A review of O'Reilly's Mastering Grails 101 video series by Berglund and McCullough. Covers Grails fundamentals, Groovy language basics, convention over configuration philosophy, building applications from scratch, and scaffolding. Recommends for anyone wanting to learn Grails web framework quickly.

Step-by-step guide for installing Groovy and Grails on Mac OS X with symbolic links for easy upgrades. Covers downloading binary releases, moving to /usr/share, creating symbolic links to simplify version changes, updating .profile with GROOVY_HOME and GRAILS_HOME environment variables and PATH settings, and verifying installation.

Preparing for a 22-hour flight to New Zealand and Australia by loading up on ebooks from ThriftEBooks. Focusing on Manning Publications' "Groovy in Action" and "Grails in Action" to gain expertise for demonstrating rapid web application development with Grails at work.