I nearly forgot to tell you: I am writing a new book about the Arduino micro-controller board!!

I have always been interested in electronics, but I never had the time to learn more about it. It all changed with the advent of the . The Arduino makes playing around with electronics so easy and so much fun that I simply did not have any excuses any longer.

When I told my publisher that I was playing around with the Arduino, they immediately offered me a book contract. They wanted me to write down all the things I have learned and discovered and they wanted me to write a book that introduces absolute beginners to the exciting world of electronics and the Arduino.

The book is available in beta already, so if you’re interested in the electronics and/or the Arduino platform, have a look at it!

Thomas Baustert started a new (German) podcast interview series named PodcastOnRails. I had the great honour to be his first interview partner and we’ve talked about Ruby, Rails, and my new book.

I’ve written two books having the words “Ruby” and “Enterprise” in the title, that is I am really interested in “Enterprise Ruby”. Hence, I am very pleased to see a lot of discussion going on regarding this topic lately.

Nick Sieger, for example, blogged about his observations at QCon. He wonders why Ruby is not used more often in big companies, although he thinks Ruby already has everything it needs to be a successful enterprise software development platform.

I totally agree with Nick: Ruby and Rails are ready for the enterprise and it’d be great, if more CTOs would think so, too. And like Nick I do not know exactly why it is not more popular. Some people think it’s because only mediocre programmers work for big companies. I don’t think so, because I know a lot of smart people working in corporate environments. Guy Kawasaki brings it to the point in his great new book “Reality Check”:

There are a lot of guys and gals inside established companies who are as innovative and revolutionary as their bootstrapping, soy-sauce-and-rice-subsisting, external entrepreneur counterparts.

I think many companies use Ruby and Rails already, but don’t talk about it. This is really a pity, because Ruby urgently needs more success stories. But most big companies still have massive communication problems and it’s usually difficult for corporate developers to speak or blog publicly about their daily work. Too often they aren’t allowed to say anything about the tools and techniques their employers are using.

Fortunately, these politics are changing slowly, so be prepared to read more about some interesting Ruby and Rails projects that have been developed in really big companies

Yesterday I’ve got my copies of  “Enterprise Recipes with Ruby and Rails”. It’s hard to describe how an author feels when he touches a new book for the first time, but believe me: it’s great! It took more than a year to get it done, but it was well worth the effort.

The book is for enterprise developers who’d like to benefit from using Ruby and Rails. Among other topics it shows you how to process XML documents efficiently, how to use asynchronous messaging, how to make your applications more secure, and much more. Have a look at the table of contents to see, if it contains something interesting for you.

I gave a talk about asynchronous messaging with Ruby and Rails at the German Rails-Konferenz 2008 in Frankfurt. You can watch the video here. (it’s in German and the sound quality is a bit low.)

A few days ago my new book (Enterprise Recipes with Ruby and Rails) has been released as a beta book. If you want to use Ruby to write enterprise software (or if you’re doing it already), have a look at it. It contains more than 50 recipes showing important techniques from a broad range of topics.

Sample chapters and the full table of contents can be found on the publisher’s web site.