Derek J Bender

Here's to new adventures

2002 Honda Shadow VLX VT600C

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I've ridden dirt bikes my entire life and I thought now was as good a time as any to pick up something for the road. I found a great deal on a 2002 Honda Shadow VLX VT600C from a nice person named Willy out of Hot Springs, SD.

Today's ride took me out to Deadwood, SD.

Safe travels out there.

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March 28, 2015

Getting started with Ruby on Rails 4.2.0

with Ruby 2.1.5

Prerequisite

  • Ruby: latest version at writing is 2.1.5

Getting Started

First ensure you're running the version of ruby you're expecting and not an ancient version like anything before Ruby 2.0.

$ ruby -v 
ruby 2.1.5p273 (2014-11-13 revision 48405) [x86_64-darwin14.0]

Install Rails . . .

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November 02, 2014

Denver Vacation

In which our protagonist spends a relaxing week with his wife, Laura, and their friends Kittie and Danny

Travel

Laura drove out early so I got to fly out on Southwest after taking a taxi up to Omaha. I got to the airport so early that I had time to have lunch at The Hanger and enjoy a fine beer before boarding. I forgot how much I dislike free-for-all seating on Southwest, even though the rest of the experience is fine. You really get . . .

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October 28, 2014

Apple's Multi-Device Workflow Needs to Be Razed and Rebuilt From the Ground Up

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Thanks to Merlin Mann for the exquisite narrative.

Apple was really big on the “Back to the Mac” in 2010 and while iCloud has brought so much unification to the mac workflow there is still plenty of room for improvement. iPhone syncing piggybacked off of iPod syncing through iTunes and we can certainly understand why Apple . . .

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November 24, 2012

Hate-reads and How For-profit Sites Work

The way to stop supporting terrible media is to stop watching or reading it

Marco talking about Ariel Meadow Stalling’s post:

The way to stop supporting terrible media is to stop watching or reading it.

The corollary: Why are you consuming terrible media?

Link-baiting articles are a blight, and the only way for change is by people voting with their clicks. There’s plenty of sites . . .

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September 10, 2012

Guitar Practice Tips From John Petrucci

One thing I miss about private guitar lessons is learning small exercises that improve your hands’ dexterity and agility. John Petrucci of Dream Theater fame has two excellent articles over at Guitar World that are really solid.
His advice on practicing is spot on:

Of all the things that can frustrate a guitarist the most, . . .

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August 31, 2012

Kittie Writes a Song

The corn city central
is where we play
corn city central
fructose all day
run that ball, plow that field
all the sugars is what we yield

This hymnal of corn, brought to you by chefkittie.com.

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April 18, 2012

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