It goes a little slower than I had planned on, mostly because the only time I have to work on it is at night in the hour or two before I go to bed. Being sleepy while training to learn a web framework is not a good way to go. Nor is learning in half hour chunks. It takes longer, sometimes, to get into that flow.

But I did luck across an answer to a question I asked here a couple of weeks back. That is, why won’t my relations between objects in my database show up in the scaffolding? I found it while reading SitePoint’s RoR book:

However, scaffolding does have its limits, as I mentioned earlier. For example, it can’t cope with ActiveRecord associations such as “a Story belongs to a User,” which we saw in Chapter 4. Additionally, since most applications end up requiring a fully fledged administrative interface, you’re often better off just creating the real thing rather than fiddling around with a dummy interface.

I’m also liking how things are starting to knit themselves together. The more I read and the more I try and fail to do things, the more I learn. Some books explain things in more direct ways than others. Some leave out details the authors don’t think are important, but which I struggle without knowing. If you read enough Ruby books, you’ll eventually bring the best elements of each into your vocabulary. And all will be good.

The trick is, as Kevin commented in the original post, to skip the scaffolding. This way, you also learn your way around the code quicker.  Forcing yourself to tediously code the most basic CRUD stuff is a great way to learn some of the tricks of the trade.

He’s the guy who plays the piano as the contestants learn their songs and rehearse. He helps to arrange, also.

Salute the Piano Player | American Idol (Series) | Entertainment Weekly

It seems like the contestants are ignoring a lot of advice this year. For example, this week Tony Bennett told Haley not do the whole ‘’And you, and you, and you'’ line in ‘’Ain’t Misbehavin,'’ and advised Phil to add some beats behind the words ‘’Night and Day.'’ And yet, neither listened. What do you make of that?

Those two and LaKisha, who was told by Tony Bennett to end on the one note, when instead she ended on ‘’Ain’t no sunshine when he’s gone.'’ Believe me, no one wanted to come off being disrespectful. I know the kids were just blown away by him. I was a wreck playing the piano in front of him. He just happens to be a real purist with the melodies. Unfortunately, because of the way they had the clips, it made the kids look like they weren’t going to listen to what he said. But we tried it his way. I worked with Haley and LaKisha that week and we tried changing it up and playing it straight. We came back to the studio on Monday and said, ‘’Let’s try it his way.'’ It just didn’t work. They have to do how it feels right to them.

In Haley’s defense, the whole flirty shtick worked well with her new skirt-up-to-my-hoo-ha image.

Yeah, you have to take what the mentor says, learn whatever you can, and then be comfortable with your own performance. You’re the one being judged, not Tony Bennett.

Brazilian and American stem cell research (always politically correct and the cure for everything else) has now cured diabetes. Here’s more on the same story.

In other news: A diabetes blogger wants Apple’s help in designing better equipment for diabetics. That would be cool. Me, I just want Aventis to stop putting insulin in such cheap crappy thin glass vials that break if you so much as exhale on them, forcing me to renew my prescription early and being denied insurance coverage on it and costing me $80 a bottle. Thanks, Aventis! Why don’t you try a little quality control once in a while? Eli Lilly’s Humalog bottles wouldn’t break if you threw them at a brick wall. They know what they’re doing.

Previous cures for diabetes around the world:

• Diabetes has been cured again! (December 16, 2006)
• Juvenile Diabetes Reversal (November 27, 2006)
• Chinese Diabetes Remedy (June 9, 2006)
• Still curing diabetes (March 28, 2006)
• Canadians Cure Diabetes (March 20, 2006)
• Yet Another Cure for Diabetes (February 27, 2004)

• The Grand Canyon Skywalk: Bitter Big Time Disappointment. $75 per person! And you can’t take your camera out.
• You can now hack with Perl on the AppleTV.
• Even better - TVShows automatically subscribes you to BitTorrent feeds of your favorite TV shows. Remember kids: It’s wrong to steal. But if you have an Apple TV, I would understand how tempting this might be.
• Video game makers are rushing to make Wii titles, as they jumped onto the bandwagon a little late.
• Geek Fight: Smalltalk versus Ruby!
• Is the Google Brain Drain coming? Will Google be the victim of its own successes? The IPO money can start flowing freely out the door now, temping many to take the money and run. I think it’s only natural for some to want to make their own way in the world, start up their own ventures, or just plain old retire. But I also think (I Am NOT A Google Employee) that Google has created an environment that is very inviting to its employees, and that’ll keep the brains on campus. I wish other employers would learn that lesson.

Apple Statement: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS® X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard’s features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the right ones.

Better late than buggy, right? And it’ll still be shipping four years sooner than Vista did off its original timeline.

Better late than never.

• Bobby (widescreen) (2006)

I can’t believe that Oprah couldn’t sell this movie. What hope is there in this country if we can’t count on her pull for massive marketing dollars?

• Cinderella: Asia Extreme

Something tells me that this is not the Disney version.

• Dead & Deader (2006)

We can only wish it were a sequel to DUMB AND DUMBERER. Instead, it’s further proof that Dean Cain’s career died with the Superman curse.

• Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple

I really should have a joke here. The fact that I don’t is mildly disturbing to my ego.

• Major League: Wild Thing Edition (1989)

You make my heart sing. You make everything. . . GROOVY.

There’s an alternate ending on this release and some commentary stuff, including a tribute to the great Bob Eucker.

• Payback – Straight Up: The Director’s Cut (1999)

Supposedly, this is a better version, more faithful to the original material.

• Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?: Season Three (2-disc set)

An entire season on two discs. THAT’S what’s wrong with cartoons these days!

(Update: Whoops.  See comments thread for correction, but this is the classic SCOOBY.) 

• Shanghai Surprise: Special Edition (1986)

Another Madonna ‘classic’. . .

• Steven Wright: When the Leaves Blow Away (2007)

Funny show. If you missed it on Comedy Central, don’t miss it again.

Yay, we’re back to the group sing-alongs! Jordin won that one. And Sanjaya gets the biggest laugh again.

The results were certainly anti-climactic. We all saw it coming. It was laughable to have Haley and Phil out on the stage together yet again. They should have just tossed both of them for being there so often. Heck, there ought to be a new AI rule: If you’re in the bottom three for three straight weeks, you’re eliminated. Phil’s just happy to be there because he has to know he has no chance of winning and he’s just slowly sliding towards the finish line, weeks ahead of the winner.

And then they dragged the show out, letting Ryan banter with Simon as much as he liked, plugging the charity event with an e-mail address, and showing comical skits that are supposed to be funny but just come off as filler. Really, do you want to run a multi-million dollar charity event by asking corporations to contact you via an e-mail address? That’s just the publicity ploy, right? I can only imagine the spam mail and Sanjaya fan mail they’re getting at that address.

J. Lo did her song and dance thing. And while the camera used as many wide and long shots as possible to help, er, “showcase the dancers” and the pyro, there’s a part of me that still wonders how much of that song she sang. Her lips were never out of synch that I noticed, so maybe I’m just being hyper-critical again. But, then, in 3/4ers of the shots that were of just her, the mic blocked her mouth from the view of the camera. All of these coincidences start adding up, you know?

And, woo! They’re padding the hour by bringing in random top acts chosen by an internet vote each week, depending (I’m sure) on their availability. I bet that I’ll recognize one of the performers between now and the finale, but that’s about it. Ironically, I don’t listen to much of today’s music.

In any case, Chris Richardson was the third in the bottom three. No big upset last night. No Diva in the bottom three. I guess they’re holding onto their fan bases just fine. Chris is starting to look a little shaky, though. Once Phil is gone next week, we have to start asking: Who will go next? I think Chris is at the head of that particular pack. But who’s there with him? Is Sanjaya’s time finally coming?

I felt bad for Haley. You know she was dying to make it to country week. I think she even listed Martina McBride as a major influence in an interview somewhere. That explains her eye roll (or was it a shoulder shrug?) when Ryan mentioned the theme for next week’s show. Maybe the kids met up with her before last night’s episode. . .

OK, enough of my rambling. What did you think? What was the most painful filler of the night for you? The Tony Bennett audition? Simon in Africa mentioning “classroom in a box” a dozen times in 30 seconds? Ryan on the street?

As 24 ended one chapter in its on-going storyline this week, so did THE SHIELD. I was surprised it ended that quickly, but it worked for me. Other television shows would have dragged this out to ludicrous ends, with characters failing to talk to one another and obvious plot holes creeping in as they built to a deafening crescendo of plot chaos. Not THE SHIELD. They came in through the side door to end it all, in a way that other shows would have feared becoming anti-climactic. I think it made sense.

And the conversation at the end of the episode between Kavanaugh and Mackey was perfect. You could see the chinks in the armor, the vulnerabilities between the two characters, and so much more in so little time on-screen.

Meanwhile, Mackey got to do his One Man Force of Nature act, including the quote of the episode that is slightly too PG-13 for this blog and would constitute a spoiler. I’ll hide that after the break.

As with 24, feel free to discuss it all in the comments below, but please don’t talk about the coming attractions.

(more…)

It’s Latin week, and noted “singer” Jennifer Lopez came down from her block to act as dance coach to the contestants. Every now and then, she also told them to “feel” the song. Aside from that, she was completely useless.

The rest of the episode was a rehash of Gloria Estefan night, with some Carlos Santana thrown in for good measure. That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but not by much.

Sadly, it was not a memorable night for the show. The performances were not stellar. The best of them were just good. There was nothing great in the show, nothing memorable. Boring.

You knew it was going to be an off night when they led off with Melinda and LaKisha.

Melinda Doolittle sang “Sway Me,” which is a Latin classic of some sort. It was, indeed, a safe song. I don’t think she was nearly as sexy or as sultry as she was supposed to be for the song, but she made a good show of trying to be. Sometimes, I think those video packages really hurt the contestants, because they put one aspect of the performance in their minds, and everything else drops away. Even if everything else went spectacularly, the audience and the judges will focus mostly on what the mentor said in the package and forget the rest. Shame.

Her vocals were fine, though, and who doesn’t love Melinda? After Simon criticized her, she told Randy that she was happy she finally gave Simon the chance to say something bad about her. That cracked up both Randy and Simon. It also earned her the extra votes to stay out of the bottom three this week. That pole position is painful for contestants.

The only distracting thing about the song was that it reminded me so much of “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps,” the theme song from Brit-Com COUPLING. I miss that show. . .

LaKisha went with “Conga.” All of a sudden, I thought I was at a bad wedding. This also started the parade of songs where the background singers and instruments took over the night, leaving the lead vocals in the dust. I give LaKisha credit for stretching a bit and not doing another ballad, but this was merely passable. The song isn’t a great choice. It doesn’t have great range and it feels very repetitive. She tried to dance, but she can’t. And by the end of the song, I thought she was starting to lose her wind. She’s not used to all that walking and singing, let alone dancing. Eh.

Chris Richardson went with “Smooth,” one of the most overplayed songs of the last decade. All I could think of the entire time he was up there was that Chris Daughtry would have rocked the song. Chris did a good job with it, though. He made it his own, although I think he tried too much to do so in a few spots. I didn’t like it, mind you, but that’s my personal preference. I could do without all the runs. I think enough people will like it and him — particularly after the boring first two singers — that he’ll skate on by another week.

Most importantly, he looked comfortable doing “his thing.” He didn’t look like he was just trying to get past the week, as so many contestants do with themes they just can’t hook into.

Haley Scarnato sang “Turn The Beat Around,” another classic anti-IDOL song. The background singers drowned her out so badly I couldn’t even tell she was singing half the time. Her hair and makeup proved such an ugly distraction that I couldn’t even watch it. What was with that bright red lipstick? Why did she pull her hair up like that? I understand the shorts: Simon hit it right on the head. I just don’t think I could have been as honest with her on national television, but good for Simon for calling it as he sees it. It wasn’t bad, but there was nothing there. In the end, the performance was what you’d expect — two long legs with a voice.

But she should shoot the hair and makeup people backstage.

More after the break:

(more…)

This is the either the best episode of the series, or the most ludicrous.

For starters, the pay off on last week’s cliffhanger was great. I thought they sold it well. And Dwayne Wayne Palmer is my new hero. Sadly, they continue to stretch out his medical condition, and he continues to push himself past ludicrousness, but that’s another story. Hey, if Jack can do it AND fire a gun at the same time, why can’t the President negotiate and sit up straight?

This was Jack Bauer’s episode, from beginning to end, though. He owned it. He almost got the quote of the night with, “Now we’re gonna have some fun.” But I think Ricky Schroder topped him with “Damn, Jack” at the end. Jack Bauer isn’t a man. He’s a force of friggin’ nature. Just don’t think about it too much, because they really stretched credulity at one point and you had to make the conscious decision to give them enough literary license to pay off the story. Now, the second story can begin. Oh, what a cliffhanger. It’s one we all saw coming in one fashion or another, but it’s great to see it here. We have, what, eight episodes to go? Whoo-hoo!

Discuss all the spoilers you’d like for the season thus far in the comments below. Just don’t talk about the coming attractions!

• Want to discretely show the world you’re ready to play a WiFi game on your nintendo DS? Buy some buttons!
• Mac Eject Key: The latest update of the OS software now means you have to hold down on the eject key to pop a disc in or out. Logistically, I understand this. But it was frustrating until I looked it up on-line and found out about it.
• Microsoft is dead. Further explanation for the clue-impaired.
• From the previous link: “Microsoft’s biggest weakness is that they still don’t realize how much they suck.” Microsoft? Or Sanjaya Malakar?
• My Linux Fund credit card is dead. Not that it matters — I haven’t used it in a long time. My Amazon.com credit card gets me stuff.
• GAIM has been renamed to Pidgin, because AOL is a big meany.
• Web site on a white board. Author sells her book with a long series of big graphics. Silly, but fun.
• O’Reilly is opening an on-line school, where you can take $400 classes covering web programming, Linux, and more. The price ain’t bad. The CGI Programming With Perl class is temping.
  

It’s not going to be easy-going for GREASE:

‘GREASE’ & DESIST By MICHAEL RIEDEL - Theater - New York Post Online Edition

THE folks involved in “Grease” have been brag ging for a week now about ticket sales - $9 million and counting for a revival that doesn’t open until July.

What they haven’t been talking about is a little misfire that happened last Monday, the day after the final installment of “You’re the One That I Want. . .”

The phones at Ticketmaster were, I’m told, ringing off the hook because a lot of viewers who bought tickets to “Grease” weren’t happy with the actors chosen to play Danny and Sandy […]

“There was a bit of a frenzy because a lot of people wanted Austin and Ashley to win,” says a source. “They wanted their money back.” […]

The “Grease” team is also acutely aware that the Broadway community despised “You’re the One That I Want.” The only insider I know who was able to stomach every episode was writer and performer Seth Rudetsky. And that, I hope, is only because Playbill.com paid him to write a column about it every week.The rest of Broadway was put off by the cheesy production values, poorly staged musical numbers and cookie-cutter nobodies who auditioned to play Danny and Sandy.

Click through to read about how much the producer and writer are hated. Kathleen Marshall is still safe, it would seem.

Hopefully, this will teach reality TV wannabes a valuable lesson — America goes more for the underdog and the personal story than they do the talent. Not that Max is bad, but Austin is so much stronger but without the cute kid/underdog story to back him up.

I don’t see the big deal with the Sandies, though.

It was love songs week, prompting Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman to make all sorts of vaguely inappropriate innuendo at the prime time audience. Ryan looked a little uncomfortable wearing a jacket that looked three sizes too large for his frame, while he bounded about the stage taking cookies from cute kids in the audience, heckling Simon, and trading not terribly witty bon mots with Brian.

Ah, the joys of Season One.

Kelly Clarkson started out the night with “Walk On By,” and powered through it like she did every other song in season one. It did seem a little shouty in spots, but she still outshone most of the contestants in every other season since with a performance that the judges considered an off week for her.  Simon predicted she was going to be huge after the show. How right he was.

R.J. Hilton went with “Arthur’s Song” and massacred it gently. Too many runs, dawg. Too many keys were sung around, but not quite hit.Justin Guarini did some slow song. I didn’t take notes as I watched the show, so I don’t even remember it anymore. It was mediocre, at best. Bad bad song for IDOL.

Nikki McKibbin ended the night with “Always Someone There To Remind Me.” It’s considered an 80s classic today, but it just wasn’t that good for her five years ago. It sounded like her voice was weak and tired. I don’t think she had the energy or power to live up the song at that point in the competition.

Looking back five years now, I can see I liked her far more than she deserved. Hey, I got suckered into rooting for the contestant who sang the Jim Steinman song early on. Who can blame me? And I remember being sure that she was toast the next night. How could America have possibly saved that performance?  Easily: R.J. was even worse
Many consider the moment at the end of the song where her son walked up to the stage to give her a rose the thing that saved her that week. It’s quite possible. But, hey, if you thought it was amazing that she lasted past this week, wait till you see next week’s show! Whoa, mama. The coming attractions incorrectly refer to it as the most talked about vote in Idol history. How quickly they overlook the infamous and still-mentioned-on-this-blog Three Divas vote. I can’t wait to see what AI REWIND comes up with for that week.

But, wait! There’s one more performance of the night that I saved for last.

Tamyra Gray memorably performed “House Is Not A Home.” The question we’ve been discussing in the AI comments thread in recent weeks is, “Will the performance still be as good today as we remember it being yesterday?” Honestly, yes and no. Simon’s fawning praise was well deserved. Paula’s tears were needed. And Tamyra was amazing. The last minute of that song was as powerful as AI got in its first season, and you can safely count this song as an “Idol Moment.”

That said, there were some shaky moments in the song where her voice warbled just a tad, but that was all in the front half. She hit the low notes as strongly as she hit the high notes, which is something most contestants can’t do. They usually disappear in the lower section when they’re not showing off. Tamyra powered through even that.  So, in the end, it’s still a great performance, and definitely in the top three for the season, if not the best.
You know what. You can watch it for yourself. Click through for the YouTube video of the song. And ask yourself, “What’s with that lazy left eyelid?”

Wow, that long note at the end. . Wow.

If that’s not enough for you, check out her live performance of the song on the tour, where her voice sounds even stronger. Or Anwar Robinson’s treatment of the same song a few season later.

Tamyra wins.

Then she gets kicked off at the Round of 4 level. That’s NEXT week. . .

April 7, 1969: Birth of That Thing We Call the Internet -

1969: The publication of the first “request for comments,” or RFC, documents paves the way for the birth of the internet.April 7 is often cited as a symbolic birth date of the net because the RFC memoranda contain research, proposals and methodologies applicable to internet technology. RFC documents provide a way for engineers and others to kick around new ideas in a public forum; sometimes, these ideas are adopted as new standards by the Internet Engineering Task Force.

There was a time not too long ago when people on the internet knew what an RFC was. I know I used a few of them in creating reports back in college. It’s amazing how many of them have survived to this day. The basic outline for the handling of all your e-mail, for example, is RFC 821, from back in 1982. In 2001, it was updated/obsoleted by RFC 2821. But much of it remains. The beauty of the internet and its underpinnings is its simplicity - simple short text messages passed back and forth enable all of the wizardry you see today.

The fifth season just started on the Travel Channel.  It’s about time!

But the next season will be elsewhere:

Variety.com - World Poker Tour moves to GSN

After five years at the Travel Channel, the World Poker Tour is pulling up stakes and heading to GSN.

Cabler has inked a one-year deal to broadcast rights deal with WPT, one of the early poker-on-TV franchises. GSN will shell out nearly $7 million for 23 two-hour episodes, or about $300,000 per seg, accoring to a statement filed by WPT to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Deal also includes a per-episode bonus of between $20,000 and $35,000 if the show matches agreed-upon ratings benchmarks. GSN has an option for two more years of WPT programming.