Projectionist: A tumblelog

Wed Aug 31

#

Pluck attributes from a collection

module Enumerable
  def **(method)
    map {|i| i.send method}
  end
end

Person.find(:all) ** :name
# => ["Scott", "Nicholas", "Tobi"]

#

#rails-core

10:48 PM < htonl> i really don't know why apple's dictionary doesn't recognize "rails's switchtower" as being properly spelled

10:51 PM < htonl> jobs needs to recognize that the buck blogs here.

Mon Aug 29

#

The downside of books (packing them)

#

“ One of the two engineers who built the study I speak to you from today, Bill Meyers, is retiring this week. My voice comes to you through wires and faders and switches that he soldered into place, one by one, by hand, with his partner in crime Al Mix, who could not have been more generous and helpful and decent to work with. And we are sorry to see him go. ”

Ira Glass in the closing credits of High Cost of Living

#

#rubyist.org

12:40 <@chad> average age is now 22. *sigh*

12:40 * chad joins #fortran

#

I-10 bridge in New Orleans (Reuters)

Sun Aug 28

#

Rattlesnake Bridge in Tucson

#

“ Are you for kidding me?! ”

Patrick Henry Ewing

#

#rubyist.org

13:42 <@mikael> http://www.phubuh.org/~mikael/projects/projektet/darcs.el

13:43 <@mikael> it is v. agile

13:43 <@mikael> i.e., broken and half-assed

13:43 <@mikael> and I'm not sure why there's a comment that just says "snoop dog"

#

Rails programmer Jeremy Voorhis has been evaluating the new Python web application framework Django. He’s written down some of his impressions, including details on where it is similar and different from Rails.

Sat Aug 27

#

“ The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it’s you and that you’re standing in the doorway. ”

John Darnielle in Going to Georgia

Fri Aug 26

#

Tip Eliminate “tag-along” revisions with Darcs `amend-record`

We’ve all recorded changes where a file or two was forgotten, or where a typo slipped past our eyes. Darcs accomodates for human fallability with the amend-record command, which works just like record but sneaks the changes you select into the most recent patch. What a great idea.

#

Tobi’s workspace

#

“ The best ship is our friendship. ”

Lisa Smith

Thu Aug 25

#

Transform hashes into weighted arrays

module Weighted
  def to_a 
    inject([]) do |array, (key, weight)|
      array + ([key] * weight)
    end
  end
end

weights = *{:people => 2, :places => 3, 
            :things => 5}.extend(Weighted)

# => [:people, :people, :places, :places, 
#     :places, :things, :things, :things, 
#     :things, :things]

#

Fall is coming

#

“ I had a life affirming talk with the garbage man today. He said, “Believe in me. And take the trash away.” Oh, how do you do it? ”

from Save It by Jim Guthrie

#

“ Traditionally, the artworks are destroyed upon completion to symbolize the impermanence of beautiful things, a central tenet of Buddhist philosophy. This one, however, will be secured with sprayed-on glue ”

Monks in Louisville Create Tribute to Ali

#

Love it or Leave it

Chad Fowler talks about writing as a thought excercise which can lead to really clarifying what’s important and changing your life. Fun times…

Oh, he’s also looking for a designer with Rails experience.

#

“ I’m asking for more art and less science in software. ”

David

#

“ By Getting Real, you mean using a lot of Javascript and doing XP right? ”

Chad Fowler

Wed Aug 24

#

Liquidmetal

Super bouncy metal

#

#rubyist.org

18:11 < htonl> irb(main):027:0> (_)===D

18:11 < htonl> => false

18:11 < htonl> irb(main):028:0> (_|_)

18:11 < htonl> => false

18:13 < htonl> irb(main):035:0> (_)===D(_|_)

18:13 < htonl> => true

18:13 <@noradio> is D a method?

18:13 < htonl> yeah

#

private message

18:07 <noradio> this is pretty much ready for the desktop it seems like

18:08 <sam-_> this being what

18:08 <noradio> this pooter

18:08 <sam-_> cool

18:08 <sam-_> is it ready for the laptop

18:08 <noradio> i will find out

18:08 <noradio> when the train comes

#

#rails-core

11:30 < noradio> "To protect your computer, Firefox prevented this site (greasemonkey.mozdev.org) from installing software on your computer."

11:30 < noradio> ...

#

“
this site was probably designed by
37 signals or the like.
”

footer copy from hoodwink.d

Tue Aug 23

#

#ruby-lang

11:07 AM < Austin--> IIRB, Ruby 1.9 already has this.

11:13 AM < kbrooks> IIRB?

11:13 AM < cyanite> if i recall borrectly

11:14 AM <@dblack> if i remem bercorrectly

#

A List Apart 4.0, powered by Rails

Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin unveil ALA’s new custom-designed Rails publishing application. Nice!

Mon Aug 22

#

Visualizing the O’Reilly Connection Network

Timothy M. O’Brien wrote a Python script to generate Graphviz visualizations of his connections on O’Reilly’s new social networking app.

Turns out networks look like networks.

#

Dissident – More Ruby Dependency Injection

Christian Neukirchen, Ruby prodigy with an unrememberable last name, has not only written a nice new Dependency Injection library, but a nice overview of DI itself.
API sample:


class Application
  inject :logger
  def do_stuff
    logger.log "doing stuff"
  end
end
class MyContainer < Dissident::Container

  provide :logger, Logger

end
Dissident.with MyContainer do

  a = Application.new

  a.do_stuff

end

#

#rails-core

16:03 < minam> any objections if I add a :use_short_month option to select_month, to show abbreviated month names?

16:04 < htonl> i will foam at the mouth if you do that

16:04 * minam does that, just to see htonl foam at the mouth

16:05 < htonl> ROAR!!!

16:05 < htonl> i am RABID ON RAILS

16:05 * minam puts down htonl

Fri Aug 19

#

Dynamic CSS templates with Rails

Scott over at Lunchbox Software is working on a nice dynamic CSS generation API built on top of Jim Weirich’s Builder library.

Something like this


site_background = '#FAFAFA'
text_color      = '#7F7F7F'
lb_fonts        = 'Helvetica, Arial, sans_serif'
css.comment! ‘this is my css file’

css.body(:class => ‘foo’) {

  css.background_color site_background

  css.font_size        ‘small’

  css.font_family      lb_fonts

  css.line_height      ‘18px’

  css.color            text_color

}

becomes


/* this is my css file */
body.foo {
  background-color: #FAFAFA;
  font-size: small;
  font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans_serif;
  line-height: 18px;
  color: #7F7F7F;
}

#

#ruby-lang

10:09 AM < dblack> it's funny how one knows that certain questions on ruby-talk will get multiple identical simultaneous answers

10:09 AM < dblack> yet one answers anyway, because what if everyone else decided at the same time that they didn't have to?

10:09 AM < dblack> prisoner's dilemma, ruby-talk-style

Thu Aug 18

#

The Sawzal Programming Language

Sawzall has become one of the most widely used programming languages at Google

Mon Aug 15

#

Lunchbox Software’s Lunchroom

Core developer Scott Barron has revamped his main Lunchbox Software site and added a blog, The Lunchroom. He’s been with Rails since day one. If you work with Rails you should know this name and company.

Sat Aug 13

#

#rails-core

11:01 < noradio> Rails is at revision 1999

11:01 < noradio> TONIGHT WE ARE GOING TO PARTY

#

Wildcard completion with Google

Nathaniel Talbott (he wrote test/unit ya know…) notices that you can do wildcard completion style searches with Google.

Example:
Ruby was created by *

Fri Aug 12

#

List generation helper for Rails

def make_list(items, options = {}, type = :ul)
  lis = items.map {|i| content_tag(:li, yield(i))} 
  content_tag(type, lis * "
", options)
end

# e.g.
make_list(@links) {|l| link_to l.label, l.url}

#

#rubyist.org

13:40 <@noradio> A[B[A[B[A[A[B[B[Bkj22[A[Bkjjk/quit

13:40 <@noradio> oops

13:40 <@sam-> haha

13:41 <@noradio> sometimes irssi isn't so agile

#

“ Like C++, Objective-C is an extension to the C programming language that made it object-oriented. Unlike C++, Objective-C is weakly typed and extremely powerful. ”

Aaron Hillegass in Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X

#

RSpec

No, it’s not a new perfume from Ali G, it’s a “Behaviour Specification Framework” for Ruby inspired by Dave Astels’s article A New Look at Test Driven Development. Apparently they’ve been too busy writing tests to get any documentation done so far :o.

Thu Aug 11

#

AWD has shipped!

#

A Championship Chicken

#

“ Welcome to the mental planes of the all-seeing all-petaled red lotus. ”

_why on what it’s like to use Ruby

Wed Aug 10

#

Integrating Flash interfaces with Rails

Rich Kilmer describes how he integrated his ActionStep library into Rails in one night while at OSCON. Includes some examples.

#

Using the Rake Build Language

A tutorial by Martin Fowler

#

“ By using Ruby, I want to concentrate the things I do, not the magical rules of the language, like starting with public void something something something to say, “print hello world.” I just want to say, “print this!” I don’t want all the surrounding magic keywords. I just want to concentrate on the task. That’s the basic idea. So I have tried to make Ruby code concise and succinct. ”

Yukihiro Matsumoto

Tue Aug 9

#

from Airborne Cats

Mon Aug 8

#

“ You can wear plenty of red without knowing any Ruby.

And supposedly you can write Rails code without knowing any Ruby. ”

Why the Lucky Stiff from A Starry Afternoon

#

Playback all messages, courtesy of Jim Weirich

class VCR
  def initialize
    @messages = []
  end
  def method_missing(method, *args, &block)
    @messages << [method, args, block]
  end
  def play_back_to(obj)
    @messages.each do |method, args, block|
      obj.send(method, *args, &block)
    end
  end
end

#

10 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know about Ruby

Another great talk by Jim Weirich from OSCON 2005

Sat Aug 6

#

Example use of Class Interception

def test_warmer
  Warmer.use_class(:Heater, MockHeater) do
  # Here, anytime a method in Warmer references
  # Heater it will get a MockHeater class instead.
  end
  # Here Warmer is back to normal.
end

#

Dependency Injection: Vitally Important or Totally Irrelevant?

Jim Weirich’s OSCON 2005 talk. The room was so crowded even Dave Thomas was turned away at the door.

#

Rio – Ruby I/O Comfort Class

Rio is a convenience class wrapping much of the functionality of IO, File, Dir, Pathname, FileUtils, Tempfile, StringIO, OpenURI, Zlib, and CSV.

Thanks for the convenience.

#

Yield to the Block

Slides from Matz’s OSCON talk

#

#rails-core

11:38 < pragdave> a product contains one or more items to ship, and each item type can be in multiple prodicys

11:38 < pragdave> products

11:38 < noradio> looks like you've been using Active Supports Inflector again ;)

Fri Aug 5

#

SwitchTower

Rails application deployment and much more, thanks to the fine work of Jamis Buck

#

What Business Can Learn from Open Source

Paul Graham’s talk at the 2005 OSCON

#

“ Kate Lee is blessed with an exceptionally rational mind and will hopefully forgive me for the callous words. ”

Hoverbird

#

“ marcel, you should have a stamp that says agile so you can go around stamping things with your approval ”

Maura

Thu Aug 4

#

Mo’s getting a new car

#

private message

17:23 <hoverbird> i like how in the rails book the cartoon of him makes it look like he has a pile of shaving cream (or poo) for hair

#

#rails-core

14:21 < nextangle> why the lucky stiff

14:22 < nextangle> btw, THAT's HIS NAME!

14:22 < nextangle> It's not an alias

14:22 < nextangle> It's his legal name

#

#rails-core

14:07 < nextangle> I'm in Matz' "Yield to the block" section now..

14:09 < nextangle> BTW, matz just called Rails the killer application of Ruby ;)

#

#rubyonrails

11:17 < bryceb> STUPID SYNERGY2 IS NOW STUCK IN ALL CAPS. BACK IN A SEC.

Wed Aug 3

#

Street painter illusions

#

Lake Shore Drive in shadows, from Metroblogging Chicago

#

#rails-core

13:28 < minam> sometimes, I wish OSX wouldn't allow a window to have focus if it isn't visible

13:30 < killfile> focus follows brain

13:30 < minam> pinky follows brain

#

#rubyist.org

12:38 <@mikael> ``Dear customers, you all suck and I hate you''

12:38 <@mikael> ``Please relieve me of the terrible burden of supporting you''

12:39 <@noradio> all user support emails i get are written with LaTeX quotes

#

“ Old men
move me.
The way courage is asked of them
to walk.
The way they still wear hats
and tip them for a lady.
How their collars stand out from their thin necks.
How they are careful to balance their heads.
How they do not complain
but, if you ask, might say,
“Most horrible!” and grin.
How they wear Hush Puppies, walk silently,
practicing to be ghosts.
How their hair grows so white and thin
it lies on their frail skulls like light.
How when they are alone, their spindle fingers
make gestures, speak in silence.
How their mouths work, remembering.
How their eyes, their eyes look far, far off,
seeing something I do not yet know what. ”

Old Men by Norah Pollard

Mon Aug 1

#

PairOn XP chair

“Unfortunately we’ve sold out of our initial batch of 5000 to ThoughtWorks.” Can you feel the agility?

#

Streamlined conio.net

Yeah, that blog was going nowhere. What do you think?

#

A camel drinking Coke

#

#rails-core

13:42 < madrobby> didn't the horse of lucky luke smoke?

13:42 < noradio> i think so

13:42 < noradio> makes Milou look like a puss

#

#rubyist.org

13:32 <@toryj> you know the CEO of ATI is named KY Ho

#

#rubyist.org

10:21 < mikael> I am doing an evaluation of Common Lisp for wronting home sights

10:21 < mikael> an EVALUATION, if you will

By

Wed Aug 31

Pluck attributes from a collection

#rails-core

Mon Aug 29

The downside of books (packing them)

Ira Glass in the closing credits of High Cost of Living

#rubyist.org

I-10 bridge in New Orleans (Reuters)

Sun Aug 28

Rattlesnake Bridge in Tucson

Patrick Henry Ewing

#rubyist.org

Sat Aug 27

John Darnielle in Going to Georgia

Fri Aug 26

Tip Eliminate “tag-along” revisions with Darcs amend-record

Tobi’s workspace

Thu Aug 25

Transform hashes into weighted arrays

Fall is coming

from Save It by Jim Guthrie

Wed Aug 24

#rubyist.org

private message

#rails-core

footer copy from hoodwink.d

Tue Aug 23

#ruby-lang

Mon Aug 22

#rails-core

Fri Aug 19

#ruby-lang

Thu Aug 18

Mon Aug 15

Sat Aug 13

#rails-core

Fri Aug 12

List generation helper for Rails

#rubyist.org

Aaron Hillegass in Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X

Thu Aug 11

AWD has shipped!

_why on what it’s like to use Ruby

Wed Aug 10

Tue Aug 9

from Airborne Cats

Mon Aug 8

Why the Lucky Stiff from A Starry Afternoon

Playback all messages, courtesy of Jim Weirich

Sat Aug 6

Example use of Class Interception

#rails-core

Fri Aug 5

Hoverbird

Maura

Thu Aug 4

Mo’s getting a new car

private message

#rails-core

#rails-core

#rubyonrails

Wed Aug 3

Lake Shore Drive in shadows, from Metroblogging Chicago

#rails-core

#rubyist.org

Old Men by Norah Pollard

Mon Aug 1

A camel drinking Coke

#rails-core

#rubyist.org

#rubyist.org

Tip Eliminate “tag-along” revisions with Darcs `amend-record`