In prototype.js, Event.observe method is very useful. But it is a bit inconvenient if you want to handle events only once such as an initialization. I have often encountered such situation, so I wrote a small utility function being as follows.

   1  Event.observeOnce = function(element, event, observer){
   2    var handler = function(){
   3      Event.stopObserving(element, event, handler);
   4      return observer.apply(null, $A(arguments));
   5    };
   6    Event.observe(element, event, handler);
   7  };

The usage is same to Event.observe.

   1  Event.observeOnce(document, 'dom:loaded', function(){
   2    /* some code goes here */
   3  });

It may be useful if you copy this into public/javascripts/application.js for Rails applications.

My name is Genki Takiuchi. I was born in Tokyo at 1980, so I am 27.

I've started programming when I was 8 years old. Simple games brought me to the world defined by BASIC. 20 years made me pass through many languages such as C/C++, HDL, HLSL, Java, D, Perl, Scheme, Erlang, Haskell and Ruby.

I won the Minister of Education prize at the programming contest in Japan when I was 19. I had studied concentratedly about computer graphics (photorealistic rendering) and statistics.

And now, I have worked with Ruby on Rails for more than 2 years. I wrote some articles to "WEB+DB press" and "Nikkei Software" which are magazines published in Japan.

I have a life work that is to solve the problem in the computer graphics.

I decided to separate entries into two blogs according to its language. This is the first entry which has written in English to this weblog.

I had decided learn about English about two years ago, but that is not achieved yet. The goal is so far. I want to communicate with cool programmers using English as a native or second language.

By the way, I plan to write something about Ruby on Rails, computer graphics (especially about offline rendering) and so on to this blog.

If you are familiar with Japanse, please visit "Hello, world!" the another weblog which is written Japanese.

Thank you.