

Ask HN: Review my first Rails app? Pitchforked - pstinnett
http://www.pitchforked.com

======
pstinnett
I just "launched" my first Ruby on Rails application last night. It creates a
random playlist of songs from Pitchfork.com's best new albums area. Up to now
I've primarily worked with PHP.

A little backstory: Just a little over a month ago I saw Zach Klein (now
working at Boxee) tweet this: <http://twitter.com/zachklein/status/7770633908>

I had been reading through the new railstutorial.org, but I always learn more
quickly working on a real project. So I took a stab at the app and here I am.

I'd love to hear any feedback or comments/questions.

Thanks!

~~~
evlapix
Very nice design.

Looks like pitchfork improved their security a bit. I remember they used to
just have an XMPP player, where the XML behind it just had an additional node
titled security. It's contents said something to the effect of.. "Don't
download these files!". Or something like that.

~~~
pstinnett
Thanks. I'm not really sure about Pitchfork's security...I know they lock down
their mp3s and had some recent trouble (maybe?) with leaking albums? Not 100%
sure on that last part.

All the mp3 files that I'm using are provided by 8tracks.com via their API.

~~~
yogione
I like the clean design. Do you have a blog with notes of the whole process -
plugins used / css / js / hosting.

~~~
pstinnett
No blog yet. After I get the first round of revisions done on pitchforked I'll
get something up that details the process. I've been taking notes throughout
the whole thing, just haven't gotten around to it yet! I'll post again once
that's ready.

------
dogas
I like it a lot, reminds me of muxtape before they got taken down.

One suggestion - the onmouseover gray hover color gets a bit annoying for the
current song playing. Also, a fast forward link would be great, in case the
song is a little "out there".

~~~
dogas
Also don't forget to package up those assets. I recommend jammit
(<http://documentcloud.github.com/jammit/>), as it can use the google
javascript compiler to squeeze out a couple extra kb.

~~~
pstinnett
I'll take a look at that! Nothing is packaged yet. Is there an easy way to get
this into the deployment process so that my dev site isn't packaged and
everything on the production side is? Thanks!

~~~
jashkenas
Yep, that's the whole idea. In development everything is unpacked,
uncompressed and debuggable. In production, you get packaged CSS, JS, and
(optionally) images, for the smallest size and fewest HTTP requests possible.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me (jeremy at documentcloud dot
org), or start an Issue on GitHub.

~~~
pstinnett
Excellent! I've got this added in to my issues for pitchforked. Will be
implementing it in the next couple of revisions.

------
pclark
great domain.

doesn't work so well with chrome and flashblock, can't find the flash element
to unblock.

~~~
pstinnett
Thanks. I've gotten some reports about problems with Flashblock/Clicktoflash.
I'll hopefully have an update to fix that tonight. Thanks for checking out the
site!

------
kungfooey
I think it's pretty neat. Very simple interface that tells you pretty much
exactly what it's going to do.

~~~
kungfooey
A pause/play button would be nice.

~~~
pstinnett
You can pause by clicking anywhere on the track name (except the links to the
review). I guess that might not be obvious though...

~~~
pstinnett
Unfortunately, due to licensing restrictions, I can't add a skip button in:(
Same sort of problem with Pandora. You can only skip a certain amount of
tracks in a certain time period, so I've just excluded the option to skip
tracks.

~~~
kungfooey
Easy to get around by just reloading. :)

------
wsbail29
Nice job! I did something like this awhile ago too. I wrote a scraper that
pulled all of the reviews from Pitchfork (scraping was necessary before they
updated their site with rss feeds). My app currently just display a random set
of reviews on each visit.

<http://pitchforkd.thirtymontgomery.com>

I was actually thinking about updating it to add playlist functionality.
Thanks for pointing out 8tracks.com. I'll have to check it out.

