While working on Careplane recently, I ran into a problem that was made easier by JSONPath. I was already enjoying the ability to test my JavaScript with Node.js, Jasmine, and other npm packages. It would be nice if I could get the same package system I have with npm and use it with my client-side JavaScript.

While working on Hootroot and Careplane, I found myself getting frustrated with the way I was having handling events. Over time, however, I stopped fighting the language and learned a pattern that I believe is easiest to test and read.

Lately, I’ve been working on a Google Maps mashup that calculates CO2 emissions for automobile, bus, and rail trips. Since Google Maps has such a great JavaScript API, I decided to write the application almost entirely in JavaScript. Thus, Carbon.js was born!

Recently, we spiffed up some of our emitters with enhanced documentation using Rocco, a Ruby port of Docco. We combined this with github’s ability to set up static html pages for a repo. By setting up a branch called gh-pages, Github will serve any html files in that branch. We use this feature to display Rocco-generated documentation of our carbon models (check out the flight emitter for an example).

I just got back from JRubyConf in Columbus, Ohio. I had a great time meeting other Rubyists and learned a great deal about how Ruby is being integrated into enterprise environments via JRuby. It’s really exciting to see “the big guys” embracing a language and ecosystem that we at Brighter Planet enjoy using on a daily basis.

I have been spending the past few weeks creating and refactoring our carbon model gems, with the goal of making them easy to enhance, fix, and test by climate scientists and Ruby developers. I wanted to make contributing a simple process and bundler fit the bill quite well.