Setting up PayPal with ActiveMerchant in Ruby on Rails.
Cody Fauser has literally saved my life! How you ask? Well, he wrote an excellent blog post on PayPal Express Payments with ActiveMerchant.
I have been searching around for some detailed info on setting up PayPal in a Ruby on Rails application, and Cody came through in fine fashion. It turns out that by using ActiveMerchant, setting up PayPal in a Rails application is quite simple and pretty straight forward. Certainly check out Cody’s blog posting if you are looking into integrating PayPal with your Ruby on Rails application.
XBox Live users are seriously getting a little ridiculus
In case you have not heard, there have been some problems with the XBox Live gaming service as of late, most notably over the Christmas holiday. The service was down for periods of time, people were losing their account settings, and many people could not connect or play games online.
First of all, no service is perfect and it is going to go down from time to time. I do agree that Microsoft should have been better prepared for this, as they knew that the holiday season was going to bring a massive mount of new gamers connecting to the service. On top of it being a holiday week, and the new influx of gamers, the service just simply couldn’t handle the traffic and got severely bogged down for periods of time. Now, I agree that I was pretty irritated with Live for a while there as I was wanting to play my fair share of games along with everyone else.
But, here is the part that I can’t understand………..
Is it really that big of a deal? I mean come on, surely people have other things they can be doing with their time right? Well, apparently not. The problems with the service have caused quite a reaction in the Live arena, so much so that people have actually filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft. This just seems totally stupid to me, as I don’t see the value in doing something like that. In the long run, it won’t make the service better, and it won’t bring anymore value to the service than what is currently there. Now granted, I pay my XBox Live subscription fees just like everyone else does, but really, a class-action lawsuit for what averages out to be about $.15 per day? No thanks, I’ll pass. Microsoft has already spoken up about the issue and said there were some major problems that they are working on, and have even offered a free arcade game to all subscribers for the trouble. Now, I agree that this was not the best idea in my opinion, and I would have rather had a free month of service or something along those lines.
Anyway, my point is this…..people are blowing this whole thing way out of proportion. It is not the end of the world here people, and Live will continue on just as it always has. MS will fix the problems and you will be back to gaming bliss soon, just sit back and give it a little time.
Ya know, nobody forces you to pay for the service, and nobody is keeping you from buying a different console and playing something else. If you don’t like the service or the way MS is handling the situation, don’t pay for it. That seems fairly logical to me, so I can’t figure out why it does not to everyone else. You have a choice here, and no one is forcing you to choose Live. Besides, we are talking about $50 for an entire year, so we are not exactly breaking the piggy bank here.
I would like to hear everyone else’s thoughts on this, I mean maybe I am just missing something here, and if so, I would like to hear about it. For me, I don’t see the big deal in all of this. I know that the service is going to have problems from time to time, and I expect it. I just don’t see the need in getting in an uproar, when you know the probability for it is there.
The WordPress Help Sheet
If you are looking for a great guide to help you with WP themes, The WordPress Help Sheet may help you quite a bit. Give it a look!
Building a Successful Niche Social Media Website: An Interview With Andrew Egenes of Design Float
Vandelay Web Design has an excellent interview with Andrew Egenes, founder of Design Float. Design Float is certainly one of my daily visits and is a Digg clone that caters to the design community. In this interview, Andrew discusses the origins of Design Float from launch to it’s current rise to fame as a quality resource site for designers.
Design Float steps in and fixes the exact problems that I have always had with Digg, useless content. When Digg first launched, it had quality tech news and I loved it. As it has grown in popularity, the site has continuously went downhill in content quality and relevancy. Design Float aims to fix that problem by focusing on a niche and providing excellent content for that niche. Be sure to read this interview, as it provides some really good advice on creating a good social media niche site.
Akelos PHP Framework
Another interesting PHP framework has surfaced that looks mighty good! The Akelos PHP Framework looks pretty interesting, as it is based on the MVC (model/view/controller) design pattern. This is of course one of the staples of Ruby on Rails and is certainly a very pragmatic way to program. If you are a PHP programmer, or you are thinking of picking up PHP, check out the framework as it may just fit you needs.
A year in Xbox 360 failures: 2007 Edition - Joystiq
If you have an Xbox 360, then are no doubt aware of the RRoD(Red Ring of Death) plague that is sweeping the Xbox community like wild fire. It seems as though getting the RRoD is inevitable if you own a 360 console, as even the newer consoles appear to have the same problem. Joystiq has a great article about the RRoD plague that should give you some insight in to what you can look forward to in the future with your 360 console.
A year in Xbox 360 failures: 2007 Edition - Joystiq
Review: Freelanceswitch.com
For the last few weeks, I have been spending a good bit of time on Freelanceswitch.com. This site is awesome and offers up some excellent articles, tools, and info for the freelancing professional. Here is a quick rundown of things that I like and do not like about the site:
What I like
- The design of the site is very clean and probably one of the best designs of 2007 for me.
- The articles are great and always well informative about various freelancing topics.
- The tools are a godsend! The rates calculator is very helpful in figuring out what you need to be charging per hour for your freelance work.
- The podcast is great! Very informative podcast discussing important freelancing topics.
What I don’t like
- Even though they released a book, it should not cost $29 in my opinion. Once the paperback is released, a $29 tag may be alright, but for a PDF download, I would like to see the price in $14-$18 range.
- The job board, while great, is not free. It requires a monthly fee in order to view/post job listings.
- The forums could be better and a little more lively. I would like to see something more along the lines of the forums over at sitepoint.com.
All in all, freelanceswitch.com is an awesome place if you are a freelancer or thinking of becoming a freelancer. You will find a plethora of great information there and some handy tools that will help you along the way. If you have the cash, I would recommend that you pick up the book, as you will find it to be another great source of info.
I would love to hear your thoughts about the site, so check it out and then drop back by and leave me a comment on it!
Share your Mac’s wireless with your XBOX 360
In case you were wondering if you could hook up your 360 to your Mac and piggy back the wireless, why yes you can! Check out this article that explains how to share your Mac’s wireless connection with your XBOX 360. It takes a fair amount of configuration, but appears to work for everyone that has went through the process. This will certainly save you that $100 that MS wants for their wireless network adapter. Good luck with it.
My typical design process
I often times get asked what my process is for designing and building a typical website. And, while my process is probably not much different than others, I thought I would share it for people that are maybe looking to simplify the process of designing a site. I have broken the process down into 5 steps.
Step 1. Sketch Phase
When it comes time to design a new site, I start out by sketching all of my ideas out on paper. I first begin with writing down all of the initial thoughts I have about the company, the logo, the branding idea, etc. This allows me to free flow my thinking and get it all on paper to go back and use later. Once I do that, I sketch out some layout ideas and starting forming the look and feel as well as the flow of the site. Sketching on paper saves loads of time in this process, because it is quick and you can quickly get a good idea of where the site is headed without spending a lot of time mocking stuff up. Once I have a good sketch in place, and I am happy with the layout ideas, I move on to mocking it up.
Step 2. Mock-up
With my layout ideas sketched out, I move on to Photoshop to actually mock up the layout in a clean fashion. I build the site and place everything as it will look once it is actually usable. This is where I can move things around to better suit the site and finalize the layout before actually coding anything. Once I have the site mocked up and I am happy with the final version, I build it.
Step 3. Slice/Code
With my mock-up now complete, I can slice it up to get my images, logos, background images, etc. I then being the coding process by coding out all of the framework in an xhtml document. I typically use Textmate or skEdit for this but Dreamweaver is also a tool in my arsenal that gets plenty of use. Once I have the initial framework coded out, I then begin my CSS coding and putting some life to that xhtml code that I have created. Once I have the CSS and the xhtml code, I can build the complete site and fine tune the design to my liking.
Step 4. Testing
After I have the site built and looking like I want it to, I then begin the testing process in multiple browsers and platforms. I design and build everything in Firefox on the Mac, and I get the site looking perfect there first. Once I have that, I then go back and tweak for IE6, IE7, and some of the other lesser known browsers. I test everything for xhtml and css compliance and make all of my final tweaks at that point.
Step 5. Launch!
Once the site is designed, built, and tested….I launch it! Usually after a site launch, I often have to go back and make some other subtle tweaks to get everything pixel perfect. I set up hosting, domain name, etc. and upload everything to the new hosting server.
So, although what I have described above is brief, it gives you a good idea of my overall process. Obviously, there are further details that go into this such as client revisions, color schemes, etc., but you should now have a really good idea of my basic process. I hope that you find it useful and hopefully it helps you better refine your process for building sites.
As always, no process is perfect, so if you have any ideas or comments, I would be glad to head them. Maybe you have some ideas for making my process better. If so, please comment and share your ideas!
Design Float - Digg for Designers
I stumbled upon a new site today that is pretty cool if you are A) a designer of some type and B) you are a fan of the Digg. The site is called Design Float and it is a Digg clone that focuses on design in particular.
I like this site because it focuses on more of what I find interesting, without having to search for it like I would have to on Digg. My other complaint with Digg, is the fact that a lot of the content on Digg is useless in my opinion. A lot of content makes the front page that has absolutely no reason to be there, which can often times put better content on lower pages.
Design Float seems to already have a pretty good following and there seems to be a pretty good collection of information hitting the front page. I also like the fact that even though the primary content is based around design, the content is still categorized into more specific areas of design. This is great because I can immediately browse my particular area of interest quickly, without reading through content that may not be of interest to me.
All in all, even though the whole “Digg” type of site has been cloned countless times, I think that Design Float has cloned the concept well. Hopefully the site will gain a bigger following and continue to provide worthy content to the design industry. Check out the site and let me know what you think.