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Febuary 23rd, 2009
What, the, hellllll is happening with the habs!?!??! I’m so pissed! And I’m worried… really worried. Not really because 2 immature bros from belarus hang around with a drug dealer… but worried because there is something else, something bigger and monstruous is coming and will tarnished the organization… I can feel it, it’s in the air. The media wanted to tell the whole story but for some reasons they changed their minds and now everyone is silent. A small ray of light in these dark times : Alexei Kovalev! God I love this guy… his return with the team was fantastic (1 goal and 2 assists). It’s like the fans connected with him that afternoon. Something was in the air. It’s like we were telling him : “We know you are clean in all this story. You are the light in this dark time and watching your immense talent on the ice is like a bandaid on our wounds”
Ok maybe I am exaggerating but I love the guy. I always was a fan of Kovy but now it’s definitely my favorite habs player of all the time.
AK 27 for the win!
Febuary 2nd, 2009
I did it! I’m a father. Now that I am more intelligent than every “non-fathers” alive, everything is different. I am so wise now. When people are sad and tell me about the atrocities that occur in the world, I take a serious pose and tell them something like : “Oh well my friend, that’s just the way it is. Some innocent people get murdered in the streets, others like me have to get up in the middle of the night. We all have our problems”
December 13th, 2008
The “2 whitespaces for indentation” thing :
Ok… i did my homework and I can say that I am less ignorant concerning this issue now. White spaces for indentation are gaining in popularity because they “look the same” in every code editors. We cannot say the same thing with Tabs…
I have decided to jump in the bandwagon and to adopt the 2 whitespaces convention.
November 7th, 2008
The 2 whitespaces indentation convention in ruby is stupid and ugly. How about… a fckn regular TAB?? Don’t indent your ruby code with 2 whitespace characters people, don’t do this. Sometimes, Ruby tries a little too much to be different. Don’t fall in the trap.
November 3rd, 2008
Recently I worked on a contract and I had to debug something in VB for Access. It was awful. End of story.
October 31th, 2008
People working in big offices, what the hell? Working 9 to 5, day after day after day after day until retirement. They can’t decide to work when they want, can’t stop to work when they’re tired. No, people in big offices have to work from 9 to 5. Ohh I’m so bored I would like to go outside and take a 15 minutes walk. Aww, too bad Billy… your break was 30 minutes ago, you can’t. I’m afraid you’ll have to keep that fat ass on the chair.
Happy Halloween by the way. If you see a guy disguised as a woman in the street, don’t laugh… this is what he wants. Don’t encourage him.
October 27th, 2008
- My favorite apple variety is Empire
- Following the mass is stupid.
- So many talkers, where are the doers?
- There are still people who deploy a web app by ftp, renaming the current directory with the “_old” extension before uploading the new one in case something goes wrong.
- I’ll be a father… in a little more than 2 months.
October 10th, 2008
About music… Recently i became extremely tired of hearing the combo “Guitar-Base-Drums-Voice” all the time. I realized that all my life I had considered this combo to be the definition of music. But music is so much more. I started listening to some old jazz from the 1930-1950s. I’m currently discovering Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald and oh God is this good! The music, the variety of instruments. the emotion in the voices, the swing, the divas. wow…
The song that I am currently digging is “Say it isn’t so” from Billie Holiday. It is good in an extremely special way that you cannot understand if you don’t know Billie’s extremely pathetic and sad story. Anyway, I always considered myself a music lover but now I realize that I’m just starting to discover what music really is.
Electric Guitar is so overrated, screaming in a mic as well… as is saxophone (see, i am not that biased)
October 7th, 2008
- Wearing a mullet is no longer cool.
- A close friend of mine paid 16000$ for a 1 year formation in programming. This was not even worth 2000$. They spent like 1 week on HTML, 1 week on C++ pointers, 1 week on ASP, etc. Laughable but sad at the same time.
- PHP is the ugliest and most overrated language of all the time. People, it’s not because you “can do everything you want with PHP” that you should still use it. There are better languages out there. Get rid of your comforting PHP slippers and try something new and modern. If you absolutely don’t want to leave PHP, then by all means use a MVC framework like symfony or cakephp. Plain PHP is a joke. Welcome in the new century. Please send your hate mail here : rubyfleebie@gmail.com
October 4th, 2008
Hey people, I’m happy to announce the return of the news section! Back in the days I used to write here about anything not relevant enough to make the topic of a blog post.
I guess you have noticed the removal of the publicity on the blog. There were far too many ads not related to ruby/rails for my taste. Moreover I don’t post here to make money anyway so it helped me in my decision.
Oh and I really disagree with what I said on November 6th 2007. I changed my mind completely. Who cares about “focus”? I write on this blog for fun for godness sake. It’s like I had something to defend don’t you think? “Ok now I’m so serious I will put a job board on the sidebar and try to pretend it is useful”. Screw the Frank of November 6th 2007!
November 6th, 2007
What is the purpose of these “news” anyway? The stuff here is becoming more and more random don’t you think? Don’t worry, this news section should disappear quite soon. I’m kind of liking doing this, but the problem is that it doesn’t serve any purpose. I mean, what the hell was I thinking on October 23th?? You want to read about Ruby so I’m going to concentrate writing stuff about Ruby.
I have to say that maintaining these “news” was kind of fun because I knew that only a very small minority of you were aware of their existence. It was like a “hidden” feature. But now it’s time to focus a bit more. This site is about Ruby after all. I’m probably going to replace this news section by a job board in the following days/weeks. Stay tuned.
October 23th, 2007
Hey I just feel like talking really… I have no statement to make, no special message to say. I’m just going to tell you random stuff that have little chance of changing your life… but what could, anyway?
October 18th, 2007
Sometimes I take a look at one of my article and I say… Holy ****! This is probably the biggest flop in history! I currently have this feeling with my latest one. It’s okay, I’m a grown man, I can live with that (dissimulated sobbing). I wonder if it was too fast to demand guest posters on the blog. You know, normally, only huge and well established blogs can do these sort of things… but I wanted to try it anyway.
Let’s not despair all that quick… because maybe people are so excited by my proposition that they are actively writing incredible ruby stuff… so that’s why they have no time to comment! Is this what we call wishful thinking? Whatever! at least I did try something! 
All this episode reminded me how much we bloggers depend on your feedback. We think that because there is no comment on our latest blog entry, it must be because it sucks. Not always. It’s a proven fact that most readers almost never leave comments. Those people just like to take their information and pass to something else. That’s perfectly fine. That’s just us, the insecure bloggers, who would like everyone to participate.
With all this “does this blog post sucks?” crawling in my mind, I was like a zombie surfing on the web… doing nothing constructive at all… when I found it! I was reading pickthebrain.com, a blog about self-improvement which I always found really interesting, when I saw this wordpress plugin : 
. Exactly what I needed! I’m going to install this as soon as possible.
October 15th, 2007
I finally decided to include the MyBlogLog plugin! I was hesitant because I didn’t want to waste the blog design… but after some tweaking with the colors, I came with something that “almost” fits.
I also added a plugin in the comments section that displays your avatar! Yep, just sign up at MyBlogLog or Gravatar (that slow and jerky service) and your picture will magically appear.
October 15th, 2007
I don’t know the exact stats, but bare with me. Most of us will die before they get to 80. I don’t want to fall into bad cliches, but 80 years is damn short, don’t you think? It freaks me out I’ll tell you. I am currently 27 years old and I have decided that I wanted to be happy : NOW.
Recently, I realized that happiness is not something that happens when you have met certain conditions. Happiness is always there, it’s all there, in our friggin’ head! If you can’t achieve it now, you won’t achieve it tomorrow. Nothing will magically happen tomorrow. The situation will always be the same as it is today : You on one side, happiness on the other and the ever-growing gaps in-between. Of course, we all need goals to pursue… but goals suck when we think about them night and day. We have to be able to take a step back to enjoy what we have now and who we are now.
No marijuana, or any other drug for that matter, has been consumed during the conception of this news post.
October 10th, 2007
Every morning I open my computer, I read my mail, I check the comments on the blog AND finally, I type www.feedburner.com in the address bar (yes I know that I could put the feedburner chicklet directly on the blog…). So, I log in in feedburner to see the number of subscribers and… ding ding ding! A new level has been reached! The number of subscribers is now 808! That’s it for my ego trip.
Now, I want to announce that Dan and I will present TimmyOnTime at the next DemoCamp that will be held October 30th, from 18:30 to 20:30, at the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) in Montreal. We will be easy to recognize with our TimmyOnTime T-shirts and our french accent. So if you happen to be in Montreal on October 30th, just drop by and say hello! It would be an honor for me to meet some of the RubyFleebie readers.
September 21st, 2007
Have you listened to the Matrix? Yes, of course. You remember that line when Morpheus says to Neo : “You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.” This movie is fiction, sure… but this excerpt could not be more real. We are all tempted by the blue pill. It is fake, but it is easy… and it doesn’t look too painful. The red pill is the reality, a trip to discover the truth, a trip to discover the being you really are. The path of the red pill looks dark, blurry and painful… but if we are brave enough to accept the challenge of our true self, we will find our just place and we will shine. The red pill might hurt… but it is the one that has to be taken. All that story to say one capital thing : Follow your dreams right now… because if you don’t you won’t live the life you had to live. That’s it that’s all, farewell!
September 11st, 2007
I was thinking the other day (it happens to me sometimes) of the things we (dan and I) could do to help promote TimmyOnTime. I had this flash (it’s not a big deal but it’s cool and cheap…) : Why not make a TimmyOnTime T-shirt? In my vision, it was brown and on the front it had the little guy you can see on the homepage. As you can see, I am a terrible design guy… but the idea is there.
September 1st, 2007
Faith is in the air!
Ahh… September! This month smells so good. This is the month where everything restart after the summer break. A new season in the NHL, new ideas in my head, new projects in the air. I can smell faith and hope everywhere. To me, the first day of the year isn’t January 1st… it is September 1st.
This year will be great for me, I know it will. Ruby Fleebie will continue to put joy in my life, TimmyOnTime will explode and triumph, our french blog, Triabulle, will be healthier and more interesting than before, I will help my girlfriend to make geccoe.ca even more kick-ass… and I’m sure tons of new possibilities that I am currently unaware of will emerge. This year is the year.
I’m happy to stand where I stand, to be who I am and to do what I do. I’m lucky to count on you, dear readers, because your presence is what make this blog works. I learn a lot from some of your comments and I want to thank all of you just for being there and hanging on with me on Ruby Fleebie.
Have faith people, this is September, life restart now
August 14th, 2007
Yesterday I was the special guest on montrealtechwatch.com and I had the chance to write about Ruby, Rails, RubyFleebie, TimmyOnTime… and me! How nice is that? If you want to read the interview, here it is.
Now, what about my current “weird” job situation that has nothing to do with computers? Well, it should ends in 3 weeks. After that, Dan and I will team up once more and then we’ll get back to what we like the most : developing kick-ass web applications.
But Frank, what is that job your are talking about that has nothing to do with computers? I want to know! Ok ok… I’ll tell you : I drive big trucks, I can wear (dirty) t-shirts, (dirty) jeans, (dirty) shoes and I can “forget” to shave a few days in a row. I am doing manual work like moving heavy stuff somewhere and taking it back the day after. Sometimes, I am also in the various parks of the city to remove the sh** people “forgot” to put in the trash cans (argh). You see, I am doing stuff that is the complete opposite of what I’ve always done in my life. It seems I really needed a break of my “normal life”. Now the break is almost over… and I’m ready like never before to pickup from where I left off.
July 30th, 2007
The old timers have probably noticed that the number of posts went downhill in the last few weeks. This is only a matter of time before things get back to normal. I am on a contract that should ends this September. What’s kind of funny is that this new job has nothing to do with programming and computers at all. The web development jobs in my region are just not that interesting, but there is more than that. What I want eventually is to live from projects like TimmyOnTime… you see? Developing this project with Dan Simard has been one of the most motivating things I did in my life. We were free to program the way we wanted, we were in charge of everything, we took every single decisions and we had a lot of fun. That was an incredibly satisfying experience that confirmed something I already knew about the professional life I wanted. While I think TimmyOnTime is a project with really high potential, the truth is that it can take some time before people have enough faith in a product to pay for it. The situation became quite stresful and unpleasant for me. I wanted people to love and adopt TimmyOnTime so bad that it completely absorbed every ounce of energy in me. That’s why I have decided to “take a break” from all of this in the hope to clear my mind of all the negative side effects. My heart and passion is still in TimmyOnTime, it is still in Ruby Fleebie, it is still in geccoe.ca, ecstatik, Triabulle and every projects I am working on. It is just that I have pressed the pause button just so I can breath a little and think of a better strategy that will help me achieving my goals.
July 2nd, 2007
TimmyOnTime got a brand new design! You know who’s behind it? Yep, the same guy who made the design for Ruby Fleebie, Alex Dumas! On other news, we were also very happy last friday to learn that we made it to the last sunspots edition of 37signals!
June 14th, 2007
We launched an alpha release of TimmyOnTime! This is a time management tool based on Instant Messaging. We are receiving tons of good comments so far, that’s rather thrilling. Go and try it out! You can also read the post about it I have written here.
June 4th, 2007
A few days ago, I put online the brand-new design for RubyFleebie. It was a so incredible change that I had to write a post about it. Thanks to Alex Dumas for the incredible job.
May 16th, 2007
Today is a special day for me. I made the front page of rubyinside.com… that is quite something! The maintainer of the reknown website, Peter Cooper, asked me some questions related to Ruby Fleebie and our new project, Ecstatik! I really liked the experience and I’m very thankful to Peter for taking the time to make it a reality.
May 7th, 2007
We launched Ecstatik!. A place where you submit and vote for funny stuff you find on the web.
April 30th, 2007
Twit this? Twitter is the new big thing recently so I thought it would be a good idea to twitterize ruby fleebie. When you click the button (you’ll find it next to “save to delicious” before the body of every posts) , a popup window appears letting you add a twitter entry for the current URL. I also put a twitter plugin on the about me page.
April 23th, 2007
New section “About me” as well as a few changes in the “About ruby fleebie” section. I also removed “Goodies” from the navigation and put it into “About ruby fleebie” just to reduce noise.
April 19th, 2007
My ranking in google just dropped dramatically and i’m not too sure why. I think it has something to do with these so call “google updates” which happens once in a while. Currently it’s not even funny, if you search for “Ruby Fleebie”, you will find my homepage at the 3rd page only… that’s crazy. 3 or 4 days ago, it showed in first place. Oh well, just hope it will get back to the normal soon.
April 10th, 2007
I didn’t like how the articles were displaying on the home page so I made a little change. From now on, the full version of an article will only appear on it’s dedicated page. I find it more convenient to see the articles in a list-style fashion.
April 7th, 2007
I found a new code highlighter plugin that doesn’t make use of a textarea to render ruby snippets. This means that it is now showing correctly in Google Reader and other feed readers!
April 3rd, 2007
I removed the old categories and came up with a nice trio. Easy reading, in depth and short & sweet.
Easy reading contains non-technical articles. Opinions and news have great chances to land in this category as well. In fact, Easy reading is like a sanctuary for our brain… =)
In depth is for the hardcore and curious ruby fans. It’s for those who want to understand how the language works. I analyze Ruby concepts and I do my best to explain them as clearly as possible.
Short & sweet has been created to give short and concise answers about various things in ruby. We don’t always have time to read a 600 words+ article when we are just looking for a single answer. That is the whole purpose of this category. You should find howtos, quick advices, tips and so on. We’ll see how it goes.
April 2nd, 2007
I realized that the nice syntax highlighter component you see in my articles doesn’t display well at all in Google reader. That’s because the component is rendered as a textarea and Google Reader choose to not display those elements at all. I am currently looking for a solution to this problem. I want my feed subscribers to be able to see the code snippets as clearly as the live ruby fleebie users do. If you know a syntax highlighter plugin that displays well in google reader, please let me know.
