This past weekend involved a trip to the Hunter Vally Vineyards, about two hours north of Sydney. We arrived at the Hunter Valley YHA, the first hostel I’ve stayed at in my life, around 11:30am. After quickly checking in and dumping our stuff in our rooms, we headed out to the bus for our wine tasting tour.
Our first stop was the Dayton’s family vineyard. They run a fairly large operation, though they don’t export internationally, they do their own bottling and do some bottling for smaller neighboring vineyards. While there, we tried a sample of chardonnays, rieslings, ports and chocolate liquors. My favorites here were the Unwooded Chardonnay and the Traminer Riesling. The 12 year-old port was also the best port I’ve ever had, though not as good as these two wines. After the sampling, they took us on a quick tour of their bottling facilities, and the area where their wine club members get to do their sampling.
Our next stop was at a very small vineyard called Tinklers. Featured here was an adorable black lab, along with some wines. My top picks here were the Verdelho, a light sweet white, and the Volcanic Ash, a very light fruity wine with a hint of sweet. They also had quite a selection of fresh jams like apricot pumpkin.
After lunch, we stopped at a pretty well known vineyard, Rosemount. Rosemount is one of the larger wine producers in the Hunter Valley and is known in the international markets of the US and UK. The wines here were absolutely fantastic, with my favorites being their Traminer Riesling (I just realized as writing this that I already bought a Traminer Riesling!), and their very popular “O” (which is best served Over ice). Their 2007 stock of “O” sold out in 3 months, and they are expecting similar for their next harvest, hoping to eventually start exporting it to the US.
The last place that we stopped was the Hanging Tree vineyard, which by far had the most stunning views. Vineyards surrounded by small lakes all set in front of a breathtaking mountainous background. Unfortunately, none of the wines really struck me at this place, though they were mostly dry reds and as you can probably tell by now I tend to prefer fruity and sweet whites. They did have a very nice Cabernet with a hint of cinnamon, and a peppery merlot which I enjoyed small amounts of, but couldn’t have more than a glass of.

After our wonderful wine tasting, we headed back to the hostel. After hanging out pool side (freezing!), we got to make our own pizzas and have them cooked in a wood pizza oven! My pizza turned out amazingly, and everybody had a good time throwing together their own. After dinner we walked about 300m down the road to the local micro brewery and pub, Potters. It was karaoke night and it was packed! I think all of Hunter Valley showed up Saturday night.

Sunday morning started with a trip to the “Smelly Cheese Shop” where I acquired the most amazing Feta cheese I’ve ever had. It is Cow Feta with sundried tomatoes and garlic. It is absolutely delicious and I am addicted. I had to buy a jar, which I’ll hopefully be able to make last a little while. We ended up walking home (we got a ride there) and along the way had to walk past a roadkill Kangaroo. They really are akin to deer in the Midwest, as a hazard to motorists. The walk took an hour and a half, it was extremely scenic and I quite enjoyed it. It was nice to be able to walk and be out of the city, away from the noise, the people, the cars.
We went back to Potters Brewery for a 2pm brewery tour. This is by far the smallest operation I’ve ever seen. They had one 600L brew kettle, and a cooler that the group of us (15 on the tour?) barely fit into around the machinery and kegs they were storing. They did have some very nice selections however, my favorite being the Hunter Kölsch, a German style ale. After the tour we headed back to the hostel and relaxed until the bus came to whisk us back to the city from a weekend away that felt far too short.

It’s finally here: ActsAsCSVable!

Important Update! on June 25th, 2009
ActsAsCSVable is now on GitHub.com and all development has moved to git.
http://github.com/pjleonhardt/ActsAsCSVable/tree/master
Git Repository: git://github.com/pjleonhardt/ActsAsCSVable.git

History
I developed a plugin while working as a Rails Developer, CSVExportable, which was originally based off of some code from Bryan Helmkamp.

CSVExportable was good, but it was an evolutionary design. As such, it was hodgepodged together with no since of organization. I decided to rewrite the plugin from scratch, and design it a little bit better this time around (since I knew where I would end up this time around). It also needed a name change, since it does both CSV exporting and importing. I’ve seen a few Rails plugins that will do CSV exporting, but I haven’t found one that does both, or even importing. Importing is definitely tricky, but I think that if you follow a few guidelines, it can be useful in the right situations.

Installation
Subversion: Trunk | Stable v1.0 | Development Application
Project Management: Redmine

Usage

   #in your model
    acts_as_csv_exportable :fancy_naming, [{:first => "first_name"}, {:last => "last_name"}, {:email => "email_address"}, {:address => "mailing_address"}]
    acts_as_csv_exportable :detailed, [:first_name, :last_name, :email_address, :mailing_address, :formatted_date]
    acts_as_csv_exportable :default, [:id, :first_name, :last_name]

    acts_as_csv_importable :default, [:id, :first_name, :last_name]
    acts_as_csv_importable :new_projects, [:name, :details, :\owner_username]

    def formatted_date
      self.date.strftime("%Y/%M/%D")
    end

    def owner_username=(username)
      self.owner = Users.find_by_username(username)
    end

  # your contrller
  def index
    @people = Person.find(:all)

    respond_to do |wants|
      wants.csv { render :text => @people.to_csv(:columns => [:first_name, :last_name, :date_of_birth]) }
      # or
      wants.csv { render :text => @people.to_csv(:template => :fancy) }
      # or
      wants.csv { render :text => @peope.to_csv } #renders the :default template
    end
  end

  #/people/import
  def import
    file = params[:csv_uplodad]
    template = params[:upload_template]
    projects = Project.from_csv(file, template)

    if projects.all?(&:valid?)
      projects.each(&:save)
    else
      # Options options options...
      # 1) Save valid rows, and re-export invalid rows
      # 2) Save nothing, and tell user which rows were invalid
      # 3) Save nothing and tell them rows are invalid
      # 4) Up to you!
    end
  end

I only ask that if you use the plugin, let me know! I love to keep track of how its being used. The more response, the more likely I am to improve it and write more plugins! Leave a message below, or send me an email. I’d love to hear your thoughts for improvement, as well.

Today’s entry has tons of links, be sure to check out all of the pictures that they lead to!

This past weekend entailed a trip to the glorious Blue Moutains of New South Wales (NSW). Luckily, it decided to pour all of saturday morning as we made our way through Sydney. We stopped at Sydney Olympic park, a planned stop, for a new bus because the brakes on the one we departed on were sketchy at best. Instead of walking around, enjoying the jumping water fountains, the stadium, etc, we huddled inside of a Gloria Jean’s coffee house, trying to stay warm.
After hopping on our new bus, we made our way to a National Wildlife Refuge, where we were able to pet koala, feed emu, and box kangaroo (picture coming)! I also got to see dingoes, wallabies, Inland Taipans (most poisonous snake in the world), and other Australian centric creatures.
Finally we climbed our way up to the top of the Blue Mountains, where we saw a spectacular array of fog, reminiscent of a recent trip up to Waimea Canyon, on Kauai, Hawaii. We decided to break for lunch, which was a welcome chance to warm up with some hot soup, along with fish and chips. Afterward, the weather decided to play nice and let us enjoy some of the stunning views of the Three Sisters, and another look out.

That night, we went to Sidebar, a bar/club located beneath WakeUp!, rated #1 hostel in the world, and also to Landsdowne Hotel on Broadway to soak up the local bar scene.

Monday afternoon and evening, a small group of us went on a walking tour of part of Sydney, walking from our house here in Redfern through Hyde Park, all the way up to the Harbour and the Sydney Opera House. After touching the opera house, and milling around a bit, we headed towards our original destination, the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We were on a mission to walk across the bridge today to see spectacular views of the Harbour and the Central Business District (CBD). Going across the bridge, I managed to snag a few good shots of the Opera House and Circular Quay (pronounced: key). We ended up grabbing some dinner at a Japanese place near the bottom of the northern pylons, after which we walked down to the waterfront to getting some views of the Harbour at night. There, it is where I took my favorite picture.

Be sure to follow my pictures on Flickr. (There are a lot of similar looking pictures as I just upload my whole camera. It would take too much time to sort through 100+ pictures every time I upload!)

I started off the day with a trip out to my new job site, ASDM, where I interviewed for my internship position. It was less of an interview and more of a thanks for coming out to meet us, this is what we would like you to do while you’re here; does that sound good to you? Both of the gents I spoke with were very friendly (a recurring theme…) and welcoming. I’ll be assisting them in data collection and analysis for their clinical trials of a new cardiovascular device that they’ve recently developed. More details to come as I’m on the job and get a better feel for the project. I start on Wednesday, 9 o’clock.

After a thirty minute chat with Dr. Jari and the lead mechanical engineer from the cardiovascular project, I headed back to St Leonards station and then hopped a train back to North Sydney to the CAPA office where I had the first day of my Australian Cinema class. We watched an excerpt of The Sundowners, and then a complete showing of Walkabout. I’m still not quite certain whether I’ll be keeping this class or not, as having Mondays off would allow me to take 3-day weekend trips all semester (or just lounge on the beach on Mondays!).

I think I’ll head off to Bondi Beach in the morning, go back to take some pictures and maybe a quick swim if it isn’t too cold (it probably will be). All I’ve got is a Business in the Pacific Rim class at 2pm.
Walking to work today, among the hustle and bustle of the city I began to feel at home in the city. Previous to this I always felt completely foreign, a tourist, but now I begin to feel the assimilation. As I fall into the routine of work and class this will no doubt grow until I feel at home here and have trouble leaving in December.