How to learn Ruby on Rails in one week
Tags:programming rails rails 2.0 rails2 ruby ruby on rails screencasts speed learning tutorials web 2.0 web development webcomicRead and view these in order:
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Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby
a very readable webcomic that teaches & is totally free (Attribution-ShareAlike)
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Programming Ruby - The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide
This will take you from newbie to expert Ruby programmer
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Getting Real by 37 Signals
This is a fantastic free-to-read-online book about design principles of web development (with Rails).
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Must Know Facets of Ruby on Rails
The 8 essential things you have to know to understand Ruby on Rails.
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Ruby On Rails Quick Start - From Nothing To A Simple Database Driven Web Application In Ten Simple Steps
Great guide to turn you on to fully functional rails in five minutes
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How to use SQLite in Ruby on Rails
SQLite is a SQL database that’s great for small database
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Ruby on Rails from Scratch Part I
$9 Peepcode screencast that shows you how to get up and running with rails in 75 minutes
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Ruby on Rails from Scratch Part II
$9 Peepcode screencast that explains the finer points of rails in 80 minutes
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Ruby on Rails: Test First Development
$9 Peepcode screencast that explains the importance and easy of test-first development in ruby
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Rails Code Review .pdf
$9 Peepcode guide meant for beginners that is really top notch and covers a ton of topics
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How to Avoid Hanging Yourself with Rails
.pdf presentation on how to use ActiveRecord right the first time
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ActiveRecord Relationships Cheatsheet
covering belongs_to, has_many, etc. Printable!
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Rails2 .pdf
$9 Peepcode guide that discusses all the new features of Rails2, which is pretty standard as of 2008.
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RailsCasts.com
Free Ruby on Rails Screencasts; several new ones discuss features in Rails 2.1.
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Multiple belongs_to relationships
What if your article has three authors, each of which you want to reference with a foreign key?
Total cost? $45. The total cost of one credit hour of computer science at my university, Virginia Commonwealth University? $245. Most courses at my university are three credit hours.
derek’s stream of consciousness guide to amsterdam
Tags:I wrote this to a friend — it’s mental vomit of the best things to do in two days in Amsterdam. FYI for anyone who might ever be attending the VU!! And I apologize for the spelling mistakes and writing style. I call this “don’t worry, everyone here speaks english — a quick guide to a’dam.” Enjoy!
quick guide to the city: public transport is super easy but if you’re staying in the city center you can walk everywhere — but to take a tram you buy a “strippenkaart” from either the machines that sell them or a lot of stores e.g. in centraal station, i think ako nieuws sells them; you stamp one strip for each zone plus one for yourself (i.e. traveling within a zone is 1 + 1 = 2 strips, stamp the second; or just tell the conductor where you’re going and he/she will do it for you). the markets in amsterdam are really great, i like waterlooplein which has mostly clothes, nieuwmarkt whenever it’s open which i’m not really sure about, and albert cuypmarkt a bit southeast of the city on albert cuypstraat, maybe 25 minutes walking max from centraal station but close to some. albert cuypmarkt is close to some metro stops like weesperplein or something…
at night rembrandtplein is awesome (stop on some random trams, i always bike or walk there, it’s just south of muntplein where there’s a big tower), leidseplein (stop on #5) is super popular but really touristy, personally i like dutch bars and there’s tons of random ones & they’ll be cheaper than other places. there’s a “jaeger bar” (1,50 euro jaegermeister shots) called st. christopher’s hostel which you can easily get to by walking north from the dam not on the main street with the trams but the street behind the national penis i mean wwii remembrance obselisk. it’s on the right, Warmoesstraat 129
for a cool view of the city you can walk behind and to the right (east) of centraal station and follow the signs to post-cs/stedelijk museum (a modern art museum, temporarily located there)
as far as museums van gogh and rijks are both really nice, i also like a few others like the fotographie museum but you obviously aren’t here very long.
for fast food i like kantjil to go, which is takeaway indonesian food on nieuwzijds voorburgwal just north from the spui on the tram #5, (actually in front of that tram stop, look for a red and white box of takeout food next to a restaurant called kantjil and de tijger, just south of the amsterdam historical museum and north of the american bookshop). maoz falafel which is a bit ubiquitous (there’s one on the main drag of tram #5, leidsestraat which goes from leidseplein to koningsplein over the canals) is also great. new york pizza apparently sucks… i also know a great dutch place i can take you.
if you want to just walk around, go west and south from the city center and you’ll end up in the jordaan/nine streets of amsterdam, which is pretty and has boutique shopping. kalverstraat the main shopping street runs through the dam, it’s pretty hard to miss.
don’t eat mushrooms (sold at “smart shops”) and fall into a canal! those are mutually exclusive — feel free to do either (the second one is more dangerous) but not at the same time!! hahaha.
as far as coffeeshops go (places that sell weed, coffee houses sell coffee), if you’re into that my friends have recommended to me: “de dampkring” just north of koningsplein (stop on tram #5), “homegrown fantasy” (by nieuwzijds voorburgwal, also a stop on tram #5 and the name of a street), and “the bluebird” for hashish (located between waterlooplein and nieuwmarkt). you can have weed on you outside the coffeeshops, really you can smoke it on the street it’s no problem. i’ve seen people do so, especially in the red light district. i’m pretty sure people get harassed more for bicycling improperly i.e. without lights than for smoking weed. if your hostel is cool there’ll be a room that you can party in.
the van gogh museum is really easy to get to, just take tram #5 and get off at hobbemastraat, the stop between leidseplein and museumplein. the “heineken experience” is Tweede Weteringplantsoen 21, just walk from leidseplein southeast past a club called paradiso and a small plein with a hard rock cafe to your south (the holland casino is just south of that) and keep walking for about 5 minutes until you have to walk across a traffic circle and then you’re there, just look for the signs.
if you’re at all into classical music, we should definitely hit up the concertgebouw while you’re here. 7,50EUR for any concert, no matter who is playing, or we could go to the free lunchtime concert wednesday at 12:30pm (we should be there by noon).
i don’t know if you’re flying into amsterdam, if so you can really easily take a train to amsterdam centraal station, which is the city center. or hope on one to amsterdam zuid/WTC and take anything heading north, e.g. tram #5 or metro #51.
of course, a lot of this stuff but not all of it is represented on derek’s google map of amsterdam
have fun and take it easy!
Koninginnedag 2008 (Queen’s Day)
Tags:amsterdam Koninginnedag orange orange craze Queens Day study abroad the netherlands
Queen’s Day is my new favorite holiday. Taking place annually on April 30, everyone in the Netherlands parties outside to celebrate the Queen’s birthday. In a typically Dutch twist, they actually celebrate on the old Queen’s birthday since it generally has wonderful weather.
To celebrate the House of Orange, everyone dresses up in the Dutch national color, orange. Orange is also my favorite color, so I was more than ready for Queen’s Day. I have never seen so many ridiculous hats or nationalist (provincialist) symbols in one place!
I love that on Queen’s Day, the country turns into a free market (Dutch: vrijmarkt) — anyone can sell anything, anywhere. Basically, Amsterdam had a city-wide yard sale. I was pleasantly surprised that Dutch people also think people are interested in buying their household shit that they don’t want, and by late afternoon no one seemed to be selling much of anything worthwhile. Street food vendors were extremely successful and common across the city (I quite enjoyed my five Vietnamese loempias, or fried spring rolls made with rice paper).
People — my friends and myself included — go out the night before on “Queen’s Night,” when the city hosts almost as many free concerts as on Queen’s Day. I don’t recommend it, unless you’re biking — the night buses were so overcrowded that they were leaving people waiting for the next one.
Unlike most holidays I’ve seen overtake the city of Amsterdam (Christmas, New Year’s), Queen’s Day had surprisingly few tourists. Of course, few is relative… there were probably a few hundred thousand foreign tourists swarming the city, but they were matched or surpassed by Dutch people celebrating their only national holiday.
It’s not all great, though — many Dutch people are over it, since they’ve been celebrating it since their birth. Plus, in any of the crowded areas (any of the pleins, most of Vondelpark, and anywhere there is a concert), it can get a bit rowdy. It’s not a fun holiday if you aren’t a party person. However, I love it.
I know that this won’t be my last Queen’s Day, even though I’m moving away this summer when my exchange ends. Like Schwarzenegger, I’ll be back.