Useless Ruby Tricks: DATA and __END__

So maybe not totally useless certainly fun. Normally, ruby scripts are finished when you reach the end of a file; however, this is not always the case. You can end your script sooner by using the __END__ keyword in your script. Once added, everything you type after …

Converting ERB to HAML snippet

I'm playing around with merb so I'm using merb-gen to create some basic scaffolding; however, I'm not using ERB, the default rendering engine, I want to use haml

Haml comes with a script, html2haml, which can take HTML with ERB and convert it nicely to haml. Seeing as …

Code Reviews - Inherit in Git

Code Reviews are common in software development. One programmer reviews another's code to find potential issues or to see if the developer could have used something that the system already provided.

With multiple programmers, you can probably expect a versioning …

Issue Tracking + Git = ticgit

So not only is git useful for the small projects it's also good for keeping track of todos and issues. Ticgit is a distributed ticketing systems based on git. It provides a command line interface as well as a web interface via sinatra and stores all of the ticket …

Version Control Isn't for Just the Big Projects

We know that when you are working with a bunch of developers for code that's going to be deployed to the world that version control is something that you want in your toolbox. I would like to submit that it's not the only reason to use source control.

I bought a Flex …

Making ActiveRecord faster by NOT indexing

Usually one of the first things I read about on how to speed up ActiveRecord is to index my columns to speed up the lookup of items. "Of course!" But could indexing too much be harmful

Essentially, if your column is an enum, then indexing it could actually cause MySQL …

Adobe, Are you kidding me?

So there I am, wanting to install Photoshop on my laptop, which happens be a Mac with Leopard installed when I see this lovely message:

So what does "This software cannot be installed because the file system of the OS volume is not supported" even mean???!?! I tell …

A Tip For People using Google Code and the Issue Tracker

If you are using Google Code, and let's say that you want an issue addressed, like having ruby supported in GAE Please, Please, PLEASE, use the star voting and avoid making comments that are simply "+13. The more stars a defect has, the more attention it has, not the …

Problem with writing RESTful Google App Engine Code

So after I used middleware to make browsers work with RESTful URLs in GAE I started to write more than simple little methods and I'm trying to write a test application. Upon doing so, I ran into a defect with how request parameters are returned for a PUT request To be …

Letting Browsers use all of the RESTful Methods in Google App Engine

So there was much talk and whathave you about Google's new App Engine and after viewing the tutorials and reading the documentation, I thought it was pretty rad too. Because I was using rack for some previous stuff, WSGI felt right at home (probably because rack was …

Installing PostgreSQL on Leopard using MacPorts

I have always used MySQL but I wanted to give PostgreSQL a whirl. This is what I did.

Prerequisites

Now I don't want to go too deep into this, so I'm going to assume that if you are reading this, that you have the following installed

• Mac OS Developer's Tools

Forget About Little Old CGI

Maybe someone may have told you to use ruby and CGI together, but I think that person has a screw loose. I mean, come on. Everyone knows that what you really need to use is Rack

Why Rack

Well for one, it's light weight. So if you want to deploy your ruby script …

Don't Forget About Little Old CGI

Rails is great and all, but sometimes it can be just a little too much and you just need to set up a few pages, not the next big app. Fear not, there is still tool in the ruby tool box at your disposal: the CGI library. CGI is fast and lean and still can be used will …

Dropping the WWW

I did this a while back, but I thought I would mention it now: I have dropped the www from ShiftEleven. This came about from a discussion I had with Jason. He proposed the important question: "Is www even important or mean anything anymore?"

So like Ambethia.com, …

Goodbye Typo, Hello WordPress

I have migrated my blog over to WordPress, finally! It's something that I've been wanting to do because I wanted to free up some resources on my host as typo was taking up precious memory.

While I was at it, I also downloaded a new theme for the blog. Hope you like.

Dropping the WWW

I did this a while back, but I thought I would mention it now: I have dropped the www from ShiftEleven. This came about from a discussion I had with Jason. He proposed the important question: "Is www even important or mean anything anymore?"

So like Ambethia.com, …

RailsForge Needs Your Help

RailsForge is hosting a survey to see what you, the Rails community, would like in a site for rails gems and plugin management.

So if you have some free time, please take the survey to help this project turn into something that you actually want to use

Array-like Objects in JavaScript

It make look like an Array, hell, it even has a length attribute; however, it may not actually be an Array. JavaScript is sometimes a quirky language to say the least and the notion of what is an Array is no exception.

So what are these array-like objects that I …

Safari 3.0 and the Submit Button

Safari has come out with their public beta and every is excited because the browser is now available for Windows XP/Vista; but there is also a beta available for Mac users.

So I downloaded it and I started to use it. I love the ability to resize text areas and there …

Migrated My Blog to Slicehost

I previously mentioned that I was experiencing pain points with dreamhost and I have finally done something about it. I purchased a slice from slicehost and set up my own Ubuntu box.

So now instead of Apache and FCGI running the show, I am using Lighttpd and Mongrel …