• Rails is very different from PHP, yet somehow more elegant
• Scaffolds are a great way to cheat as a programmer, but messy to clean up if you do something wrong
• Don’t use a plural name for a model (i.e. “news”) because it will cause you a world of pain
• Google as always is your friend but be sure to add the phrase “Rails 3″ to your searches
• That said, there are answers to your questions out there, just be patient and try to find answers on stackoverflow. They truly are the best out there.

Anyways, I’ve been at this too long. Time to go home and get some sleep. More soon!

Joe’s itself is as they say in great literature, “an unassuming hole in the wall” in a typical suburban DC strip mall off Rockville pike. Yet though the atmosphere is simple, it is at once fresh and inviting, as if you were entering a local joint in Shanghai where you know the food is fresh and the service is friendly. The menu is expansive and comprehensive across the major categories of protein and vegetables and frankly can be overwhelming for the unitiated. Fortunately for me I was with a few regulars and in the discussion on the car ride up, it was decided that one dish for sure would be the “mapo doufu” a Szechuan tofu specialty known for its lip numbing Szechuan peppercorns (more on that later). Joe’s is ostensibly a Szechuan establishment and not the tabasco, Siracha style Szechuan that it passes for “spicy food” in most American restaurants. I knew that spicy would be baked, indigeneous to the dishes I was eating.

After some deep consultation, we decided upon the following for our hungry party of four:

• A plate of “mapo doufu”
• A whole fish
• Green beans with garlic
• Eggplant with Basil

As the “tofu semi-virgin” (or tofu skeptic, depending on your perspective) the group insisted that I try the mapo dofufu first. I have to admit that I only intended to have a few bites to be polite and then move on to the other dishes. But after a few bites and the numbness on my upper lip combined with the firmness of the quality tofu turned me into a convert and one bite became a second helping much to the joy of my hosts who had successfully turned another soul to the Tofu side.

The fish was tasty, though I personally didn’t care much for the gelatin cubes that accompanied the spicy sauce. Honestly, I think my palate was completely confused by the Szechuan peppercorns so I am probably not well equipped to give a definitive appraisal of the fish. The green beans were excellent and inspired me to try cooking crisp green beans in season with garlic at home. Finally, the eggplant which was high quality combined with particularly fresh basil made for another great dish and my hosts noted that though the eggplant with basil was a first order for them, it is likely to be a mainstay in their ordering repertoire.

All in all, I have to give Joe’s four stars for a top quality Chinese meal at a decent price especially for larger groups. I will definitely be back and in the future I may even get one of their signature rewards cards as well so I can enjoy more food for less money

“It’s not just about software,” said Albert Shum, general manager of the design studio for Windows Phone. “It’s about the whole end-to-end experience.”

Funny how good ideas take a while to be accepted.

Tweet below:

@BusinessPalaces: Business Palace News is out! http://t.co/sa6YPGB5 ▸ Top stories today via @noframex @rasheqrahman @glemmie @republic1st @crispkirstbarba

The impetus began this past summer when Twitter announced its new CSS framework called Twitter bootstrap. As I read more about the theme and downloaded the v1.0 source code, the simple, clean design tugged at me as if begging me to use it in a project. I had looked for years for a simple theme that was mainly white for the text part but had a fixed top navigation bar that could pull together my different interests (photography, writing, web development) but in a compartmentalized way so that the output of each activity could be cleanly displayed in a format that highlighted its unique characteristics. Bootstrap provides such a lattice upon which build such websites. As always, WordPress is the brains behind this project because, like the dependable friend that it is, I can connect it to my front end HTML and CSS almost immediately and know that the key files will be in the right place and easily customizable.

I vowed for this project to use as few WordPress plugins as possible, relying more on code snippets and design patterns to customize my website so I truly understood what was “under the hood.” As I hope to share in coming posts in the code category, I did this in order to improve my PHP skills and to gain a better understanding of WordPress theming. Having now completed this site and several others this year I am excited to declare that I intend to “hand roll” my own themes from here on out, i.e. using only HTML templates and adding in the WordPress code myself. If you are at the point of having configured a few existing off the shelf WordPress sites yourself and are looking to really grow as a WordPress developer, I highly recommend the “roll your own” approach.

Overall the process took some four months, with a two month long break in the middle and several pauses in the middle while I thought about the design and how I wanted everything to fit together. I decided to launch it today to kick start the New Year knowing full well that both content and design need some continued tweaking.

Look for the aforementioned coding posts in the coming weeks and please feel free to comment below. I look forward to your thoughts and questions.

Fellow Meetuppers,

I don’t write to our whole community often, but this week is special because it’s the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and many people don’t know that Meetup is a 9/11 baby.

Let me tell you the Meetup story. I was living a couple miles from the Twin Towers, and I was the kind of person who thought local community doesn’t matter much if we’ve got the internet and tv. The only time I thought about my neighbors was when I hoped they wouldn’t bother me.

When the towers fell, I found myself talking to more neighbors in the days after 9/11 than ever before. People said hello to neighbors (next-door and across the city) who they’d normally ignore. People were looking after each other, helping eachother, and meeting up with each other. You know, being neighborly.

A lot of people were thinking that maybe 9/11 could bring people together in a lasting way. So the idea for Meetup was born: Could we use the internet to get off the internet — and grow local communities?

We didn’t know if it would work. Most people thought it was a crazy idea — especially because terrorism is designed to make people distrust one another.

A small team came together, and we launched Meetup 9 months after 9/11.

Today, almost 10 years and 10 million Meetuppers later, it’s working. Every day, thousands of Meetups happen. Moms Meetups, Small Business Meetups, Fitness Meetups… a wild variety of 100,000 Meetup Groups with not much in common — except one thing.

Every Meetup starts with people simply saying hello to neighbors. And what often happens next is still amazing to me. They grow businesses and bands together, they teach and motivate each other, they babysit each other’s kids and find other ways to work together. They have fun and find solace together. They make friends and form powerful community. It’s powerful stuff.

It’s a wonderful revolution in local community, and it’s thanks to everyone who shows up.

Meetups aren’t about 9/11, but they may not be happening if it weren’t for 9/11.

9/11 didn’t make us too scared to go outside or talk to strangers. 9/11 didn’t rip us apart. No, we’re building new community together!!!!

The towers fell, but we rise up. And we’re just getting started with these Meetups.

Scott Heiferman (on behalf of 80 people at Meetup HQ)
Co-Founder & CEO, Meetup
New York City
September 2011

Reading this shore note helped me remember the goodness that came out around the country after that day. The resolve to come together, to learn from this tragedy, to open our hearts to those who were different in approach and belief but common in their aspirations for a better, more connected world.

I hope wherever you are and however you are commemorating this day, you honor not only that which was taken from us that day but the new “togetherness” that was the result of it. That community of understanding is our best defense against terrorism.

Life at OPOWER from OPOWER on Vimeo.