You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September, 2008.
Yesterday’s fun was getting started with cucumber, as some of the links below will tell you.
- Thin 1.0 - Another project hits “release”.
- What ToDo - The next stop in my quest to find an OS X task manager that thinks the way I do.
- Cucumber for Ruby on Rails - Instructions on what to install to get started.
- WebRat - Non-browser tool for web page acceptance testing that works with Cucumber.
- Cucumber - Next Generation RSpec Story Runner - Some of the basics.
- TextMate Bundle for Cucumber and TextMate Bundle for Webrat - Useful adjuncts.
- Shoulda 2.0 - Big upgrade to one of the other BDD tools.
- Woulda - Plugin-specific tests for Shoulda. Can Coulda be far behind?
Another contribution to the Rails Guides project: Layouts and Rendering in Rails.
- Twist - New functional testing platform from Thoughtworks, based on Selenium and implemented as Eclipse plugins.
- CSS Systems for Writing Maintainable CSS - Excellent set of slideks and notes. I need to spend some time with this one.
- TextMate Reigns Supreme with ‘Ack in Project’ - Very fast full-project search bundle for TextMate.
- GridIron Flow - This looks like very nice work management software for design professionals.
- Master Services Agreement (Part I) - Start of a new series by Obie Fernandez. Should be interesting, but remember, swiping someone elses’s MSA rather than talking to your own lawyer is asking for trouble.
I seem to be hanging out in #rubyonrails on IRC these days…mikeg1a if you’re hunting for me there.
- Rails Rumble 2008 - If you’ve got October 18-19 free, there’s another “build an application in a weekend” contest coming up.
- Using hoptoad in open source project deployments - A general approach to keeping a separate deploy branch in git to hold confidential information.
- Rails Take Five - Five Questions with Karmen Blake - Another in the Five Runs series of Rails interviews.
- RubyGems 1.3.0 - You might want to go slower than me on installing this version; it deprecates some code that Rails uses, resulting in annoying warnings on script/generate operations.
- Replacing Braid or Piston (for Git) with 40 Lines of Rake - An approach to doing subtree merge control for Rails plugins. If you use this, make sure to include a trailing slash on the destination when doing a git:subtree:merge operation. Took me forever to figure that out.
- Status Update: Merb 1.0 - Coming October 11.
- Creating Valid Records with Populator and Faker - For filling up your test database with stuff.
- RR - Test double framework for ruby code. If your current method of writing mocks and stubs is too verbose, this will help. (It has other good features too).
- TankEngine - Plugin to build iPhone-optimized Rails user interfaces.
- Gash - Access a git repository as a ruby hash. Wacky. (via RubyFlow)
Whew, 300 of these? In other news, we just hired a PA so as to shift towards a higher ratio of billable work to outsourced work. This means I’ve got more hours to sell, again.
- Building our centralised authentication system - Implementing single sign-on with Rails
- Installing aspell and raspell for Ultrasphinx - And getting rid of some warnings.
- Thetis - Rails-backed groupware/CMS.
4AM continues to be my quietly productive time this week.
- Automatic Rails at Slicehost - Setup script from FiveRuns.
- This Week in Rails - The latest goings-on around the community. I was tickled to see that I got mentioned.
- Rails is for Developers, Django is for Designers, Part 1 - Wow, flamebait. (Though the author says that’s not his intent).
Early mornings are the most peaceful time around here. Which may explain why I’m awake at 4AM.
- CouchDB with Rails - The latest screencast from PeepCode. CouchDB has been on my radar for a long time but I haven’t had a good excuse to use it yet.
- Reminder Tests - Dan Manges suggest some novel uses for automated tests. Well, novel to me, anyhow.
- Cucumber - Plain-text BDD tool that’s an alternative to RSpec stories.
- turled - The “look up Twitter users’ web sites fast” script has turned into a whole site, complete with my Ubiquity command.
I think the ActiveRecord Associations Guide I wrote may actually be finished.
- Dynamic Rails Error Help - Making the default validation messages more useful with a bit of javascript.
- Exceptional - This online error-tracker for Rails apps is now in open beta.
- Is Your Rails Application Safe? - If you’re inadvertently allowing mass assignment, probably not.
- MysqlTableSyncer - Command-line tool to synch up two MySQL tables.
- turl - My contribution to a little scripting fest on Twitter yesterday. If you have FF3 + Ubiquity, you can use “turl <userid>” to go straight to a Twitter user’s web site.
My latest work-in-progress: Rails Routing from the Inside Out. I’ve been grubbing through the Rails source, and this is the result.
- roodi - Code style checker for ruby applications.
- Rails: Performance Tuning Workflow - Good advice from Dan Manges
Well, I think I can add “setting up cruisecontrol.rb” to my accomplishments - though really, that’s not so hard.
- Using Single Table Inheritance is OK - A counterpoint to some of the Rails advice I pointed to yesterday.
- GeekTool 2.1.2 - Pipe system output to your OS X desktop. I played with this for showing the log of a running Rails app, but I generally don’t have any desktop visible.
- Espresso - The folks behind CSSEdit are coming out with a full web development app. This could be hot.
- Analyzing your GMail History - With a combination of OS X and Ruby.
Looks like I’m editing on the Rails Guides now. That’s what I get for opening my big mouth.
- Ruby on Rails Code Quality Checklist - I don’t agree with every tiny detail here, but it’s a great starting point.
- Bort v0.2 Released - Fast progress on this Rails application skeleton.
- Protonotes - Nice-looking free service for adding sticky notes to prototyped web pages.
- Configatron 2.0.0 Released! - A big bump and easier syntax for this generalized configuration library. (via Rubyflow)
- Ruby on Fails - I laughed. You can get a sticker, if you want.
My latest plugin noodling around: db_populate. Yeah, there are a bunch of seed data bits out there; I combined the ones I liked. Unfinished, but has some potential.
- Blanket - Ruby flexible backup framework, for Rails apps and other bits.
- Rifgraf - RESTful server to draw graphs from periodic data. I should think about whether there’s a synergy here with user_event_logger.
- Story Driven Development in Rails - Part I: Up and Running - I haven’t gone the SDD route (yet?) but it’s interesting.
- I got through Monday OK, despite email and meetings. Now to actually get some work done for the week.
- Awesome Fresh Rails Documentation to Enjoy - People are starting to notice the Rails Guides project. That’s good.
- IE6 hate seems to be increasing in the web circles I run in. Pushup uses javascript & CSS to suggest that people upgrade old browser. For a more aggressive approach, there’s KillIE6, which tries to trick people into upgrading to IE7. (via http://gadgetopia.com/post/6551)
- seed-fu - Another option for loading seed data into a Rails application.
- EditorKicker - Tool to automatically pop open your editor at the right source code line when Ruby raises an exception. There’s a Rails plugin for it too. (via RubyFlow)
Woot, I’m published on one of the official Rails sites now: Rails Routing from the Outside In. I feel all accomplished and stuff.
- Lockdown - Authentication/authorization plugin for Rails the operates on a “deny by default” basis.
- Loading Seed Data - Good discussion on the ways to get static data into a Rails app without depending on brittle migrations. I swiped some of this in an app I’m working on now.
- db_populate - Simple Rake task to load data from Ruby files into a new database. I’ve forked this to make it have some verbose output.
- EcomPages - Open source Rails shopping cart.
- Prawn’s Second Release (0.2) - Looks like this pure-Ruby PDF generation library is moving right along.
- App Store. I’m Out. - Yep, I’m glad that I decided against investing time in writing iPhone applications. Fat, dumb, and arbitrary is no way to go through life.
- Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet - Nicely formatted but not language-specific or comprehensive.
- Ruby QuickRef - Includes an exhaustive Ruby-specific regex section.
- I Dropped IE6 - Site to brag about your refusal to support obsolete browsers.
With a CI server set up, now I’m feeling pressured to sort out the tests in a bunch of projects. Ah, progress.
- Ruby on Rails Jobs - Another Rails job board. Some day I’ll try to run up a complete list.
- The Googlebot and Subscription Sites - Changing your user agent can get you into sites like Experts Exchange, which are otherwise so annoying in the Google search results (personally, I just block them from appearing).
The current fun: Setting up CruiseControl.rb with git and rspec.
- Git Quick Reference - Not exhaustive, but useful.
- 10 Things You Could be Doing to Your Code Right Now - Some suggestions for Rails shops that are feeling slipshod.
- This Week in Rails - Another look at what’s been cooking around the community.
- Completely Sodding Stupid - A rant about some of the obvious shortcomings of CSS.
- Una - Commerical editor supporting shared code editing. (via RubyFlow)
- Setting up CruiseControl.rb with/for Git Based Projects - Best guide I’ve found. Way better than the execrable official documentation.
Looks like I may actually have enough work for the end of the year. But don’t let that stop you asking for more.
- Merb Beginner’s Tutorial - Notes on how to instal the latest edge bits.
- Bort - A Base Rails Application - A shot at packaging all the “I always do this stuff” bits into a fresh Rails application. I’ve seen some of these before; the general issues are that my stuff doesn’t match your stuff, and they haven’t tracked Rails versions. But this one got enough immediate traction it might do better.
- Ruby Wrapper for Twitter Search API - Just in case you need such a thing.
Checked in another contribution to the DocRails project yesterday - A Guide to Active Record Associations.
- Analytics with Capistrano - Interesting idea, though much is left as an exercise for the reader.
- SQL Injetion issue in :limit and :offset parameter - A Rails security issue worth paying a bit of attention to.
I pushed out some more improvements to both finder_filter and user_event_logger over the weekend.
- Rails 2.1.1 - A bugfix release.
- Get a Free License for Today! - Today is a little Mac menubar app that helps track your tasks & calendar. It’s not bad, and if you’re a blogger you can get it for free.
- Map Rails Kit - Geocoding and Google Maps plotting in one abstract API, for $199. I’ve done this work myself, and I’m pretty sure I charged my client more than $199 for it.
- Ruby on Struts - A contrarian view about RESTful routes in Rails.
- ActsAsOrderedTree - Coming in handy on a project for me currently. Seems to fit my brain better than BetterNestedSet.
- acts_as_ferret tutorial - A good introduction.
- Asset Versioning in Rails - Understanding why Rails tacks that querystring on to your images.
- Inspect My SQL - Another tool for performance-tuning in Rails.
- DB Fixtures Replacement Step by Step - How to move to factory_girl for testing. I’m starting to feel this itch myself.
OK, now I have enough work for the month. Time to buckle down and get it done.
- DDL Transactions - Now supported in edge Rails for much safer migrations. Best reason I’ve seen yet to switch away from MySQL (where they are not supported).
- Django 1.0 Released - The official announcement. And here’s a handy cheat sheet.
- Keeping a git fork in synch with the forked repo - I’ve had to hunt this down too many times. Time to blog it.
- railsdoc - My first experiment with building a Ubiquity command.
Things appear to be settling out on the “underemployed” side.
- Hobo 0.8 Released - Still moving on towards a 1.0 release.
- Enterprise Recipes with Ruby and Rails - Forthcoming from Pragmatic Press.
- Building the Never Blocking Rails, Making Rails 12x Faster - At least, for some database-bounded operations.
- Changeset 8961 - The tag for Django 1.0 Final. Congratulations to the Django team.
Looks like I’m either going to be overly busy this month or underemployed. Should find out in the next day or two which it will be. Fingers crossed.
- Kete - Rails-based community/KM/CMS application. Version 1.1 just released.
- RazorSQL - I’m looking into this for sqlite management. I wish the Navicat guys did a sqlite version.
- Rak - Ruby-based replacement for grep with extra bells and whistles.
- Web 2.0 Bingo! - This is my life writing for WWD.
September is starting out real slowly for me.
- Unobtrusive Prototype.js - Another PeepCode screencast, this one on a topic I’ve really been meaning to learn about.
