Okay, Galaxia on Rails would my be a more apt name for a version of Galaxia in Ruby on Rails. But Galaxia Ruby sounds better to non-programmers.

This follows the tradition I’ve been recently following of learning new languages by writing bits of Galaxia in them. There is a real possibility I might get a version out this time :P

This version may even have AJAXy goodness and things. But don’t hold your breath…

I’ve been vaguely aware of Ruby for a while but never really gave it more than a cursory glance. If you didn’t know Ruby is a language that has been around for a while that got far more interesting when Rails, a framework for it was released.

After reading around I don’t think I’m really a fan of Ruby syntax per se (I’m definitely a fan of the punctuation heavy C-style syntax as opposed to the keyword heavy Basic-style syntax) but Rails seems to be an amazing framework.

Since I might be starting a job soon (and if not soon at least eventually) that will focus on PHP, starting to learn something new might not be ideal. But if it really as good as it’s fans say then things might be fine.

I suggest anyone involved in web development who hasn’t checked it out yet do so. There is a good introductory article on ONLamp.com.

The advantage of having an imminent interview (and ultimately of having a job) is I can buy computer books without worrying so much about not having much money. They’re an investment you see…

A post on the WSJ blog (which is running on Wordpress incidentally) actually references an article on the Onion. The Onion by the way is a satirical online newspaper type thingy that I never thought a serious journalistic endeavour would talk about.

The WSJ points out that it’s “hard to write satire, but it’s even harder to write satire about corporate taxes”. In fact it’s so good that I might even read it despite the fact that I understand alarmingly little about what it’s talking about.

Another post talks about some bankrupty meeting in New York: “The California utility, which filed for bankruptcy at the end of December, only served ice water; last year’s Delta meeting featured coffee and soda (did Delta borrow from its airplane beverage carts?).”

On the off chance that she reads this… I’d like to say Happy Birthday to Julia’s sister Jade :)

Happy Birthday

Well the interview went well. Although it didn’t feel like it at first since the first thing I had to do is optimise a SQL query which I kind of fumbled my way through. The result - they want me in for an afternoon to perform some programming task to see how I actually work.

Although I keep thinking of ways for it to go badly, I did that before the first interview and everything worked out fine…

Yay!

I’m going to Brussels on the 9th to see Julia. She’s going later today for her little sister’s birthday. We’re staying until the 15th then coming back. And then I get Julia for another 10 days until she’s goes back to Aberystywth.

Just thought I’d share :D

On a scarier note, I have that interview later today…

Ooooh, I just read on Wikipedia about a vulnerability in how Windows reads WMF files.

The reason why I find this so interesting is because apparently the vulnerability exists versions of Windows all the way back to 3.0! Doesn’t that mean that a serious bug that allows malicious code to be executed has actually existed for 15 years without being exploited? That has to be some sort of record.

I bought Julia Civilization IV for Christmas. It’s something I wanted myself but my computer only just reaches the minimum specs. But we installed it anyway and on the lowest settings it does run (although it runs “fine” it’s really unstable after about half an hour and prone to crashing).

If you don’t know, Civilization is a game where you control a civilization from ancient stone age times through to the near future (the last technology you develop allows travel to Alpha Centauri). This version adds a lot to the basic idea though. The biggest addition is religion. It was always going to be a touchy subject but since religion has had a huge impact on Civilization they couldn’t ignore it forever. All the religions in the game are basically handled the same, the only differences being what you need to do to found them. The fact that you can found them can cause events that are vaguely blasphemous (like founding both Buddhism and Christianity in London) but this is really no worse than warfare between two countries that never fought each other in the real world.

I can’t really describe all the coolness here but anyone remotely interested in the genre should go out and buy this game.

Happy New Year!