Day 32

I have purchased a laptop and been setting-up, uninstalling, installing, etc. and will find myself pushing events forward on the desktop, fielding calls, emails, texs, and chats on my phone, and working on tweaking the laptop at the same time.

Still have been unable to get the PHP scripts to work from the command line. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Today I finally created my first S3 Bucket using the AWS Management Console. Now I am going to see if I can do any command line stuff with it.

DAY11

Had a real revelation or two last night about modules, classes, objects, and methods and their relations to each other. Also got some insight about setting and getting the value of instance variables as well as on the concept of records as hashes and symbols as recordIDs.

Notes following are based on Agile Web Development With Rails pp. 66-67:

class ClassName < ModuleName::ClassNameInPrecedingModule

#declarations about entire class
#(module "has _many" is inhereted (i.e."<")
#from ModuleName)

has_many :symbols #used as hash(records) keys (recordIDs)

#class method abut the class in general
#can be called anywhere in application
#ClassName.method_name

def self.method_name
self.method(params)
end

#another_method uses
#symbols declared above

def another_method
instance variables declared/etc.
symbols.method {|blockvariable|
block
}

end
------------------------
#Instance variables are not directly accessible outside the class.
#To make them available, write methods that return their values:

class NewClassName

#initialize = what happens when new instance of
#NewClassName is generated via the “new” method
#i.e. object_variable = NewClassName.new(param)
#sets the @instance_variable to the param

def initialize(param)
@instance_variable = param
end

#object_variable.method_to_return_value_of_instance_variable
#=>puts the param passed
#from initialize (new) method or the
#new_method_to_set_value_of_instance_variable

def method_to_return_value_of_instance_variable
@instance_variable
end

#object_variable.new_method_to_set_value_of_instance_variable=(param)
#sets the @instance_variable to the param

def new_method_to_set_value_of_instance_variable=(param)
@instance_variable = param
end

end

DAY4

Just completed the "Hello World" exercise. It used to be you had to use the "scaffold" method, but no longer I see. Pretty easy stuff. Going to experiment with the erb and embed various ruby in the html later today.

Been reading the AWS book, too. It's a little abstract at this point, though I get the concepts. I'm about ready to start with some of the exercises there, too.

My boss at work had a great idea for an application. I've asked him to pressure me because I work better with deadlines.

DAY2

Got the AWS book today. It's written for PHP, with which I have very limited experience--really just the intro course on Lynda, but I think I can handle it.

I updated the Ruby at work today to 1.9.2 from 1.8.6 and everything stopped working. I managed to fix most of the non-working programs except for a couple.

Reading the AWS book tonight and will probably start this weekend with a basic Rails application.

I need to register a domain name and get a DNS service, I guess.

DAY1 part 2

The book says to "gem install sqlite3-ruby" and this is what happened:

=============

Hello! The sqlite3-ruby gem has changed it's name to just sqlite3. Rather than

installing `sqlite3-ruby`, you should install `sqlite3`. Please update your

dependencies accordingly.

Thanks from the Ruby sqlite3 team!

=============

Does that sound like it installed or not? Sounds like not to me. I guess I will install sqlite3 and inform Pragmatic Bookshelf?

DAY1

OK, obviously this was a long time coming, so calling this day 1 is a little bit of a misnomer.

Today *is* day 1, however, of the blog I just created to track this project: building a Rails database system not unlike Quickbase using Amazon Web Services as the host.

There: I've said it out loud.

I have been thinking about it for a while, having worked in Quickbase for several years and recently delving into VBA, Ruby, JavaScript/jQuery, SQL, and some HTML/CSS to get more out of it. I did set up some basic Rails stuff at work, but I was consistently thwarted by the fact that I did not have admin rights to my computer. My boss let me have a subscription to Lynda.com for a year and I logged in every day for an hour to learn all I could.

Mostly what I have done up to this point is create some extra-Quickbase sauce (with the help of the Gareth Lewis mostly who created the QBAPI wrapper for Ruby) that uses Outlook emails to trigger all sorts of events inside Quickbase.

I recently bought the book Metaprogramming Ruby from The Pragmatic Bookshelf, then Agile Web Development With Rails from the same company, and then Host Your Web Site In The Cloud: Amazon Web Services Made Easy: Amazon EC2 Made Easy.

Between these three I think I can get this done within a year.

Downloaded Ruby 1.9.2, sqlite3, Rails 3.0.3, and jEdit with Ruby plugin at the suggestion of the Agile book. I have been using Notepad++, but it doesn't (read: I haven't figured out if/how it might) auto-complete, which apparently jEdit will and with the Ruby plugin, it will really shine somehow.