I just posted a bit about the what and why of Railcar over at my blog. Check it out and find out how you can be involved!

We're back for our fifth year on August 26-27, 2011 in Nashville, TN (and we still cost $0). This year we're armed with an excellent crop of talks and a great experience (which you can learn about on my blog over the next few days). Head over to the website to get more details or register now!

The CFP for The Ruby Hoedown V (happening on August 26-27, 2011 in Nashville, TN) is now open. Head on over to the website to submit a talk proposal.

Last week we (Jeremy and Ryan from Arcturo) ran our first show of RubyRescue.tv, a live question/answer/discussion show for Ruby happening every Tuesday at 2p.m. Eastern. It went awesome, and so this week we're offering a $50 Amazon Gift Card up for grabs for one lucky question submitter. Head over to the website and submit a question using one of the forms or other methods there. Good luck!

I just slashed the price 50% on the Rails Upgrade Handbook down to $6. You'd be better grab it now because it goes back up to $12 on Tuesday!

The most magical FREE Ruby conference on Earth! We've now posted our speaker line-up on the newly redesigned conference website. We've also opened up registration for everyone with no room booking requirements (though it would be awful nice if you'd book at the conference hotel!). Register now!

There are just a few hours left in the public voting phase of this year's Rails Rumble. So be sure to head over to the site and vote for your favorite applications (I hear tldr.it is probably the best application ever built with Rails...just sayin').

If you've missed the announcement, MagicRuby is happening in Orlando, FL at Walt Disney World's Contemporary Resort (like, 50 feet from The Magic Kingdom!) on Feb. 4-5, 2011. It's a free conference, but all we're asking is until we fill our room block, that you book room if you book a ticket (it's only $189 a night for a hotel that's normally about $400-$500 a night!). For those who help us out with our room block (even with one night), we plan on having a special reception and some other goodies, so sign up today and get those travel plans firmed up!

I just released a new gem for generating those fancy new Tweet Buttons from Twitter. Check out the code etc. over at Intridea's Github.

We just announced the speakers for Ruby Hoedown, but we've also announced the Nuby Hoedown, a one day, 8 hour training/refresher set for Rubyists. We'll walk through some core Ruby language skills, RubyGem authoring, Git skills, and more all led by experts like David A. Black and Scott Chacon. Check it out and register now for FREE!

Upgrading to Rails 3? Got Peepcode credits, a Peepcode Unlimited subscription, or just really like giving Geoffrey Grosenbach money? Then grab my PDF on upgrading to Rails 3, now available on Peepcode!

We're having the Ruby Hoedown in Nashville again this year on 9/3-9/4, and also much like last year, it's free! We're currently open for registration, but more importantly, the CFP is open (and closes on July 2, this Friday)!

With only about 10 tickets and a week left, you'd better register now if you want to come to this year's Ruby Hoedown, the free regional conference we're holding in Nashville, TN!

You'd better register now if you're going to join us. Hey, it's free, so you've got no excuse not to come! :)

The CFP for the Ruby Hoedown (the FREE Southern U.S. regional Ruby conference) is closing soon, so get those proposals in. Also, don't forget to check out the Hoedown Heist; get free stuff for coming (and getting others to come) to a free conference!

The Ruby Hoedown is happening again this year. This time we're taking the show to Nashville, TN on August 28 and 29 at the awesome OpryLand Hotel. Hope to see you there, especially since it's totally free!

deprecate is a library for deprecating features after a certain date, version, or other arbitrary condition is met. I started this library a while ago but decided to finish hacking it out when I saw the "time bomb tests" blog entry on RubyFlow. :)