Working With Rails

Magical Microformat Maker

Shaped Test Output

Last month I had to write some stuff that affected our whole application and therefore I had to run the full test suite several times a day and wait for it to finish every time to find out what the errors are that it displays. The output in the shape of ‘…E..F..FE..’ is usefull to get an overview of the amount of errors but unless you wait til the end you can’t get a clue as to where the error occurred.

That bugged me quite a while and finally i wrote a plugin that shapes the output much better (at least to my mind).

When you use the TestOutputShaper you get this:

AlbumTest:    ....F.F...
AlbumControllerTest:    FF......FF...
PictureTest:    FFFFFFFFFF

At that point – without knowing the actual error – you can stop the suite and run the particular test to see what is broken.

When you work with small test suites that may not be a big win, but when you have a lot of code and have it well covered by tests, it can be a huge time saver. Especially when you test for valid html your test suite can take like hours.

A Grand Day Out With Liam

StarLogo 1.0

Flex 4 introduction video

aizatto: Temporary development environment setup. For how long?

On track ?

Moving a Rails app from 1.2.6 -> 2.0.2

aizatto: Its fun to dream of hardware.

Be cool with DRb, it’s far from “scalable”

aizatto: Reading reviews, and rather disappointed.

As I've not done a memefest in a while...

Take The Fetish Clothing Style Test at HelloQuizzy

Congratulations! You are not susceptible to brainwashing, your values and cares extend beyond the borders of your own country, and your Blind Patriotism does not reach unhealthy levels. If you had been German in the 30s, you would've left the country.





One bad scenario -- as I hypothetically project you back in time -- is that you just wouldn't have cared one way or the other about Nazism. Maybe politics don't interest you enough. But the fact that you took this test means they probably do. I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt.


Did you know that many of the smartest Germans departed prior to the beginning of World War II, because they knew some evil shit was brewing? Brain Drain. Many of them were scientists. It is very possible you could have been one of them.



Conclusion: born and raised in Germany in the early 1930's, you would not have been a Nazi.



<center></center>




<center><font size="4">The Would You Have Been A Nazi? Test</font>

<font size="1">- it rules - </font></center>

Take The Would You Have Been a Nazi Test at HelloQuizzy

you chose AZ - your Enneagram type is THREE (aka "The Performer").

"I need to succeed"

Achievers are energetic, optimistic, self-assured, and goal oriented.

How to Get Along with Me

• Leave me alone when I am doing my work.



• Give me honest, but not unduly critical or judgmental, feedback.



• Help me keep my environment harmonious and peaceful.



• Don't burden me with negative emotions.



• Tell me you like being around me.



• Tell me when you're proud of me or my accomplishments.

What I Like About Being a THREE

• being optimistic, friendly, and upbeat



• providing well for my family



• being able to recover quickly from setbacks and to charge ahead to
  the next challenge



• staying informed, knowing what's going on



• being competent and able to get things to work efficiently



• being able to motivate people

What's Hard About Being a THREE

• having to put up with inefficiency and incompetence



• the fear on not being -- or of not being seen as -- successful



• comparing myself to people who do things better



• struggling to hang on to my success



• putting on facades in order to impress people



• always being "on." It's exhausting.

THREEs as Children Often

• work hard to receive appreciation for their accomplishments



• are well liked by other children and by adults



• are among the most capable and responsible children in their class
  or school



• are active in school government and clubs or are quietly busy working on their own projects

THREEs as Parents

• are consistent, dependable, and loyal



• struggle between wanting to spend time with their children and wanting to get more work done



• expect their children to be responsible and organized

Renee Baron & Elizabeth Wagele

The Enneagram Made Easy

Discover the 9 Types of People

Harper
SanFrancisco, 1994, 161 pages

You liked the test?

so S P R E A D I T ! tell everyone!!!
(use Quick-Paste below)

you wanna know MORE?

so check out, what Wikipedia says about your type...



...even more you'll find in Google

or do you prefer to

<font class="usertext"> </font>

---

You are not completely happy with the result?!

You chose AZ

Would you rather have chosen:

BZ (FIVE)

CZ (ONE)

AX (SEVEN)

AY (EIGHT)

Take The Quick & Painless ENNEAGRAM Test at HelloQuizzy

Karen's excellent curry and larb [Flickr]

John Wulff posted a photo:

aizatto: Need or want? Asus EeePC 900 (MYR 1699) or HP Mininote 2133 (MYR 2299). I think its a want.

Praktyki sprawnego programisty

Ostatnio pisałem o nowych książkach, a dziś napiszę o pierwszej z nich jaką przeczytałem. A przeczytałem coś co można chyba uznać już za klasykę książek z półki dla ,,agile developers''. Mianowicie mam tutaj na myśli Practices of an Agile Developer autorstwa Subramaniama i Hunta, całość wydana oczywiście w Pragmatic Bookshelf. Czy oni wydają jakieś złe książki?

Dla kogo jest ta książka? Nie tylko dla programisty co mógłby sugerować tytuł. Kadra zarządzająca niższego szczebla powinna też znaleźć ciekawe informacje w tej książce. W ostatnim rozdziale książki można znaleźć wskazówki skierowane do programisty i oddzielne dla menadżera. Czym ta książka nie jest. Nie dowiesz się z niej nic o podstawach Javy, Rubiego, .Net, czy jakiegokolwiek języka. Właściwie nie dowiesz się z niej nic technicznego. Jeśli chcesz jakąś książkę, dzięki której nauczysz się pisać w którymś z ww. języków to nie kupuj Praktyk Zwinnego Programisty. Ale jeśli umiesz już klepać kod, ale jesteś świadom, że często ma błędy, często piszesz nie to czego oczekują inni lub zespół którym kierujesz nie radzi sobie z zadaniami powinieneś właśnie przeczytać tą książkę. Autorzy opisują co to znaczy ,,agile'', jakie mechanizmy wprowadzić by pracować sprawniej, a produkowane oprogramowanie było właśnie tym czego oczkują klienci. Programiści dowiedzą się czemu muszą pisać testy i nigdy nie spoczywać na laurach.

Ja książkę zdecydowanie polecam. Z tego co wiem nie jest ona wydana po polsku, ale to niczemu nie szkodzi, wręcz przeciwnie według mnie. Angielski to teraz podstawowy język na świecie, a już na pewno w branży IT, więc czytanie tej książki to okazja by się poduczyć, a nie jest napisana jakąś skomplikowaną angileszczyzną. Practices of an Agile Developer pomoże czytelnikom spojrzeć na oprogramowanie z nieco innej strony. Szczerze polecam!

Top Tool Tips

Do you write proposals?   do bug testing?   or write books? post blogs? or just need screen shots to help explain what you mean? 

If Yes then you need the latest version of SnagIt by TechSmith.   In it's version 9 release SnagIt has moved from being just a good screen capture applet to being a fantastic, indispensable application that every good developer, author, tester etc etc should have installed.

It's only when you start to use the new features without noticing you realise what a great piece of software you are using.   Having installed the V9 release a few weeks ago  I initially liked the OneClick pop-up that made switching capture modes a breeze,  but what I have found most useful is how SnagIt now keeps all my captures for me - no more having to save/or losing that key image. 

The Library view showing this weeks captures.  Whats really cool is any annotations are all stored and can be edited.  No more saving as a PNG and then having to fudge the text using Paint.

Tags

I only found this today, the ability to Tag captures using simple icons and allowing you to get find them quickly.

Whilst we're on the subject of tools

Writing this blog post it suddenly dawned on me how many tools (all by different creators) I was using to bring this post to you.

SnagIt 

To capture the screen shots.   I have tweaked this slightly and  added another Program to the SnagIt Send to that allows me to send captures directly to Flickr Uploadr.

Flickr Uploadr

Making uploading images to Flickr just that little bit easier.   Why upload to Flickr you may ask,  well I user Windows Live Writer to author my blog posts

Windows Live Writer

This is one of the best bits of software anyone could install if they are serious about blogging.   The ability to link to multiple blogs, be able to recall existing blog posts for editing and correcting (yes it does happen). 

Here you can see me authoring this very blog post. 

But wait wasn't I telling you why I used Flickr?   Yes,  and if you look closely at the right hand menu you will see some nice Insert options, one of which is Insert Flickr Image.

Flickr for Writer

This neat plug in allows you to insert Flickr images directly from Flickr,  normally this is defaulted to my account but you can also insert others.

There are many more tools that I use day to day,  some more aimed at development some at just getting things done.   Hopefully this Top Tool Tips post will help you become a better blogger :)

RE: RE: Чудесная новость

MySpace: "Authentication failed. Failed to resolve application URI" solution

I'm hacking on a MySpace OpenSocial app at the moment and have wasted several hours trying to debug this: all REST requests to http://api.myspace.com/ give me the error Authentication failed. Failed to resolve application URI "my oauth key here".

In the end the solution was to create a new app; the REST call succeeded immediately with the new app ID. Presumably some database migration failed on MySpace between me creating my first app (many months ago) and now, leaving my application unusable.

Comment

使用 mod_rails 開發 SSL 網頁

How To Screen Capture (Printscreen) Selective Windows in Mac OS X

降旗 学の「長目飛耳」

http://sial.org/howto/debug/unix/parsepath

RE: Чудесная новость

Innofisio.com ya está instalado

El sitio web de Innofisio ya está instalado y listo!

Suerte!

Selenium Grid

Highline - Ruby Gem

Rails.cache: Memcached, development mode and offline cache invalidation

Rails.cache rocks, but it can be tricky to set it up for development mode. For my purposes I need to:

• Keep config.cache_classes to false so that I don’t have to restart my server while I develop
• Cache all kinds of objects, not just strings
• Be able to invalidate the cache easily from cron scripts or other offline processes
• Test caching locally before deploying

The first thing I did was check out the excellent railscast and I read through the blog posts mentioned there. However, I couldn’t quite figure out how to get things to work – I kept getting strange errors where all of the methods were being stripped from my classes, rails was complaining that my classes didn’t exist or I was getting dreadful “singleton can’t be dumped” errors. After a lot of googling and experimentation, here is what finally worked for me:

Environment files

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  # config/environments/development.rb
  config.action_controller.perform_caching = false
  config.cache_classes = false
  config.cache_store = :mem_cache_store, '127.0.0.1:11211', {:namespace => "dev"}

  # config/environments/dev_with_caching.rb
  config.action_controller.perform_caching  = true
  config.cache_classes = true
  config.cache_store = :mem_cache_store, '127.0.0.1:11211', {:namespace => "dev_with_caching"}

  # config/environments/production.rb
  config.action_controller.perform_caching  = true
  config.cache_classes = true
  config.cache_store = :mem_cache_store, '127.0.0.1:11211', {:namespace => "production"}

Here are a few interesting points:

You don’t need to have memcached installed to develop locally

If you run your app locally without memcached installed, or without memcached running, you will see entries like this in your log

MemCacheError (No connection to server): No connection to server
Cache miss: Post.all ({:force=>false})

However, your app will work just fine. Rails will always execute the contents of the fetch blocks, and will return nil for any reads.

If memcached is running, you need to set cache_classes to true

To run memcached locally, you need to install memcached. I develop on a mac and manage packages with macports, so for me it was as easy as:

sudo port install memcached

Once memcached is installed, you can start it with

memcached -m 500 -l 127.0.0.1 -p 11211 -vv

which will print verbose logging to STDERR, or you can start it as a daemon like so:

memcached -m 500 -l 127.0.0.1 -p 11211 -d

Either of these will start a memcached process running on port 11211, and it will allocate 500MB RAM (most apps can get by with 128MB, or so I’ve heard).

Once this is running, though, you need to set config.cache_classes to true – otherwise you’re app will blow up.

Marshal.dump is finicky

Rails.cache calls Marshal.dump on any object you try to put in the cache. Marshal won’t work on everything though – and you may need to write your own serialization script. I’ve had problems with classes that have lots of module_eval statements that create methods dynamically and similar meta-programming techniques. If you start getting errors like “singleton can’t be dumped”, check to see if you have any meta-programming going on. I’ve also had issues with REXML objects.

If you do have an issue with a class that Rails won’t cache, you can easily bypass the built-in serialization by writing your own _dump and _load methods. See the ruby docs for more info.

Use a separate environment to test locally

I have a new environment named dev_with_caching that I use to test caching locally. I set up my database.yml file so that it points to the development database, but performs caching and in all other respects mirrors the production environment. To test locally with that environment, I use:

script/server -e dev_with_caching -p 3001

Clearing the cache

I mostly use Rails.cache to cache data – and mostly for arrays of objects – like Category.all. As such, it’s to keep all of this in the model, but cache invalidation can be trickly to manage. Here’s a pattern I’ve started to use a lot:

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class Category < ActiveRecord::Base
  
  after_save      :reset_cache
  after_destroy :reset_cache
  
  def reset_cache
    self.class.reset_cache
  end

  class << self
    
    def reset_cache
      cached_all(true)
    end
    
    def cached_all(force = false)
      Rails.cache.fetch("Category.all", :force => force) do
        Category.find(:all, :conditions => {:active=>true}, :order=>'position')
      end
    end
  end
end

Here’s what’s happening:

The first time you call Category.cached_all it looks for the “Category.all” item in the cache. If it’s not there, it executes the contents of the block, and adds it to the cache. When you save or destroy a record the cache is invalidated.

If you want to force a refresh of the cache, just specify Category.cached_all(true) and it will be reloaded from the database. Once this is in place, it’s easy to write cache invalidation scripts that both clear the cache and reload it at the same time.

I’ve done this by adding a class method that reloads the data, which is triggered by after_save and after_destroy callbacks. I’m sure there are a number of plugins that will do all that and more, but for my purposes this simple pattern works for me most of the time.

Clearing the cache with cron

Finally, if you want to clear the cache at specified intervals you can do so easily with rake and cron. First, create a rake task that calls the model’s reset_cache method – since I normally have several classes with caching behavior I normally create a loop like so:

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namespace :cache do
  namespace :reset do
    %w{Category Forum Post}.each do |klass|
      desc "Clear the #{klass} cache"
      task klass.underscore.gsub("/","_").pluralize => :environment do
        klass.constantize.reset_cache
      end
    end
  end
end

Now you can run

rake cache:reset:categories

RAILS_ENV=production rake -f /var/www/apps/yourapp/current/Rakefile cache:reset:categories

It might take a little while to grok Rails.cache – but once you do your apps will be faster and you’ll quickly become a wild caching fiend!

Bill C61 - Anti-competitive (Photo)

The fuzz (Photo)

Kempton interviewed by CBC radio (Photo)

Fair Copyright - Calgary Chapter (Photo)

Networking Mac and Windows with VMWare

I recently discovered how easy it is to view my local development websites on multiple OS’s using VMWare. I use this primarily to see how awful my apps look in IE. Here’s how you can do it too:

Step1: Get Setup (the expensive part)

1. Buy a mac
2. Buy VMWare Fusion
3. Buy Windows. Yes – if you want to run IE6 and IE7 you’ll have to buy two licenses. Yes, it will take you several hours of frustration and several hours on the phone with MicroSoft to get your licenses installed with VMWare.
4. Download a few real OS’s and add them as virtual machines

Step 2: Find your network address

When you installed VMWare, it configured all of the necessary IP addresses for you. To find out what they are, open Terminal and type:

ifconfig

You’ll see something like:

lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384
    inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1 
    inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000 
    inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 
    inet6 fdd3:5091:e6df:4c3d:21b:63ff:feab:d72e prefixlen 128 
gif0: flags=8010<POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST> mtu 1280
stf0: flags=0<> mtu 1280
en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    ether 00:1b:63:ab:d7:2e 
    media: autoselect status: inactive
    supported media: autoselect 10baseT/UTP <half-duplex> 10baseT/UTP <full-duplex> 10baseT/UTP <full-duplex,hw-loopback> 10baseT/UTP <full-duplex,flow-control> 100baseTX <half-duplex> 100baseTX <full-duplex> 100baseTX <full-duplex,hw-loopback> 100baseTX <full-duplex,flow-control> 1000baseT <full-duplex> 1000baseT <full-duplex,hw-loopback> 1000baseT <full-duplex,flow-control> none
en1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    inet6 fe80::21c:b3ff:fe7c:916e%en1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5 
    inet6 2002:4452:63ee::21c:b3ff:fe7c:916e prefixlen 64 autoconf 
    inet 10.0.1.199 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.0.1.255
    ether 00:1c:b3:7c:91:6e 
    media: autoselect status: active
    supported media: autoselect
fw0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 4078
    lladdr 00:1d:4f:ff:fe:73:a1:ba 
    media: autoselect <full-duplex> status: inactive
    supported media: autoselect <full-duplex>
vmnet8: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    inet 172.16.192.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.192.255
    ether 00:50:56:c0:00:08 
vmnet1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    inet 172.16.43.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.43.255
    ether 00:50:56:c0:00:01 

Notice the last entry, vmnet1 – the inet address listed there is the address that all of your virtual machines can use to access your localhost. In my case, this is 172.16.43.1

Let’s say you have a local rails app running on http://localhost:3000/ – to access that app from anywhere (your mac or any or your virtual machines) just type http://172.16.43.1:3000/ in your browser.

Step 3

Just kidding ;->

References

• http://www.lunenburg.org/wade/articles/2007/12/11/theres-no-place-like-lo0/

Ruby Driven Development 4 JavaA screencast illustrating how to...

Ruby Driven Development 4 Java

A screencast illustrating how to install and use Buildr, Rspec and the Story Runner to test first a Java application. It’s long enough (1:15) to explain also some tricks and concepts behind BDD but the main goal is to explain how to move quickly from plain text requirements to working code from Ruby to Java. I’m planning to create a screencast for each user story and talk more about BDD and tracking. Have fun!

Tech Details:

• Video recording: iShowU
• Keystrokes:  KeyCastr
• Post processing: none!
• Format: 720p

lesson of the day: if you want merb to work, run the version from git.

Autonomous Mutant Festival 2008 unofficial webpage

Implicits for the Masses

Windows Live Mail Bug: Can't Recognize Firefox 3x & Microsoft's Good Karma

I like Windows Live Mail (Web Edition not the desktop app) and I have been using it for a few months now in addition to my primary Gmail and personal IMAP mail account.

As I upgraded my default browser from Firefox 2x to Firefox 3x, I find that Windows Live doesn't recognize the browser correctly and throws up an error. This is a bug that should be easily rectifiable as Windows Live Mail worked perfectly with the Firefox 2 series.

To Microsoft's credit after wrongly diagnosing my Firefox 3 as an older browser they gave linked to "Upgrade My Browser" and the list included not only MSIE (of course) but also Firefox and Safari. Opera folks will not be too happy but it is a pleasant surprise to see Microsoft (which BTW gets more than its fair share of online "expert" critics) to link to its major competitors.

Here's a screenshot:

Links for 2008-07-04 [del.icio.us]

• Olbermann Highlights McCain Flip Flops

Links for 2008-07-04 [del.icio.us]

• Mac Vim (Again)
• Bug in Cinema Display
  Just happened to me. Hope it's dying in the off

Links for 2008-07-04 [del.icio.us]

• 网络广告业的变局 | It Talks--魏武挥的博客

Links for 2008-07-04 [del.icio.us]

• A List of people who need to stop writing software
  This appears to be very much a windoze problem. From what I remember I think you can also include: Dell, Hp, Gateway, IBM, Adobe, Divx, Real and Canon for starters

Links for 2008-07-04 [del.icio.us]

• Barcamp Portugal 2008
• iPhone Timeline
• Paperclip
  Ruby on rails plugin for handling file attachments

Koolhaas’ CCTV

The New OS

Vou torcer pro grêmio bebendo vinho….

TimeMachineScheduler - set the backup interval of Time Machine [del.icio.us]