The year is coming to a close, so I thought it would be a good time to reflect at some of the projects I’ve worked on in 2011.

• DotBlock API v1 is the first version of DotBlock’s public API.
• DotBlock API Ruby is a Ruby gem for communicating with the DotBlock API.
• DotBlock API PHP is a PHP wrapper for communicating with the DotBlock API.
• DotBlock API Bash is a simple Bash client for communicating with the DotBlock API.
• TiFighter is a jQuery-like utility library for use in Titanium Mobile applications.
• DotBlock Mobile is the first iPhone application for DotBlock.
• whmcs-ruby is a Ruby library for communicating with the WHMCS API.
• MiniDB is a tiny wrapper for use with PHP’s PDO database library.
• FannyPack is a Ruby library for communicating with the Fantastico API.
• Snuggie is a Ruby library for communicating with the Softaculous NOC API.
• Hamburglar is a Ruby library for communicating with fraud prevention APIs (currently only MaxMind).
• vim-stripper is a vim plugin that strips whitespace from buffers on write.
• vim-odo is a vim plugin that lets you control the size and position of MacVim windows with the keyboard.

This has been one of my best years ever in terms of learning and sharing code. I’m excited to see what I hack on in 2012!

I can’t believe it’s already been six months since I joined the engineering crew at Site5. I’ve been having a blast!

Looking at my GitHub profile, it’s pretty obvious to me how much I’ve grown these past 6 months. I’ve developed and released three rubygems used in other Site5 projects (hamburglar, snuggie, and fanny_pack). I’ve helped the original developers of a few other Site5 gems (solusvm, moo_moo, lumberg, and squall). I’ve helped with some proprietary projects. I’m also happy to say I’m helping with one engineer’s transition from PHP to Ruby :)

Along the way I’ve learned the value of BDD and tests in projects. I’ve had a chance to play with Node.js and coffeescript on our company sponsored hackdays. I’ve finally had a chance to get to know Rails 3. In fact, I’m co-developing one of Site5’s first Rails 3 projects, which will likely turn out to be one of it’s largest applications. I live for this stuff, so this has been awesome fun for me.

The first day I started working for Site5, I decided to switch my editor to MacVim from Textmate. I’d been playing with MacVim on and off for a few months, but something always brought me back to TextMate. After six months with MacVim, I can say it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made as far as my development environment goes. I won’t get into all the details in this post, but I’ll note that I’m much faster with writing and editing code than I ever was in TextMate.

Aside from the actual code and tools, working with a team of engineers using the same tools and languages as me been an amazing experience. Being able to bounce ideas off of someone else is invaluable.

I’m learning a ton of new things all the time, and constantly able to practice and perfect the things I use daily. I decided to join Site5 because I thought it would be a great environment to learn and build great software – if this is what the first six months has been like, I can’t wait to see what the next year or two will bring.

This quote from Bleach sums up my thoughts on perfection pretty well:

There is no such thing as a perfect being in this world. That may sound cliché, but it’s the truth. The average person admires perfection and seeks to obtain, what is the point of achieving perfection? There is none. Nothing. Not even a single thing. I loathe perfection! If something is perfect, then there is nothing left. There is no room for imagination, no creativity. No place left for a person to gain additional knowledge or abilities. Do you know what that means? For scientists such as ourselves, perfection only brings despair. It is our job to create things more wonderful than anything before them, but never obtain perfection. A scientist must be a person who finds ecstasy while suffering from that antimony, who finds disease while he has it.

I was having trouble getting Pow working with rbenv, and I found this detailed article that goes through the process, and a lot more. Check it out if you want to take another look at your OS X ruby development setup.

Need to use Apache alongside Pow? I found this guide that explains how to setup Apache to use IPv6.

A friend of mine sent me this article today, a very interesting read about taking chances in business.

I wrote my first vim plugin, a simple command to strip trailing whitespace from buffers. Check it out if you think whitespace is the devil too.

Yesterday, I pushed Snuggie, a gem that wraps the Softaculous API in a warm, loving ruby embrace. Check it out if you use Softaculous!

Check out FannyPack if you use the Fantastico API with Ruby.

I’ve been itching to get ahold of this Adium mod since seeing it on MacThemes about a year ago. I decided to check back in the other day, and was pleasantly surprised to see that iDium had finally been publicly released.