Projectionist: A tumblelog

Mon Oct 31

#

Long-tail CAMP

“We’re certain that Long-Tail Camp will be a huge success and expect it will be over in about 10-12 years, depending on the exact parameters of the distribution…”

#

Yes, sir

#

“ I crossed 50 states only to find that Georgia’s real pretty but it’s you that’s on my mind. ”

Beulah

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Out in Arizona

#

“ It’s 80+ in Portland and everyone is grinning slack-jawed in the sun. It’s mass bliss. ”

Jeremy Kemper, last spring in #rails-core

Sun Oct 30

#

Nathan Barley and David Lee Roth

#

Tip Use the whiteboard

Space permitting, get a whiteboard. Preferably 8×4.

#

White Sox victory parade ticker tape

#

Suffix aliases in zsh

% grep mate .zshrc
# Cause '*.rb' to be expanded to 'mate *.rb'
alias -s rb=mate

#

Java.net on Ajax

It’s official: Sun declares Rails an “impressive framework.”

Sat Oct 29

#

Fall back

For those that are affected by it, daylight savings time ends tonight.

#

Tip “Definately” is not a word

According to Google, over 7% of the time people try to write definitely, they spell it with an “a”.

#

“ Plus ca change… ”

From a nice new tumblelog (this guy really gets it)

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Tractor

#

“ post ”

not one person wants my hair

#

“ Lay back, lay back, rest your head on my thighs. ”

Will Oldham

Fri Oct 28

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Tip Effortless lighttpd

Currently in trunk, Rails provides script/lighttpd which (assuming you have lighttpd and fcgi installed) is as simple to use as script/server.

% ruby script/lighttpd

Fun times.

#

A statue in Sweden

#

“ I was a landscape in your dream and all my mountains were on fire. ”

Of Montreal

#

#rails-core

14:52 < nextangle> gah, gah

14:52 < nextangle> Now I want it now ;)

14:52 < sam-> me too

14:52 < htonl> do it

14:52 * minam breaks out his stopwatch...

14:52 < bitsweat> the mantra is "after 1.0"

14:53 < bitsweat> say it and breathe deeply

#

Leak-free JavaScript closures

Laurens van den Oever devises a clever wrapper for cleaning up after IE.

#

Web Two Point Oh!

Itching for some angel investors, but don’t have a business plan yet? This handy Web 2.0 name and product generator might be just what you’re looking for.

Thu Oct 27

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#rails-core

20:43 < minam> wow, I just had a major "I love duck-typing" moment

#

“ Please no more lol unbelievable. ”

Vjaggra spam

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Library paneling

#

“ Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation… ”

Steve Jobs

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Peaches

Wed Oct 26

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“ Go! ”

Stephen Malkmus

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#rubyist.org

8:49 <@noradio> the brand is "simplehuman"

8:49 <@noradio> they are getting real about trash can UI

#

“ Animals strike curious poses. ”

Prince

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#rubyist.org

08:49 <@noradio> his name is David HasAndBelongsToMany Hansson

Tue Oct 25

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“ Deeply the difference is really bigger, but in the usable. ”

Someone in #rubyonrails

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Ruth riding the Gravitron at the Clay County Fair

Mon Oct 24

#

Tip Use `raise` instead of `puts` for debugging

When you might normally resort to so-called “printf debugging”, use raise instead. So instead of the classic:

puts "DEBUG: #{some_value_that_isnt_right}"

use:

raise some_value_that_isnt_right.inspect

Make your messes in such a way that you can’t forget to clean them up.

#

Prairie dog!

#

“ I want to support re-writing instruction sequence on Ruby level. ”

SASADA Koichi

#

“ The combined effects of the new testing defaults in Rails 1.0 make your tests go faster. And when you’re running tests after every change, every second counts… ”

Mike Clark walks through why testing is faster with Rails 1.0

#

“ Only post things that are awesome. ”

Marcel Molina Jr.

#

Chad Fowler joins Projectionist

# Welcome Chad!
>> chad.save
=> true

Sun Oct 23

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“ A book is good or bad only in relation to a reader’s particular needs at a given time. ”

Jerry Weinberg

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Tadao Ando on West Wrightwood Ave

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#rubyist.org

12:30 <@noradio> mikael: your .zshrc is pretty riced out

12:30 <@noradio> it's a nice starting point

12:30 <@mikael> I read the manual and pasted all the bloat

Sat Oct 22

#

Tip Stub out authentication and leave it for later

You know that your Rails application will include authentication eventually. Focus first on what is most important (i.e., not authentication).

Have a single method logged_in? determine if someone is authenticated. When you start developing your project add a stub for logged_in? in your ApplicationController that just wraps local_request?.

def logged_in?
  local_request?
end
helper_method :logged_in?

You can then start using logged_in? throughout your application as you intended to without worrying about the implementation details. Requests that are not defined as local will be treated as unauthenticated requests.

Later, when your authentication scheme is hooked up, just replace local_request? with the actual code.

#

“ It’s like you’re watching a conveyor belt and pink seaogs or orange umbrelloots or blue yahtzicles start emerging from the rubber curtains at the end. You watch it and it’s just the daily assembly line all right, but it’s got a very neat style dripping off. ”

_why on what draws him to tumblelogs

#

#rubyonrails

15:52 < Rad> PHP5 is faster than Ruby

15:52 < tehdely> Rad: not if you're a developer :P

#

Grotto of the Redemption

#

“ I’m in the archipelago and I’m waiting to arrive. ”

Mirah in Archipelago

#

Tip For clearer, more elegant code

Read Martin Fowler’s Refactoring.

#

A horse in Montana

Fri Oct 21

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“ Jason Fried, Ryan Singer, Sam Stephenson and Marcel Molina in Chicago, Matt Linderman in NYC, David Heinemeier Hansson in Copenhagen, and Mr. Jamis Buck in Provo, Utah. ”

Signal vs Noise sidebar

#

“ It’s always the people who didn’t capitalize on the old-made-new-again idea…who are calling it stupid. ”

Amy on tumblelog detractors

#

Embracing constraints

#

Anarchaia has a new URL

… and it’s easier to remember. ;)

#

We’re back

Sorry for the downtime — we had DNS issues while switching hosts.

Wed Oct 19

#

Using the result of a block to set a default method parameter

def speak(message = yield) 
  message
end

speak 'Hello'
# => 'Hello'

speak { 'Howdy' }
# => 'Howdy'

speak 'Hello' if false
# => syntax error

speak { 'Howdy' if false }
# => nil

#

#rails-core

15:15 < pragdave> pwd

15:15 < pragdave> oops

15:16 < htonl> ~/porn

15:16 < xal> you mean ~/.porn

15:18 < bitsweat> you mean ~/.python

Sat Oct 15

#

David’s latest contribution to Rails

<% if false %>

Fri Oct 14

#

“ Dynamicity is your friend, but my ENEMY. ”

SASADA Koichi

Thu Oct 13

#

Tip Customize the inflector in edge Rails

If you’re riding the development version of Rails, you can customize the inflector to create or override pluralization rules in environment.rb.

Inflector.inflections do |inflect|
  inflect.plural /^(ox)$/i, '1en'
  inflect.singular /^(ox)en/i, '1'
  inflect.irregular 'person', 'people'
  inflect.uncountable %w( fish sheep )
end

Note that the inflection rules are frozen now in Rails trunk, so this is the way to bend them to your needs.

#

“ Money tends to make you more agile. ”

David Black

Tue Oct 11

#

“ You understand that in Ruby, things ought to act like chunky bacon. ”

Jamis Buck, explaining the new plugin system for Rails

#

Google Local provides restaurant details now

#

Termite, Ionist’s upcoming open-source feed reader

Mon Oct 10

#

“ The guys complaining that reported 10:1 savings over Java was bullsh*t were right on target: 10:1 is way too low from what we’re seeing. ”

Rick Bradley, whose 20,853-line Java app became 823 lines in Rails

#

An untitled painting by Dan Witz

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Dan Witz’s street art

Photorealistic paintings on found canvases. Sad and stunning.

#

“ BY DOWNLOADING AND USING SYBASE SOFTWARE, YOU CONFIRM THAT YOU ARE NOT LOCATED IN ANY COUNTRY UNDER U.S. ECONOMIC EMBARGO (AFGHANISTAN (TALIBAN-CONTROLLED AREAS), CUBA, IRAN, IRAQ, LIBYA, NORTH KOREA, SUDAN AND SYRIA)…AND NOT DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY INVOLVED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OR PRODUCTION OF NUCLEAR, CHEMICAL, OR BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS OR MISSILE TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMS. ”

Sybase License Agreement

#

#dylan

<brucehoult> heh. message on a local developers' mailing list this morning:

<brucehoult> #rubyist.org

<brucehoult> 13:37 <@mikael> speaking of dylan, that is the one programming language harder to google for than "io"

<brucehoult> At least people are noticing we exist, now. :-)

#

“ I have tried to be good. Judge me as you will. ”

Jedediah Purdy, at the age of 8, in a letter to Santa Claus

#

#rubyist.org

13:37 <@mikael> speaking of dylan, that is the one programming language harder to google for than "io"

#

“ The bug is not available with egcs-2.93.×. ”

tommy

#

“ Love letters…require the courage to stake oneself on an expression of hope that may very well come to nothing. They also indicate a perception of importance, a sense that some possibilities, however unlikely, are so important that not acknowledging them would be an act of terrible neglect. ”

Jedediah Purdy in the preface to For Common Things

#

#rubyonrails

12:58 AM < court3nay> http://dev.rubyonrails.com/timeline

12:58 AM < court3nay> worship at the altar of patches!

12:58 AM < zem> it's like the train's running and they're frantically building the track ahead of it

Sun Oct 9

#

#

#

“ With respect to the collection of information and the control of paperwork, the Director shall coordinate the review of the collection of information associated with Federal procurement and acquisition by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs with the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, with particular emphasis on applying information technology to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Federal procurement, acquisition and payment, and to reduce information collection burdens on the public. ”

US Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995

#

“ Whatever’s clever is totally whatever. ”

Upright Citizens Brigade, episode 109

Sat Oct 8

#

Progressive politics

Scott Chacon is using a tumblelog as part of his campaign to become a member of Congress. He’s also using campaign management software written on Rails called GroundWorks, to be released under the MIT license. Open politicians can’t be bad, can they?

#

Marshall Field’s, Chicago

#

Tip OOSC

Read Bertrand Meyer’s Object-Oriented Software Construction.

#

#rubyist.org

21:25 <@Ulysses> I have been emerging glibc for the last hour and my room is noticably warmer

21:25 <@Ulysses> which is rad, they have not turned on the heating here and it is fkn cold out

21:25 <@Ulysses> gcc is my new heater

Fri Oct 7

#

“ The pen is the tongue of the mind. ”

Miguel de Cervantes

#

Extract shared logic with global Ajax callbacks in Prototype 1.4.0_pre11

Ajax.Responders.register({
  onCreate: function() {
    if (Ajax.activeRequestCount > 0)
      Element.show('spinner');
  },
  onComplete: function() {
    if (Ajax.activeRequestCount == 0)
      Element.hide('spinner');
  }
});

#

What’s the rush John Henry?

John Henry is a comprehensive framework and web-based IDE for rapidly developing Ruby on Rails apps.

Thu Oct 6

#

“ I don’t know who Katie Holmes is, aside from apparently being Cruise’s utero-cyborg. ”

Mike on wallace-l

#

“ yeah but what I really want to know from this list is WHATTA THINK ABOUT KATIE HOLMES BEING PREGGERS BY THE CRUISEMASTER? ”

Carol on wallace-l

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Shining

Kubrick’s The Shining presented as a feel good movie.

Wed Oct 5

#

#rails-core

17:17 < nextangle> I'm just listing my use cases

17:18 < nextangle> this discussion went south when we stopped being concrete

17:18 < nextangle> So I'm Getting Real (TM)

#

#rails-core

15:29 < minam> ALL IN FAVOR? SAY AYE!

15:29 < noradio> AYE!

15:29 < htonl> eye

15:29 < minam> I!

15:30 < bitsweat> EAY!

15:30 < bitsweat> YAE!

15:30 < bitsweat> damn.

15:30 < minam> what a bunch of nonconfirmists

15:30 < minam> surprising, for rails developers ;)

15:30 * noradio is a sheep ;_;

15:30 < htonl> baaa

15:30 * minam shears noradio

#

“ During this trying time when no one can get their techie catchwords to stick to the refrigerator no matter how hard they slap it with the enchanted magnetic spatula, it�s good to know that the contrived phrases really do fly, graceful and unclasped and bearing north toward chilled shrimp. ”

_why

Tue Oct 4

#

#rubyist.org

11:52 AM < chris2> htonl: wasnt infinity discovered before the middle ages?

11:54 AM <@htonl> beats me

11:54 AM <@htonl> i'm not that old, dude

11:54 AM <@htonl> ask chad

#

“ Don’t input your secret ruby script. ”

Ko1

Mon Oct 3

#

“ Emigrating! ”

DHH’s away message

#

#rubyist.org

14:17 <@htonl> EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

14:17 <@htonl> it's a battle cry

#

Avoid premature optimization

Sat Oct 1

#

By

Mon Oct 31

Yes, sir

Out in Arizona

Jeremy Kemper, last spring in #rails-core

Sun Oct 30

Nathan Barley and David Lee Roth

Tip Use the whiteboard

White Sox victory parade ticker tape

Suffix aliases in zsh

Sat Oct 29

Tip “Definately” is not a word

From a nice new tumblelog (this guy really gets it)

Tractor

Fri Oct 28

Tip Effortless lighttpd

A statue in Sweden

#rails-core

Thu Oct 27

#rails-core

Library paneling

Peaches

Wed Oct 26

#rubyist.org

#rubyist.org

Tue Oct 25

Someone in #rubyonrails

Ruth riding the Gravitron at the Clay County Fair

Mon Oct 24

Tip Use raise instead of puts for debugging

Prairie dog!

Mike Clark walks through why testing is faster with Rails 1.0

Marcel Molina Jr.

Chad Fowler joins Projectionist

Sun Oct 23

Tadao Ando on West Wrightwood Ave

#rubyist.org

Sat Oct 22

Tip Stub out authentication and leave it for later

_why on what draws him to tumblelogs

#rubyonrails

Mirah in Archipelago

Tip For clearer, more elegant code

A horse in Montana

Fri Oct 21

Signal vs Noise sidebar

Amy on tumblelog detractors

Embracing constraints

Wed Oct 19

Using the result of a block to set a default method parameter

#rails-core

Sat Oct 15

David’s latest contribution to Rails

Fri Oct 14

Thu Oct 13

Tip Customize the inflector in edge Rails

David Black

Tue Oct 11

Jamis Buck, explaining the new plugin system for Rails

Google Local provides restaurant details now

Termite, Ionist’s upcoming open-source feed reader

Mon Oct 10

Rick Bradley, whose 20,853-line Java app became 823 lines in Rails

An untitled painting by Dan Witz

#dylan

Jedediah Purdy, at the age of 8, in a letter to Santa Claus

#rubyist.org

Jedediah Purdy in the preface to For Common Things

#rubyonrails

Sun Oct 9

US Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995

Upright Citizens Brigade, episode 109

Sat Oct 8

Marshall Field’s, Chicago

Tip OOSC

#rubyist.org

Fri Oct 7

Miguel de Cervantes

Extract shared logic with global Ajax callbacks in Prototype 1.4.0_pre11

Thu Oct 6

Tip Use `raise` instead of `puts` for debugging