December 2007
46 posts
Record screencasts on Mac OS X →
Recommended by Geoffrey Grosenbach when he launched PeepCode.
Personal goal ~ write a script that ...
Runs a Ruby ferret full text search engine on Merb, connects via Rails apps with Squirrel.
Merb's required gems
Merb is hailed as small and great for fast data processing so I’m going to give it a whirl this weekend. First step, however… install these gems: mongrel json json_pure erubis mime-types rspec hpricot mocha rubigen haml markaby mailfactory Ruby2Ruby
Personal goal ~ write a script that ...
Mirror Angelo, Kevin, and Jason’s cool markup and style process (things like, “first create some classes that cleanly override defaults and give you the best clean slate”) by creating a Ruby generator. Extend it with CSS and HTML Design Patterns.
November 2007
93 posts
Downloading this in Cuba, Iran, North Korea,...
Twice today I ran across U.S. export laws for encryption software. The first was when I was looking through the Apache documentation for setting up SSL on my localhost and the second was when I was downloading a standard network protocol analyzer. Check this out: “The Wireshark network protocol analyzer is open source software that contains strong encryption. Specifically, it has the...
Webrat →
Integration testing meant for Rails apps without a lot of JavaScript. (use Selenium in a situation like that)
Squeak →
open source full-featured implementation of Smalltalk programming language and environment. Squeak’s virtual machine is written entirely in Smalltalk (sounds like what Rubinius is striving for) making it easy to debug, analyze, and change.
Dabble DB →
This still strikes me as one of the coolest web apps around. The Smalltalk web app framework Seaside was extracted from this app.
Quiet Test::Unit backtraces for Rails
At the Boston.rb hackfest tonight, we addressed the problem of “noisy” Test::Unit backtraces for Rails test suites. Our solution, which should be named quiet_stacktrace.rb and placed into RAILS_ROOT/lib: http://pastie.caboo.se/123089 You also need to add this line to config/environments/test.rb: require ‘quiet_stacktrace’ We also confirmed that filter_backtrace is mixed into...
AssetPackager →
Minimizes JavaScript and CSS files into their smallest forms upon Rails deployment.
YSlow →
Determine which parts of your web app are slowing down performance (page load time).
autumn-leaves and git →
IRC bots.
Verizon opens up, will allow any device and any... →
Impressive.
"Giant Global Graph" ~ Tim Berners Lee →
Definitions on the Net, the Web, and the Graph from the man who helped create create it all.
“Live Documents copies the Office 2007 interface and feature set. Bhatia says his...”
– Nicholas Carr, India’s online Office knockoff
WatchIntel is agressively competing with the One Laptop Per Child project. Higher prices, Microsoft Windows … come on MIT/1LPC! Bring the price down to $100 like you said you would and start selling!
Personal goal ~ write a script that ...
Reflects on the Rails schema and creates a full new/edit form with correct fields based on attribute types. Better scaffolding generator.
acts_as_state_machine unofficial documentation →
Great tutorial for how to use a plugin that I’m using more and more on side projects…
SVD recommendation system in Ruby →
Looks more complex than my acts_as_recommendable…
Electronic Paper →
Amazon releases “Kindle”, what they are calling electronic paper, but what is really a Newton or an ugly, large Blackberry with the ability to download thousands of books instead of make phone calls. Until electronic paper can fold, feels like an electronic version of a newspaper or magazine, and is completely a multi-touch screen like the iPhone, I’m not buying.
Frameworks →
Rails, Seaside, Prototype, jQuery… what’s CSS bringing to the table?
IBM goes agile →
Big Blue acknowledges a better approach to developing software.
Text of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field...
A Tao of Regular Expressions →
The second of two worthy regular expression tutorials.
Using Regular Expressions →
One of the most worthy two regular rexpression tutorials in existence.
“You can’t even imagine KG’s crazed demeanor during these home games...”
– Bill Simmons
Boston sports fans
More proof why we consider ourselves to be the most knowledgeable, passionate fans in sports… “We were sitting near the Wizards bench and heckling Arenas that he ‘wasn’t a good enough player to be a bad teammate’ and that his teammates hated him and that he was a jerk for complaining about his teammates to his assistant coach (by the way he doesn’t talk to the...
“I don’t believe that getting 100% coverage is worth it in most cases. Especially...”
– DHH
The jargon file →
Ancient tomes.
Email validation regex for Ruby
validates_format_of :email, :with => /^([^@\s]+)@((?:[-a-z0-9]+.)+[a-z]{2,})$/i
A history of violence →
Over millennia, humans have become less violent. Why?
“Destruction is the last thing a military wants to accomplish with a...”
– Bruce Schneier
Signs of progress in Iraq
Iraq rocket, mortar fire at 21-month low, have seen steady descreases for the last three months, and 10 roads will re-open in Baghdad. Iraqi violent deaths are down 10% for the month of October as well.
Sen. Obama & Rep. Paul debate
I really like what Dan Gilmour said about better presidential debates. I would like to see a one-on-one debate for an hour between Senator Barack Obama and Representative Ron Paul in a quiet room, videotaped. They could ask each other whatever they wanted and the video would be uploaded to the internet for anyone to cut it up and mix as they wanted. I’d love to try to organize this and have...
“This year’s endless [ debates ], with so many candidates aiming for the...”
– Dan Gillmour
"Thank you" to the veterans
I live about a mile from the site of the Battle of Bunker Hill. From those early soldiers to the brave folks who served and lost their lives in the Civil War and World War II, thank you for making the world more equal, just and free.
1 tag
iPhoney ~ iPhone simulator for designers →
Personal goal ~ write a script that ...
Condenses the stacktrace on my Test::Unit/Shoulda/autotest environment so that I only see the Rails files and line numbers. Update: done!
WatchWhat Fox’ hit drama, “24”, would have looked like in 1994. Thank you to the brilliant technical minds that have advanced us past that point.
Lightweight Neural Network Ruby extension →
Ruby extension for the lwneuralnet C library. The extension currently lets Ruby programmers create a minimum network of fixed size, and query the network for parameters like number of layers, number of neurons, and neuron output.
RubyInline →
Ruby Inline is an analog to Perl’s Inline::C. Out of the box, it allows you to embed C/++ external module code in your Ruby script directly. Could be useful for building Gabe’s quant program using neural networks.
