Articles

Blocking an IP with iptables

istock_000000152791xsmallEarlier today, I noticed a bunch of weird requests to one of my Rails apps. I’m not sure what their intention was but I didn’t want to take the chance since the IP traced back to somewhere in China which meant if something went bad, I’d have little recourse.

Of labels and limits

In an attempt to satisfy our need for identity and belonging, we desperately try to wear as many labels as possible, and to a certain extent labels are a necessity. When people ask you what you do for a living, it’s far easier to reply “I’m a computer programmer” than to try and explain the plurality and complexity of the exact criteria of your job.

Rails Envy Podcast - Episode #080: 05/27/2009

Episode 80. Gregg sneezes on my dog in this episode. How messed up is that?

Rails Envy Podcast – Episode #080: 05/27/2009

Episode 80. Gregg sneezes on my dog in this episode. How messed up is that?

Questions Five Ways - Static Code Analysis and Testing

This week in Questions Five Ways I've assembled a group of testers and tool builders to talk about code analysis and code testing. Kevin Rutherford (@kevinrutherford) is the co-author of the upcoming Ruby Refactoring Workbook and the creator of reek. Andy Lester (@petdance) is a longtime proponent of testing in the Perl community. Kay Johansen (@utahkay) is an agile testing guru. Russ Olsen (

Future Ruby

My friends from unspace are putting together FutureRuby, the spiritual successor to Rubyfringe which turned out to be one of the best conferences of last year.

The theme of the conference is obviously the future of ruby but one thing that is clear from the lineup is that the event doesn’t forget that ruby is part of a greater ecosystem and that ruby is as much a language as a mindset.

The Weekly Standup: May 26, 2009

Keep up with all the latest Agile Development with Rob goodies on Twitter and Facebook.

Design: Ease of Control, or Challenge of Relationship?

You'll have to forgive me, cuz I'm trying hard to find a way to wrap my head around a concept in my head so I can express it.

The test everything trend in design bothers me. Or to make every decision based on the numbers. Or to focus on problem-solving. Or patterns.

I'm trying to formulate a good way to express *my* approach to design, but when I try, people don't understand. I'm aware this is a problem on my end, not yours. But I'm gonna keep trying.

This is a quote from a comment on an article on BoingBoing:

Double Shot #461

A little flotsam from my browser.

#323 | »Top 50 Ruby on Rails Tutorials« in Category Other collections

»Improving the Usability of Your Ruby on Rails Applications (video)«

Articles | Rails Fire

Articles

RTeX 2.0 Released

I’m happy to finally release RTeX v2.0.

RTeX is a Ruby library for generating PDFs via the LaTeX typesetting system, and can be used as a standalone executable or Rails plugin for pdf.rtex files. If you need to generate complex (and well- typeset) documents dynamically, this might be the ticket.

Ask Your Doctor About mod_rails

We need new inventions that reveal people’s true intentions, a portable pride protector, affordable lie detector…—Buck65

UPDATE: You can learn all about Phusion Passenger with the new PeepCode Screencast on the topic.

Half A Dream


Living on the Edge (of Rails) in Spanish

Juan Lupión wrote in to inform me that he’s also translating my Living on the Edge (of Rails) series of blog posts to Español. Thanks Juan!




Living on the edge (of Rails) #21

It’s another slow week (just 2 changes of note imho) after the release of the 1st Release Candidate (RC1) of Rails 2.1. Follow that link for installation instructions – though if you’re reading this blog post you probably don’t care! (because you’re, you know, “living on the edge”).

72. Integrating Rails app with Campaign Monitor API

In this episode you will learn how to use campaign monitor gem to integrate your Rails app to Campaign Monitor Web Service API.

Rubinius runs Rails

Congratulations to the rubinius guys on getting our little web framework that could to start up and serve requests. It’s great to see so much experimentation and progress happening in one large and bazaar-like community!

71. How to create a SEO sitemap for Rails Apps

The Sitemap Protocol allows you to inform search engines about URLs on your websites that are available for crawling.

RTeX on Lighthouse

I’ve just opened up a Lighthouse project for RTeX here. This fills out the RTeX family of pages to be:

* Documentation

* Development

* Issue tracking

The Two Kinds of Programmers


Photo courtesy of Roby72

In my time as a developer, and now managing a team of developers, I have come to realize that there are two kinds of programmers: the Journeyman and the Craftsman. These terms aren’t mine – I’ve seen them used other places – but they describe the developers I’ve worked with pretty well.

Articles | Rails Fire

Articles

Import your MacHeist serials to AppShelf

If you have purchased the latest MacHeist nano bundle, you might have noticed that there is no option this time to export as an AppShelf file. I felt a little guilty spamming my twitter followers to get my three free bonus apps (Airburst Extreme, Tracks, and Burning Monkey Solitaire), so to atone, I’m sharing a script that will translate your reciept into an AppShelf import file. Just save your receipt page from the browser, then pass the filename to this script as an argument:

#355 | “50 of the Best Websites Developed Using Ruby on Rails” in Category: Promotion/Enthusiasm

»50 of the Best Websites Developed Using Ruby on Rails«

360 Flex - Day 1 (Sunday) - Live Blogging

We just had a great breakfast at Peggy Sue’s Dinner…and moved over to the Ebay Headquarters where the conferences is about to start.

I’ll be taking notes during the day and updating this page as we go one.

UPDATE: Now that I typed all that I realized that Justin put up the slides and code on his blog: http://blog.classsoftware.com/.

Ruby on Rails'e başlarken

Ruby on Rails'e başlarken

* İlk Adımlar
* Ruby Dili ve Rails İskeletine Genel Bakış
* Ruby on Rails'in Temel İlkeleri

* Kurulum
* İlk Uygulama
* Rails Sürümünü Yükseltme
* Rails ve Ruby Gem'ini Güncelleştirme
* Bir Uygulamayı Yeni Rails Sürümüne Yükseltme

Using Eclipse for the first time in years, and I’m sad to...

Using Eclipse for the first time in years, and I’m sad to report that the UI is still terrible. This mystery meat home screen you’re greeted with on first install is just one example.

GitHub Drinkup, Peninsula Edition

It’s about time – the GitHub drinkup is moving to the peninsula! One week only, don’t miss out! If you’re a peninsula dweller like me, join me at CityPub in Redwood City at 8pm next Thursday, March 11. It’s right by the CalTrain stop, so you have no excuse:

vault.ncaa.com : under the hood of a cool Flex project.

Thought Equity Motion and NCAA two days ago officially released the Ncaa Vault. A cool Flex app backed by an incredible video database with awesome metedata about each game…and released just in time for March Madness.

Here are a few of the announcements and online articles describing the services:

Heads up: IBM is looking for top notch student hackers

As a thank you for following my blog, I’d like to introduce you to what I think is a great opportunity for the right students. My team is looking for two bright students for a 16 month, full-time internship opportunity with IBM.

Passenger 2.2.11 packages for Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy

The last Passenger release, 2.2.10, has a bug that causes Apache to freeze when used under moderate load (Phusion say high load but we’ve seen it on quite moderate conditions).  We recommend that anyone using Passenger 2.2.10 upgrade to 2.2.11 asap.  Ubuntu Hardy packages are now available in our repository.

Shameless Self-Promotion, Beautiful Unique Snowflakes, & Extra Nose Syndrome

Popular opinion among smart, skilled, hard-working people seems to go something like this:

Something is wrong with a society/world that values and rewards outgoing people, who talk up their strengths, over good or even great people who do not.

Ah, self-promotion.

Is there any other skill in the world of which smart, skilled, hard-working people love to boast, “I’m just terrible at it”?

Microblogging on Twitter | Rails Fire

Microblogging on Twitter

Earlier this year, I started using twitter. I was not at all convinced it would be worth my time. I didn’t really understand why I would want to tell people “what I’m doing right now.”

While some people literally tweet what they’re doing every five minutes, I discovered that many people don’t. And so now, I “get it”. I’ve found the key is not follow a lot of people – I currently follow about 70 – otherwise it’s a firehose.

What I get out of twitter is access to conversations that those that I’m interested in are having. It helps me keep up with the news a bit more than reading blogs, although anything important always shows up on a blog at some point anyway. Also, many heated conversations on twitter originate from a blog post.

So I think blogging is here to stay for a while, despite what some may think.

However, it occurred to me that I’ve blogged a lot less in the past couple months, because it’s much more convenient for me to tweet a link or an idea, than it is to write up a blog post. So while both Brian and I will continue to blog here, you should follow us on twitter:

Jeff on twitter

Brian on twitter

Anytime we have something to announce, teach, entertain, or waste your time with that fits into 140 characters or less, we’ll use twitter instead.

I will say that I don’t understand how some people follow 800 other people. Unless you’re watching the stream all day long, or using another tool to analyze/summarize it for you (which is cool).

And I don’t understand tweets like, “Having dinner with my wife.” Imagine, you’re sitting there eating dinner… “Uh huh, yes dear, exactly… hold on a minute, i have to get my cell phone out so i can text something to twitter…”