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. 

I like Photoshop, I use it just about everyday. It’s running a little slower these days on my G5 iMac, but it gets the job done. However, sometimes there are applications that come along and get the job done without the extra fuss. Picturesque, by Acqualia, is one of those applications. It’s easy, beautiful, and just upgraded to version 2.

Picturesque makes easy work of rounded corners, shadows, reflections, strokes, and now rotations and tilts. It’s perfect for styling images for the web, or to provide a little something extra to thumbnails. I used version 1 extensively on images I took for StylingSalon.com last year.

Here’s a small gallery of what version 2.0 can do.

I’m an information junkie. I enjoy knowing what’s going on in the world. The problem with being an information whore is sorting through the dribble that I don’t want to know about. For instance, sport scores, don’t care, not even a little bit. But the latest information about some new software that will seemingly make my life easier and/or better, I’m all over it.

The other problem with being an information enthusiast is classifying my interests. I have many interests and I don’t have time to scour different sources that cater to those specific interests everyday. Which is why I use Google Reader. It’s simple, free, easy, and I can sort all the areas of my interest in one spot and get the information my little heart desires.

Here are just some of the areas of interest that I stay updated on through Google Reader: Anything Apple related, the art and craft of writing and publishing, faith and Christianity, news, Photoshop and Lightroom, Ruby on Rails, website design (HTML, CSS), music, and friends with sites. Whew! I’m tired just listing all of those.

So already being in a platonic relationship with Google Reader, when I switched to the iPhone and discovered that Reader was formatted for it, my heart swooned with delight. Well, now there is a new beta version of Reader for the iPhone which is even better. You can point your iPhone to: http://www.google.com/reader/i/ and see all the beautiful Reader goodness. I like the UI updates, they’re clean, pretty, and work more like the regular Reader, allowing the starring or sharing of any item. Also, read items don’t disappear from view like they used to, a big improvement. 

The Google folk have a blog for Google Reader and have posted some more information about the new beta version for the iPhone.