As you may know, I’ve written a couple of posts for the O’Reilly Media Programming Blog since I started working there:

• How setting aside Rails and picking up Padrino might make you a better Ruby developer: I contributed this in early December, after seeing a lightning talk at KC Ruby and being reminded of the Padrino framework. Now, two months later, I’m not sure I still believe what I wrote. Or maybe I do. The bottom line is I think many of us need a good balance between learning and producing a product to stay the course. Is Padrino the best option for this when it comes to Ruby? Maybe.
• The self-made developer: Bootstrap or bootcamp?: I wrote this in December but the holidays pushed it back more than a month. It’s gotten a good response so far. If you have a viewpoint from either camp (bootstrapped or bootcamped; or none-of-the-above) I’d love it if you chimed in on the post’s comments. Oh, it was also pretty neat to see this article on Forbes.com as well.

I’ve still got the Everyday Rails blog and indie media empire rolling along, too. I don’t write there as much as I should, but last month I wrote a quick post admiring a Ruby Tapas episode on outside-in testing. Afterward, Avdi was cool enough to make the episode in question available for streaming from my post. If you’re interested in learning more about this type of testing in Ruby, please check it out–not for my content as much as his. Then subscribe to Ruby Tapas.

Finally, a couple of small updates to share on Everyday Rails Testing with RSpec: First, I’ve made the Rails 3.2 edition of the book available as a free download when you purchase the current version. I’m not sure how popular this will be, but I’ve gotten a few requests for it and it’s easier to provide this way than pass along a zip file on my own. I thought about selling it as its own product for a couple of bucks, but decided to just provide it as-is instead of having to support a legacy codebase. There have also been a couple of rounds of updates to the book lately–both minor–but if you downloaded awhile back and would like to get your hands on a newer, better version of the book, head over to Leanpub and grab the current version. It’s free to everyone who’s purchased it, ever.

Finally-finally, I’ve been reading more than writing of late. I started keeping a reading list on this site; please check it out when you have a chance. I’m including Twitter-sized reviews as I get the chance.