spicycode

Languages of interest

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:02:04 -0400

I’ve been tinkering with a lot of other languages recently, here are a few of them. What languages are you looking at?

Standing up: 100% complete

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:58:13 -0400

Recently I decided to try a stand up desk again. I’ve used one a few jobs previous where I had to assemble all manor of electronic devices and rather liked it. At home this has the duel benefit of keeping me focused, and keeping my son out of my computer equipment.

I’ll keep you up to date with how it goes. I’m interested to see how standing at home and sitting at work compare with regards to comfort.

Safari 3.1 and Prototype breakage

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 10:21:01 -0400

Safari 3.1 and Prototype breakage

Secrets is a very useful pref pane

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:46:03 -0400

Secrets is a very useful pref pane: It has definitely kept me from having to store yet one more seldom used defaults write string in my brain.

"Install this to twitter from quicksilver"

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 15:41:04 -0500

“Install this to twitter from quicksilver”

- hogeLog » Quicksilver Twitter Plugin

Leopard and X11

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:58:24 -0500

Leopard and X11: The ins and outs of leopard and x11.

No one told me there was a Ninjabread man game! Too bad...

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 20:34:00 -0500

No one told me there was a Ninjabread man game! Too bad it’s apparently one of the worst games of the year.

Taking Merb to Production

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 19:25:33 -0500

Taking Merb to Production

Safari 2.0.4 Side By Side With Safari 3 On Leopard

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:34:00 -0500

Safari 2.0.4 Side By Side With Safari 3 On Leopard: Follow the link for steps

Hiding /Opt From Finder.App In OSX

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:00:00 -0500

Simple way via the command line:

sudo SetFile -a V /opt killall Finder

Flush your dns cache on leopard

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 11:12:08 -0500

Flush your dns cache on leopard: dscacheutil -flushcache.

Want to get FireFox 3 on OSX working well?

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:22:05 -0500

Step 1: Get FireFox 3

Step 2: Install the Proto theme (it’s the soon to be default osx theme)

Step 3: Install the latest Firebug that is compatible with Firefox 3

Anyone Get SuperRedCloth To Build On Leopard?

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:00:00 -0500

Two machines here get segfaults from gcc (yes, after port installing ragel). Help?

Enable The New Web Inspector On Leopard

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 23:00:00 -0500

Just run the following in your terminal

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitDeveloperExtras -bool true

Then right click on anything and click Inspect Element to bring it up

A Serialized Mystery

Thu, 31 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Author: Nick Ang Ehren and I recently had to spec out a discussion filter to return only items selected by the user. While testing all things were golden. However, when we tried to step through the implementation in the browser we would have issues. After some investigation in script/console we finally found the culprit. The breakdown of our model The model we are filtering contains a serialized column of integers to aid with the filtering. This is a low-tech version of a full-blown association. The purpose was to insulate us from yet more expensive sub queries as the full page load can be quite intensive. (I jest not when I say we have a model named “Item” in this project.)

class Item 	serialize :used_by_filter_ids end

Calling Scotland Yard

Our investigation had us discover that the serialized column was returning an array of integers as Strings, versus actual Numerics which our callers expected. A simple tweak to the implementation to call to_i prior to handing the results back and all is good.

class Item 	serialize :used_by_filter_ids    	def used_by_filter_ids    	read_attribute(:used_by_filter_ids).each(&:to_i)   	end end

This discovery and subsequent fix explained why we were getting the errors through the browser but none during the specifications. The browser passes params around as strings, and the tests submit actual integers. A lesson to learn Always verify you are not relying on conversion magic at some level when serializing, or testing in general. If it needs to be an integer, use an integer. If rails will pass an integer as a string in params, you should do the same in your tests and specifications. I estimate the time we spent in proportion to the code of size n was about O(n), but the constant hidden by the big-o notation was rather large.

Make it fast please

Sun, 27 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400

I love OSX. It’s my favorite OS this side of BeOS. However I still get frustrated some times when things move more slowly that I would like. That’s why I was very happy to find this tip at macosxhints From MacOSX Hints If you are willing to sacrifice the visual feedback, disabling animation can provide a snappier experience. To disable animation in the Finder, open your favorite Terminal Software and enter this command:

defaults write com.apple.finder DisableAllAnimations -bool true

killall Finder

I definitely don’t have a slower system, but I still like being able to disable the zooming windows here and there. When I want a folder open, just open the folder please. If you decided it wasn’t for you, just reissue the command and restart finder again.

defaults write com.apple.finder DisableAllAnimations -bool false

killall Finder

RSpec 1.0 Released!

Tue, 22 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400

RailsConf was quite fun this and I finally got a chance to meet David Chelimsky and Aslak Hellesøy on Saturday. Ken and I sat down with them and coded a patch or two for RSpec 1.0. We got the “not implemented” spec feature added during this time. It worked like this:

describe YourClass do

it "should do something awesome later"

end

By not giving the example (‘it’) a block you get a Not Implemented spec notice in all the various outputs. This will be yellow in the console output when color is on, and the same in the html output. Having not implemented specs will not break your build, and they do not count as errors or failures. All in all a very fun time.

Jim Weirich Joins EdgeCase

Mon, 14 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400

I haven’t had a lot of time to blog recently but I had to get the word out on a few things at my company, EdgeCase.

A wonderful addition:

Jim Weirich of rake, rubygems, flexmock, and many other ruby projects is joining EdgeCase. I couldn’t be more ecstatic. Jim will bring a great depth of experience to our team and allow us to really tackle the larger projects with ease.

A new site

The EdgeCase Website has relaunched with a new design and more useful information on our portfolio, services, and who we are. It’s nice to get this up and going prior to RailsConf.

Enterprise Ruby Conference: erubycon

erubycon is coming up sooner than you might think. Pat Eyler has recently announced a contest we are putting on to get free tickets to erubycon.

Bitten By The Hard Breaks Again

Sun, 13 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Another turn around the textile wheel of fortune in a rails application today yielded a lesson learned long ago but forgotten. The textilize helper included with rails enables the hard_breaks mode by default. Hard Breaks converts 1 new line to a br and 2 newlines to a p tag. When you disable hard breaks mode you only get p tags.

Here’s how the source for that method looks:

def textilize(text)

if text.blank? "" else textilized = RedCloth.new(text, [ :hard_breaks ])

textilized.hard_breaks = true if textilized.respond_to?("hard_breaks=") textilized.to_html

end

Here’s a simple override of it you can put in your application_helper.rb if you want the no hard breaks behaviour.

def textilize(text)

if text.blank?

""

else

RedCloth.new(text).to_html

end

Nothing new, just posting it here as a reminder to myself and a hopefully helpful tip to anyone not yet familiar with this difference.

Globzilla - Destroyer Of Subversion

Thu, 03 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400

At the office today Nick and I tried an experiment. It was a failed one, but who said all news has to be good news? Here’s how it breaks down.

Step 1: Optimal Optimism

Be lazy enough that you don’t want to use one of the plentiful svn add scripts on the net.

Step 2: Arbitrary Assumptions

Decide, hey, I can make that happen with fewer characters!

Step 3: Shiny Shells

Try to run the following in your sleek zsh shell:

svn add **/*

So, this step is awesome! It adds all the new files, while not re-adding existing files. It also has the added benefit of scrolling so much text in your console you have time to get a refreshing drink.

Step 4: Reversion Regret

However, the last step has the added benefit of adding svn ignored files by calling them as explicit targets. This gives us a wonderful experience of learning how to selectly svn revert everything our nuclear svn add option just did.

Step 5: Bowing Back

So what have we learned? Sometimes globs do not solve all problems. Most perhaps, but definitely not all. Also, I’d like to give a shout out to my friend subversion, who enabled me to rollback this mess of a command.