So recently Rails 3.1 was released, bringing a ton of fun new features, such as the asset pipeline, streaming, a new migration syntax, and a bunch of other new features. You may ask “hey thinkingonrails guy, how can I learn all this new stuff? There are no books out there that are cutting edge and up to date enough to help me!”

Fear not gentle reader, you’ll be happy to hear that the newly updated book from Manning Publications Rails 3 in Action is fully updated to cover Rails 3.1 (and Rails 3 if you’re even farther behind).

I was able to read through some of this book and I have to say that Ryan Bigg and Yehuda Katz did a great job in making an accessible book on rails. Yes, it definitely helps to have at least some rails (and of course ruby) experience, but if you’re reading this blog, you probably have at least a passing understanding of these things. It covers topics such as:

• Testing (early on, which is awesome)
• Nested Resources
• Authentication and authorization
• File uploads
• Email
• API design (for those wanting to go a bit beyond a blog site
• Engines
• Rack based applications

That’s not all of course, that’s just me cherry picking the table of contents. I admit I haven’t read fully all of the topics here, they are quite frankly, beyond me. The book looks great in layout as well, lots of whitespace (even @danbenjamin will approve).

I don’t want to go deep into a review and will just say this. This book hits topics that will matter in real life day to day work. Recipes such as twitter authentication and file uploads are well mixed in with a more traditional style of programming book which walks you through building an application, with successive sections building upon the previous. The writing style is fresh and feels more “conversational” (to me anyway) than other Rails books out there.

The eBook version of the book is released today and you can get a 50% off deal (that’s half price folks) for today only by using the code rails350e if you go and purchase the eBook here.

Disclosure: I was kindly given early access to the eBook by Candace over at Manning.

Cool news for the Ruby community…. Matz, creator of the language has joined Heroku (wonder if that’s what they did with their big payday?). Potentially very cool stuff, congrats to Matz and the ruby community (and especially Heroku).

Matz is going to be the Chief Architect. Here’s a press release for you.

Just got this email from the Cascadia Ruby Conference list:

Big news! We’ve opened registration. Early bird tickets are available
for $300 until Midnight, May 31, PDT. Regular registration will be $400,
and available until July 25th at Midnight PDT. After that you’ll be out
of luck. To register:

http://cascadiarubyconf.com/register

As a small aside, we know that some of you may think it’s strange to
open registration before the program is announced. Rest assured that
you’ll have at least six weeks to register after we’ve finalized the
program.

And finally, a related reminder: our CFP is open and we’re looking for
great talks. If you’re interested, head over to:

http://cascadiarubyconf.com/proposals

The CFP will remain open until May 15th and Midnight PDT. As always,
keep your eyes on our site and @cascadiaruby for updates.

If you don’t know what Cascadia is, you can check out the Cascadia Ruby Conf website and if you’re in the Vancouver/Seattle area, definitely sign up and join us!

Almost a year ago I had a grand idea to create a site that could become a canonical source for Ruby Idioms, and grabbed ruby-idioms.com, pointed it to this site, and proceeded to not be able to find the time do do much more than a skeleton rails site.

The renewal for the domain is coming up now and I have still not yet done anything with it, so maybe someone out there in the community can do better than me.

If you’re interested in doing the site, or getting the domain, please contact me at either @arcterex or by email at alan @ ufies.org. Hopefully the domain will do someone in the Ruby and Rails community some good!

Remember a bit ago when Wayne E. Seguin of RVM Fame (I think he should legally change his name to that BTW) was hired by Engine Yard to do, among other things, help get Rails working properly on Windows? Well, looks like in only weeks of work, there is now Ruby and Rails on Windows in a Single, Easy Install.

If this works as advertised (haven’t had a chance to test it yet), then this is huge in giving Ruby on Rails a big edge into the Windows world, and eliminates the need for such hacky (sorry Curtis) solutions like this, previously the “best” way to run Rails on Windows

Not only that, but this gives Rails on Windows almost the same advantage it has for development on Mac and Linux: stupidly low barrier to entry. Rails has always been easy to program in, but you had to get it up and running first. On Mac it’s been included in the OS for a few versions of Mac OS, on Linux it’s been as easy as “apt-get install rails” (or equivalent), and now on windows it’ll be as easy as “go to http://railsinstaller.org/, download and clicky clicky”.

Awesome work by Envy Labs (of Rails for Zombies and EnvyCasts fame) creating Ruby on Rails 3 Cheat Sheets. They look great, are well laid out, and are great to throw in your Rails PDF folder to look at when needed.