Double Shot #646

Another semi-random walk through my corner of the internet.

• ripple - Ruby client for the Riak distributed database.
• Cerberus 0.7.5 Released - New version of the Ruby CI server that I'm happiest with at the moment, now with Mercurial support.
• GLTerminal - If OS X leaves you pining for the distorted fuzzy green-screen thin clients of yore, this little piece of freeware is the cure.
• Turn Off Google Buzz With One Click - Really, the only thing you need to know.
• The iPhone obsession - Doomed argument that web devs should care about standards instead of candy.
• Easiest Postgres Install Ever - Mac Edition - Script from Wayne Seguin, passed on by Philip Ingram.
• Git Autocomplete in Mac OS X - A tiny little bit of shell convenience. If you use the Git for OS X Installer, you already have the script on your drive.
• HoudahSpot - Search/Find utility for OS X that actually finds what I'm looking for, unlike Spotlight. Yeah, if I was a Spotlight pro there are probably commands to do all this. It's easier to spend money than time, though.
• rake_cap_bash_autocomplete - More autocomplete fun for bash. A bit slow though on my Mac.

Double Shot #636

And no, running HTML 5 does not make a closed proprietary device magically open.

• Panopticlick - "How Unique - and Trackable - is Your Browser?". Test site from the EFF. Turning on NoScript helps significantly.
• The jQuery Cross-Domain Ajax Guide - A whole list of ways to work around cross-domain restrictions.
• Rails Security Review Checklist - Sara Allen pulls together some notes.
• Diff for gist.github - Another useful GreaseMonkey script.
• Postgresql 8.3 on Debian Lenny - Pretty easy to install and configure, actually.

Double Shot #633

It was a busy weekend - apparently for other people as well as for me.

• couch.io - Managed hosting and support for CouchDB.
• UTC vs Ruby, ActiveRecord, Sinatra, Heroku and Postgres - Some notes on time zones in ruby web apps.
• SSL Certificate Check - From DigiCert, but works for any SSL site. A fast way to tell whether you have things configured and installed correctly.
• Rapid Application Deployment with Git - Nice new workflow from from Webbynode. I need to dust off my Webbynode account and play with this.
• pgtune - Automatic configuration tuning utility for PostgreSQL.
• Active Record Query Interface 3.0 - Shiny new finders for Rails 3.
• jQuery QueryString Plugin - Came in handy for hooking up Rails controller methods and stuff inside the jQuery.
• Getting Up to Speed with Rails 3 - Detailed look at moving over an existing Rails application.
• jQuery.sheet - Excel-ish spreadsheet implemented in jQuery.
• Git Branch Auto-Tracking - Useful tip from Mike Champion.
• MySQL Tip: How To Check, Repair & Optimize All Tables in All Databases - I never knew about mysqlcheck, but now that I do I'll likely be using it again.
• murder - Deployment via BitTorrent, courtesy of Twitter. Cute idea, but the number of sites that need this is vanishingly small.

Double Shot #632

12 is really too many billable hours for one day.

• PostageApp - SMTP mailing service that integrates directly via a Rails plugin.
• IBM DB2 Gem Version 2.0.0 Released - For Rails/ActiveRecord, now supporting paramaterized queries.
• Tuning Your PostgreSQL Server - A basic introduction.
• Table size, database size - Determining physical storage sizes with PostgreSQL.
• Setting PostgreSQL’s SHMMAX in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) - How to temporarily bump up shared buffers without rebooting - works in Snow Leopard too. He's a bit confused about SHMALL, though, which is in pages rather than bytes on OS X.
• KyngChaos PostgreSQL - Precompiled OS X installers, including server, client, PostGIS, and pgRouting.
• Rails 3 Reading Material - Link list from Maxim Chernyak.
• What is Shared Memory - Straightforward explanation of OS X shared buffers with some alternative settings.
• Telephone - SIP/VOIP app for OS X.
• Twitter Unstupidify - Greasemonkey script from Peter Cooper, for those of us who dislike the new retweets.

Double Shot #613

Last week of the year. This one can't end soon enough for me.

• Blueprints 0.4.0 - Another replacement for factories and fixtures with some nice syntactic sugar.
• Ruby 1.8.7-p248 released - Can't really tell how significant this is because reading Ruby's own changelogs is a mystery to me.
• holidays - Gem to extend the Ruby date class to make it holiday aware. Works well, once you figure out you have to require the individual holiday support for whatever region you're interested in.
• CoffeeScript - Rubyish language that compiles down to JavaScript.
• RMSforms - CSS styling framework especially for forms.
• formtastic-sass - Sass mixins to style formtastic forms. If only I liked sass.
• MySQL and Postgres command equivalents (mysql vs psql) - Handy if you switch back and forth.
• email-spec - Matchers and steps for testing email with RSpec and Cucumber.
• rspec-integration - A mind meld between regular Rails integration tests and RSpec. So far I like this much better than Cucumber.