So nearly a month to the day after releasing my Twitter Stats perl script, I finally made a webified version. You can check it out over at TweetStats.com.

This was really more of an engine for me to get up to speed on Ruby on Rails (RoR) than anything. I’ve been wanting to play with Ruby for a while now, but really just didn’t have the motivation. I’d like to keep making regular updates to the site as there are several features I’m hoping to add such as dynamic graphs that allow you to zoom in on your timeline, an auto-follow bot that will keep your stats constantly up-to-date, and a widget you can put on your site if you so desire. Although I’ve enjoyed working on the site, I would like to relax for a little bit.

The experience with RoR has been fairly pleasant. It’s a well thought-out framework that lends itself to quick and efficient development once you wrap your head around the model. The only downside, and really what kept me from being able to put the site up faster, was the usage of some gems like BackgrounDRb. While a great idea, a fractured development community and somewhat buggy coding gave me many a headache in the past week, ultimately leading to two redesigns of the backend code and consumed two weekends of my life. I won’t say the code is perfect, it’s far from it. But it’s been fun and hopefully people enjoy the site.

The Internet is an invaluable resource and you can find many links I used via my del.icio.us rails tag. The most useful by far was Dominiek.com’s Building a .Com in 24 hours and you will see similar design patterns on my site. I had this page open nearly the entire time I was developing the site. It was a great aid throughout the entire process.

Finally, a special thanks to somebody that sat up with me throughout the night as I muttered away coding to myself.

Well I’m back off to Germany again. I’ve been super-busy (and sick, blech) so I haven’t had much time to do things like call my family lately (sorry) or be of much use otherwise. Hopefully I’ll have some time to catch up once I get to Germany.

Until then, auf wiedersehen!

For whatever reason (perhaps it’s the slowness of Twitterific, or the lack of any other application to satisfy my Twitter-craving) I wanted to be able to Tweet from Quicksilver. A quick Google led me to an AppleScript to Tweet from Quicksilver, but alas…it was a year old and not functional.

So, two hours later - allow me to present an updated version of the script:

using terms from application "Quicksilver"
	on process text im_text
		repeat with im_delimiter_position from 1 to (length of im_text)
			if character im_delimiter_position of im_text = ":" then exit repeat
		end repeat
		set im_contact_name to characters 1 thru (im_delimiter_position - 1) of im_text as string
		set im_message to characters (im_delimiter_position + 2) thru (length of im_text) of im_text as string
		tell application "Adium"

			set user to first contact whose (status type is available and (display name starts with im_contact_name or title starts with im_contact_name))

			if not (exists (chats whose contacts contains user)) then
				tell account of user to (make new chat with contacts {user} with new chat window)
			end if

			send (first chat whose contacts contains user) message im_message
		end tell
		return nothing
	end process text
end using terms from

The procedures for installation and usage are the same.

• Paste the script into Script Editor and save it in ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions as Send As IM.scpt.
• Cmd+Space, period, “Contact name: Message”, tab, S, enter.

I now return you to your regular Twedule.