RayLucke.com

I got sick of scouring the web every time I wanted to find a GoDaddy coupon code so here’s my “definitive list” of coupon codes. Feel free to post updated codes in the comments.

CJC695DOM – $6.95 .COM for both NEW and RENEWALS

EMMA1 – 10% off Any Order

cjc695t1 - $7.49 for .COM domains

So there you have it, my easy reference for GoDaddy coupon codes.

The Wordpress team finally released their new iPhone app and I must say, it’s very impressive.

Here I am sitting at Duck Island Alehouse and posting. Very cool.

Over the last couple weeks I have returned to my old past time, running. The last time I ran regularly was in high school. I was in excellent shape at the time and remember feeling pretty full of my self one day in science class when we were learning about our cardiovascular systems.

Our teacher put us in groups and had us each check our resting pulse. Next, we took turns running a specified distance and checking our pulse immediately afterward, and a few minutes afterward. My ego was stroked when I saw that I our little exercise really didn’t do much to raise my heart rate.

Anyway… Fifteen years later here I am, 30 years old and get winded when I walk up a set of stairs. I decided to get back to running again so I can achieve the goal I’ve had since I was in my early 20’s: get in excellent shape and be able to participate in activities that my poor fitness has forbade me from doing in the past. I haven’t been since I stopped running and going to the gym regularly while in high school. Now that I live a block away from Green Lake, it seemed like an opportune time. Green Lake is 2.6 miles around the inner path where presently I run.

I started Monday of last week, running about a quarter around the lake in all, with much walking interspersed. On Wednesday I upped it to a third of the way, and on Friday I managed to make it half way.

I took the weekend off to make sure I recovered properly. This Monday I was able to make it a two thirds around the lake with minimal stops, and today I made it three quarters the way without any real stops. Hopefully Friday I can make it the whole way.

I’ve had to fight my urge to overwork myself, as it’s really easy to do, and every time I’ve tried in the past I have burned out as quickly as I got started. I highly recommend pacing yourself.

If you have any experience running, or questions, by all means drop a line in the comments!

I’m a perfectionist and I’ve found that my perfectionism tends to breed procrastination.

When writing a blog entry I’ve often found it excruciating because I felt like I was completely butchering it. I would finish writing a post and suddenly realize that I completely hated what I had just written. It only takes going through that process a few times before you start to lose confidence in your writing.

I recently read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and one of the main things she recommends is keeping a daily journal. She calls the journal “Morning Pages.” Every morning you are supposed to brain dump three pages worth of content into your journal. This includes every thought that comes to mind including hopes, dreams, worries, the fact you need to take the clothes to the dry cleaners, etc. If you run dry on ideas to write about, you are supposed to write about the fact you can’t think of anything else to say. The key is to do three pages of writing. You’re also supposed to hide the journal and not show anybody, your significant other included.

Writing daily morning pages accomplished two things for me. First, it allowed me to express some feelings I really haven’t dealt with, which was great. Second, it actually made me realize what it feels like to write with no holds barred. It felt freeing to be able to just vomit my thoughts onto a page and not worry about looking like a complete fool when somebody else were to read it.

What does this have to do with finding your blogging voice? Well, I have found that when writing my blog entries if I can recapture that “free” feeling I have when I write in my morning pages, everything comes out much easier and more clearly. I’m sure we all have our own issues that hold us back from being truly comfortable with our writing, which in turn makes for impaired writing ability.

Might I suggest that if you are having problems getting comfortable blogging and don’t feel that you are expressing your ideas the way you want to, consider trying out morning pages.

I just implemented very simple and primitive class table inheritance in ActiveRecord. The goal is for this to become mature enough to become a true feature in Rails. Check it out here:

http://guest@blog.raylucke.com/svn/inherits_from

Here’s how it looks in action:

create_table "books", :force => true do |t|
  t.column "product_id", :integer
  t.column "pages", :integer
  t.column "author", :string
end

create_table "products", :force => true do |t|
  t.column "name", :string
  t.column "price", :integer
  t.column "subtype", :string
end

create_table "videos", :force => true do |t|
  t.column "product_id", :integer
  t.column "minutes", :integer
  t.column "starring", :string
end

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
end

class Book < ActiveRecord::Base
  inherits_from :product
end

class Video < ActiveRecord::Base
  inherits_from :product
end

Book.create(:name => "Agile Development with Rails", :pages => 350)
Video.create(:name => "Twilight Zone Season 1", :minutes => 490)

Book.find(1).name => "Agile Development with Rails"

Note: this plugin is not production ready. I’m hoping some people who are much smarter than me will send me patches to make it primetime.

Known bugs:

• Inherited column validation/error handling does not currently work
• Book.find_by_name() (inherited column) does not work
• Only basic attributes are passed along right now

Feel free to send me any comments to ray @ this domain (raylucke.com).

Updated 4/24/07: Thanks Eric for the patches!