Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas as I'm not sure I will have a chance to post again until after Christmas. I also wanted to point your attention to a new video podcast by despair.com. These are the guys that have all those really funny demotivational posters and calendars. They have done a couple of videos as well and they are hilarious. Check them out if you need a little holiday cheer!

I just finished a quick how to on reading a text file in Ruby. Now that I have the new software working I'm hoping I will be able to write a few more how to's on a regular basis. Mostly I plan to write about core stuff like reading a file, writing a file, reading command line parameters, etc... While learning Ruby I found very few simple examples of how to do A, B, or C. Typically you find more like an (A^2/B^3)^C or some such thing that distracts from the core principle. When you want to learn about A, you don't want B and C mucking up the works. Anyway, I hope to rectify the situation.

I am also hoping to do some of the same for XQuery. But more on that in another post

The Register has a glowing review of Ajax in Action on their web site.

I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, but I picked it up in Barnes and Noble the other day as it was 20% off and looked good. Looks like I made a good choice. If you are interested in Ajax, this looks like a good intro. Check out your local B&N. The book is probably still on sale and if you have a discount card it will be 30% off. However, feel free to click on the above link instead. :-)

Checkout this post by Rails developer David HH on explosive growth of Ruby books.. Sales are up 1552% at O'Reilly and they only have 2 books on the market. David also notes that Ruby books are out selling Python books. Pretty amazing stuff when you think about it. From obscurity to quite a buzz in about 1 year.

More evidence to me that Ruby is going to be the next big thing. It is just fun to program in the language. I haven't done any Rails programming yet, but I'm in the process of switching over to DreamHost as my ISP. Rails is the main reason for the switch. Hopefully around Christmas I get more of a chance to try some of this out.

I hope to be posting more on Ruby on the weeks and months to come. I'm just learning the language but I think I should share as I figure things out.

By the way, if you are interested in the two Ruby books, here they are.

The xml.com site has an intro article on using the Ruby REXML. This the main libary for manipulating XML in Ruby. It's pretty easy to use and is well worth getting to know. Haven't read all the aricle yet, but it looks good.

Well I have been remiss in my Anime posts of late. Since I just started on the 2nd season of Ghost in the Shell, I thought I should comment on the first couple of disks for season 2 of one of my favorite Anime series.

Season 2 starts with the reauthorization of public security Section 9 under a new government with a new female Prime Minister. The main issue facing the new government is a question of what to do with refugees from the last world war. The aid program that has taken care of the refugees is about to expire and is not to be renewed. So there is a lot of social unrest. The first few episodes included in disk 1 and disk 2 has Section 9 in unfamiliar territory. They are in a reactive mode as opposed to the proactive mode of season one. This does give the early episodes and different feel. The 3 or 4 remaining Tachikomas that were not destroyed are also back for season 2. (Woo hoo!)

The 2nd Gig also has new opening and closing sequences along with new songs. All are good, but the opening sequence is regular anime instead of the 3-D affects used in the first season.

So far so good. The story has been a bit slow for me, but it is beginning to pick up. I really love the rich detail of this series. The anime is great and the future vision of a truly networked world is cool. (Having you brain plugged into the Internet, now that's really wired. Can't get much more networked than that.) It is going to be tough to have to wait another two months for the next disk to be released.