I upgraded my Lenovo g555 laptop to Ubuntu Oneric Ocelot on Friday and it was a little rocky, but now its working really well. I have setup…
I've been working more git lately, covering at least the following items: Gitolite Git enrypt Git annex Bup Here are my notes on each…
I've been wrestling with Gnome Keyring during the transition to Gnome 3 on Debian, and Ubuntu 11 (all with Awesome WM). One interesting snag…
Yikes! My dsa public keys stopped working today, and I found this murky error message in /var/log/auth.log: Hmmm... apparently gnome-keyring…
I'm planning to use bup to make backups of vzdumps. Bup is a backup utility that build on top of git's awesomeness, so in some ways, its…
I've been working on Wikee a bunch lately, and today I'm converting the Informed Banking wiki to be in git format (a format that will…
I finally figured out how to setup acceptance testing in Rails3 with Rspec2, Capybara, and Devise! It actually wasn't that hard, once I…
I'm getting this odd "error" when trying a bundle install: Looks like the problem is related to yaml and psych. There is a related issue on…
Rails 3.1 Engines Are Awesome! I have been having a blast with Rails 3.1 Engines lately. Why? They are intuitive - they just "make sense…
First Attempt to Install Shapado I'm trying to install shapado, a stackoverflow clone running on top of Ruby on Rails. It looks like a very…
GitModel Rocks! Tonight I've been working on GitModel, an ActiveModel powered ORM that uses Git as its storage mechanism. Serializers It…
I'm using Engines with Rails 3.1 extensively. Ran into an interesting factor: when isolating the engine namespace, if the engine's…
I've been digging deeper into Rspec, and along the way I've found some truly amazing features enabled by combining Rspec and shoulda from…
Tired of waiting for Rails 3 to start up again and again, I decided to try out Ruby 1.9.3-rc1. To my surprised, Ruby 1.9.3-rc1 works…
I'm finally digging into the jQuery setup with Rails 3.1. As you are all likely aware, jQuery is the new default javascript language in…
The Rails 3.1 asset pipeline has had some twists and turns lately. The community seems to me to be a little overdramatic about the state of…
I went searching for noteworthy Rails 3.1 gems and engines recently and found these to be very interesting: active_reload - am using it now…
A few months ago I forked the regulate project on github. Its a rails 3 engine that provides git-wiki like editing capabilities of text…
I'm trying to use Rspec to test a Rails 3.1 application that uses Inherited Resources, but I keep getting these types of errors with spec…
I'm noting these instructions on how to remove a git submodule for future reference: Delete the relevant line from the .gitmodules file…
AuthLogic was the first authentication gem I chose for Rails 3.1. It works, but I have issues with the documentation - its not clear, and…
I've run into an error with the Rails 3.1 asset pipeline where one of my controllers happens to be named AssetsController: Hmmm. What to do…
Looks like my Rack middleware is having some trouble with an updated version of rack: Oddly this is only happening when I try to use the…
Active Model is a new component of Rails 3+ that abstracts out some generic functionality from ActiveRecord to that a single API can be…
Rails 3.1 implements a new feature of Rails that has been in the works for quite some time: the Asset Pipeline. In Rails 3.1, it is the…
A workaround is to use:
I'm revamping an old Sinatra app I built and unfortunately I'm running into this odd error: It was occurring due to the octopussy gem, which…
I was curious about using rails and git, specifically with regard to engines. Engines as Gems As gems, they work really well - and I'm…
The process of removing Zentom System Guard sucked so badly in my experience. Everything I tried was foiled: Unable to start task manager…
I'm very impressed with the caching capabilities in Rails 3. Not only can it cache pages like any good Rack application can, it can also…
How To Render a Partial HAML Template From a Rake Task in Rails 3.1 Thanks to Klimant Mamykin, I was able to figure out how to render a…
I just started a new Rails 3.1 project, and got the following error: The fix: I bet this has something to do with coffeescript, but I haven…
Based upon a suggestion from a co-worker, I tried out rack-perftools_profiler today. It is awesome. One thing I noticed right away is that…
I've been exploring Rails 3.1 for a couple weeks now and last night I focused on advanced queries with Active Record, utilizing some new…
I ran into this sort-of bug while using Memcached and Rails. By caching an object in memcache, Rails doesn't know how to autoload the file…
While I'm not surprised that the Exchange 2007 Outlook Web App doesn't work on my Droid X, I'm still disappointed. The Outlook Web App is…
I'm trying out Travis CI for Regdel and it is awesome! I'm also using it for rack-xsl, and I finally got that to pass. It took me thirteen…
https://rubygems.org/gems/viewpoint At work we've upgraded from Microsoft Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2008 and as such we have to stop using…
For what its worth, having a bit-buffer-bucket-brigade proxy like NGINX in front of Apache is an excellent idea in almost every situation…
I am using Machinist 2 beta with Rails 3.1 and its working quite nicely. Though its beta, I've found it to be working quite well. To do some…
This is an example of Ruby's Enumerable class method group_by: Enumerable is truly an awesome class, actually - its a module! Which really…
How do you like these Ruby errors? 1.9.2 1.8.7 D'oh! This all started happening when I copied a bunch of resources from my FathersWork…
A new project I am working on using Rails 2.3.11 introduced me to acts_as_list and acts_as_tree, so I decided to look for those for use with…
In working on Regdel, an open source bookkeeping system I am writing with Ruby on Rails, I pondered the question about whether to use Single…
At my new job as a Ruby on Rails developer, I've been exposed to a very nice application process management service called NewRelic. When I…
As a continuation to my post on setting up Rails 3 apps via RVM, CentOS on OpenVZ, Mastered by Puppet, this is an entry about doing…
For reference, an install of Ruby on Debian:
There are many reasons why I love working with Ruby, such as its consistency, its use of natural language, its clean object-oriented…
Today I am writing an article about two packages available for UNIX-like operating systems. tmux Tmux is a terminal multiplexer, similar to…
Install debian GNU/linux "squeeze" on big, BIG, iron. Refine with a xen kernel and recommended hypervisor tools. Build a virtual machine…
As luck would have it, I decided today that I wanted to switch from using the fgrlx proprietary ATI video graphics driver to the preferable…
Here are my Ruby and Ruby on Rails notes for this week! They involve OpenSSL and the 422 HTTP response code. Ruby and OpenSSL I tried using…
I'm trying to install Debian Wheezy on one of the earlier Intel based Mac Minis. I first tried pressing "C" a non-Mac keyboard, but that…
Its been awhile since I'd built a MacMini with a completely free operating system, but I did so at work this past week. The hardware is a…
I recently switched from Mac OS X to Debian at work, and one of the hurdles was accessing the Microsoft Exchange server. I tried Empathy…
I'm looking to build lots of Rails apps, and when I do I would like each one to be in its own OpenVZ container, and each container built and…
Drupal6 has been available within Debian for quite some time, and has even had a couple modules available as debian packages, such as drush…
This post is an overview of how I am using Rails3, rspec, and factory_girl to test my ActiveRecord models. Its not a complete or thorough…
I had the opportunity today to research a couple of matters, including the use of MongoDB with Rails 3, as well as the idea of tying in…
When engineering software, there is a straightforward and somewhat obvious strategy for separating functionality from presentation: put as…
This is a never ending challenge for me. Here's my latest effort:
I work for a web development company that hosts hundreds of websites on about a dozen dedicated servers. Those servers all have cPanel…
Zimbra versus Microsoft Exchange I'm glad to have recently checked out Zimbra, an enterprise level email hosting and serving solution that…
This post explains a simple code snibbet I use convert a Rails-ready select input array into a hash. The Rails-Ready Select Input Array The…
When I try to change the link power management policy of my sata controller, it does not work. What's up with that? Check it out: It always…
The main problem I have with Google's chromium browser is how much it writes to disk ALL THE TIME. Seriously, is there any way to reduce…
I finally got the chance to set up a Debian Xen server today. After wrestling with Xen on a VMWare virtual machine (I know, I know) I found…
This is an interesting challenge - and I love interesting challenges! How can I convert markdown to an openoffice document, or a PDF to a…
Today I downloaded a pre-built template from OpenVZ.org based upon CentOS. After downloading the archive, I verified the signature, then…
The upgrade of Rails 2 to Rails 3 is a bunch of really helpful simplifications, including this one by changing named_scope to scope. Funny…
In Rails 3, the validates_format_of is deprecated. I sometimes get annoyed with all the deprecation that goes on with Rails (and Ruby, to a…
Dynamic Creation of Instance Methods In Ruby with define_method and method_missing This is really, really cool. What does it do? If you are…
Today I wrote a plugin for Redmine and ended up using alias_method_chain. Its a very handy little method! What does do? It allows for…
I'm pleased I was able to get Rspec, Rails 3, and AuthLogic working, and to make it easier to do next time, I'm jotting down my notes here…
I'm trying valiantly to update Altered Beast (forums) for Rails 3! Then running rake rails:upgrade:check produces some serious concerns…
Lua is a perfect scripting language for quick and lightweight logic - for proxies, middleware applications, and application level routing. I…
The fix for this error: "fatal: could not create leading directories of '...': Permission denied" was much different than what I thought it…
Two of my co-workers were actively working on a Rails site today, transferring files to-and-from the demonstration server via FTP, as well…
Postfix has terrific e-mail gateway capabilities, and yesterday I discovered a configuration option to select a mail transport based upon…
The git remote sub-command has received some improvements recently: Here's output from a recent version of git-core: And the latest version…
Somehow when using ssh-keygen on Debian / Ubuntu to create a public / private key pair, and then importing that key into gitosis, the…
Thanks to our special friend SPAM, SMTP servers have special requirements. If you are setting up an STMP server, such as Exim, Postfix, or…
Seriously, who is going to call me up and tell me I've won ten thousand dollars? I've seen it on television... you know - when the one…
In my humble opinion, the ballyhoo over the state of affairs between the Debian and Ruby communities is unnecessary. Why? Because while…
It appears there is some sort of problem that I am having trying to use Vlad with Rails 3. Could it be bundler? I'm also getting this error…
I've never seen this one about "could not open library 'lib.so'" before... but I'm sure I'll track down the problem so I'm posting it here…
Debian is the Universal Operating System How cool is this... Debian Squeeze is on its way towards official release! Debian Squeeze is…
I'm working on an application that requires a user to be matched with objects, and therefore, to test them, I need to create user fixtures…
I've been running Squeeze for awhile, and like most Debian "testing" systems, it has been running fairly smoothly. However, today I ran into…
When writing Ruby web applications, I use Rake to help automate repetative tasks, Vlad for deployment, and daemontools to actually run the…
I'm migrating some machines with problematic hardware to OpenVZ containers (as well as to save on energy). Seems to me that it is much…
It seemed like my RAID controller was running a little slow, so I was very concerned when I noticed an "INOPERABLE" message next to one of…
When I run rake test for a Rails 3 application I am developing, I receive a deprecation warning about block helpers: Hmmm. When I try to do…
The media is reporting that Facebook and Goldman Sachs are becoming friends. Why? There are rules about how corporations are structured, and…
Evolution is the default email client used in Ubuntu. Its not a bad client, but I'm surprised it was chosen over Thunderbird 3.0. I believe…
I'm using Mysend.py to post messages to Movable Type from the command line. I had to hack up the rpc-xml code within MTOS, but its still…
I've been really looking forward to trying out git annex, an extension (is that the right term here?) to Git by Joey Hess. In a nutshell, it…
Today I FINALLY got around to automating the process of updating my Xapian indexes that contain information from the blogs and wikis I…