Duplicate posts in some feedreaders

Posted by Luke
on Monday, April 28

We’ve been getting complaints about seeing duplicate posts in some feedreaders (and I’ve seen this myself several times at Planet Ruby on Rails). We like our subscribers and don’t want to piss you off!

Does anyone know what causes this? We are using FeedBurner with Mephisto (approximately version 0.8) and producing Atom. The feed validates.

Our guess is that it has something to do with updating the posts, but we’re not sure. It may also happen when updating the permalink (which I encourage my co-authors not to do after publishing. Naughty naughty!) On Planet Ruby on Rails, there is sometimes a problem where one copy of the post goes to “www.railspikes.com” and one to “railspikes.com” and one to the FeedBurner post link (example).

We have id, published, updated and link tags to identify each entry:

1
2
3
4
5


<id>tag:railspikes.com,2008-04-25:1351</id>
<published>2008-04-25T18:57:00Z</published>
<updated>2008-04-25T18:57:12Z</updated>
<link href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/RailSpikes/~3/277795704/startup-school-2008-misc" rel="alternate" type="text/html" />

Any ideas? We’d like to fix this problem.

Hiring: Ruby on Rails Dark Lord of the Sith

Posted by Jon
on Tuesday, April 01

Slantwise Design is hiring one Ruby on Rails Dark Lord of the Sith. Candidate will lead Rails projects in a fast-paced, show-no-mercy environment. Our ideal applicant will have 1-3 years of Rails experience, a strong programming background, and be open to the power of the dark side.

Desired skills:
  • Ruby on Rails
  • Ruby programming (non-Rails)
  • Web deployment experience (Linux/Unix, mongrel, etc.)
  • Java background a plus (and JRuby experience great), but not necessary
  • The force, esp. mind trick
  • Database knowledge (i.e. deeper than just ActiveRecord)

You will also be responsible for enforcing order within our projects. We practice rigorous waterfall project management, with heavy emphasis on meetings and documentation, so experience with the FAHS system (Fear -> Anger -> Hate -> Suffering) a plus.

We currently have two Rails Sith Lords on staff but are interested in bringing in some fresh talent. To apply, please send your resume to darklord@slantwisedesign.com and vanquish one of our current developers in single combat.

Edit: Happy April 1

Sadly, we aren’t actually hiring Rails developers at the moment, but special thanks to Darth Rubious, who put Eric in the hospital.