Method chaining has been all the rage lately and every database wrapper or aything else that’s uses queries seems to be doing it. But, how does it work? Let's figure it out!

This week, Codebrawl's running a Ruby programming contest challenging you to build a content-aware image cropping tool with ChunkyPNG. Show us what you've got!

At Codebrawl, we did an RSpec formatters contest before, but we're doing another one since a lot of you asked us to. Can you build the best RSpec formatter ever? Bring it on!

I published an article about slow spec helpers and loading dependencies in your Rails models, controllers, and initializers instead of letting Bundler pre-require everything all the time.

Ruby makes it trivial to pass a block of code into our method calls. But what do we do when a method needs two blocks of code or more? In this week's Codebrawl, we challenge you to write the most elegant way to allow a method to take multiple blocks. Oh, and we have a great prize for the winner!

Arrr! A quick, talk-like-a-pirate-day-flavored article about isolated testing for custom validators in Rails 3.

Because our last ChunkyPNG contest was a great success, we decided to do another one. In this week's contest, we compete for the best Ruby program to apply the selective color effect to an image. Who needs expensive photo editing tools? We're programmers!

This week, Codebrawl is challenging you to create a key/value storage backend in pure Ruby. Think you've got what it takes? Give it a shot and you might even win the prize!

For Codebrawl's Ruby testing libraries contest, we had some great and unique entries. Want to find out who won? Read the contest rundown.

Codebrawl's first contest just ended. We asked the contestants to build a formatter for the RSpec testing library and we got some fun entries. Check out the contest rundown to find out who won!

This week, the challenge is to create your own formatter for RSpec 2. Your solution should solve a problem you’re facing with the existing formatters (like, I don’t know how long my specs are going to take or I don’t notice when my suite is done running) or you can do something completely crazy and funny. Good luck!

About Euruko 2011 in Berlin and some thoughts about the Amsterdam edition next year.

I'm sure you've seen the image diffs Github released last month, which is a really nice way to see the differences between two versions of an image. In this article, I'll try to explain how a simple image diff could be built using pure Ruby and ChunkyPNG.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve become increasingly interested in computer vision. After having some problems with existing libraries, I decided to dive in to figure out how it actually works. In this article, I'll explain how I did colored blob detection to detect a clown's nose in pure Ruby (using ChunkyPNG).

Keeping up with the Rails Lighthouse can be quite a task. In this article I'll explain what I did to make it a bit more manageable.

Capybara got a new RSpec acceptance testing DSL. In this article I explain how to get it up and running.

Remember Swinger, the Capybara RSpec driver swapper? Capybara can now swap drivers out of the box.

I just published an article explaining how I tried to solve the problem of broken code being unable to test itself because it's broken. What do you think? :)

An article explaining why I think writing prototypes is good, as long as you throw them out.

I wrote a short article on monday to announce StillMaintained, a simple Sinatra application that keeps track of open source maintenance states. Just log in via Github to add your projects. :)

A quick tip about save_and_open_page: for when you really need to see what's going on in your acceptance test.

Announcing Fuubar: an instafailing progress bar formatter for RSpec.

An article about RSpec's fail_fast configuration option and command line argument that make RSpec immediately stop running after the first failure occurs.

Introducing Swinger: a really simple extension that allows your Capybara to have multiple partners in one session.

An overview of what inspired me the most attending RubyAndRails 2010 in Amsterdam

Another article about why I'm still having issues with gem builders and .gemspec files and why I think you should consider using Bundler to bootstrap your RubyGems.

Another Bundler article about letting the Bundler Gemfile read your .gemspec instead of the other way around.

In this article, I'm trying to figure out how to temporarily disable ActiveModel callbacks. How would you solve this?

Bundler made gem dependencies in Rails projects a lot easier, but what about gems themselves? In this article I show you how Bundler makes managing your gem's gem dependencies a breeze.

An article highlighting some mistakes you've probably seen before, solving them and suggesting you do the same.

It's been a while, but I finally got a chance to release Navvy 0.3 (the database agnostic Ruby background job processor). In this announcement I'll cover some of the changes and new features 0.3 introduces.

I just published an article about using God to daemonize and monitor the Navvy worker.

I just published an article about my experiences in the May 15 & 16 Rails 3 Bugmash.

I just published an article about a little spec I wrote to ensure my blueprints stay in shape.

I just released an article about Luismi Cavallé's "Steak": minimalist acceptance testing using pure Ruby with Rspec and Webrat or Capybara. No explicit givens, whens or thens. No steps, no English, just Ruby.

I just released Guestlist: a Rubygem for user authentication using Github credentials. The source is on Github and here's the gem.

Yesterday I wrote “.gitignore your *.gemspec”, in which I suggest to stop putting .gemspecs in gem repositories.

Yehuda Katz replied with “Using .gemspecs as Intended”, in which he explains why you should put them in your repositories to be able to install gems from git.

Today I published “Don't put your *.gemspec in your Rakefile”, in which I explain myself some more and revisit some of my previous statements asking myself why I generated my .gemspec in the first place.

Introducing Navvy; a simple background job processor inspired by delayed_job, but aiming for database agnosticism. Currently Navvy supports ActiveRecord, MongoMapper and Sequel but it's extremely easy to write an adapter for your favorite ORM. It completely supports Rails Edge and there's a pretty good wiki.

I released a simple Ruby API wrapper for Wakoopa. It's built to give an ActiveRecord-like way to fetch your software usage data. The source is on github, there's a pretty good wiki and the gem is on gemcutter. If you run into any issues, please report them.