Redis and Twit-arr

Just experienced my first PEBKAC while using my library - code reloading doesn't work when the server is in production mode.

Over the weekend, I started eating my own dog food where Kul is concerned. Last year, my wife and I went on the Joco Cruise Crazy - and it was awesome. Highly recommended. Cruising is something that IMHO requires friends, and 800+ fellow nerds are a great group of soon-to-be friends to go with.

(I also got to meet John Scalzi - and got to watch Wil Wheaton play Artemis. That's hard to beat, you gotta admit)

Anyway, the group brought along their own server with it's own microblogging instance. And while it was neat and all, it wasn't exactly set up for the cruise. It tended to overwhelm the wifi capacity whenever the entire group was together, and it didn't exactly make the best use of small screens, etc. The concensus was that on the next trip Twit-arr (the microblog) would have its software overhauled.

So over the weekend I started putting together a new version. I started with Kul (of course), and it's helped me to see some of the flaws / weak points in what I'm building. I've already made some changes to the framework based on things that were difficult to use.

I'm using Redis as a backend for the service as well. Redis is awesome, and it's Ruby integration is even more awesome (if that's possible). The installation guide in the quickstart was one of the most complete I've ever used, and if it took me an hour to set Redis up it was only because I was going slowly. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Basically, I got to mess around with Redis (which I've been wanting to for awhile), use my own framework, and build something that (hopefully) will be of use to a bunch of people.

The code for my new twit-arr instance is up on GitHub, of course. Still in early development but I'm having a blast with it.