My New Year's resolutions (For 2009)...

We're almost at the end of 2008...It has been a great year for me.

* My daughter Kiara born on April.
* I attended SAP TechEd Las Vegas on September.
* Published the following books:
- El Arte de Programar SAP NetWeaver
- El pequeño libro del Performance
- El Arte de Programar Flex
- The Art of Programming Flex.
* Move to a new company called BizPartner.

So, for this new year...I got some resolutions...

* Start all the needed paperwork for applied to a Canadia Resident Visa.
* Learn Rails...Yeah...I said this every year -:(
* Publish the following book:
- The Art of Programming Ruby
- The Art of Programming for Kids
- The Art of Programming SAP NetWeaver
- The Art of Programming Java
* Learn Python...Same thing as Rails -:(
* Finish my ABAPIF Engine
* Attend TechEd Phoenix 2009
* Give my daughter the best 1 years old party ever!
* Loss weight...I need to loose at least 8 more kilos...
* Get the Latin American people more involved on SCN

As you can see...It's going to be a busy year for me -:) Specially because I always got new projects coming to my head every single day LOL

Greetings,

Blag.

Blag's T-Shirts

I just released a new store for selling Geek T-Shirts and related stuff.
You can found it on Blag's T-Shirts.
Here's a small sample -;)





Greetings,

Blag.

Do you follow me on Twitter? Coz I'm not following you...

I have using Twitter for a long time...And I can't deny that I totally love the service (Even with the whales)...

But there's something that I still don't get...Why people try so hard to be the Promo Queens? Sometimes I see profiles following thousands of people and being followed by another thousand of people...I really don't see a point on this...

Guy Kawasaki posted on his blog a nice essay called How to Use Twitter as a Twool, while I like it, I don't follow his idea of using Twitter as a marketing tool. Why? Simple answer...I use Twitter to keep in touch with my friends or to know people who share my interests...Why on earth would I follow someone who doesn't nothing related to my own interests?


You can see that 368 individuals follow me, but I only follow 235...There are 133 individual that I don't follow...

I simply don't want my Twitter flooding with Tweets that I don't want to read or are in any way interesting to me...

Pretty sure, I'm going to loose some followers after this post...I don't care...I just my Twitter to be plain and simple -;)

Greetings,

Blag.

Flex alternative IDEs...

Because of my last post Looking for the perfect Ruby IDE, Frank Koehntopp The Gadget guy ask me about Flex IDEs...

It amazing that even when Flex Builder it's a great tool, there are only a couple of open source projects handling Flex development.

First try was FLEXible an IDE made with Flex...What can I say? It's still Alpha and I could do anything with it...Just get error messages...


Second try was FlexBean a NetBeans plug-in...Very nice...But it lacks of code completion...Anyway...It's a nice option.


Last try was Flash Develop, which need some external configuration but has code completion...I have read it's widely used...So far, the best alternative IDE...



I can't say that I would want to see other Flex IDEs...Because Flex Builder is just great...But I hope that the Open Source Community can came out with some better alternative Flex IDEs...

Greetings,

Blag.

Looking for the perfect Ruby IDE

I consider myself a Ruby fan...That's why I'm always looking for news and of course...IDE's.

My first approach was FreeRide, a Ruby based IDE. What I love about this IDE it it's simplicity...While some people are getting used to fancy RAD tools, I like to keep things as simple as possible...FreeRide offers this.


Second try was Ruby in Steel, which is free in it's personal edition. I have never been a huge fan of Visual Studio even when I got some C# skills...Despise that, I decide to give this IDE a try...Installation was quick and smooth...However, as I already had Ruby installed on my laptop, I decided to skip it from the installation for later configuration...Sad surprise when I pointed to my Ruby installation folder...Ruby in Steel didn't accept it...According to the message, I needed Ruby to be installed on Program Files folder, while I have it under Programacion folder. Bad thing, as I got no plans on uninstalling my current configuration...


My last attempt was NetBeans 6.5 which is currently bundling Ruby/Rails, Groovy/Grails, C/C++, Java/JavaME/JavaFX and PHP (I wonder why left out Python and Perl)...This was a real pleasant surprise...NetBeans had done an excellent job...I really love the IDE and sure love the Ruby support which is run under JRuby...I could installed all my beloved gems and start working...Highly recommended -:)


Now...I know what you're thinking..."Hey Blag...Haven't you tried Eclipse?" Sure I did, but doesn't think it was necessary to put it here...I use Eclipse for my Flex development and wanted to keep it that way...

Also...There are a plethora of IDE's out there...But those three we're the most important to me...Which are yours?

Greetings,

Blag.