Announcing www.arnab-deka.com!

So I finally agreed to all the people/articles and am moving from blogger . Taking that opportunity, I got my own domain. So my blog now on will be hosted on my own site!

So now on I won't be posting anymore here - although I'll leave the existing ones here (and I have imported all of them - so you can see them in my site too).

Here it is - www.arnab-deka.com (bye bye blogger - will miss you). Go over to my site to read a blog about why - http://www.arnab-deka.com/posts/2009/01/so-this-is-my-new-blog (and feel freeto quiz me why I moved)

Missing the spam from me?

I love feeding on bits of information. The world is full of interesting things and the Internet has a thousand ways of feeding you all that.

If you are not this type of a person - and like to live in your own shell (nothing bad with that) - you can stop reading now - and use your time well doing something else. Like living in your own shell.

Back to the topic - I do skim most of the info dished out at me. Some I keep in my "hmmm" folder of my brain (you guessed it - doesn't stick long), some I delicious-mark. The rest are the really interesting ones - I find it hard to not share with people I know.

Like this - http://bit.ly/17q25 written by @zen_habits
(this article is on how to use twitter well - I have a truckload, or maybe a trainload of people I know, who tell me - "What is twitter anyway? Just another Social Media Platform? Why would I want to go to yet another site? Is Facebook/Orkut/MySpace/insert-your-fav-social-media-network not enough already?" This is an excellent article on why and how twitter.)

How can I not make my friends read this? :-)

Now if it was 3 months ago, I would have snapped the link up in an e-mail and sent it to all of you, hoping that you'll also read it and like it and apply it. This group of people would include at least all interesting folks I know in India, NY and Seattle - that's a lot of people right? And most probably won't even read it (yeah I know - it's ok)

No more - I just twit it now - with the knowledge that whoever wants to eat info-blurbs like I do will follow me and read it.

That's why I urge you my friends/social-beings/netizens, give the article above a read - here it is again for effect - http://bit.ly/17q25

If you do get convinced that twitter is a big idea, can be useful to you and actually help in reducing spam, get an account fast.

You can follow me if you like - http://twitter.com/arnab_deka
Or check out the people I follow - there are some interesting folks - and follow them instead.

And finally, here are some interesting/info on why/how etc. of twitter: http://delicious.com/arnab.deka/twitter

If you are still not convinced and take nothing else from this blog, take this back - you can rest assured that you'll get spam from one less person now on.

On RubyRef - Ruby Doc on iPhone

Just learnt from @IndianGuru's tweet about RubyRef - it's an iPhone app for Ruby Doc.

Sound like a nice idea - however redundancy was already a thought by the time I went to the Appstore to check it out. However I am spoilt by free iPhone app already - and seeing a tag of $0.99 I didn't care to even try it. Here's why -

1) There's hardly any time I am coding Ruby/Rails I am not online. And there's really great free doc (rubybrain, railsbrain, and the excellent one stop shop gotapi). When I have these at a keypress away, why will I turn to the iPhone?

2) I find myself copy-pasting most of the time I am looking up some obsecure Ruby functionality. Agreed, Ruby makes it concise. It's not like you have to a) code up an Iterator, b) have a while loop to go thru it c) and finally iterate, like in some other languages - Ruby is good at being concise. But still, you gotta cut-paste sometimes right?

3) I find myself working with different Ruby/Rails versions all the time. Ruby 1.8.7/Rails 2.2 at home, Ruby 1.8.6/Rails 1.2 at work (don't get it started on why) - so I find rubybrain/railsbrain very useful for this purpose. I haven't tried RubyRef yet - but looking at the screenshots it probably supports one version. Especially with Rails evolving all the time, we definitely need something like that

4) I haven't talked about ri/irb combo yet - I find them very useful for Ruby docs. Right in the shell, no context switch to move to the browser/phone. Even if you don't use them, having a downloaded copy of the doc (from rubybrain for example) will probably be much more easier to refer to than the iPhone.

I mean, I don't see myself coding Ruby/Rails without a computer (at least now). As long as I have a computer won't ri/irb/rubybrain/downloaded-doc be easier to refer than the iPhone?

I had all the intentions of trying the app out - but given so many good, free alternatives I don't think I'll try a 99 cent app.

What about you?