Currently Browsing: Technology
I really hate flying. Flying has 2 major drawbacks: one, it requires uncomfortable sitting in close quarters (note: I’m 6′3), and second, it almost never has internet. On long flights, I do what any other geek would – I end up programming. Quite often, bored and internet-less programming turns into solving some problem which has been solved many times before. This was one of those problems.
I needed a quick script which could rip through a list of hundreds of urls and evaluate each url for an expected ‘200′ response value indicating that the website was ‘ok.’...
Here’s a quick capistrano task for synchronizing a remote database to your local development environment:
set :application, "appname"
set :application_path, "/home/someurl/apps"
set :user, "appuser"
set :password, "***********"
set :use_sudo, false
set :production_database,'mydb_production'
set :production_dbhost, 'localhost'
set :dbuser, 'dbadmin'
set :dbpass, '************'
desc "Synchronizes remote database to local development database"
task :sync_to_local, :roles => :web do
sql_out =...
Quite often in Rails projects, I need some way to backup the contents of database quickly. The script below is an easy way to backup the database of your current environment using the database.yml file already set up in your Rails project. Feel free to modify the below script to do your bidding.
/script/backup_db:
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../config/boot'
require 'erb'
require 'yaml'
unless config = YAML::load(ERB.new(IO.read(RAILS_ROOT +
"/config/database.yml")).result)[RAILS_ENV]
abort "No database found...
The Problem
Working in an agency setting, where the crispness and clarity of your images is extremely important, writing web systems that automatically generate thumbnails can be problematic. When resizing images downwards, as is often the case in thumbnail generation, pixel values are approximated from their original size. These approximations can result in thumbnail images which are blurry and difficult to read. The bigger the change in pixel size, the more dramatic the effect. So if you resize a 900×900px image into 120×120, you will see a major difference in clarity.
Photoshop has several...
My blog, music server, linux playground, etc…, was down for a period of several months due to some hardware that finally gave up the fight. I’m proud to be back online with a new, and much more powerful, server that I received from my good friends at Metro Hi Speed. Having nothing bad to say about Ubuntu or other linux based alternatives out there, I decided to rebuild on top of CentOS 5- if for nor other reason than boredom and my need to tinker. In the process of becoming better accustomed with the frustration charm of the world outside of debian, I’ve come to love my new machine....
One axiom overheard constantly throughout the blogs and forums of the internet’s technorati, is “use the right tool for the job.” Generally this nugget is brought up in conversations questioning whether one should use framework A or framework B, language C or language D, etc… Invariably, people get pissed, comments get ridiculous, and “that guy”:http://www.geekitude.com/Pictures/Linucon2004/Ex45TronUpCloseRot.jpg eventually shows up to tell everyone that they’re retards for not using Lisp. This is not one of those articles. Having spent too much of my life...
A little while ago I had an extra computer who’d been put out to pasture. This machine, while great in its time, felt the inevitable constraints of Moore’s Law and was forced to be removed from even semi-serious use. So instead of taking old Betty out to the glue factory, I turned it into a custom music server which allows me to stream my music library from anywhere with an internet connection.
Slimserver is an open source music server which allows you to do this with very little fuss or configuration. Now I can stream music from natemiller.org in my neighborhood coffee shop or at...
One of the things that has always bugged me about developing full-flash websites, is the way that Flash sometimes makes it difficult to implement behavior that users rely upon for a good experience. Things like deeplinking, context menus, mouse-wheel scrolling, are all possible – but at a cost to developer time. One such issue which I found particular irritating was the fact that Flash websites set at 100% width and height suffer from visibility issues when the end user’s monitor or window is set at a smaller setting. The easy solution is to set your containing html element at a fixed...
The Art of Abstraction
Posted by admin in Featured Articles, Technology on March 19, 2010 | No Comments Think for a moment about the word ‘abstract’ and its definition. When you think of an object, like a table for sake of example, what image comes to your mind? Most certainly, your image is different from mine. My mental image of a table looks a lot like the dinner table I sat at while growing up, while your table may look like the one sitting in your dining room. Yet I can use the word ‘table’ in a conversation and you will instantly know what I’m referencing without knowing exactly what my version of a table looks like. We take this mental feat for granted every day as it...PulseCheck: A Simple Tool for Monitoring Server Uptime
Posted by admin in Technology on March 6, 2010 | No Comments
I really hate flying. Flying has 2 major drawbacks: one, it requires uncomfortable sitting in close quarters (note: I’m 6′3), and second, it almost never has internet. On long flights, I do what any other geek would – I end up programming. Quite often, bored and internet-less programming turns into solving some problem which has been solved many times before. This was one of those problems.
I needed a quick script which could rip through a list of hundreds of urls and evaluate each url for an expected ‘200′ response value indicating that the website was ‘ok.’...Sync a database with Capistrano
Posted by admin in Featured Articles, Ruby on Rails, Technology on October 11, 2009 | No Comments
Here’s a quick capistrano task for synchronizing a remote database to your local development environment:
set :application, "appname"
set :application_path, "/home/someurl/apps"
set :user, "appuser"
set :password, "***********"
set :use_sudo, false
set :production_database,'mydb_production'
set :production_dbhost, 'localhost'
set :dbuser, 'dbadmin'
set :dbpass, '************'
desc "Synchronizes remote database to local development database"
task :sync_to_local, :roles => :web do
sql_out =...Painless db backups in Rails
Posted by admin in Featured Articles, Ruby on Rails, Technology, Uncategorized on October 10, 2009 | No Comments
Quite often in Rails projects, I need some way to backup the contents of database quickly. The script below is an easy way to backup the database of your current environment using the database.yml file already set up in your Rails project. Feel free to modify the below script to do your bidding.
/script/backup_db:
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../config/boot'
require 'erb'
require 'yaml'
unless config = YAML::load(ERB.new(IO.read(RAILS_ROOT +
"/config/database.yml")).result)[RAILS_ENV]
abort "No database found...Automated image sharpening
Posted by admin in Featured Articles, Ruby on Rails, Technology on February 28, 2009 | No Comments
The Problem
Working in an agency setting, where the crispness and clarity of your images is extremely important, writing web systems that automatically generate thumbnails can be problematic. When resizing images downwards, as is often the case in thumbnail generation, pixel values are approximated from their original size. These approximations can result in thumbnail images which are blurry and difficult to read. The bigger the change in pixel size, the more dramatic the effect. So if you resize a 900×900px image into 120×120, you will see a major difference in clarity.
Photoshop has several...New Server
Posted by admin in Technology, Uncategorized on February 23, 2009 | No Comments
My blog, music server, linux playground, etc…, was down for a period of several months due to some hardware that finally gave up the fight. I’m proud to be back online with a new, and much more powerful, server that I received from my good friends at Metro Hi Speed. Having nothing bad to say about Ubuntu or other linux based alternatives out there, I decided to rebuild on top of CentOS 5- if for nor other reason than boredom and my need to tinker. In the process of becoming better accustomed with the frustration charm of the world outside of debian, I’ve come to love my new machine....5 Reasons to Use Rails
Posted by admin in Ruby on Rails, Technology, Uncategorized on February 22, 2009 | No Comments
One axiom overheard constantly throughout the blogs and forums of the internet’s technorati, is “use the right tool for the job.” Generally this nugget is brought up in conversations questioning whether one should use framework A or framework B, language C or language D, etc… Invariably, people get pissed, comments get ridiculous, and “that guy”:http://www.geekitude.com/Pictures/Linucon2004/Ex45TronUpCloseRot.jpg eventually shows up to tell everyone that they’re retards for not using Lisp. This is not one of those articles. Having spent too much of my life...Creating your own streaming music server
Posted by admin in Technology, Uncategorized on September 16, 2008 | No Comments
A little while ago I had an extra computer who’d been put out to pasture. This machine, while great in its time, felt the inevitable constraints of Moore’s Law and was forced to be removed from even semi-serious use. So instead of taking old Betty out to the glue factory, I turned it into a custom music server which allows me to stream my music library from anywhere with an internet connection.
Slimserver is an open source music server which allows you to do this with very little fuss or configuration. Now I can stream music from natemiller.org in my neighborhood coffee shop or at...Making Flash sites scroll vertically
Posted by admin in Technology, Uncategorized on September 10, 2008 | 1 Comment
One of the things that has always bugged me about developing full-flash websites, is the way that Flash sometimes makes it difficult to implement behavior that users rely upon for a good experience. Things like deeplinking, context menus, mouse-wheel scrolling, are all possible – but at a cost to developer time. One such issue which I found particular irritating was the fact that Flash websites set at 100% width and height suffer from visibility issues when the end user’s monitor or window is set at a smaller setting. The easy solution is to set your containing html element at a fixed...