I don’t want to jinx the next few weeks, but I think we lucked out on our first winter on the Oregon coast. I was prepared for the worst: Non-stop rain, heavy winds, never-ending gray skies. We had all that in stretches, but they were shorter than I’d been expecting. I assume this won’t be typical.

In keeping with doing a regular update mid-month, here’s what I’ve been up to lately. No big travel or lost pets these past four weeks, but plenty to cover all the same:

• Over on Everyday Rails, I posited the question, is it still important to know SQL in a day with powerful ORMs like Active Record? (Spoiler: I thought of seven reasons, and I’m sure there are more.) I’ve had a part two to this post sitting mostly finished in my drafts folder for almost a month now; with sufficient interest I may build the gumption get it out the door.

• I also spent some time moving this site over to Netlify from a server I’ve been managing myself. I wish I’d done this years ago! I wrote a brief post on the migration experience, and the features I’ve been digging. I should note I have no affiliation with Netlify; just a happy consumer.

• March 12 was the seven-year anniversary of my first post on Everyday Rails about how I learned to test Rails applications. The response I got to those initial six posts helped me realize that I may be onto something. I had heard about Leanpub as a means for converting blog content into a book, and decided to give it a go. Seven years and more than 6,500 readers later, I’m celebrating this little anniversary by offering a great deal my book, Everyday Rails Testing with RSpec, for just $7. I think that’s the lowest public discount I’ve ever offered. It’s good through March, 2019, so grab it while it’s hot.

• Finally, I just started experimenting with cross-posting my technical content to DEV. I feel better about sharing there than I do some other content sites. If you’re active on DEV, I hope you’ll give me a follow/heart/unicorn/etc.

Meanwhile, I have a couple of irons in the fire that I’m hoping I’ll be able to say more about in the next couple of months. I think It’ll be one or the other. There’s one thing I can mention:

• I mentioned starting a local civic hacking initiative for Astoria and Clatsop County. I just started a little proof-of-concept project around public data provided by the Oregon Department of Forestry. I’m going to demo at the next Astoria Full Stack meetup. See you there. It’ll be open source on or before that date.