May 2009
1 post
2 tags
February 2009
1 post
ruby.mn webchallenge team! →
The Ruby Users of Minnesota group has a team for the Overnight Website Challenge. Cheer us on!
January 2009
1 post
3 tags
github page →
My codes.
December 2008
1 post
3 tags
subqueries: sqlite3 vs. mysql
Ugh. I thought rails was supposed to handle database peculiarities for me. Is this a bug, or am I being stupid?
Here’s the gist:
November 2008
1 post
5 tags
new to obj-c
I’m working my way through the Pragmatic iPhone screencasts, and my complete newbosity to Objective-C is thoroughly kicking my ass.
Basically, there’s a main application delegate that has a property on it for data shared amongst other controllers. The controllers “should” be able to access it… as far as I can tell I’ve set up all my connections and...
October 2008
1 post
1 tag
September 2008
1 post
2 tags
August 2008
5 posts
1 tag
“I’m tired. I’m gonna make like a baby and head out.”
– Carolyn
6 tags
rspec is mocking me
Grr. I hate situations where it works here, but doesn’t work there, and I can’t see where the difference is. Something has to be different, I just can’t for the life of me figure out what. Maybe someone can help.
Here’s what’s up.
I’ve got rspec and rspec-rails installed as git submodules. Running the latest edge rails. I’m gonna generate up a...
1 tag
“My favorite color is all of them. My second favorite is green”
– Katy
2 tags
off to sodak
Heading out to see Eric in South Dakota today. I’ve been promised pizza and beer. In exchange, I will be used as a prop in a photoshoot of Katy.
Updates forthcoming.
1 tag
July 2008
15 posts
5 tags
sqlite3-ruby-1.2.2 and rails == no good
Tonight I fired up a new rails app to play with… did my initial git stuff, ran script/console for the first time, fired up localhost:3000, etc etc.
Everything was going so smoothly. Until I hit the “About your app’s environment” link on the default index page. Observe the pinkish horror:
Here’s the relevant error text (for google to...
1 tag
Beijing 2008 Preparations - Three Weeks to Go →
Some amazing photos of the preparations underway for the 2008 Summer Olympics.
3 tags
why inline labels suck
Came across a form on a website today. A typical signup form, you see these a jillion times a day. But this one thought it would be clever, and use the hip new style of “inline labels” for its input fields. Observe:
See? The label for the field is inside the field itself. And when you give the field focus (aka click on it), the label disappears, quickly getting out of the way...
2 tags
1 tag
“Getting actual fan mail is like sex and Christmas at the same time.”
– Pete Forde; “Think lazy: Rails is like building a kayak”
1 tag
“OH: “That’s what happens when you add one bad feature, you end up...”
– @stevenbristol
1 tag
eyes on the prize
John: 'eh. turns out that dropping a column from a table is impossibly hard.
Andy: heather was complaining about the same thing
Andy: except column == baby
Andy: and table == vagina
2 tags
iphone eve
Walk in to the office today, and on the whiteboard, scrawled in giant letters, I see:
Happy iPhone Eve!
Truth. Happy iPhone ev-ery-body.
Now, the only question that remains… Black or White?
5 tags
dotfiles
Don’t know why I didn’t do this before. The hot new thing is to put your dotfiles up on GitHub. Now it’s trivially easy to keep my terminal life in sync across my macs.
Here’s the link to my terminal bliss.
I forked Ryan Bates’ project, since he’s got a nice rake task to install symlinks for each of the files, and I liked his file structure. I’ve...
1 tag
hard times
Jane (hungry): What can I get if I show you my boobs?
Bartender: (plops down a 50¢ bag of chips on the table)
Jane: WTF!?
Me: Well, we are in a recession...
3 tags
installing git man pages
In a previous post, I was confused on how to install the latest git man pages after updating my git installation. Turns out to be a single command!
$ git archive origin/man | sudo tar -x -C /usr/local/share/man
Pretty awesome. The git maintainers made this very easy, as they’ve got a ‘man’ branch that contains the latest auto-generated man pages. A simple...
1 tag
“4th of july is the best holiday— no need to buy presents, or spend time w/...”
– My Linh Pham
3 tags
“OH: the trick is to write your unit tests while you’re sober. then write...”
– technoweenie
2 tags
trms goal week wrapup
Company Presentation: check.
Grilling: check.
Beers: check.
Smoking pipes out back: check.
Rock Band in the conf room: check.
More Beers: check.
Enjoying the awesome folks you work with: check.
Gotta say, it’s been a pretty good day today.
2 tags
June 2008
30 posts
2 tags
2 tags
3 tags
update git, using git
I realized today that I was a bit behind the times:
john@jeebus ~
$ git --version
git version 1.5.5
The latest release is 1.5.6.1. Time to update git.
Rather than downloading a tarball, I figured it would make more sense to use git to get the latest git. Seems like the natural thing to do. Back when I first installed, I had cloned the git repo just to see what was going on. So,...
Carousel 5.2: Images in RSS Feeds →
Carousel’s RSS bulletins are a fantastic way to get dynamic content on your digital signage system. The one drawback is that they’re limited to textual content only… But not for long. In Carousel 5.2, RSS bulletins bust free from their text-only shackles and now display images embedded inside the RSS feed. …
2 tags
“Rails people have to be the epitome of cool nerds, with their special lingo and...”
– from @defunkt, quoting Penny
2 tags
patio in progress
Patio-making is a process. We’ve spent the past several days working on it, and though I’m tired as hell, it’s starting to look pretty dang good.
I’ve been keeping up with the photos on Flickr, so you can follow the progress there, but I’ll just call out a few highlights here.
We started with 3 cubic yards of class 5 rock:
Turns out this wasn’t...
4 tags
strange activerecord error
So I’m using the ActiveRecord gem (outside of rails) to translate some data from our old forum database to YAML, so it can be imported into a different system. But I’m getting an error on one of my models that I just can’t figure out. Here are the details:
class Topic < ActiveRecord::Base
set_table_name "forum_topics"
set_primary_key "TOPIC_ID"
has_many ...
2 tags
first layer of rock done
Day one of the patio comes to a close. Witness Katy cleaning up one of the edges of the excavation, and the ceremonial first pile of rock dumped in the hole.
A short while later, we’ve got our first layer of rock down:
More pictures of the process (from last year) can be found in part 1. Follow our progress this year in part 2.
Tomorrow: we get the plate compactor,...
1 tag
trms forum stats
The venerable Tightrope Forum succumbed to some jerkface hackers not long ago, so I’m working on migrating our data to another system. Along the way, I found some interesting stats. Well, I think they’re interesting anyway. Checkit:
There are 828 topics, with 2278 total replies.
There are 891 user accounts.
257 users have actually posted something. (Just under 30%)
Of those...
2 tags
3 tags
pizza, part two
(If you haven’t already, see part one here.)
Okay. So the dough has been chillaxing for two hours, and it’s looking all big and puffy again, sorta like this (isn’t yeast great?):
Plop the dough out on to the board once again, and tear it into two equal-ish pieces. Form each into some sort of ball-lump type of shape.
Spread each doughball into your desired...
3 tags
pizza, part one
Pizza. ‘Nuff said. Here’s how we’re making it tonight.
First, prep your dough. In a big ol’ bowl, mix together 3.5 cups flour, 0.5 tsp salt, and 1 pkg dry active yeast. Like so:
Next, in a smaller bowl (or a measuring cup), mix together 1 cup warm water, 0.25 cup olive oil, and 2 tbsp honey:
Mix wet with dry!
You’ll get a dough that...
1 tag
dinner tonight
Homemade pizza. Kneading dough and everything. Will report back soon.
1 tag
jitters
Slammed my first big coffee since going cold turkey for about a month (thanks, mono). Noticing that my typo rate is higher than usual. Wonder if there’s a correlation.
1 tag
carousel 5.2 beta ready to go
Just sent out a beta invite to some folks. Any other Carousel 5.0 or 5.1 users reading this who are interested in helping test it out?
2 tags
at the office...
Aaron (on the phone): The guys here say that the KRZR is a good phone to get, I guess...
Me: I believe the correct pronunciation of KRZR is "iPhone."
Carousel 5.2: Player Status Monitoring →
For larger Carousel installations, managing several dozen Carousel Players can get a bit tricky. It’s hard to know which channel they’re displaying or even if they’re running at all unless you’re standing in front of the display. That’s why we’re introducing Player Status Monitoring in Carousel 5.2.
1 tag
grill
Every company should have a grill out back. Just in case.
whither markup? →
I’ve been poking around with a couple of the hot new javascript frameworks making the scene lately. SproutCore had a giant splash at WWDC, and I’ve been trying to see what’s going on with Objective-J …
Carousel 5.2: Web-based Channel Preview →
One of Carousel’s most impressive features is the fact that the entire user interface is web-based. This means that you can create and update your digital signage content from anywhere, as long as you have a web browser. …
Carousel 5.2: DisplayEngine Network Diagnostics →
In Carousel 5.2, there’s a much better way to diagnose strange communication issues between your Carousel Players and the Carousel server. Let me give you a first look at the DisplayEngine’s new advanced communication test suite. …
1 tag
Jack
High school pal, college roommate, awesome friend. Having a rough time of it right now. Wishing you the best, buddy.
1 tag
dinner == success
So, of course, once all the food was ready it was quickly devoured, leaving me zero time for any pics of the finished product. Judging by the speed at which it was eaten, it must have been good. As to the cake, everyone had a second helping, and, in some cases (me), a third.
Lesson: A big ol’ chicken isn’t that difficult to cook. Plus you can make a wicked stock from the...