the real Nate Clark

Tonight at the Pivotal office I showed a few people the updates and modifications I’ve made to the globalize plugin for Rails.

My main motivation was fixing Globalize to work with Rails 2.1. They changed the way rails views are selected and rendered, and the date_helper api, both which broke the plugin. I forked globalize on github and my fork now works with Rails 2.1.

UPDATED June 14: Thanks to tips from jodosha and David Ramalho, I’ve made a few updates to the branch that fix a few things.

script/plugin install git://github.com/heythisisnate/globalize.git

>> "Biodiesel Stations".t
=> "Biodiesel Stations"

>> Locale.set 'zh-tw'
>> "Biodiesel Stations".t
=> "生質柴油"

In addition to string translations, Globalize does a lot more, including date & time localization, currency, and number formatting differences. It handles pluralization supremely. The original team did a great job, and I’m happy to contribute my changes for Rails 2.1.

I’ve hacked on a few additional features that I previewed tonight … they’re not quite ready for prime time yet. I’ll definitely publish them here when they are.

After a very long break, I’ve decided to revive this blog. Today, June 10, is a turning point for me. This morning, I resigned from my senior Rails developer position at a startup in Palo Alto, and I’m wasting no time getting ready for the next career adventure.

Being employed and extremely busy didn’t work well with frequent blogging. Unfortunately, I have done a poor job of writing interesting stuff here. But, now that I’m a free agent, I’ll have more time and motivation to keep the blog going.

As you might guess, I’m now looking for a new Ruby on Rails gig. I live in San Francisco now, and will stay in this area. If you’re looking for a leader and developer with 2+ years experience, I’m your guy. I favor small teams that use Agile or XP principles.

Anyway, as I write this, I’m upgrading my server and updating my resume (simultaneously). Look forward to more frequent articles on more in-depth technical topics.

You may or may not know that Atlanta is in a severe drought right now, and the Governor recently asked Atlantans to cut back their water consumption by 10%. Reminds me of a mantra of an old friend:

When it’s yellow … let it mellow
When it’s brown … flush it down

Yeah, that’s a little gross, but seriously we could do better to conserve water. Especially when taking a leak … it seems like such a waste to use all that water to flush away something that’s already liquid. I read this week that one county’s schools are going to those waterless urinals. A great step in the right direction. Let’s also get these in airports, malls, everywhere.

Also, I recently came back from Paris, where all the toilets have two flush buttons … one that deploys a smaller flush for #1. What a great, simple and effective idea. Why don’t we have these in our homes?

It looks like they’ve caught on in some airports:

Photo by jessamyn on Flickr

Usually, Gmail’s spam filter works great … but this was just funny:

I just found out through a post on Consumerist that my bank of about 6 years, Netbank, went out of business with no warning on Friday.

I never would have thought that my bank would just close up shop, but I guess anything could happen. Thank goodness for the FDIC, which ensures that my deposits of up to $100,000 are insured and immediately accessible. No need to worry, my friends, my bank balance was (far) less than the $100,000 insurance cap, so this ordeal will only be a minor inconvenience for me. The FDIC has already published a comprehensive information page and 24-hour hotline about NetBank’s failure, and the changeover of its accounts to ING Direct. This is one of the few times where I am actually praising a U.S. Government agency for doing their job (and saving my ass). Wouldn’t it be great if the rest of the country operated in such an efficient and responsible manner with the best interests of citizens as their first priority?

I switched to NetBank about 6 years ago because they offered interest bearing checking accounts with no fees (not even ATM fees), were one of the first banks to have online bill-pay, and (my favorite feature) accepted deposits by mail. I’ve heard good things about ING Direct’s interest rates … so I guess this really isn’t a bad thing.

I feel really bad for the 1,500 account holders that had collectively $109 million in deposits that are over the FDIC limit. These poor rich folk stand to lose as much as 50% of their assets just because they chose the wrong bank.

Let this be a lesson learned … when you get rich, keep your excess money stuffed in your mattress or buried under your patio … yeah, that’s much safer.

Pidgin is a great free multi-protocol instant messaging app with a cute purple pigeon logo. I use it to connect to my AIM, MSN, Google Talk (x2), and Yahoo! IM accounts, but it also is compatible with lots more. Pidgin is the new name of the Gaim project, which was an earlier version of the same tool.

On Ubuntu Feisty, you can install Pidgin yourself by downloading it from pidgin.im or other sites, but it won’t be included in the official Ubuntu repositories until the Gutsy release. I prefer to use Aptitude instead of download stuff to install, mainly so it automatically stays updated. Pidgin for Ubuntu Feisty is available by adding this repository to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://repository.debuntu.org/ feisty multiverse
deb-src http://repository.debuntu.org/ feisty multiverse

Add the repository key:

wget http://repository.debuntu.org/GPG-Key-chantra.txt -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Then update and install Pidgin:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install pidgin

You’ll see that Pidgin has replaced Gaim on the Applications > Internet launcher menu. You may get a notification for an updated Gaim transitional package after the install. If so, go ahead and install it.