If you've ever browsed the source code of this blog, you might have noticed a directory called lib/active_copy. Opening up that directory is somewhat interesting, as you'll be able to see exactly how I take Markdown files with YAML front matter and render them through ActionView. But unfortunately, unless you fork this repo and hack it to bits, you were unable to use ActiveCopy in your own Rails projects.
At the job, we're constantly trying to improve the UX of eLocal.com by making the site behave harder, better, faster, stronger. For some reason, recently we've had a surge in these kind of feature requests from the "peanut gallery" of sales and operations staff who are the primary source of feedback for the application. Most of what I do every day is solving bugs or adding new features to this big monolithic app, which powers the vast majority of our business. It is used by the staff on a daily basis to accomplish all sorts of tasks, from an in-house CRM to an advanced billing system (complete with recurring charges and invoicing), as well as basic control of our paying customers' ZIP code ads and lead dissemination.
There has been a lot of hate towards scopes recently. I'm here to tell you that scopes aren't all bad, and they can be used to create some astonishingly elegant model definitions.