we cut to New French/Ohlone and back to the cars. Ohlone was pretty soggy and the mud there has historically been slicker-than-snot. It still was, but the trails are holding up better than I’d expected, and it was all rideable. I’m looking forward to getting out as much as possible with all the wet weather we’ve been getting.

A PowerBook replacement was announced this morning at MacWorld. They’ve gotten rid of the monicker they’ve had since the PowerPC transition.

• 2 Intel processors in each one. “4-5x” faster.
• 15.4" LCD that is “bright as a Cinema Display.”
• Built-in iSight camera.
• IR sensor and Apple Remote.
• Thinnest Apple laptop available.
• New Power Adapter is magnetically held in. If yanked, comes right out.
• 5.6 lbs.
• Will drive a 30-inch Cinema Display.
• 1.67 GHz Core Duo, 667 DDR bus, ATI x1600: $1999
• 1.83 GHz Core Duo $2499
• Shipping in February. Taking orders today.

I told Val that if they introduced a new pro laptop, I’d buy it. I just ordered one with VeriSign’s discount. Here’s what I got:

• The 1.83 Core Duo model
• 1 GB 667 DDR2 – 1 SO-DIMM (it’s got another slot that I’ll fill aftermarket)
• 100 GB Serial ATA drive @ 7200 rpm (This is a BTO upgrade—the stock HDD is 5400 RPM. They have a 120 GB option, but it’s only 5400, and I’d like the speed.)
• ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 – 256 MB GDDR3 (Woo! Double the VRAM of my old BTO PowerBook.)
• iWork ’06 preinstalled (I actually use Pages.)

They showed it at CES! The bad part is the release date: “mid-to-late 2006.” :(

This is the TiVo with CableCard support, which would allow HD over cable. Like the HD DirecTiVo, it has 2 ATSC (over-the-air HD) tuners and 2 NTSC tuners. On top of the 2 CableCard tuners, for a total of 6(!). It can only record two shows at a time, despite the number of tuners.

Other highlights:

• Backlit peanut remote.
• SATA interface for additional storage add-on.
• Great looking box with LCD readout of what the box is doing.

But damn, I miss my TiVo, and was holding out for the new box. They’d previously said early 2006. :(