Ryan Daigle reports that the latest 'edge Rails' has a cool new feature that lets you specify find conditions more logically. For example:

Post.find(:first, :conditions => ['status = ? and active = ?', 1, 1])

.. becomes:

Post.find(:first, :conditions => { :status => 1, :active => 1 })

I've accidentally tried to use this style before, and am glad it's now an approved part of Rails. If you're running edge Rails, you should have access to it as soon as you update, otherwise wait for Rails 1.2 :)

If this tickles your fancy, you might also want to check out ez_where by Ezra Zygmuntowicz that lets you do insanely cool stuff like:

articles = Article.ez_find(:all, :include => :author) do |article, author|
  article.title =~ "%Foo Title%"
  author.any do
    name == 'Ezra'
    name == 'Fab'
  end
end

Yes, abstraction rules.