This is a great time saving little tip for Leopard (10.5). It comes from MacWorld magazine via MacOSXHints.com.

It allows you put a “recent items” stack in your Dock. You can control-click/right-click for options to change between documents, application, servers, or favorite items. I have mine set to recent documents. This is the same recent items list that shows up on the Apple menu. It’s crazy helpful when you work several of the same documents over several days, like style sheets or Photoshop files.

Maybe it’s out of boredom or just out of the desire to do something new, but I always feel the need to constantly be in a state of learning.

One of my latest endeavors is Ruby on Rails. A programming language for the web. I didn’t jump on the Rails train immediately, mostly because of a lack of time. Now however, I’m making time. I’ve been going through some great tutorials via pod and screencast from the guys over at BuildingWebApps.com, Michael Slater and Christopher Haupt. I also just picked up the latest Rails book from Sitepoint.com, Simply Rails 2 by Patrick Lenz which walks through how to build a digg.com replica site.

One of the things I’m enjoying about Rails is the simplicity and speed with which an application can get off the ground and running. When I first started learning PHP, it seemed like it was so complicated to get everything set up and begin coding. I guess compared to Rails, PHP is more complicated.

The nice thing about learning Rails is that I’m doing it with my friend Brian. We’re both diving into it and getting our hands dirty, presumably to be a formidable Rails development team able to tackle any challenge that comes our way. We already have a project on the horizon which is motivating too.

So onward and upward, I keep going forward always with a need to learn. 

Dean Koontz is one of my favorite authors. His writing is mysterious, intriguing, and laced with a comical sense that I enjoy. His new book Odd Hours came out yesterday, in hardback and audiobook. To accompany the book, but separate, there is a whole series of webisodes on YouTube that follow Odd on his journeys. The webisodes are not written by Koontz but stay true to the character.

I also discovered, from the Dean Koontz mailing list, that Dean now has a podcast which you can get from his site, or from iTunes.