Bob Holt

I've been working this morning on converting this site to a Rails-powered blog. I'm happy with my progress so far, and I think I've actually stumbled into a minimalist layout that I really like.

I'll be working on this project tonight at the boston.rb Hackfest. Maybe I'll even get it launched in the next day or two.

I installed some semblance of Ruby on Rails onto every machine and OS in the house in the last week. Some installations were easier to accomplish than others. The following is a wrap-up of my experience, and may or may not apply to your individual machine.

Continue reading "On Rails Installation"

This post and the last one are a bit out of order, but what are you going to do?

I went to my first Boston Media Makers meeting last Sunday hosted by the one and only Steve Garfield. Much like the boston.rb meeting I attended, I was amazed by how interesting, useful, and friendly this group of folks was.

Continue reading "Boston Media Makers: 7 June 2009"

My last post was an attempt to start producing actual content. It's funny to me now that less than a week after writing that review about ASP.NET, I emailed a friend about beginning to learn Ruby on Rails. I took a quick look at the time, but work projects ended up occupying my time for the next few months.

Cut to now. I have a little free time on my hands, and am diving head-first into Ruby on Rails.

Continue reading "Riding the Rails"

Learning ASP.NET 2.0 with Ajax by Jesse Liberty, Dan Hurwitz, and Brian MacDonald is the book that jump-started my web development career. I had tinkered with websites for over a decade before I finally decided that I should actually do that for a career. As I perused the help ads, it seemed that companies were looking for experience with FrontPage (Boo! Hiss! Who needs someone who relies on WYSIWYG?) or .NET. Faced with that fact, I blindly picked this book up and began a self-taught two week seminar in .NET.

In no uncertain terms, this is a spectacular book for learning .NET. I came to this book with a hefty knowledge of HTML and CSS, but no real programming background. I feel like even somebody coming from a WYSIWYG editor would be able to make it through here. Everything I needed to learn was offered in relatively easy bite-sized chunks. I was able to work through this like a workbook, and the beauty of web sites is that you can get instant feedback to see whether you're doing it right or not.

Continue reading "Book Review: Learning ASP.NET 2.0 with Ajax"

I am slowly but surely adding content. The Portfolio page is starting to get fleshed out, as is the Links page. The About page is chock-full of placeholder content for now. I intend to clean that up a bit on the next go-round. The Contact page is also up, and should only need a couple of small-ish tweaks.

I suppose what I'm saying is that if you happen to see anything out of the ordinary, then please let me know.

Coming soon: actual content (like reviews and code discussions and things). Stay tuned.

I have once again pulled up stakes, muddled my way down the road a piece, and set up a new homestead. This site is intended to house all of my "work-related" activity. From my portfolio to blog posts about web development, you'll find it all here. And, if by any chance you're looking for me, well you should be able to track me down pretty easily from here as well.