In the spirit of the Argon Express, I’m taking the train to this year’s RubyConf.

I know a couple of other sd.rb people are going, so if you live near L.A. or one of the other stops on the route, hop on board!

WHEN:
October 18 - October 19.

Total trip time is about 1.5 days. We’re leaving from San Diego at 3pm. If you’re leaving from Los Angeles, you want to catch the 6:45pm Southwest Chief. We’ll arrive in Denver around 10:25pm the next day.

WHERE:
The Southwest Chief on Amtrak, heading from Los Angeles to Denver.

COST:
Using Amtrak discount code ‘H571′, one-way tickets from LA to Denver are $80. And roundtrip tickets are $160. (Airfare runs about $250 - $400, so this is a sweet bargain.)

HIGHLIGHTS:

• Hack out with other Rubyists before the main conference. (I’m planning to build a new Rails app from scratch during the trip.)

• Stay online with EVDO-enabled WIFI (where coverage allows)

• Check out the scenery from the observation car

RIDERS:

• Patrick Crowley
• Nick Zadrozny
• Kevin Clark

FAQ:

• Are you taking rail the whole way? Sadly, the last four hours of the trip is a bus ride from Raton, NM to Denver — but it’s a direct route with only two stops. (Hey, we didn’t build the rail system… there some places they just don’t go.)

• Are one-wayers welcome? Absolutely. I’m going roundtrip, but one way is cool too. Take the train out to RubyConf, then fly home in style!

At the last sd.rb meeting, I gave a talk on the Summer of Rails and my experience developing Graffletopia (my first SoR app).

Thanks to Chris Abad, my presentation is now online and is available as the first episode of the official sd.rb podcast.

I gotta say… it’s kinda weird seeing yourself in iTunes.

sd.rb podcast: Episode 001: Summer of Rails

Since returning from RailsConf, I’ve been working like mad on my first Rails app and Summer of Rails project.

…

So, today, I’m very happy to announce I’ve just launched Graffletopia, a website that makes it easy to share OmniGraffle stencil files. (For those who don’t know, OmniGraffle is essentially Visio for Mac… but way better, of course. And stencils are just clip art files that can be easily shared.)

Stencils are a cool part of OmniGraffle, but the list on the Omnigroup website always seemed a bit buried. Hopefully, by having a separate site for sharing stencils, it will be easier to find and share cool stencils.

I don’t think Graffletopia will ever be a huge website, but I’m willing to bet many other Mac-based web designers will find it useful.

http://graffletopia.com

Today, I’m excited to be launching Summer of Rails, a new website for the Rails community.

Like a lot of people, I’m pretty stoked about developing applications in Ruby in Rails. I’ve gotten the books, built a shopping cart, all that stuff. But I still haven’t launched my first Rails site. And I’m guessing I’m not alone.

So, here’s the Summer of Rails challenge.

• Learn Rails
• Make something useful
• Badge it

Easy, right? So let’s see how many Rails apps we can launch by the end of summer!