Presentation I gave at the Spokane Ruby User Group. Wednesday March 3rd, 2010.

Baltimore's Rails community is welcoming this year's RailsConf with an un-official pre-party the evening before RailsConf begins: Ignite RailsConf.

Whenever something's a really "big deal" in the Ruby world, we cover it - even if it makes more sense on Rails Inside (which is now switching to a user contributions model).

A year ago today, we announced that Rails and Merb would merge. At the time, there was much skepticism about the likelihood of the success of this endeavor. Indeed, The most common imagery invoked by those who learned about our plans was a unicorn.

This is something that many may already use as a best practice, but if not it’s something simple and convenient to add to your repertoire. Sometimes you may have a model that requires additional information if a certain condition is met. For example, I may require a user to add more information about themselves if they wish to be listed publicly, whereas I would not if they do not wish to be listed.