Standard Deviations ^{[no mean blog]}

This the Ruby way of passing optional arguments with default values into a method:

   1  def awesomeness options = {} 
   2    #sensible defaults
   3    opts = {
   4      :name => "Jerod",
   5      :handle => "sant0sk1",
   6      :blog => "Standard Deviations"
   7    }.merge options
   8    
   9    opts.each { |key,value| puts "#{key} = #{value}" }
  10  end

When called sans arguments this function will print the following:

   1  awesomeness
   2  handle = sant0sk1
   3  name = Jerod
   4  blog = Standard Deviations

When called with arguments this function will merge them into the opts variable and print the following:

   1  awesomeness :name => "Dork"
   2  handle = sant0sk1
   3  name = Dork
   4  blog = Standard Deviations

The defaults are used unless you specify an override in the method call, in which case the override is merged into the opts hash.