July 2010
1 post
4 tags
Simple Blowfish encryption with Ruby
I needed to encrypt some text before storing it in the database. Since I needed to get the original back at some point I settled on Blowfish and AES as good candidates. There are a couple gems with provide this type of encryption, but I could not get either one to work.
Eventually I came across this snippet and this blog post. It turns out that it is trivial to use the Ruby OpenSSL library to do...
April 2010
2 posts
Get ready for more expensive cars
The Obama administration is announcing steep increases in the federal CAFE standards. Under the new standards average fuel efficiency will increase from 27.5 to 35.5 MPG. The administration is positioning it as a win for everybody: the government continues to assert its control over the auto industry, environmentalists get thrown a bone and the auto manufacturers get big “green”...
Microsoft doesn't follow its own OOXML standard
ISO OOXML convener: Microsoft’s format “heading for failure”:
Although Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) document format became an ISO standard two years ago,
the company still hasn’t built any software that truly complies with the standard. Microsoft Office
2010, which is expected to be released later this year, implements the deprecated...
March 2010
5 posts
Patron 0.4.6
I have release version 0.4.6 of Patron, my HTTP client library for Ruby. The big news for this release is a dramatic speedup for uploads. There are still a few bugs outstanding and I hope to have a new release ready soon. You can get Patron via rubygems with gem install patron or get the source from Github.
Importing Wordpress content into Tumblr
When I decided to move my blog from Wordpress to Tumblr I did a lot of searching to find a tool that would import my content. I found a couple of solutions, but none that worked for me. After taking a look at Tumblr’s API docs I decided to throw together a simple script that would parse a Wordpress export file and post the content to Tumblr. It turned out to be pretty easy. Since this is one...
Tumblr is blog lube
This is going to be one of those embarrassingly meta posts where I talk about the technology behind this site. Rather than drag this out needlessly I will get right to the point and say that I have fully moved my blog over from a self-hosted Wordpress install to Tumblr. Actually, it is a little more complicated than that. I had three sites where I theoretically posted content: my main blog at...
“The logic seems unassailable: The District of Columbia is the hub of the...”
– Good News, D.C. Unemployment’s Up - WSJ.com
“Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch claims that the company’s ubiquitous Flash plug-in...”
– Mozilla previews new feature to guard against Flash crashes
September 2009
1 post
3 tags
Extracting data from iPhone backups
I recently reset my iPhone in an attempt to clear up some weird issues I was having. It wasn’t until afterwards that I realized that I had forgotten to pull my photos off of the phone first. After doing some searching I discovered that the iPhone backup files are located at:
/Users/<user>/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
I then found the bkupextract.pl script that...
July 2009
6 posts
5 tags
Patron 0.4
The 0.4 version of Patron has been released. This version addresses feedback from the initial public release and fixes a few minor bugs:
Fixed a bug in the Patron.version method
Added HTTP proxy support
Enabled SSL and Win32 support
Added ability to download data to a file with GET
Fixed a bug where header values were prefixed with a space
Made the Session#request method public
Added...
5 tags
Using DTL templates with Nitrogen
One thing that I did not like about working with the Nitrogen web framework is the way that view rendering is handled. Nitrogen calls the function main/0 in your web modules which, by convention, returns an instance of the template record. This record points to a template file that has HTML code with a little Erlang mixed in. Essentially, you can call functions in your web module and whatever...
5 tags
Announcing Patron: a Ruby HTTP client library
I was recently given the opportunity to release several of the projects I was working on at The Hive as open source. These projects are libraries that we built to address specific problems we ran into but were not core to our business. Most of these were always destined to be released, it just took a while before we got around to it. Everything is currently on my GitHub page, but I wanted to do a...
6 tags
Thoughts on NetBeans 6.7
I used NetBeans back when it was called Forte for Java and have kept an eye on it ever since. Every few releases I would download it and try it out again. Since Eclipse came onto the scene, NetBeans was just “that other Java IDE.” I no longer work with Java, nor do I use an IDE, but I still download NetBeans every once in a while to see how far it has come. When Rails began to gain...
Master's degree preferred
I recently found this in a job ad:
This position will be responsible for customizing xml front-end templates
Sounds like fun. After lines of “must have X plus years in Y technology” the employer states:
Candidates will possess a Bachelor’s Degree in a related field, with a Master’s Degree preferred.
Seriously? I am curious what field is “related” to editing...
3 tags
My Erlang setup
When setting up Erlang under OS X I have run into two issues. First, how do I keep multiple versions installed at once? I sometimes have a need to evaluate a new version of the Erlang VM while keeping the old version around “just in case.” In a few instances I had two applications which needed different versions of the VM. Second, where do I install all of the 3rd party Erlang...
March 2009
1 post
“And many of us are hoping that all those in power fail, because those in power...”
– Nothing Personal, But I Hope You All Fail
February 2009
2 posts
“But why is the Macalope thrilled by this news? He is thrilled because a Zune...”
– The Macalope
4 tags
QLMarkdown 1.1
There is a new version of the QLMarkdown generator available. I didn’t have anything to do with the new release other than zipping up the final product. Michael Dominic K. added some nice new features. You can download the goodies here or grab the source from GitHub.
January 2009
1 post
3 tags
Keeping track of little things
I have been using GTD for a while now (1 year? 2? Has it really been that long?). By now I have mostly passed the “tinkering” phase and my system has become integrated with my daily routine. Having said that, I am still finding small ways to improve and optimize the whole process.
This morning I was looking over my Today list in Things and I realized that there were two tasks on my...
December 2008
2 posts
“No one likes the transmission of power between generations—not the left or the...”
– Paul Graham: After Credentials
4 tags
Nitrogen
I have been using Erlang extensively for the last 6 months or so and it is a very nice language. While I have enjoyed working with the language, I wasn’t really impressed with the existing Erlang web frameworks. Mochiweb is nice enough, and I use it to power an application with an HTTP based ReSTful API, but it is too bare bones to use for building a full-featured site.
Then I ran across...
November 2008
2 posts
Forwarded to me by a friend:
In wine
There is wisdom;
In beer
There is freedom;
In water
There is bacteria.
“Some of us learn by doing, while others learn by following a strict regimen of...”
– Review: Improve your iPhone typing with Typing Genius
October 2008
1 post
“Yet it was Mr. Sarkozy, speaking before Congress last November, who offered the...”
– A Capitalist Manifesto - WSJ.com
August 2008
1 post
4 tags
app_version Updated
I have updated my app_version Rails plugin to support getting build numbers from Git. This is of necessity a little kludgy. The plugin allows you to specify either ‘git-revcount’ or ‘git-hash’ as the build. ‘git-revcount’ will set the build number to the number of commits on the current Git branch and ‘git-hash’ will set the build number to the first...
July 2008
7 posts
4 tags
QuickLook Preview for Markdown
I was curious about QuickLook generators and decided to write a quick generator for previewing Markdown files. QuickLook generators are pretty simple and it didn’t take me long to throw something together. This plugin creates an HTML preview from the Markdown source and renders that in the QuickLook window.
If you are interested you can download a binary or check out the source on Github.
5 tags
Programming Language Nuclear Winter
One of the points that I’ve been trying to make since I’ve gotten back in to
the languages space is that a lot of what is happening in languages now is
unpausing the nuclear winter that Java imposed on the programming language
space. If you haven’t been following this space for a while, you’d believe that
all this dynamic language stuff was invented in the last 5 or 10 years or so.
...
2 tags
News flash: fast food is bad for you
New Yorkers try to swallow calorie sticker shock:
“I was blown away,” said Cara, a 27-year-old homemaker from Forest Hills in
New York City. “I’m not a no-carb type of person, and I usually don’t even
think about it. But you pick up a little muffin with your coffee, and it has
630 calories in it? That’s a bit extreme!”
I found this article incredibly...
“Beer is a health food. And you do not need to buy it from those wan,...”
– George F. Will - Survival of the Sudsiest
4 tags
Debunking third-world myths
Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen
3 tags
The Law of Unintended Consequences
Ars Technica reports on a quirky 9th Circuit decision that has significant implications for privacy in the workplace. According to the Ars story, “the ruling provides an extensive space for workspace privacy,” but I am not so sure. It turns out that the case hinged on a police officer who claimed that the department he worked for invaded his privacy when they reviewed the messages he...
3 tags
The Nature of Software Development
The Myth of the Interchangeable Programmer: Can’t We Just Offshore Him?:
The problem here is that the [Software Management Formulas] incorporate
a number of flawed assumptions. The first of these assumptions is that
programmers are fungible. The SMFs assume all programmers will contribute
roughly the same amount to a project and that all programmers are
interchangeable.
I think the...
April 2008
7 posts
3 tags
Solving .Mac sync problems
I use a Mac Pro for work and I have a black MacBook for everything else. Managing two sets of keychains, calendars and bookmarks can become a giant pain (“I thought I bookmarked that site…oooh, it must be on the other computer”). Thankfully, .Mac sync keeps the important stuff synchronized between both machines. Mostly. Recently both my keychains and bookmarks had not been...
6 tags
app_version plugin is now hosted on GitHub
I recently changed hosting providers and I am still in the process of moving everything over. One headache that I don’t need is recreating all of the Subversion repositories that I had hosted on the old service. So, I have decided to move the code for my app_version plugin to GitHub.
The plugin’s code is now located at http://github.com/toland/app_version. You can clone the...
5 tags
Campfire theme for Colloquy
I occasionally use IRC, and Colloquy is my preferred client. The default theme is OK, but not great. Recently, I stumbled upon a Colloquy theme that is based on 37signals’ Campfire chat application. It makes the Colloquy chat windows much easier to read, in my opinion.
3 tags
Github goes live
Following up on my earlier post, GitHub is now officially live (hat tip: Ruby Inside). So, what are you waiting for, got host some code!
Be sure to checkout GitHub’s Guides, including the list of cool and unusual Git techniques. Finally, the aforementioned Ruby Inside post also pointed out this Ruby and Git roundup at InfoQ.
3 tags
It's all about Git
Git seems to have gained a lot of traction lately. Just last week the Ruby on Rails core team announced that they are moving the official Rails source repository to Git. The core team took a lot of flak for the move, but I think it is a good one.
Rails will be hosted on the upcoming Github site, which looks promising. Of course, Gitorious is a similar service that has been around for a little...
3 tags
Learning from games
Bob Cringely wrapped up a three-part series on education this weekend. The series (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) provides some salient insights into our current educational system. For example, in the final article of the series Bob points out that the actual goals of the educational system don’t often match up to the lofty ideals that are often attached to it:
Part of any answer is...
4 tags
OOP is a tool
I spotted this comment to a lengthy article about the proper use of inheritance in Object Oriented programming:
On one of the ‘communities,’ someone had a sarcastic response to the
Final == Good article: To boil the article down: OOP is hard.
Let’s make it as non-object-oriented as possible so that things don’t
get too complicated!
I think that’s actually...
March 2008
5 posts
1 tag
Cringely on Education
Cringely on education: While it is fine for society to create opportunities for advancement, what’s more important is removing BARRIERS to advancement. And for the most part that’s not what we are about.
“The user manual is a list of software design mistakes.”
– Quoted in Could software be a list of business process mistakes?
“Every revolutionary idea evokes three stages of reaction. They may be summed up...”
– Arthur C. Clarke
“There are the languages everyone complains about, and there are the languages no...”
– Damien Katz: What Sucks About Erlang
“The fundamental lesson is that property rights are not—and never have...”
– History suggests copyright crusade is a lost cause
February 2008
6 posts
“[I]…said that I don’t need an IDE, he got mad and called me a name. It...”
– Static Languages: Rationalizations and Myths :: Steve Vinoski’s Blog
“The passion is impressive but the clarity, not so much.”
– Things I Learned At The Apple Store — Part 2
5 tags
Darcheology Screenshot
You ask and I deliver. Mark asked for a screenshot in a comment to my original post on Darcheology. So, here it is:
4 tags
Update to ANSI Smalltalk
While doing some Smalltalk related research, I ran across this announcement on Smalltalk.org from last October:
Fellow Smalltalkers,
I have had a conference call with representatives of INCITS and it seems that
getting the process restarted to revise the ANSI standard for Smalltalk is very
doable.
The first step is to submit a proposal for the project of working on the
...
4 tags
Darcheology beta announced
I have used darcs for about 2 years now and have been generally very pleased. One thing that has been missing is a good GUI tool for visualizing changes and managing your repository. Today John Clayton announced the availability of his Darcs repository explorer, Darcheology, as open source.
John has been working on Darcheology for a couple years and it looks quite good. It is still a beta...
“Is it more depressing to think that Microsoft, seemingly alone among industry...”
– Ars Technica: Knee-deep in the dead