Ben Curtis

Yesterday I read a post over at the EngineYard blog about a use case for Redis (in the name of being a polyglot, trying new things, etc.), and I just had to scratch my head. I love Redis — it rocks my world — but that example was too much for me. If you...
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My latest project, UploadJuicer is running on Rails 3, and I’m loving it. Back in the Rails 3 beta 1 days, there were still a lot of rough edges, but beta 4 has been great so far. Until I wanted to upgrade UploadJuicer to Rails 3 RC (1). After the upgrade, I got this:...
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It says something about the sorry state of my blogging lately that my blog is the last place I’m announcing my latest project, Juicer. :) It’s a handy service for offloading image uploading and resizing from your web app. Now you don’t have to tie up your server to handle long uploads or to...
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This is simply awesome.  Facebook launches a new API using OAuth2, making it much easier to integrate with Facebook from your Rails app, and Michael Bleigh quickly churns out a new oauth2 gem. Having dealt with the pain of Facebook integrations recently, and having really enjoyed using OAuth, I had to dive in. The...
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Recently I received a request from another B2B SaaS vendor to integrate with Catch the Best, so their users could pull their data from Catch the Best into this app. This is a classic use-case for OAuth, so I dove in to learning how to make my Rails app an OAuth provider. Well, thanks...
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I was banging my head against a Facebook Connect problem with one of my clients’ Rails apps recently, and I thought I’d share a useful tidbit I gleaned from the experience, in case it can spare someone else the headache I had. This app originally supported just plain-old users who created an account at the...
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Well, I’ve put this off for as long as I could, but I think now is the time to make my first hire. I’m busy enough with client work and with my own projects that I need some help. So, if you or someone you know is looking for a part-time Rails...
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In case you haven’t seen it yet, Shopify has a brilliant developer platform that makes it easy for developers to create Shopify add-ons that can be marketed to Shopify store owners. And now, for even more awesomeness, there’s the Shopify App Rails Kit that makes it incredibly easy to build an app to...
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I realized a couple of days ago that it was January of 2007 when I dove into the crazy world of freelancing full-time. It has been quite an adventure. In that time I’ve worked on a number of fun projects with an amazing assortment of awesome clients, launched two different products (Catch...
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For some reason I find myself starting new projects on holidays. Perhaps it’s mental decompression, or just an excuse to have some fun. Either way, today’s holiday project was a little smaller than usual—I’m already done! It’s a tiny Sinatra app for allowing people to anonymously submit tickets to your Unfuddle...
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