There's a nice article about Austin on Rails and the larger Austin Rails community in today's Statesman.

Here are the slides from tonight's presentation.

I'll be talking at Austin On Rails next week on performance tuning your Rails app. Here's the info.

There is a limited theatrical release of Pete Seeger: The Power of Song showing at the Dobie this week. It is a critically acclaimed documentary on the life and music of Pete Seeger. It also happens to produced by my favorite line producer.

Mountain biking can be a nice analogy for life. Here are few things I've learned while riding my bike that are directly applicable to life:

Focus on the task before you - As you approach a hill, it is easy to get overwhelmed if you focus on the size of the entire hill. Only think about the 10 feet directly in front of you. Understand how the 10 feet fits into the larger picture, but only concentrate on the 10 feet directly in front of you.

Learn from your mistakes - When you fall, and you inevitably will, take a moment to analyze what went wrong. Either you picked a bad line, you were leaning the wrong way, whatever. Figure it out, so you don't make that mistake again. Our shortcomings and failures offer far better opportunities for growth than our successes.

Don't focus on the obstacles - A strange thing happens when you are riding down a trail and you focus on the big rock ahead. Your bike will veer right towards the rock. Your body instinctively will go towards whatever your eyes are fixated on. Focus on the path around the obstacle, not the obstacle itself.

Stop every so often and take in the view

I've switched over to Mephisto software for this site. I was previously using Typo. I liked Typo, but I've been wanted to try Mephisto for a while.

I'm back working in rails professionally and really enjoying it. Beerific development is progressing slowly when I find the free time. I'm also going to be speaking at the November Austin on Rails meeting.

New features in Rails 2.0 for generating iPhone view templates. (and other formats as well) link

Still dead.

I know everyone has been jonesing for Rob Mack info and it’s been over 3 months since my last post. Well I’m sorry to disappoint, but I’ve been busy with a great new job. I’m working with Spring/Hibernate/JSF now. My wife and I are expecting our first child next week and we are planning a move shortly thereafter (still in Austin).

I’ve also been working a little on a Rails peronal project: Beerific!. More on that later when I get further along.

Here are the slides from my Capistrano talk last night. There’s not a lot to them, but it might help you get started. The official Capistrano guide on the ruby on rails site is probably the best place to look if you need more info.

The Rails team has released an important security patch today. No details yet on what the vulnerability is, but it is highly recommended that you patch your systems. read the press release

I’ll be speaking at the Austin on Rails August meeting. The topic will be “Deploying your app with Capistrano.”

Working on the site, hopefully it will be a little more interesting than it has been recently.