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Some observations and thoughts on my recent attendance at Wordcamp Montreal 2010. What went right, and what went wrong, and everything in between.

Rails 3 has done away with the ever so useful "error_messages_for" form helper. As this was something I used quite often, I wanted to find a reasonable replacement quickly.

Ajax validations are a great way to improve the user experience of your site. This screencast walks through the basic steps required to get a nice validation setup working with Rails 2.3.8 and jQuery. This technique is especially useful for validations that require server-side checks, like ensuring a value is unique.

Learn how to get multiple file uploads working smoothly with Paperclip & Rails. This is something that can be a little tricky if you haven't done it before, so I thought a screencast would be a helpful resource.

Learn how to setup the command line tools used to convert .wav audio files to the open .ogg format. These tools are especially handy if you have a web application that needs the capacity to convert files.

Learn how to deploy your Rails (2.3.5) application with Site5 shared hosting. I put together this screencast to help anyone who found the Site5 documentation to be lacking. A little rough around the edges, but still useful if you're new.

Take a moment to listen to the smooth sounds of Pink Floyd in 8-bit, just as the group always intended you to hear it. I know it's a bit 'off the wall', but I think this serves as a great introduction to the "Geek Culture" category of this blog. Enjoy!

It's time to take the training wheels off and start an official blog. I know it'll be a lot of work, but there are some very good reasons to start publishing personal content on the web.