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October 31, 2007
Fixture improvements
Just found out via the Rails Envy podcast about improvements to the much-derided Rails fixture implementation, recently added into the trunk. This addresses some of the problems that FixtureReplacement set out to cure. I'll be sticking with FixtureReplacement, however, because:...Posted by wincent at 3:51 PM
Windows
USB stick contents before visit to local print shop 5 PDF documents USB stick contents after visit to local print shop 5 PDF documents AutoRun.inf (with arch, uchg, hidden attributes all set; requires root privileges to delete) Data 9.exe RavMon.exe...Posted by wincent at 3:48 PM
October 30, 2007
Creating new daemon users on Leopard
I just made a curious realization while trying to build MySQL for Leopard: I don't know how to create new daemon user. No doubt this is ridiculously easy with Mac OS X Server, but in the non-server version it's far...Posted by wincent at 3:07 PM
On Leopard's stability
I was somewhat surprised to read in Michael Tsai's summary of John Siracusa's Leopard review (I'm not capable of wading my way through the entire, ridiculously prolix review) that he says it's stable: Well, the actual GM is just as...Posted by wincent at 4:10 AM
October 27, 2007
Net Monitor upgrade
I just bought an upgrade license for Net Monitor, seeing as the old version (4.1.1) I'm running won't work when I get my hands on Leopard. How long did I think about whether to make the purchase? About 2.3 seconds....Posted by wincent at 5:22 PM
October 25, 2007
PayPal breakages
So I just found out that when PayPal rolled out their new website they broke all of my payment links. It looks like it took as many as 9 hours for a user to report this to me, and I...Posted by wincent at 4:15 PM
October 23, 2007
MacBook Pro
I just organized a new MacBook Pro for my colleague with a very attractive developer discount (haven't read the terms and conditions but no doubt I'm forbidden to reveal the actual quantity). These machines, released back in June so still...Posted by wincent at 12:19 PM
October 22, 2007
On the internal-only Leopard GM
In "Indies Roll the Dice on Final Leopard", Steven Frank writes: It increasingly looks like we won't be getting access to the final build of Leopard until the same day our customers do. We have a close-to-final seed, but not...Posted by wincent at 1:26 PM
October 21, 2007
Why distributed version control
I just got an email from Uli Kusterer asking me to expand on my comments the other day that Ben Collins-Sussman doesn't "get" distributed version control: Could you maybe elaborate on your reasons as to why distributed version control is...Posted by wincent at 12:39 PM
October 18, 2007
Ben Collins-Sussman doesn't "get" distributed version control
Subversion developer Ben Collins-Sussman has just posted this piece of flamebait packed with emotionally-loaded mischaracterizations of people who use distributed version control systems like Git. Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS) are all the range (sic) among the alpha-geeks. They're thrilled...Posted by wincent at 5:02 PM
Internal encoding conversion benchmarks
Ruby has a (somewhat justified) reputation for being slow but one of the great things about it is that it is easy to write extensions for it in lightening-fast C. Despite the fact that for some time now C has...Posted by wincent at 2:30 AM
October 17, 2007
Allan Odgaard on file type detection in TextMate
I've never been able to get TextMate to reliably detect Ruby, Rails and RSpec files. Allan Odgaard, the author of TextMate, explains here how to bend the system to your will. I think there's something obviously wrong with the design...Posted by wincent at 7:00 PM
October 16, 2007
Tabs vs spaces
Linus weighs in, in typical fashion, on the tabs versus spaces debate: The only sane solution is the one the kernel and git have always used: tabs are 8 spaces wide, and anybody who disagrees can go screw themselves. Now,...Posted by wincent at 10:22 PM
October 15, 2007
Custom validation matcher
Thanks to FixtureReplacement my Rails model specs are looking awfully clean: describe User, 'validating the login name' do it 'should require it to be present' do u = new_user(:login_name => nil) u.should_not be_valid u.should have_at_least(1).errors_on(:login_name) end # examples continue here......Posted by wincent at 1:14 AM
October 13, 2007
The support holy grail
I'm getting closer to my support system "holy grail": the ability to have a web-based issue tracker (like Bugzilla) which you can control easily via email. Keeping everything on the web makes the development process much more visible and accessible...Posted by wincent at 5:56 PM
October 12, 2007
FixtureReplacement
Just added a FixtureReplacement cheatsheet to the Knowledge Base, seeing as the only documentation for the plug-in at the moment is in the form of a screencast (which isn't too easy to consult!). Normally I don't like overloading a Rails...More Development articles
Posted by wincent at 10:38 PM
Being nice
Sometimes I think people in the open source world could learn to be a lot nicer. I often see negative or hostile attitudes from more experienced people within a community towards less-experienced newcomers. Take this ticket for example: User runs...More Opinion articles
Posted by wincent at 7:22 PM
October 11, 2007
Bad UI design in Rails
A minor peeve about the rails commandline tool. When trying to upgrade an existing app using the new Rails 2.0 preview release you'll inevitably be presented with a choice like this: exists vendor/plugins exists tmp/sessions exists tmp/sockets exists tmp/cache exists...More Development articles
Posted by wincent at 3:39 PM
Attacking the spam time drain
The other day I wrote about how much time I waste each month on dealing with spam messages; specifically with training SpamAssassin to learn from its mistakes. Scott Guelich wrote in with a couple of suggestions to trim some time...More Miscellaneous articles
Posted by wincent at 2:32 AM
October 8, 2007
"Hello from Seattle" vs "Designed by Apple in California"
Well said: But really it's just a desperate desire to be like Apple, without even a smidgen of understanding of the culture code that makes Designed by Apple in California work. It's not even clear that anyone at Microsoft would...More Apple articles
Posted by wincent at 12:31 AM
October 5, 2007
Thinking about Changing UNIXes
Sho Fukamachi writes that he's thinking about switching away from RHEL 4. I've been thinking about a lot of the same issues lately and rather than cram my response into a comment on his post I'm instead writing it out...More Opinion articles
Posted by wincent at 6:33 PM
October 4, 2007
More Mail.app suckage
$ cd ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/listas/xcode-users.mbox $ ls -lh Messages total 48 -rw-r--r-- 1 wincent wincent 3K Oct 4 23:37 1722199.emlx -rw-r--r-- 1 wincent wincent 2K Oct 4 23:37 1722200.emlx -rw-r--r-- 1 wincent wincent 3K Oct 4 23:37 1722201.emlx -rw-r--r-- 1 wincent wincent...More Mac OS X articles
Posted by wincent at 11:49 PM
Rails scaling
Just found this page, and the interesting thing about it is how many hits per day you can expect to be able to serve with your new Rails app, depending on your hosting plan. I know it's only one data...More Net articles
Posted by wincent at 9:53 PM
Mail as a time drain
When I first got on the Internet I used to want to know about email as soon as it was sent to me. I always set the checking interval to the minimum available; I can't remember what this was at...More Miscellaneous articles
Posted by wincent at 6:55 PM
October 3, 2007
Mail spring cleaning
In general I never throw out any mail, apart from spam that is. I have personal mails dating back as far as 1996; prior to that I only had email at my university and I never had an archive of...More Miscellaneous articles
Posted by wincent at 7:33 PM
Daring Fireball
Several months ago Gruber made his full site feed available to non-subscribers. I may well be the only person that thinks this, but having tried it for a few months now I can say that I actually liked it the...More Opinion articles
Posted by wincent at 1:24 PM
Piracy
Simplifying dramatically, there are basically two main views on piracy among software developers. Take 1 The first is simply, don't worry about it. Let's take some examples. Kevin Hoctor writes: After years of being forced to design stronger and stronger...More Development articles
Posted by wincent at 9:56 AM
October 1, 2007
AppKit vs Foundation
Without a doubt I have a love-hate relationship with AppKit and Foundation. Basically it boils down to loving working with Foundation and hating working with AppKit. They're both amazing frameworks, but it's almost always AppKit that has me pulling my...More Cocoa articles
Posted by wincent at 12:26 PM
