Outside of the class I took at Sierra College and a couple Rails projects I’ve thrown together on my own, I haven’t really had as much time with Ruby as I’d like. With the day job having been a bit slow lately and not wanting to risk getting in trouble for doing outside contracting work while there (and assuming learning/training is an acceptable way to pass time), I decided to do the past exercises as a way to further my proficiency with the language.

Here are what would have been my submissions for the first five contests:

1. RPCFN: Shift Subtitle (#1)
   http://gist.github.com/283194
2. RPCFN: Average Arrival Time For A Flight (#2)
   http://gist.github.com/284044
3. RPCFN: Short Circuit (#3)
   http://gist.github.com/284303
4. RPCFN: Ruby**Fun (#4)
   http://gist.github.com/284365
5. RPCFN: Mazes (#5)
   http://gist.github.com/284408

Though my version of the solution aren’t the most elegant or Ruby-like, having worked out the exercises on my own then reviewing other people’s entries was extremely beneficial, showing me even slicker ways Ruby can be used to solve problems.

I’m really looking forward to the next contest and actually submitting my entry for review.

Checking my website out in Google’s Webmaster Tools I noticed that it’s report on my sitemap.xml file contained a “Redirect error” warning because some of the URLs contained in my sitemap returned a 301 HTTP status code. This “error” apparently caused the Google crawler not to crawl the links on the pages that returned a 301 response (I assumed this because in the Webmaster Tools my “Pages crawled per day” numbers were significantly lower). Obviously not good for SEO efforts.

Doing a little searching online, I found that in the default Django setup the APPEND_SLASH setting from the CommonMiddleware plugin will (as it’s name implies) append slashes to the end of requested URLs if it’s not present, however this functionality redirects the visitor to the URL containing the trailing slash and returning a 301 response. The URLs in my sitemap.xml file did not contain a trailing slash.

Wanting to keep the settings in the application as close to default as possible, I simply edited my sitemap.xml file making sure my URLs had trailing slashes and the Google crawler balked no longer.

Hacker News Notify (http://hnnotify.com/) periodically scans the “New Links” of Hacker News (http://news.ycombinator.com/newest) and matches submissions with a particular phrase in the title, submitted by a particular user, or from a particular domain. Users can either choose to be notified of matches by email or by subscribing to their watchlist’s RSS feed.

In any case, I plan on submitting the project to Hacker News for review tomorrow morning; hopefully a few people find the application useful.

PoolServicer.com is a listing of individuals and companies who service and maintain swimming pools, spas, hot tubs, and the like, searchable by zip code.

For folks who service and maintain swimming pools and don’t have a website already, PoolServicer.com allows them to quickly and easily setup and maintain their web presence by giving them access to a web page on the PoolServicer.com website.  Also they get a URL of their choosing (i.e. www.poolservicer.com/super_pools if their company name was Super Pools) which they can use on business cards, flyers, or email signatures.  For individuals or companies that do already have a website, PoolServicer.com allows them to set their existing URL to show up in the search results for their company.

For visitors to the PoolServicer.com website looking for pool service and maintenance, a simple interface allows them to enter their zip code and find companies within a 50 mile radius.

I hope that visitors find this project of mine useful and that companies or individuals who sign up are able to drum up more business because of it.

The fact is that the lowest item on the totem pole, the hourly work, is what seems to induce the most stress upon me. This work is mostly tasks such server maintenance, HTML updates, modifications to canned eCommerce systems, and things of that nature; nothing that really gets my brain in action like the programming work does. In an attempt to please all parties, I have usually agreed to take on all assignments. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy extra money (especially in the times we’re in at the moment) and also building upon existing working/business relationships, but I’ve recently started telling people that I can’t take on their assignments, both in the short term, i.e. “I won’t be able to get to that for at least 6 weeks” or at all, i.e. “That assignment isn’t something I’m interested in taking.”

At first I was nervous about responding in that manner, expecting to receive negative feedback and upset clients but actually received the complete opposite; folks did understand that I have certain priorities, am only one person, and that I have the same limitation of 24 hours per day and require at least some sleep. Also, folks also seemed to appreciate my honesty with the situation and left the door open for opportunities in the future; let them know if I get some free time soon, when my schedule will open up, etc., so I don’t think I’ve burned any bridges.

The bottom line (for me anyway, and not just work-related) is being able to say no limits the amount of stressors I introduce into my life and empowers me to better manage my time and relationships.

What’s funny is that I began drafting this post yesterday (3/11/09) and this morning in my RSS feed reader 37signals’ blog Signal vs. Noise featured a post called The most powerful word is no which motivated me to finish up my post.

Fortunately for fans, Mr. Carolla has decided to spend his personal time, money, and probably quite a bit of energy continuing his “radio” show, now in the form of daily podcasts. This format allows him to be more open, candid, and say exactly what’s on his mind without fear of FCC fines; so far there have been two, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed both.

He’s asked his listeners to “spread the word” about the podcasts, what better place than my little blog here on the web. Adam Carolla’s Podcast website can be found at: http://carollaradio.com.

That’s it, enjoy.

I have one more major piece that I’d like to get out of the way before I start applying some sort of design to my wire-framed application. After that I’ll search for and sign up for some message boards related to that market, do some Google searches and gather some contact email address to send information to, and the like. I’ll be having a couple friends and family members checking out the site to test and verify that the way I have set things up make sense to an average user.

Just to mention, the primary goal of this project is gain some experience in Python and Django, but again, I think it may be something a few folks in it’s particular industry may pay a couple bucks to use; not exactly a bad thing.

I’ve decided to implement this web application with the Django framework and PostgreSQL database backend. There isn’t any specific reason I chose this setup other than I haven’t used either of the two before and they’re something I’d like to get some experience with.

So far I’ve installed all the necessary components: the framework itself, the PostgreSQL server, mod_python, and psycopg2, setup the application database and successfully synced the framework with the database. I’ve also pencil-and-papered the outline of the models I intend to use. I haven’t run into any major issues with the initial parts so far which has made for a pleasant experience thus far, the only thing that has slowed me down are Googling for PostgreSQL commands as they are different than the mySQL ones I’m used to using.

Stay tuned…

Though there’s noting really to report, I do however want to get in the habit of writing here somewhat frequently (though probably no one is reading); with that, I’ll conclude the second post.

In between the daily job, contract work, and of course family and friend obligations, I recently setup a VPS at Linode for the purpose of developing web application ideas, an environment for becoming more familiar with certain programming languages or tools, and the like.

This blog will give me a place to document the progress of personal projects, technical discoveries, and items of that nature.