Napoleon posted the following on www.webwednesday.hk.

Unfortunately, that site is blocked in China, so we're mirroring the article since it might be of interest to some people here and really does not contain any offensive information.

I'll definitely go -- see you there?

Web Wednesday expands to Guangzhou!

Back in June 2007, I launched the first Web Wednesday event in Hong Kong, with the encouragement and help of Louise Kristensen (nee Hammond), Online Business Director of Eight Partnership. You can read about it in my first blog posting, "Humble Beginnings". Facebook was the vehicle of choice for managing the community, under the "Web Wednesday Group", and our membership has leapt from 20 people back in June 2007 to 663 internet movers and groovers as of today! Top of my new year's resolutions for 2008 was to expand the community; we seem to be well on the way with a regular event in Singapore, now on its 5th social mixer and our first event in mainland China, across the border in Guangzhou. All three events are endorsed by the Asia Digital Marketing Association, who helps us promote our social networking events to it's member database across the region. If it weren't for the friendly networking environment that Web Wednesday provides, I wouldn't have met Dr. Lonnie Hodge, who has taken on the mantle to host Guangzhou's "Web Wednesday - V1.0". You can sign up and invite friends to join this free networking event on Facebook. Lonnie is not only CEO of Culture Fish Media but somehow manages to squeeze four careers into his busy life! You can gain a taste of who he is by dropping by his blog, "Onemanbandwidth: An American Professor in China", or coming to the event in person on Wednesday 16th July, 2008 from 6:00p.m. - 9:00 p.m. at Hooley's Pub, Times Square, on the corner of Guangzhou Dadao and Tianhe Bei Lu, Guangzhou.

UPDATE: This position has been FILLED. Thanks everyone who applied!

现在我们需要一个大学生, 暑期工作, 做一个网站的数据收集员. 只需要一个人.
现在就可以工作!!! 直到你学期开学. 如果开学了了还没做完, 可以兼职.
短短的两三月, 你可以有很多收获:

　　　
1. 对互联网服务的了解.
　　　
2. 搜索问题的能力.
　　　
3. 打电话交流的能力.
　　　
4. 办公室里有来自不同国家的人,你可以锻炼好自己的英语口语.
　　　
5. 一份不薄的薪水.
　　

　 要求: 乐观,自信,有耐心,喜欢交流. 对互联网有兴趣.


英文招聘简历如下:

Kude Labs (酷德实验室) is a growing software development firm focused on building high quality web applications. We build applications for select clients around the world. We also develop our own ideas into profitable companies. Our office is in the Dong Shan Kou area, Guangzhou (广州市东山口). We are currently providing part time job in Guangzhou.

Kudelabs provide a part time job, our office is in Dongshankou(东山口), Guangzhou(广州）

Job Name : Data Collector
Job Description: This job is about collecting data from other company and the Internet everyday. The data is about traveling from city to city. After collecting, you will be responsible for entering the data into our system. Communication skills and searching skills are very important. If this interests you, please join us!

Ideal candidates would:

　　
• Know some English.
　　
• Have experience using office software like Excel and Word
　　
• Have excellent communication skills
　　
• Excellent Internet user, good with search engines and using web software
　　
• Be interested in Internet services
　　
• Patient and precise work style
　　
• Self motivated and able to work independently
　　
• Open-minded and willing to share ideas with others

To apply send your ENGLISH cover letter and resume to intern2008@kudelabs.com.
单 位：广州酷德软件开发公司, 2008
招聘职位: 数据录入员 (1个)
工作地点：广州 东山口
职位类型: 兼职

click here to read the English vesion of this article
点击这里浏览本篇文章的英文版

随着Rails越来越受欢迎，用于学习Rails的资源也越来越多。其中最好的一种学习方式就是看那些关于Ruby和Rails的视频短片（ScreenCasts）。这些短片让你在听讲授者解释概念的同时可以看到相应的代码。通常，这些短片对应一些经典的教材，但是通过这种视频短片的方式，这些内容变得更容易理解，你可以更加直观的感受到那些枯燥的概念背后的真正的含义。

首先，有一些优秀而且免费的由Ryan Bates讲授的关于Rails的短片可以从这里下载：railscasts.com。他们短小精悍，常常重点突出某一个新的特征。你可以用iTunes把这些短片自动下载到你的电脑里（但是这在中国大陆行不通，因为Feedburner被拦截了），或者你可以直接从网站下载。这些短片里面有一组是专门讲述Rails 2.1 的新特征的，很值得一看。

其次， Screencast之父， @topfunky a.k.a Geoffrey Grosenbach 也已经整理好了一组出色的关于Rails的培训教材，并把它们放在了peepcode.com上。这些教材是收费的，但是并不算贵，每个视频只要9美元即可（考虑到美国的消费水平，的确是相当便宜了）。这些教材很优秀，含金量很高，物超所值。我们已经学习过这些短片，它们帮助我们跟上了新版本rails发展的速度，此外我们也从那里下载了一些关于Rails的PDF书籍。我们极力推荐从这些教材入手学习Rails。

Rails运行在Ruby环境，我也找到了一些很好的关于如何使用Ruby编程的视频短片（ScreenCasts）。Dave Thomas of The Pragmatic Programmers(也就是Web开发敏捷之道（Agile Web Development with Rails）的作者)亲自在短片中讲授了Ruby对象模型，类继承和元编程（meta-programming）的基本概念。它们能够帮助你充分发挥Ruby的强大威力，并帮你建立理解Rails框架的基础知识背景。这些视频短片（ScreenCast）只要5美元一个（别误会，我可不是他们的推销员，如果他们付给我报酬的话，我倒是很乐意帮他们推销一下）。

如果你真的对Rails和Ruby感兴趣，我强烈推荐你使用以上这些网络上的学习资源，当然你要需要下载相关的工具，并准备好开始写你自己的Rails代码。

尽情享受Rails把，未来的Ruby黑客们！

click here to read the Chinese vesion of this article
点击这里浏览本篇文章的中文版

As the popularity of Rails grows, the number of resources available to learn Rails also grows. One of the best methods that has come about is the use of Screencasts. Screencasts are movies that show the code as you listen to the presenter explain the concepts. Often, they go over material that can be found in books. But presented in this way, it might sink in a little better as you use 2 of your senses to absorb the material.

First, there is a set of excellent FREE screencasts from Ryan Bates at http://railscasts.com. These are short and to the point, often highlighting a new feature. You can have them download to your computer automatically through iTunes (except in China where Feedburner is blocked), or you can download them directly from the website. There is a set dedicated to the new features of Rails 2.1 that deserves to be checked out.

Second, the father of screencasts, @topfunky a.k.a Geoffrey Grosenbach has put together a great set of training materials at peepcode.com. They are not free, but quite affordable at $9 per cast. They are well done, informative, and full of great examples. We have used them to get up to speed on new versions of Rails, and downloaded some of the PDF books. I highly recommend these materials to get more familiar with Rails.

Rails runs on Ruby, and I have found a good set of screencasts that goes into how to program with Ruby. Dave Thomas of The Pragmatic Programmers (author of Agile Web Development with Rails) goes through the basics of the Ruby object model, class inheritance, and meta-programming. This will help you take advantage of the power inherent in Ruby and give you the foundation to understand the Rails framework. These screencasts are $5 each.

If you are interested in Rails and Ruby, I highly recommend using the resources available on the web. Of course you will need to download the tools and start coding yourself as well!

Happy Hacking!

I recently had to rename several views+controllers in a project. This is a very wearisome task since its not just a directory or a file; but directories, files, tests, fixtures, and other files that get generated by the Rails generator helpers. I searched for a little piece of code to help manage this, but didn't find anything. That may be due to the fact that earlier versions of rake did not work with arguments very well. Here is my little rake task, you can put it into a file in your lib/tasks directory and run it using:

$rake svn:rename[old_name,new_name] # notice no spaces

And here is the code:

namespace :svn do
  FILES_TO_RENAME = [ "app/views/%s",
                      "app/controllers/%s_controller.rb", 
                      "app/models/%s.rb", 
                      "test/unit/%s_test.rb", 
                      "test/functional/%s_controller_test.rb", 
                      "test/fixtures/%s.yml"]
  task :rename, :from, :to do |t, args|
    FILES_TO_RENAME.each do |s|
      from_f = s % args.from
      to_f = s % args.to
      if File.exists?(File.expand_path(from_f))
        puts "Renaming #{from_f} -> #{to_f}"
        puts %x[svn mv #{from_f} #{to_f}]
      else
        puts "Skipping #{from_f}. File not found."
      end  
    end
  end
  
end

Please leave comments if you see a way to improve this. Feel free to modify it to your needs and tell me about it.

I ran into a strange problem when working on a new polling Ajax feature for one of our projects. Before I get into the issue, I'll set up the context.

I don't like the brute force approach of the PeriodicalUpdater, so instead I wanted to roll my own solution that utilized proper HTTP response codes to manage browser behavior. In particular, if there is nothing to report from the server, I can use the 204 - No Content (See W3C Documents) response code. In this way, I can simply use the onSuccess callback to schedule another check after an interval if there is no response body.

This worked wonderfully in Firefox and Safari, as expected. Of course, on IE, instead of calling onSuccess, it seemed to be calling onError, even though no error occurred. After displaying the status code in the error message, I found that IE was reporting the status code not as 204, but as 1223. As far as I can tell, there is no reason for this. I have found that other JS libraries have addressed the issue, so I went into prototype.js and solved the problem in the code.

I've submitted a patch to the Prototype team through their Lighthouse page, and the fix should get into the 1.6.0.3 release. If you are impatient and need the fix now, or are interested in getting into prototype hacking, here is the simple change:

prototype.js:199

 success: function() {
    var status = this.getStatus();
	// accept 1223 as a successful status, IE interprets 204 as 1223
    return (!status && this._allowStatusZero) || (status >= 200 && status < 300) || (status == 1223);
  },

     yes, there are many disasters in china these years, from 2003 to 2008, from SAS to the earthquake, but, but, but, this time it is really really different, it seems like the god fault, so many people died, so many young students died, they are died in a different way, under the heavy buildings, it is really very horrible, very miserable. I can not believe my eyes, we are in the same country, they are like our brothers ,sisters, as a colleage student just graduated, I can do nothing to help them, I am feeling very sad, and falling down stairs , the best way to help them is donate,which is the only way we can do now. and I find most of my friends' companies, they are donating , it is not donating follow the others, as a foreigner, donating with humanity, as a member in china, I think we donate with the conscience. if every donate a little, and there are so many people in china, the rivers can be joined to be a sea.
          if you don't know how to donate, let me show you, it is really not my bank' account,and you can trust them, pls feel easy. we like to use the CMB in china, yes, in their website, there is a link , if you don't believe the link , you don't believe cmb, is it right? I don't think cmb will add a link before they verify. you can donate with many diffrent cards.
        1. the first step, go to www.cmbchina.com, you can see this picture in the middle.


        2. the second step. point to the red words : “红十字汶川地震救援行动”网上捐款热线" go to another page, you will see this picture:


       3. point to the button with value "点击马上捐款" you can see the third picture, in the left , pls write how much you will donate, and your name , address ,phone number ,email, and note, in the right , choose one of your bank' card, default is the cmb card, then click "确认支付"





        4. the fouth step, will go to the bank's page , and you can fill the fields with your card number ,and password , something like that, different bank have diffrent ways. before you go the bank' page , maybe there is some problem, if you install some software from cmb, you should click "OK" , like a javascript window.

       5. after you donate, you can see your name in the yeepay website. like my name (刘银枝), in the ninth line:






the second way, if you guys like to bug things from taobao.com , and you have alipay, you can go to taobao.com, and there is a picture in the main page:


click that picture, and you can find this :





click the words "快速捐款通道", you can use alipay(支付宝) to donate. it is very easy, enter your email and you password, and sumbit ,it is ok. good luck. thanks , guys , I thanks for the your help on behalf of the misfourture people in the earthquake. good luck!

   

Light the Passion, Share the Dream! The Olympic flame finally travelled along Guangzhou today, 07/05/2008. Early this morning ,I just couldn't wait to go to Baiyun Mountain to see the Olympic Torch Relay.
Wow..quite cool,I have never seen such a crowded scene in Guangzhou. Believe it or not, it took me over 10 minutes to walk though a 100 meters pedestrian bridge,the pictures following would tell the truth:

Here we see the foot of Baiyun Mountain, people were eager to see the Olympic Torch though it still had two hours before the Olympic Flame's coming down from the top of Baiyun Mountain-- Moxing Ling.

Yeah,here,this small bridge was too crowded to find a standing room. But I had got to pass by to reach Road Luhu(one stop of the relay route) to wait for the great moment,then it costed me 10 minutes:

On the bridge, I saw two military helicopters flying in the cloudy but beautiful sky:

Views from the bridge:

Views from the bridge:

Me and my good friend Jevin( on the right):

Lol, the torch near me is so huge and great, isn't it?

Views on the road:

On the Road Luhu, some kids were happy to wait for the honor flame:

lol,the passagers made torchs themselves by newspaper`

The feeling of riding such a motorbike must be exciting,lol, I thought I was the police in the motorbike :

 

Cool,the flame's sharing, come on, sharing our peace dreams

Mike Stefan Wall's smiling at me,I said to him: "hey, you look charming ,man"

Mike Stefan Wall got on the bus,and disappeared

The Relay of Guangzhou Olympic Torch was over, but our dreams would keep carrying on 4ever.

Come on, Beijing, Olympic 2008. We are sure that it would be the most successful Olympic Games in the world. Btw, Kudelabs,you definitely have a promisingly and bright future ,just like Beijing does.

After literally a year of not finding time for finishing touches, I decided to finally just release what I have. It works fine, after all.

Rubob is based on a little tool I wrote together with Matthias Hopf in 1997 or so to play with the Java Reflection API. When I started working with Ruby almost a decade later, I realized how much easier it would be in Ruby, so I rewrote it. And then it sat there...

So what does it do?

Rubob generates a hyperlinked Web-view of your program while it runs. It can very easily be added to any existing application (one line of code).

With Rubob, every object in the system has a corresponding URL. When you access that URL, Rubob generates a Web page that contains a human readable version of the object. All instance variables are hyperlinked to the URL for their value; so you can click your way through from object to object to explore the state of your program while it's running.

Certain classes, such as Array and Hash, have a custom representation that makes their content easier to explore.

You can add your own custom representation of objects using a simple API that I'll explain when I have some time.

Here is the code.

Enjoy!

We have received quite a few resumes in the past few weeks in response to our job postings. I am often very impressed with the quality of candidates we see. In most cases, candidates present themselves well. But over the years, I have seen many, many applicants submit their information only to be put at the bottom of the list and never contacted. As a hiring manager I ask that you please take these ideas into consideration when submitting your resume for a job. These are coming from me personally, but i suspect they would be useful for any job.

1. The first thing to consider is that we (hiring managers) do not have a lot of time. This means you need to put the information you want us to read up front and easy to find.
2. Write a cover letter. Write 2-4 sentences about why you are a good fit for the job. If you don’t include a cover letter, your resume will be read last.
3. Please, dont forget to include:
   
   • What job you are applying for
   
   
   • When you will graduate or otherwise be available
4. Attache your resume as a PDF or plain text file. This may be a surprise, but I do not have Word on my computer, and I am not going to install it to read your resume.
5. Follow the instructions in the posting. If we ask for an English resume, then it reflects on you poorly if you do not provide one. It we ask for a sample or example, don’t forget to include it.
6. Lastly, remember that communication skills are very important. Even for the most technical job, we are looking for people who can express themselves in a clear and concise manner. Your cover letter/resume is your first chance to demonstrate that skill, don’t pass this opportunity.

We are currently in a hiring round, so check our job postings. We’d love to meet you.