eccp

Actually, this is one of the long lasting issues with RoR: most people want to try it on a recent version, but Linux distros try to package stable releases instead. You shouldn't blame the distros for not having the absolute bleeding edge version.

If really need the absolute latest version of Rails go on, have a separate install compiled from source, but there's no need to be rude with the packagers. I'm trying to learn Rails 3 and I found that JRuby works really fine with Rails 3, and using Warbler gives me nices WAR files to deploy on Tomcat, and I don't mess my default Ruby install.

In my case, I'm learning Emacs after ~15 years avoiding it. I use a combination of Vim, Eclipse and Netbeans for enterprisey Java, but after that many years of a fixed mindset, I'm trying to reinvent myself and I'm trying both Clojure, JRuby and Git; Emacs has great modules to integrate them with ease.

Currently I don't have the fluency I had with Vim but I think the effort will pay itself on the long run. The key is to practice and use Emacs as much as you can everyday.

Not only that, you get all the games for ALL the platforms. I happen to have both an Ubuntu laptop and another with Windows 7.

I'm learning Emacs too (after 10 years of vi/Vim), and one of the first things that most people suggest are: hiding the menu and toolbars.

See more here: http://charsequence.blogspot.com/2010/07/setup-emacs-for-dev...

And why did you have to install Windows 7 on the first place? Any special software requirements (ie. games)? ... if not, why not just installing Ubuntu, the obvious restricted packages and OpenSSH server so you can connect remotely?

Ruby Koans is great, I learned a lot (coming from a Java background), there are a number of excercises and small projects, it was a very pleasant experience to finish them.

In my case, it's rather extreme. I develop a Java webapp in Santiago de Chile for an Australian business. I've travelled to Australia twice (4 months in total), but I've been able to manage the last 2 years so far interacting with them via email/chat/Phone/Skype dialy.

It's been very challenging but it's been an interesting experience overall. In my case take breaks to be with my family several times a day and walk a lot to ease the anxiety.

It's way too easy to lose focus on your tasks unless you can keep at least some discipline, but in the end I think I've learnt a lot, not only technology-wise.

I use Ubuntu on a daily basis, but I've tried Gentoo, Linux from Scratch and FreeBSD on VirtualBox.

In those, I was looking for the experience of building all these layers of software, one on top of the other, like a set of dominoes falling backwards in time. After a few hours, you get a giant, baroque, colorful picture of software tools which built itself, and it's for you to use. I can't think of any other professional discipline which allows you to do so.

WETA Digital uses Ubuntu Server on their server farm and desktops:

http://jordanopensource.org/freeplanet/article/ubuntu-linux-...

I had a workmate on a J2EE team who had a Physics degree but couldn't work find anything on his field here in Chile. He moved into computer programming around his mid/late 30s and now he works in the largest bank, but he's always hacking small proyects.

I'm 34, and have a job with Java technologies that pays the bills, but I can't help to hack small projects after hours. I often feel that I need to escape that 'sinking' feeling, so I'm trying to build my own small business right now.

If you review other posts here on HN, you will notice a pattern of people which feel on a crisis around our age. It's common. But it's not the end of the world. You are not old, and you've proven to have the will to keep going forward, so just keep trying. Best wishes!

Highly recommended. IMO it beats other good free fonts such as DejaVu Sans Mono, Droid Sans Mono (has problems with zero vs Oh) and Liberation Mono. On Ubuntu is packaged as "ttf-inconsolata".

I won't upgrade tonight or at least for a few weeks, but I will probably upgrade to 11.04 as soon as it's released.

See http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryWThirtyTwo for a discussion of versions of Emacs for Windows.

Looks great

I was thinking the same, but then I thought "What if this guy is building a competitor to www.icanhascheezburger.com ?" maybe on that context it would be appropriate.

I think the whole thread is missing the an important aspect of the discussion: what Jamie wants is kids who are aware/concious of what they are eating, and hopefully, choose better.

See Jamie's speech on TED for more context: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIwrV5e6fMY

"Linux infrastructure was heavily used in Avatar's graphics rendering done by Weta Digital [...] The Data Center of Weta Digital was re-built in 2008 and consists of 34 racks and more than 4,000 Hewlett-Packard blade servers with a 104TB of RAM. Ubuntu is at the core of all of this, running on all of the rendering nodes, and 90% of the desktops at Weta Digital, according to Paul Gunn, the data center's systems administrator."

http://jordanopensource.org/freeplanet/article/ubuntu-linux-...

sudo apt-get install ttf-liberation ttf-droid

Chilean here. Smartphones are very popular already. Blackberries used to be popular only among executives, and the first iPhones where very expensive, but they're way more common nowadays. I don't have numbers, but I'd say that in Chile the Blackberries and iPhones have the most of the market, in that order.

Not entirely true. On Tomcat 5 and 6, the resulting code is really close to the original, plus lots of out.write().

If the logs show an exception on org.apache.jsp.mypage_jsp._jspService(mypage_jsp.java:NNNN), you can find the generated Java class on TOMCAT_HOME/work/Catalina/localhost/myapp and it's rather straightforward from there.

I do this on a daily basis to maintain a legacy app. Not sexy but, not hard either.

I googled some more and it seems that the girl on the cover is a gravure idol. There's more detail and some page scans here [nsfw-ish]:

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2010/06/03/linux-for-lolicon-u...

TekPub (http://tekpub.com/) has some other tutorials more/less in the style of PeepCode. A couple of the series are free.

Show me do (http://showmedo.com/) has a diversity of subjects, including programming.

Summary: Linus hates CVS and, by extension, SVN. Talks about the importance of distributed development and pains of the centralized model. You can work offline. On centralized, trivial decisions can't be taken because they pollute the central repository and leads to bad practices. Creating branches is not the main issue, merging FAST is. Git performs/scales well, 22K files on the Linux kernel repo, about 4 merges a day for 2 years since being tracked with Git. Mercurial is good, but Git is better. Git uses SHA-1 hashes for the full history, brings security against attacks and RAM/disk corruption.

As far as I remember, both Subcplise (the older SVN plugin) and Subversive (the recommended SVN plugin for the latest Eclipse) support svn+ssh URLs. See http://www.eclipse.org/subversive/documentation/teamSupport/...

+1 for Mousepad

http://www.xfce.org/projects/mousepad/

During the 90s I tried to learn enough to code some intros, but the learning curve is super steep to do something like your demoscene idols create. Also tried to find momentum here in Chile but failed, so finally I joined a mostly European team called 'Ethereal' which produced at least one demo:

http://pouet.net/nfo.php?which=3965&f=none

(I feature under the nickname 'eccp', on handdrawn graphics) ... I really enjoyed it while it lasted.

You're right, you can have your code in svn on Google Code, and setup the project on Launchpad, so the code is automagically imported into a Bzr branch.

I've got a Bzr branch (https://code.launchpad.net/~vcs-imports/gtkfilesplitter/trun...) imported from (http://gtkfilesplitter.googlecode.com/svn/)

I used SF in the past (prior to their svn adoption) and it was slow, lots of forms to fill for a setup, and the process to deliver the downloads was cumbersome.

Google Code requires a free Google Account and a simple form. If you can live with svn, you'll find that its features are simple yet powerful (wiki, downloads page, svn browser, issues tracker). Another thing i like is that you can give admin/commit access to other Google accounts easily.

Launchpad is also a good alternative if your code is under a free license. You'll have the features of bzr, issues tracker and others, and if you're packing for Debian/Ubuntu, you can use Launchpad PPA to build your packages for 32 and 64 bit architectures for free.

Denis Fuenzalida, the second on the list :-)