Answer Difficult Questions
Tags:A friend gave me the following advice for answering hard questions:
- Avoid Adjectives
Don’t make judgments one way or the other. - State Facts
Make simple, declarative statements. - Stick to the Question
Don’t answer other questions that you want them to ask, just the questions they ask.
To summarize: don’t embellish. Talking too much will get you in more trouble than talking too little.
It was a random conversation, but I thought these were some good points. Maybe Roland Burris needs to read this!
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.
How to volunteer in Amsterdam
Tags:amsterdam study abroad volunteeringIk ben een vrijwilliger.
I recently started volunteering at the Guus Kieft School in Amstelveen. I’ll talk about my so far wonderful experience there another time, but I want to mention how incredibly easy it was to find what may be the best community service project of my life. While walking and shopping in the 9 streets of Amsterdam late one chilly afternoon at the beginning of January, I stopped into the vacancy bank, a central repository of all the volunteer opportunities in Amsterdam. While some may say the Dutch are over-bureaucratized, in this case it’s a good thing.
When I returned for my scheduled appointment a few days later, the employee I had briefly mentioned my background and interests to had compiled a list of seven opportunities of potential interest to me. He then patiently explained each one to me, translating the description on the Dutch website and leveraging the vacancy bank’s resources to give me more information about the organizations. After forty-five minutes, I was on the phone with the head teacher at the school, discussing what I would be doing there. The next day, I started volunteering. This is a far cry from volunteering back home at Virginia Commonwealth University, where one of the only resources is a trifold pamphlet with the names and possibly outdated telephone numbers of Richmond area volunteer organizations.
Haven’t considered volunteering? It’s a great way to get off the VU campus and spend some time in the community. And, yes, it looks great on your resumé. Too many people around the world are living in such interesting places, but never see or do any of the interesting things.
Contact information for the Vrijwilligerscentrale Amsterdam (VCA) taken from their Dutch-only website, http://vca.nu. Call or walk-in to schedule an appointment:
Main Vacancy Bank
Hartenstraat 16 1016 CB Amsterdam
020-530 12 22
amsterdam@vca.nu
Open:
Tuesday: 13.00 – 17.00
Wednesday through Friday: 9.00 - 17.00
How to Flash Your Nintendo DS Lite
Tags:I found a nice description in pictures of how to flash your Nintendo DS Lite using FlashMe v7. That tutorial also has a link to a video guide. I will update when I flash my DS Lite — since you can restore the original firmware by reflashing, I can’t see why not to.
Look after the jump to read about the advantages and dangers of flashing.
Read more