Boost Your Skills, Boost Your Network at WindyCityRails

WindyCityRails is on track to sell out this year. You could be part of the group that achieves the goal. Use discount code CHICAGORUBY for $50 off before 9/5/2015. Register now.

When "@" is a Tweet's First Character

Something we should know about putting an “@” in the first character position on Twitter…

Limited Visibility

When you start a tweet with a Twitter handle (with the “@” in the first character position) Twitter interprets that as a message to another Twitter user. Only people who follow both the sender and receiver will see the message in their stream.

Madison+ Ruby and Parallella (with Video)

Parallella is a single-board computer roughly the size of a credit card or Raspberry Pi. It runs Linux. It has 18 processor cores, two ARM and sixteen RISC. You can buy this device online for about $150.00.

The Madison+ Ruby organizers invited me to present Parallella at the conference earlier today. Video and slides appear below.

Designed at West Point. 3D Printed at BLUE1647.

Experimenting with Parallella? Then you might need a way to protect it. The original acrylic cases are no longer available. Fortunately, 3D printing offers a solid alternative.

Peter's Laws

Walking through Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, I ran across an inspiring list of rules titled “Peter’s Laws”. Peter Diamandis is Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private spaceflight.

The Laws:

1. If anything can go wrong, Fix It! (To hell with Murphy!)