Continuously Deployed

Rails tests gotcha with I18n.locale

2012-01-14T00:00:00-08:00

Ruby, Rails, TestingA example of a bad I18n rails test… Found some tests failing in a project because tests in different files would change I18n.locale, changes like this make your tests fail if the tests are not run in the standard order. since this took me awhile to track down, I thought I should share a quick example for others to find. So if you are having a issue like this remember to add a teardown method that resets I18n.locale to the default local.

Ruby processing: making it snow

2011-12-27T00:00:00-08:00

ruby, processing, graphicsI re-found a fun holiday project I did a couple years ago making snow with Ruby processing.

Cleaning up files after hacking

2011-12-17T00:00:00-08:00

system, adminThis blog was hacked awhile ago. It was annoying, I hadn’t updated my blog software for awhile and there was a security hole. It was a good learning experience of how to deal with the intrusion. It was also nice to be able to quickly whip together some scripts to help clean everything up. This let me see which files were recently modifiedfind . -type f -mtime -3 | grep -v "/Maildir/" | grep -v "/logs/" The exploiters were modifying my .htaccess and adding a few files of their own, this deleted their files This code helped remove exploit code that was injected into all of the pages on the site. After upgrading my software and installing security patches, a bit of other cleanup, and file permission fixes everything was back to normal.

ActiveRecord / Rails case insensitive ordering

2011-11-16T00:00:00-08:00

Rails, Ruby, ActiverecorderIt is pretty common to want to have the results of a query sorted by order. I wanted the results sorted by name on a user object. Oddly it is hard to find how to make a string based order case insensitive on google. So for other having the same issue, it is simple, just add lower(field) in the order clause and it will sort in a case insensitive manner. Now I don’t care when a user doesn’t capitalize the first letter of their name. User.order('lower(name)').all

Announcing NothingCalendar

2011-11-14T00:00:00-08:00

Ruby, Rails, learning, projectsI wanted a small project to play around with. A project that was small and simple that I could actually get done in my free time. An app I would use myself. I ended up deciding to build NothingCalendar, which was inspired by CalendarAboutNothing. It let’s users track events, anything they feel like tracking over time. Mark off days you worked out, kept to your diet, worked on writing, studied, quit smoking, or anything else. The idea was a simple way that I could add marks on a calendar on my phone, and have it sync-able and shareable. I also wanted it to be useable when you are offline, since phones loose connection often in metros, planes, lines, etc. One goal with the project is to keep it is small enough that I can build it and play around with different ideas. It is such a small app, that I could rewrite the entire thing with a new methodology if I wanted. Which is exactly what I plan on starting to do. I wanted a app that I could practice new skills and techniques on, while still being useful, and something I would use on a day to day basis. I started working on the project with the idea to build up a chain of doing some open source experimental development having a playground to try things and learn. A small app where I could push myself to look at new technologies, and to force myself to release them into a production environment, opposed to another one off script or tests that never see the light of day. I highly recommend forcing yourself to do a bit of development every day, it is recommended by a bunch of smart people (Andrew Hunt and David Thomas’s The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master, Chad Folwer’s The Passionate Programmer, Paul Graham’s Hackers and Painters). I was in part inspired by Chris Strom (@eee_c), who has done incredible work keeping up a chain and blogging about what he learns. NothingCalendar is a testament to what you can do in about 15 minutes a day. That is about how much time I have spent on it most evenings. Just forcing myself to do a bit every day, has led to my longest streak on CalendarAboutNothing (66 days at the moment). Just remembering to code a bit everyday, keeps the project in your mind, keeps you improving it. It also makes refactoring little things a perfect task, you only have a few minutes take something on. Complete a tiny refactoring of from a todo list and check it in. I frequently just check in #TODO comments, and grep for them when I don’t have much time or an idea of what to work on. After a tiny todo, call it a day and know you will have more time sometime soon to do something more substantial. Please give NothingCalendar a try, and let me know how it goes or any problems / feature ideas. I will will be working more more on it each day, and trying to rewrite large parts of the app using some new ideas.

working with Facebook Dialog Feed and urls with params

2011-11-13T00:00:00-08:00

Facebook’s documentation always sucks. There are many examples of working with facebooks dialog feed, but none of them include passing urls that have params. They are all simple examples like share ‘http://example.com’, well if you want to share ‘http://example.com?foo=bar&buzz=baz’ you are kind of out of luck. It took me far longer than I care to admite to figure out the right way to get facebook to share a link that included params. I was using ruby and rails, creating a link with _url and params, and then trying to encode it and send it to facebook. Below is what ended up working. Note that it seems to be a bit of an odd encoding, but it allows one to send urls with params and encoded ’?’ and ’&’ properly through facebook and have the share url include the params your expecting. facebook_shared\_url = action\_url({:foo => 'bar', :buzz => 'baz'})facebook\_url = "https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?app_id=#{FACEBOOK_CLIENT_ID}&redirect_uri=#{URI.encode(facebook_shared\_url).gsub('&','%26')}&description=#{text}&name=#{via}&link=#{URI.encode(facebook_shared\_url).gsub('&','%26')}"

Grep a filtered list of files

2011-11-12T00:00:00-08:00

I am working on a project that has view formats. Frequently when grepping the project, I want to grep only one format. I added a couple bash aliases to help me pipe a list of files to grep. Grepping through a specific list of files can be useful in many situations. Here is how to grep a list of files or set up quick aliases to make it easy to do. First you need to get a list of files, in my case I do this with find and looking for the touch format alias find_touch_views='find app/views/ -name "*.touch.erb"' This generates the list of files you want to grep, now you just pipe that list to grep using xargs to grep each file for a specific word. alias grep_touch_views='find_touch_views | xargs grep -Ri "$0"' in the end this lets me run grep_touch_views touch-nav Modify these to fit your needs and add them to your ~/.bash_profile alias find_touch_views='find app/views/ -name "*.touch.erb"'alias grep_touch_views='find_touch_views | xargs grep -Ri "$0"' which gives me a list of all the views that contain touch-nav.

Git clone from local filesystem to fetch local branches

2011-10-29T00:00:00-07:00

Github, Git, environment, So I am working on a project that has a very long test suite. Yes, that is a problem and we should start to do something about it. For now that problem exists but it leads to wanting to do some weird things. I wanted to work on code in a branch, while my tests were running in another. I had cloned the project twice so I had two versions, of the project, the issue was the branch I wanted to work in hadn’t been pushed remote. I then realized since it is git I could easily solve the problem by pointing my second version of my project at the first and fetching all of my local branches! Git is pretty great that you can solve things like this. It also means you could easily just run git off a shared network filesystem, no reason to really setup a fancy git server. Here are the steps make a second version of a project and then fetch the local branches from your first version # if you haven’t clone a second version of the project do that from the filesystem or the git server> cd project_2> git clone /Users/danmayer/projects/project_1> Cloning into project_1… # in the second version of your project add a remote repo pointing at the original version of the project on your filesystem> cd project_1> git remote add local /Users/danmayer/projects/project_1/> git fetch local> git branch #=> a list of the branches on your first projects directory This is a pretty simple thing to do, but when I ran into the issue it took me a bit of time to realize how simple it was to solve this problem. It also just illustrates just how versatile git really is.

Simplifying new gemset creation for RVM

2011-10-23T00:00:00-07:00

Ruby, environment, developmentI found myself annoyed that each time I created a new project I had to go through the same steps to create and setup my gemset. I am also trying to be better about automating things I do over and over. I decided I should put something in my .bash_profile to simplify my frequent task of making a new gemset on a brand new project. The manual way I ended up creating gemsets in the past, was:* cd to project_directory* rvm use ree (my preferred local ruby run time)* rvm gemset create projectGemSet* echo ‘rvm use ree@projectGemSet’ > .rvmrc* cd ../* cd project_directiory* agree to trust the .rvmrc file That is pretty simple, but gets a bit annoying to do over and over. I figured I could very quickly whip up a solution in my bash profile. Unfortunately, due to my shell scripting skills kind of sucking, I ended up using Ruby. Basically after adding my new ruby script to my .bash_profile, I can now just type ‘init_gemset newgemset’, and I will be left in my project using my new gemset. The final script is below. One thing to note is the time saved with automating a repetitive task vs. time spent to automate it. In the end because of spending a decent amount of time trying to write this as a shell script without using Ruby. I likely spent more time getting this script working, than it will ever save me. It also isn’t even fully reusable for other people in it’s current state (the .bash_profile function needs a full path to the ruby script in it, and my preferred RVM ruby is hard coded). It could be made more easily reusable / sharable (likely making it a gem, or sending a pull request to RVM itself with this as a feature). Doing this the fully ‘right’ way would just add more time spent, on something I initially did to save a few moments. I wanted to get back to what I was originally working on, and I had something that would work for me. So I will leave it here as a simple gist. Working on this also made me think about what is worth spending time automating. In terms of savings this likely wasn’t worth much, but there are many times that a repetitive task is really begging for automation.

ActiveRecord Association objects can act weird (bug in association#any?)

2011-10-02T00:00:00-07:00

Rails, RubyI found a weird issue when working with ActiveRecord AssociationProxy objects, they weren’t proxying the method correctly. The issue arose when trying to use the #any? method on an array which should be true when empty. When calling this on a AssociationProxy object that has 0 items it was returning false. Oddly enough inspecting or to_s the association and then calling #any? resulted in the correct behavior. It was so weird though that after looking at other options I ended up using the present?, which always behaved how I expected it to. Even weirder is the issue only presented itself in the rails server debug and production modes. It always acted as one would expect in rails console. I started to dig in more, but ended up yak shaving a lot of other stuff to try to learn exactly what the cause was. If anyone understands the issue better, I would be happy to know more. Until then, be aware that at least in the 2.3.X versions of rails, ActiveRecord AssociationProxy#any? acts funky and should not be trusted. Use a work around like present? or length > 0 (both worked correctly in console and on dev/production server environments). This is one of these issues where there is so much going on in the rails stack that it is hard to determine where the issue lies. So for those googling this issue, beware AssociationProxy.any? on has_many relationships. Example code:

Google Closure Compiler And Ruby

2011-07-04T00:00:00-07:00

I have repeatedly needed to compress / minify a collection of javascript files. Which I had been doing by hand with Google’s closure compiler. I started to get annoyed with this process and went looking for a better solution. If you are using Rails, there is a great solution using Jammit asset packager library for Rails. I was not using rails, and just needed something that could write the files on demand. A bit of quick searching came up withh this post Compressing Javascript Code With Google Closure Compiler And Ruby. It basically met my needs, but needed to be modified a bit to take a collection of files and write that collection of compresses files back to disk. Here is the solution I ended up with:

Emacs swap buffer window method

2011-06-05T00:00:00-07:00

So I really like split screen in emacs. I am in that mode pretty much all the time. One thing that annoyed me was opening a file on the side of the screen I wanted. Sometimes I want code left, tests right others it is project A left project B right or often server code left, client code right. Anyways I often opened a file on the wrong side of the screen and wanted to move the buffer. Previously I always closed the buffer, then switched to the other emacs window (C-x o) then reopened the file. This annoyed me to know end, so I finally went looking for a solution. I found something that was close, but not what I wanted, which swaps two buffers positions left and right, so I started with that code and modified it to do just what I want. I then bound the function to “C-x /” which wasn’t in use and I can now swap buffer windows with ease. Also, kind of fun to do a bit of lisp/emacs hacking and breaking out of my Ruby world a bit. If you notice I have it also close the current tab for the buffer and move the cursor context to the new buffer on the other side of the screen. Most people hate and don’t use tabs in emacs so that one tab closing could be commented out. I love tabs because I am a very spacial person and the tabs let me keep the physical location of the buffers in my head. This was written to run in Aquamacs, but will work equally well in standard emacs. Just drop it in your .emacs file or emacs config directory. Code can be found at this gist, Emacs swap buffer window

Force all Sinatra traffic to https

2010-08-07T00:00:00-07:00

I wanted to have all traffic on a site go through https. Since the site was on heroku. @env['rack.url_scheme'])=='https' wasn’t a sufficient way of detecting if on https. You need to also check (@env['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO']. Below I wrote a simple before filter which you could place in the production configuration. After talking with the author of rack-ssl-enforcer I got that patched to work on heroku as well. So that is an even simpler option. Anyways, I spent far to long googling sinatra https, sinatra ssl, sinatra over https, sinatra secure, and heroku https, and couldn’t find good pages on this for awhile. So here is the info for anyone else wanted to host secure Sinatra pages on heroku.

Adding Custom JavaScript Handlers for PhoneGap Android

2010-07-10T00:00:00-07:00

One of the advantages I mentioned about PhoneGap, was being able to write custom native code, and interface with it via JavaScript. Their Aren’t great example of how to do this out there, so I figured a quick blog post was in order. I search around for how to do this when getting started with PhoneGap, and the best example I could find was, Native messages for Android PhoneGap. Following this example, I was able to get my own Javascript interface working. Basically you create a class (using java for android example): I create this private class in the main Java class which extends DroidGap (the class that boots up PhoneGap and creates the webview UI). Then in your html you can call in javascript bridged Java functions like var myData = CUSTOM.getData(); which will return the java data (in this case a string) to the javascript. I have used the JS bride to begin new Android Activities, Close the WebView and move entirely to Native code. Background the WebUI to do something native for awhile, then return the WebView back to the front, Etc. This can be done similarly for the iPhone and Objective-C to Javascript with PhoneGap. This lets you leverage extra native flexibility while still building the majority of your app as JS, CSS, and HTML.

Mobile Development and My Recommendation for PhoneGap

2010-07-06T00:00:00-07:00

In the last month or so I have been exploring mobile development. I wrote basic native Android and iPhone apps. I also build cross platform apps using Rhodes, Titanium, and PhoneGap. I thought it would be good to share my thoughts and experiences on the mobile dev space. If you want full control and are doing a lot of local heavy processing (CPU bound) native is the way to go. I program to the web data without access I don’t do much interesting. When the whole app basically relies on live data I feel javascript, HTML, and CSS is the way to go. Not only am I already familiar with it, but basically the app can share code with the mobile site. Also, using JS, HTML, and CSS gives the most flexibility in terms of supporting multiple devices. Since I wasn’t using anything specific to a single mobile device or really pushing the hardware, I quickly moved away from fully native apps. It wasn’t worth the time and extra effort to write nearly the same app in Java, Objective C, and whatever else. Game developers, and those doing a bunch with video, photos, etc are probably most interested in native apps and probably won’t be as interested in other options. This lead me to explore Rhodes, Titanium, and PhoneGap as alternatives to purely native apps. All of which let you leverage HTML and CSS for building a UI. Rhodes lets you write code in Ruby using a MVC framework. You leverage html (erb/haml) views using a Ruby back end to make remote requests, interact with a DB, and interact with native phone components. It is a cool framework, and obviously since it is Ruby, I enjoyed writing the code. However, it obscured the actual process of making an app for a device a bit much for my comfort. If something went wrong anywhere in the stack or if you wanted to break out of the Rhodes way to do something native on a platform it was difficult to do. It tries to manage the entire app development end to end hiding any per device customizations away from you. Since I wanted to be able to use some existing libraries for Android and iPhones, this limitation was a dealbreaker. Titanium and PhoneGap use the same basic approach as each other providing a javascript library, which interfaces with native code for each device. You write an app in JS/HTML/CSS and make calls to the JS library to interact with native elements like the accelerometer, GPS, buttons, etc. I think it’s a big win to be able to write most of the app in familiar web languages basically utilizing Ajax and local storage to give a nice mobile experience. Getting up and running on either Titanium or PhoneGap was painless. Again, in the end I wanted more control over some native components which caused me to choose PhoneGap over Titanium. While the concept is the same for both of these products, their approach is very different. Titanium is a bit more all or nothing of an approach, you develop in Titanium’s little world and it is best to not go out ofit. PhoneGap takes a extremely lightweight and minimalist approach to getting your project running on each device. It gives you basically the bare necessities and gets out of your way. PhoneGap doesn’t try to configure the build environment and it doesn’t manage simulators. To create a app with PhoneGap for any mobile platform you point to the same web directory (HTML, CSS, JS, and images), then generate a native app for the device. At that point you have the same native app project you would have if you were to start from scratch but you have a few nice libraries and code started for you. If you don’t like the way PhoneGap does something, that is fine delete it, override it, extend it. You need to do something native PhoneGap doesn’t support add your own JS handlers and interact with new or existing native code. I needed to allow for FaceBook connect login on Android, which PhoneGap doesn’t support no problem. FaceBook maintains a Android SDK, which I imported into my PhoneGap project and added JS handlers which call to the FaceBook Android native code. There is a bug in Androids SSL cert verification for WebKit that was causing errors for HTTPS access, drop into java override the SSL Cert verification and fixed that. This would be difficult to do with Rhodes or Titanium because they don’t allow you easily write and interact with your own native code. The project has to work only through the API provided to you to stay cross compatible. Which is great in some ways, but very limiting if you want to break out and just tweak a few little things. I have been extremely happy working with PhoneGap, it rocks. It lets you build a native mobile app as a locally cached and privileged mobile website. You can leverage existing mobile site code for the native app. It will still be better than a pure website experience. It lets you piggyback on skill web developers already have. It is a great way to make use of HTML5 local DBs, local data, and HTML templates. It encourages you follow best practices for building a mobile site that works offline and requests only minimal JSON so it can fast over slow internet. Before building an app with PhoneGap I recommend building a mobile site. Learn about best practices for the mobile web. If you are new to developing sites for mobile, I highly recommend following the recommendations from Yehuda Katz on building great mobile sites. He discusses some things specific to Rails 3, but mostly just good JS practices. In many ways when building a PhoneGap app you are just building a mobile website. You have access to utilizing some native things that you can’t with pure HTML/CSS. Local storage is a good example, it is supported by HTML5, but the earlier Android webkit didn’t support it. Using PhoneGap you have local storage on old devices and it can use standard HTML5 local storage on newer devices. Last but not least, PhoneGap has a great active community. Drop into #phonegap on freenode and people are always around to help out. The mailing list has a constant flow of questions and answers. While PhoneGap docs are a little out of date, there are people actively working on improving them. There are many example applications and open code on github to check out how to use PhoneGap. Also, the code is small and simple enough it is a great project to get involved in and give back. After working with it awhile, you will start to understand the internals and could help contribute patches, features, and plugins to the community.

The Ruby-fitbit API has been updated

2010-07-03T00:00:00-07:00

More about it can be found on here, Ruby-fitbit api on github. Also, the original announcement can be found on my blog. Basically there is now detailed access to any of the data types for any given day. This can be used to backup your fitbit or gather the data for your own charting purposes. Which I will likely start taking advantage of soon for my fitbit blog widget. Example: ~/projects/ruby-fitbit(master) > ruby bin/ruby-fitbit MYEMAIL MYPASS steps 06/22/2010Calories Burned 1012Steps Taken 0Milkes Walked .00Activity Levels Durations:Sedentary 16hrs 7minLightly 0minFairly # => {fitbit.fairly_active}Very 0minsteps data for data Tue Jun 22 00:00:00 -0400 2010+——————————–+——-+| 0 | 1 |+——————————–+——-+| Tue Jun 22 21:50:00 -0400 2010 | 91.0 || Tue Jun 22 05:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 16:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 10:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 19:55:00 -0400 2010 | 69.0 || Tue Jun 22 14:20:00 -0400 2010 | 15.0 || Tue Jun 22 08:45:00 -0400 2010 | 1.0 || Tue Jun 22 03:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 23:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 01:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 18:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 12:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 06:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 21:40:00 -0400 2010 | 11.0 || Tue Jun 22 10:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 04:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 16:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 19:45:00 -0400 2010 | 543.0 || Tue Jun 22 14:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 08:35:00 -0400 2010 | 347.0 || Tue Jun 22 03:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 23:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 01:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 17:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 12:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 06:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 21:30:00 -0400 2010 | 25.0 || Tue Jun 22 10:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 04:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 15:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 19:35:00 -0400 2010 | 19.0 || Tue Jun 22 14:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 08:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 02:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 23:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 06:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 00:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 17:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 12:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 21:20:00 -0400 2010 | 23.0 || Tue Jun 22 15:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 10:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 04:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 19:25:00 -0400 2010 | 535.0 || Tue Jun 22 02:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 13:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 08:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 23:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 11:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 06:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 00:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 17:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 21:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 15:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 10:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 04:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 19:15:00 -0400 2010 | 595.0 || Tue Jun 22 08:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 02:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 13:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 22:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 17:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 11:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 06:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 00:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 21:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 04:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 15:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 09:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 19:05:00 -0400 2010 | 425.0 || Tue Jun 22 13:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 07:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 02:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 22:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 00:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 17:10:00 -0400 2010 | 22.0 || Tue Jun 22 11:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 06:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 20:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 09:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 04:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 15:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 18:55:00 -0400 2010 | 62.0 || Tue Jun 22 13:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 07:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 02:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 22:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 05:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 00:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 17:00:00 -0400 2010 | 35.0 || Tue Jun 22 11:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 20:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 15:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 09:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 03:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 18:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 02:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 13:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 07:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 22:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 11:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 05:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 00:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 16:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 20:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 14:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 09:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 03:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 18:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 07:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 01:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 13:00:00 -0400 2010 | 91.0 || Tue Jun 22 22:15:00 -0400 2010 | 445.0 || Tue Jun 22 16:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 11:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 05:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 20:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 14:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 09:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 03:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Wed Jun 23 00:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 07:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 01:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 18:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 12:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 22:05:00 -0400 2010 | 80.0 || Tue Jun 22 16:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 10:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 05:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 20:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 03:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 14:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 09:00:00 -0400 2010 | 370.0 || Tue Jun 22 23:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 12:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 07:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 01:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 18:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 21:55:00 -0400 2010 | 69.0 || Tue Jun 22 16:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 10:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 05:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 20:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 08:50:00 -0400 2010 | 13.0 || Tue Jun 22 03:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 14:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 23:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 18:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 12:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 06:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 01:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 21:45:00 -0400 2010 | 17.0 || Tue Jun 22 05:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 16:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 10:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 19:50:00 -0400 2010 | 155.0 || Tue Jun 22 14:15:00 -0400 2010 | 40.0 || Tue Jun 22 08:40:00 -0400 2010 | 203.0 || Tue Jun 22 03:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 23:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 01:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 17:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 12:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 06:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 21:35:00 -0400 2010 | 53.0 || Tue Jun 22 10:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 04:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 16:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 19:40:00 -0400 2010 | 438.0 || Tue Jun 22 14:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 08:30:00 -0400 2010 | 12.0 || Tue Jun 22 02:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 23:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 06:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 01:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 17:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 12:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 21:25:00 -0400 2010 | 32.0 || Tue Jun 22 15:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 10:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 04:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 19:30:00 -0400 2010 | 499.0 || Tue Jun 22 02:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 13:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 08:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 23:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 12:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 06:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 00:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 17:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 21:15:00 -0400 2010 | 67.0 || Tue Jun 22 15:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 10:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 04:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 19:20:00 -0400 2010 | 604.0 || Tue Jun 22 08:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 02:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 13:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 23:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 17:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 11:50:00 -0400 2010 | 10.0 || Tue Jun 22 06:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 00:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 21:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 04:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 15:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 09:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 19:10:00 -0400 2010 | 291.0 || Tue Jun 22 13:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 08:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 02:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 22:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 17:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 11:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 06:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 00:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 20:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 04:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 15:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 09:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 19:00:00 -0400 2010 | 161.0 || Tue Jun 22 13:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 07:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 02:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 22:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 00:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 17:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 11:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 05:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 20:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 09:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 04:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 15:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 18:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 13:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 07:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 02:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 22:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 05:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 00:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 16:55:00 -0400 2010 | 37.0 || Tue Jun 22 11:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 20:35:00 -0400 2010 | 26.0 || Tue Jun 22 15:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 09:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 03:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 18:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 01:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 13:05:00 -0400 2010 | 75.0 || Tue Jun 22 07:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 22:20:00 -0400 2010 | 22.0 || Tue Jun 22 11:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 05:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 00:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 16:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 20:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 14:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 09:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 03:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 18:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 07:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 01:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 12:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 22:10:00 -0400 2010 | 268.0 || Tue Jun 22 16:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 11:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 05:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 20:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 03:30:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 14:40:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 09:05:00 -0400 2010 | 74.0 || Tue Jun 22 23:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 12:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 07:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 01:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 18:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 22:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 16:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 10:50:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 05:15:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 20:05:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 08:55:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 03:20:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 14:30:00 -0400 2010 | 16.0 || Tue Jun 22 23:45:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 18:10:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 12:35:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 07:00:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 || Tue Jun 22 01:25:00 -0400 2010 | 0.0 |+——————————–+——-+289 rows in setdone

Javascript document.addEventListener PhoneGap deviceready issues

2010-06-26T00:00:00-07:00

I had some issues with the deviceready callback. I had seen some similar posts, and figured I could save someone some time. Basically when using document.addEventListener order matters a lot. It all comes down to exactly when this line is loaded and what is already defined.

document.addEventListener("deviceready", deviceSetup, true);

We have custom JS, and originally it was loaded second, so the deviceready event was fired before, the listener was set.

After that I was still having an issue and it turns out the method you define register as the callback needs to be defined before you add the listener. So having this in our lscustom.js works.

var deviceSetup = function(){   console.log("Device Setup"); };     document.addEventListener("deviceready", deviceSetup, true); While, the below fails. document.addEventListener("deviceready", deviceSetup, true); var deviceSetup = function(){   console.log("Device Setup"); };

Anyways since I ended up wasting a bit of time searching and debugging this issue, I figured I would share my debugging session.

Code Highlighting on MovableType

2010-06-21T00:00:00-07:00

def code_highlighting puts "this is a highlight"end I found a syntaxhighlighter plugin, which makes it simple to use SyntaxHighlighter on Movable Type. After downloading and unzipping the plugin in your MT directory. Just add the

 MTSyntaxHighlighterInclude

tag to your templates and then choose the SyntaxHighlighter format when making a post.

Appcelerator Titanium older SDKs

2010-06-16T00:00:00-07:00

If you have a need to work with a app on a older SDK Titanium doesn’t make it very easy for you. In fact they don’t seem to have historical files available for download or any info on how to install older SDKs. You can get a old version of the 0.8.x (in this case 0.8.2) SDK here:Titanium 0.8.2 SDK download And after a bunch of searching I found that you should move the file on OSX to this location:/Library/Application Support/Titanium/mobilesdk/osx/0.8.2 After that restart Titanium and the SDK should be available to you in the SDK dropdown when you create or import projects.

Ruby Dev Available for Contracting

2010-06-12T00:00:00-07:00

Avdi a ex-Devver, developer, has just announced that ShipRise LLC is open for business. He is looking to do freelancing/contracting for Ruby and other hard development problems. I can attest to Avdi’s skill in breaking down hard problems (like distributed test running) into elegant simple solutions. If you are looking for a great dev to work with you on a project, ping him. Besides Ruby and general coding, Avdi is ready to help with “Dispersed team facilitation”, which he has long term experience with. If you have a small distributed team of developers, he can help get everyone on the right path to work together, while being apart. He is gather a ton of information to help remote workers at his new blog Wide Teams.

New gig at LivingSocial

2010-06-03T00:00:00-07:00

livingsocial, ruby, jobsI just started my new gig at LivingSocial. I had been a fan of their product ever since moving to DC. I had loved how it got groups of my friends to get together and plan something. I also really enjoyed how it gave me new ideas of cool things to do in my city. Especially since I just moved to DC and didn’t really know what to do. We have bought deals to restaurants we wanted to try, restaurants we already knew and loved, kennedy center brunch with a group of friends, a wine tour with a group of 5 of us going. We have really enjoyed the savings, but even more so that it helps get us out there doing and trying new things. Anyways I will be joining the development team, obviously doing Ruby stuff, since that is what I am focused on now. The team is already impressive and has accomplished a lot and scaled the site to request levels I have yet to deal with. I am excited to get to work and learn with the team, while bringing some of my skills from past experiences to help with the team. Yesterday, I pushed my first code live to production, which made me an official member of the team. Now to dig in and wrap my head around this code base.

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Ruby Fitbit API

2010-05-26T00:00:00-07:00

Fitbit has been slow to release an official API, so I started work on a screen scraping version. It will become a nice gem interface to the real API when it is released. It is pretty limited at the moment, only able to pull the most basic current days info. You can check it out here ruby-fitbit on github. Example output

~/projects/ruby-fitbit(master) > ruby bin/ruby-fitbit my@email.com MYPASSCalories Burned 834Steps Taken 552Milkes Walked .23Activity Levels Durations:Sedentary 11hrs 28minLightly 19minFairly 16minVery 0min    done

I also connected a quick sinatra app on Heroku to it so that I could embed the data in my personal blog as a widget. I will clean that up and release the code for it soon. Here is the widget at the moment. I need to add good CSS that is customizable by the user. It would also be good to make it easy for others to host their own widgets opposed to just my own data.

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Converting Movable Type to Tumblr

2010-05-23T00:00:00-07:00

Continuing my work on converting this blog to be a dev blog, I moved over all non development and computer related posts to my personal blog. I just converted about 1,000 posts and 3,000 comments from MovableType to Tumblr and Disqus. I decided I would host my personal blog on Tumblr, which has been interesting so far. Sucking the old posts and comments out of MovableType and pushing them to Tumblr wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. Although it gave me a chance to enjoy on of my favorite parts of being a developer. If something doesn’t exist and I want it, I can built it. So I set off to write a script that would take a Movable Type blog export and import all of the posts into Tumblr and push all of the comments to Disqus. While it wasn’t the easiest thing to do, it wasn’t that difficult either. I have slowly built up a collection of various utilities to help port from Movable Type to Wordpress, or from wordpress.org to wordpress.com. Things that help clean up formatting or remove javascript and replace it with something allowed on wordpress.org. I added my conversion script to the inconveniently named MT_WP_Converter git repo. View MovableType to Tumblr Converter Script Quick Gotchas:* There are lots of older or bad example code on how to use the disqus API out there, I had a problem posting comments because all of the POST endpoints must end with a ’/’, which I didn’t know. This forum post helped me fix an issue posting to disqus with rest client.* Remember to turn off the facebook publishing for tumblr, before doing the import or testing it. I didn’t remember this and published the same test post on facebook about 40 times. Oops!

Improving my Emacs Configurations

2010-05-14T00:00:00-07:00

Emacs, Aquamacs, emacs starter kit, developmentI have been using Emacs as my default editor for awhile now. My emacs setup was a hodge podge of various plugins, code from friends, blogs, etc… It wasn’t organized and was hard to maintain and fine tune. I decided it was time to get my emacs config under control, and under git so it was portable and easy to revert update etc. I looked at a couple options for existing Emacs configuration setups for Ruby. Emacs Starter Kit Topfunky’s Emacs Starter Kit Aquamacs Starter Kit In the end I ended up going with Aquamacs Starter Kit, namely because I have been a fan of Aquamacs for awhile, and already new my way around it’s system pretty well. The original Starter kit, from Technomancy, doesn’t play nicely with Aquamacs and leads to some issues. Some people have forks that are supposed to work better with Aquamacs, but it seems the kit built from the ground up for Aquamacs works best. Topfunky’s project is based on the original emacs starter kit, but has been customized to work well with Carbon Emacs, which is more cross compatible than Aquamacs, so your emacs config is more likely to be portable to all unix systems as well as OS X with Carbon emacs. This looks like a really interesting option, but I decided I liked some of the nice extra sugar that Aquamacs provides. First install Aquamacs starter kit There were a few things that I couldn’t stand from the defaults in the Aquamacs Starter Kit and removed also some modifications that I added. ### Disabling/Removing some Starter Kit features You likely installed your starter kit to a location like, ‘/Users/danmayer/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/aquamacs-emacs-starter-kit’, go there to find the files for modification. Disabling the emacs Twitter client, sorry I like my twitter to be entirely separate from my dev environment. Then edit ‘init.el’:;;(autoload 'twitter-get-friends-timeline "twitter" nil t);;(autoload 'twitter-status-edit "twitter" nil t);;(global-set-key "\C-xt" 'twitter-get-friends-timeline);;(add-hook 'twitter-status-edit-mode-hook 'longlines-mode) Disable Ruby-electric, which tries to complete various matched chars and statements as you type like ‘, {}. (), begin/end, if/end, etc… It drives me nuts and breaks my thought process. Edit ‘misc-mode-tweaks.el’:;;(require 'ruby-electric);;(add-hook 'ruby-mode-hook;; (lambda nil;; (require 'ruby-electric);; (ruby-electric-mode);; (flymake-mode-on))) ### Additions to Starter Kit I saw a Emacs package to add flog score inline to ruby method scores and thought that sounded like a great addition to help keep my methods concise, so I added that, to my .emacs: ;; ruby-complexity flog scores for methods http://github.com/topfunky/emacs-starter-kit/tree/master/vendor/ruby-complexity/(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/vendor/ruby-complexity/") (require 'linum)(require 'ruby-complexity)(add-hook 'ruby-mode-hook (function (lambda () (flymake-mode) (linum-mode) (ruby-complexity-mode)))) I also liked some of the options from defunkt’s Textmate minor mode. First ‘cd ~/.emacs.d/vendor; git clone git://github.com/defunkt/textmate.el.git’ Again added to my .emacs file: ;; textmate bindings for some nicer key combos for common actions(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/vendor/textmate.el")(require 'textmate)(textmate-mode) I am just starting to get going with improving my Emacs setup, so I am sure I will likely be making additional changes. The current changes above are checked into my fork of the project, feel free to pull the above changes if you’d like. If you have any great Emacs tips, tricks, or plugins I should add let me know as I am sure it can just keep getting better, but I am pretty happy for now.

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Introducing Ruby Resume, a project to create and host your resume

2010-05-10T00:00:00-07:00

Ruby, Github, Open source, Programming, Heroku, Markdown, Tools, ResumeThe Ruby Resume project, is a project I started to make it easier for Ruby developers to create, host, share their resume, and keep it up to date. It is an open source project, that anyone can use to help manage their resume online. It offers a variety of options and you can take or leave any part you wish. Basically, you fork the project, alter some things for your needs, and can contribute interesting additions back to the shared Ruby Resume project. The project uses Sinatra, Markdown, and a collection of Rake tasks to get the job done. What does the Ruby Resume project do?- Supports deploying your resume to Heroku in a variety of formats.

Easily deploy your app to any Sinatra compatible host
Allows simple publishing of your resume to your github personal page.
It makes it simple to publish your resume as a gem. I got the idea for a personal resume gem from Eric Davis.
It uses Markdown, which integrates well with Github Jobs
It currently suppots HTML, LaTeX, and Markdown. Soon it will support PDF, RTF, etc… I built this because I had to publish and start updating my resume again after not dealing with it for 3 years. I wanted something that would simplify the whole process. I wanted my resume under git, and I wanted to be able to quickly deploy any changes online and support a large number of formats. Anyways check out the source on Github and the Readme which gives simple instructions on how to use the project. Or what the video below which demonstrates how to use this project for your own resume. Live Examples:- My resume on Heroku
My Github personal page
My personal resume gem is, danmayer-resume, which can be installed using gem install danmayer-resume, then execute danmayer-resume Ruby Resume Project from dan mayer on Vimeo.
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This blog will be changing soon

2010-05-04T00:00:00-07:00

thoughts BlogIt will becoming my development blog. I am currently working on updating and reconfiguring the system, but you can look forward to many changes around here. If you want to follow and read my more personal blog posts, head over to WastedBrains, which will host my non development blogging and thoughts.

A archive of my last project

2010-05-01T00:00:00-07:00

Since Caliper is shutting down on April 30th, I made a little video to show what it did, and explain it’s purpose. It isn’t really promotional, but if people ever want a reference of something I worked on this should help. Caliper Screencast from dan mayer on Vimeo.

Dan Mayer Resume

2009-04-18T00:00:00-07:00

Download file Daniel Mayerdan@mayerdan.com503-819-3246821 Maryland Ave NE #305Washington, DC 20002 http://github.com/danmayerhttp://mayerdan.com DevverFounder / CTO / Ruby Software DeveloperApril 2008 - Present (2 years 1 month)Software startup to make the lives of developers easier. Originally, developed accelerated testing for Ruby developers. More recently, launched getcaliper.com, which builds code analytics for all Rubygems and builds metrics for public and private git-based Ruby projects. * Built accellerated testing tool, using distributed computing services to run developer tests * Developed a cloud-based continious integration server and notification services * Developed cloud-based code metrics and analytics project analyzer, which integrated with Rubygems to provide analytics on all public Rubygems and many OSS git-based projects (7000+ projects) * Member of a distributed agile team – practiced daily standups, remote pair programming, and continious integration * Worked extensively with cloud based services and distributed computing techniques. (EC2, Beanstalkd queues, Schemaless SimpleDB, S3) * Developed and deployed EventMachine, Merb, Rails, and Sinatra in production environments. PretheoryFounderMay 2007 - April 2008 Small Denver-based consumer web startup. Built Seekler.com to help people find the best of everything online by created social, community-based top 10 lists on consumer-driven topics or products. IndigioJava Lead EngineerAugust 2006 - May 2007 Developed web sites for Fortune 500 companies. Managed a small Java team with local and international remote employees. ISTJava Software EngineerDecember 2005 - June 2006Developed full lifecycle of a DOD distributed syncronous infrastructure in Java. Education: University of ColoradoBoulder, COB.S., Computer ScienceGPA: 3.185 Skills:Ruby, Rails, Sinatra, EventMachine, DataMapper, Linux, OSX, Javascript (JQuery/Prototype), HTML, AWS, Distributed Computing, Apache, MySql, Postgres, Schemaless DBs (NoSql), Pair Programming, Test-Focused Development, Distributed Teams, Developer team management, Participating in Ruby OSS software, Active on Github, building custom protocal EventMachine-based protocals, building restful webservice API’s

Refactoring makes me happy

2008-07-29T00:00:00-07:00

I still get such a kick out of refactoring and shrinking down code. I try not to shrink it to the point that it is harder to read. I think some people get a little overzealous with refactoring and obscure so much of the code that it is no longer that readable, or everything is 20 levels deeper than it should be when you are in a debugger trying to trace a programs execution. Anyways I was cleaning up a bunch of little TODOs or ugly sections of code that had been building up in some of our files. It felt good, and should make things even simpler moving forward.

Quicksort in Processing.js

2008-05-28T00:00:00-07:00

I always liked computer visualization. I think it is fun and interesting, and drawing Mandelbrot for the first time brought a smile to my face. I always thought I understood sorting, AI, search, and other algorithms best when you could really see them in action. I always enjoyed little videos or applets of a bunch of different sorting algorithms comparing their differences and speeds. I don’t really have time right now to do a whole bunch, but when I saw processing ported to javascript I thought I really would have to write a visualization for at least one sort just for the fun of playing around with a cool project. So here is a link to my Quicksort in Processing.js, it will only work in the very newest browsers (FF3, Opera 9.5, and other beta browsers… feel free to try it out on anything worst thing that will happen is just an empty box… but it will not likely do anything on older browsers). Anyways, just some fun coding to play around with… If anyone can figure out how to make the double buffering / frame rate look good I would love a fix to make the animation run smoothly.

iTunes Stalling on Windows XP

2008-02-25T00:00:00-08:00

I have been meaning to write this little tutorial ever since I fixed my iTunes on windows XP. I have a pretty good computer (3.4 ghz 1Gb ram), so I was confused when switching from WinAmp to iTunes to find my music randomly stalling. If i was running something process intensive like compiling or even just loading a new program my music would stutter on XP. I search around the web and found that others were having this problem, but not many had a good solution. After browsing around the web, I found that the stuttering in my music was caused when iTunes didn’t get enough of the CPU to process the music file. So when something would jump up and use 90% of my CPU iTunes would happily stop processing the music because it didn’t have a high enough process priority to keep a couple percent of CPU for itself. When playing music in the background iTunes only needs 3%-4% to play the music. So now knowing the problem I searched for solutions and many just said that every time they started iTunes they would open the Windows Task Manager go to the processes tab and right click on iTunes to set the priority of the process to high. This did in fact work, but now I had to do that every time that I openned iTunes which was really annoying. So I continued looking for a better solution. There are special windows programs out there, most of them cost money, that will monitor which processes are running on the system and automatically change the process priority on any app you tell the system to increase the priority to whatever settings you choose. This seemed like and OK solution but now having an app running all the time checking my processes and just some other app that could cause problems, seemed bad. It also seems that processes aren’t as stable if you switch their priority after they begin, it is best to set the priority as they are started. So off searching for a solution I found that you can start processes in does and pass what priority you want to start the process. So I decided to just hack up a little script which would launch iTunes from dos with a process priority of ‘High’. to run a windows app at a different process priority than the default you can create a file named “appName.bat” (in this case iTunes.bat), place this file in the same directory as the executable you want to run with a higher priority. Then edit the bat file (you can edit it in notepad). Add this line to the file start /high iTunes.exe (or start /priority_setting application.exe) Save your bat file… Now all you have to do is create shortcuts to the new bat file instead of the shortcuts pointing directly the application. To create a shortcut right click on your bat file and select ‘Create Shortcut’. If you want the shortcut to have the same icon as the original app instead of the dos icon, right click the shortcut and got to properties, then the ‘Shortcut’ tab, and click Change Icon. Select browse an application to search for an icon in, then select the application you are creating a shortcut for (in this case iTunes.exe), it will display the available icons select the one your want. Anyways, I hope this helps anyone else having trouble getting audio to play smooth on windows XP with iTunes. I have also used this method to speed up some other processes that I always want running full speed on windows, with pretty good success.

online resources for computer science students

2008-01-20T00:00:00-08:00

50 killer online resources for computer science students. I thought it was a decent list and figured I would share it. Dave sorry their is stuff about computers on my blog, I know it bothers you… You never called me when you were in Denver, so um… were even or something.

Ruby on Rails built in string shortcuts

2007-10-16T00:00:00-07:00

There are some great string munipulation shortcuts in rails. I thought this was a good write up and little collection of some of the most useful functions. Rails string shortcuts

Always use lenth on ruby collections

2007-09-07T00:00:00-07:00

This bug never got me, but it is a good little ruby best practice to follow. So remember when ever using ruby collections use .length call not the .size call… Why use length on all ruby collections.

Amazing Image Resizing

2007-08-21T00:00:00-07:00

This is the coolest image resizing I have ever seen, I love that your can resize to erase objects out of photos, awesome… Amazing Image Resizing

Finished Rails Book

2007-08-12T00:00:00-07:00

I finally finished a reading the rails book all the way through. I keep putting it off and reading other books because reading straight through a programming book is boring. Yippie for finishing that up, and I learn some more little rails tricks that should be helpful. Next up Linux System Administration and Backup and Recovery!

Using Rails link_to_if

2007-07-31T00:00:00-07:00

There are a lot of great helper methods in rails, and I need to remember to use more of them, one I over looked for a long time that I have found useful is link_to_if <%= link_to_if logged_in?, “#{item.name}”, :controller => ‘items’, :action => ‘show’, :id => item %> replaces the much longer and more verbose: <%- if logged_in? %><%= link_to , “#{item.name}”, :controller => ‘items’, :action => ‘show’, :id => item %><%- else %><%= item.name %><%- end %> I like being able to replace five confusing lines with one single simple solution. The link_to_if helper writes a link if the condition is met, otherwise it just outputs the text that would have been in the link. Very cool. Also if you want to use Ajax forms with multiple submit buttons in Rails, here is the solution. Lastly if you are trying to write a selector and want to make sure the test is returning the html you expect you can add puts @response.body into the test after the page call and see the response. This has been useful to me a few times.

Highly useful assert_select

2007-06-26T00:00:00-07:00

I find myself using the assert_select a lot while doing testing and rails. I have had to keep looking up different examples depending on the situation. I have found that this page seems to have most everything I need when I can’t remember it off the top of my head. Rails assert select examples

Ruby rails testing

2007-06-12T00:00:00-07:00

My roommate made a great post on rails testing so I thought I would share that here. Testing faster in ruby on rails.

Ruby email to rss

2007-05-20T00:00:00-07:00

A simple ruby email2rss example When I was searching for some basic ruby scripts to download pop email I came across the email 2 Rss project on Ruby forge. Since I noticed there was no code available for the project yet I figured I would make a quick version up and make the code available, so anyone else searching for similar examples would have a starting point. This code is just a functional example, but doesn’t have any real options or error checking so use at your own risk. Download the source to Ruby Email to RSS Feed

require 'net/pop'require 'rss/maker'    version = "2.0" # ["0.9", "1.0", "2.0"]destination = "/archive/emailFeed.xml" # local file to write    #create a new email Feedcontent = RSS::Maker.make(version) do |rss|  rss.channel.title = "Dan Email Feed"  rss.channel.link = "http://www.pretheory.com"   rss.channel.description = "My newest emails"   rss.items.do_sort = true # sort items by date    Net::POP3.start('pop.yourDomain.com', 110,                    'userName', 'myPass') do |pop|    if pop.mails.empty?      puts 'No mail.'    else      i = 0      pop.each_mail do |m|   # or "pop.mails.each ..."        subject = m.header.split("\r\n").grep(/^Subject: /)[0]        subject = subject.gsub("Subject: ","")        subject = subject.gsub(":","")        subject = subject[0,15] if(subject.length > 15)        link = 'http://www.gmail.com'        body = m.pop        body = body[0,25] if(body.length > 25)                #create feed item        item = rss.items.new_item        item.title = subject        item.link = link        item.date = Time.now        item.description = body            i += 1      end      puts "#{pop.mails.size} mails popped."    end  endend    File.open(destination,"w") do |f|  f.write(content)end    puts 'Done. Thanks.'

Ruby Email Archiver

2007-05-20T00:00:00-07:00

Checking and receiving email via ruby. If you need to get emails and check emails via a ruby script this should get you started in the right direction. I needed to copy down about six thousand emails from my pop server, so I wrote up this little script. Ruby makes email simple, you just need to know where to look and unfortunately most searches result in finding a 3rd party library that costs a pretty penny for email actions in ruby. What you really need is the Net::POP3 or the Net::IMAP. After going through the quick documentation and seeing some of the available code examples, writing the code is straightforward. This is just a very simple example, with hardly any error checking. Download the source to Ruby Email Archiver

require 'net/pop'    Net::POP3.start('pop.yourdomain.com', 110,                    'userName', 'myPass') do |pop|  if pop.mails.empty?    puts 'No mail.'  else    i = 0    pop.each_mail do |m|   # or "pop.mails.each ..."      subject = m.header.split("\r\n").grep(/^Subject: /)[0]      subject = subject.gsub("Subject: ","")      subject = subject.gsub(":","")      subject = subject[0,10] if(subject.length > 10)      File.open("/archive/#{i}-#{subject}.txt", 'w') do |f|        f.write m.pop      end      #if you want to delete msg after archive      #m.delete      i += 1    end    puts "#{pop.mails.size} mails popped."  endend

Rails casts

2007-05-18T00:00:00-07:00

A great way to keep up with some rails tips and ideas. I have started watching rails casts when I am eating a snack, working out, or just have a few minutes. It is a great and simple way to keep rails ideas fresh in your head. Most of the tips are fairly basic for now, but I am hoping they start dipping into more complex rails solutions. Or how to break out of the framework when it makes sense. Railscasts

Really good post on regular expresions

2007-05-17T00:00:00-07:00

I found that this was a really good post on regular expressions. Just a good beginner walk through that will have you more comfortable looking at any regex you run into while debugging someone else’s code, or if your trying to add your own regular expressions yourself. Regular expression walk through

I am now at Pretheory

2007-05-16T00:00:00-07:00

I know I don’t actually post to this blog much at all, but I still occasionally add some stuff on it and I might slowly be bringing it back to life. So with that in mind I thought I should announce that I am now the co founder of a start up. Pretheory. If you want to keep up with the various projects we are working on the best place to check is over at the Pretheory blog. Currently we are programming in Ruby on Rails, and we are hoping to have our first project launched by early August. So if you have been following this blog at all, keep and eye on Pretheory now as well.

Good Startup Resources

2007-05-14T00:00:00-07:00

Here is a list of some good start up resources that I have begun to check out on the web. Paul Graham’s essays
Clay Shirky’s essays
OnStartups
Small Business Hub
Startup news
programming.reddit.com
Good start up books to read
Hopefully I will grow this list a bit more shortly, but for now that is some good information to get your started.

Eclipse Plugin Callisto

2007-01-31T00:00:00-08:00

This is a pretty cool project you can use via the update manager you just tell it the type of development you want to do (java swing/j2ee/java webapps/c++/ and others). Anyways it is pretty good and gets a bunch of plugins together and manages them for you, so if newer versions of one thing still require an older version of another plug in it deals with any incompatibility issues. You select what you want and then it will say you need other dependencies click the button that says get required. That seems to be it. Callisto peace,Dan

Spam bots try anything

2007-01-14T00:00:00-08:00

Well I have on many of my sites had to deal with and fight the onslaught of spam bots, but I still find them amusing some times. After a bug occurred on a production machine, I was looking at the logs and ran into many errors looking like this:

  2007-01-11 18:15:05,938 [TP-Processor4395]
  ERROR com.realestate.search.core.SearchController - java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: "http://valtrex-gs.****.com"2007-01-11 18:15:05,980 [TP-Processor4395]
  ERROR org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.[Catalina].[localhost].[/].[jsp] - Servlet.service() for servlet jspthrew exceptionjava.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: "http://valtrex-gs.***.com"       at java.lang.NumberFormatException.forInputString(NumberFormatException.java:48)

It seems this was a pretty dumb, but probably mildly successful bot. It started some search and found tons of web pages, every time it encountered a form, it would attempt to fill out the majority of the fields with the URL hoping to make it into generated pages, most common search terms, comments, user names, or anything that would possibly link to the URL and increase the sites page rank. I found it hilarious, because somewhere on our site it was trying to fill out number, date, and other fields with the URL which we threw errors on format exceptions and probably returned them to the form with an error about that field. The bot hasn’t given up, but hasn’t slammed us very hard. Either way it is another amusing tale, of spam bots running amok on the web. At least they can make me laugh sometimes…

Mysql null date

2006-12-18T00:00:00-08:00

I had an issue with java and hibernate returning a null date. java hibernate java.sql.SQLException: Value ‘0000-00-00’ can not be represented as java.sql.Date This just took a little longer to find the fix on a google search than I thought it should have so I post what I ended up doing to resolve the situation here: ?zeroDateTimeBehavior=convertToNull you add this to your jdbc connection url and it will convert the 0000-00-00 to the proper type for java to work with. More info here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/cj-upgrading.html#cj-upgrading-3-0-to-3-1 thanks to this thread, which had many other suggestions, but most of them were not helpful, but the one above saved my day. http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=649520&messageID=3824019 you can add this on the end of your hibernate connection file, like so…jdbc:mysql://{DB_IPADDRESS}:{DB_PORT}/{DB_NAME}?zeroDateTimeBehavior=convertToNull&profileSql=true

Soap Sucks

2006-11-19T00:00:00-08:00

I have said it for a long time now that XML and SOAP are bloated and most of the time the wrong way to do anything. Well it seems lead api developers are agreeing with me, it might have been the decade of XML but I hope to slowly see it fade to a hardly used only when needed standard, instead of the if it doesn’t use XML it obviously isn’t designed well. Soap i wasted so much time and clock cycle for projects that you never did well and were always replaced. let me say now I’d never choose to use SOAP and WSDL again. I was wrong

Java String isEmpty()

2006-11-19T00:00:00-08:00

I have heard the java string class will finally get the isEmpty method in an upcoming release. Lets hope it is in 1.6, because I can’t wait much longer, I can’t for the life of me see why this was ignored for so long. Why have I had to put this in so many freakin if statements when this could have been fixed by adding a very easy and simple but amazingly easy to read and useful method. String randWord; /random code or back in forth between many different classes/ String someFunction() {if(randWord!=null && !randWord.equals(””)) { /do something/} ….} all of this could just be replaced and make the code so much more readable with the isEmpty function, becoming the following… if( !randWord.isEmpty() ) { /do something/} I want this functionality and I want it now… I guess since java is now opensource I should just go override the String class to add one simple function! So much value and so simple.

Nerds are great

2006-10-12T00:00:00-07:00

Some days they make me proud to be a nerd… This just cracks me up,Mozilla Bug Report

Ubuntu Server 6.06

2006-07-10T00:00:00-07:00

I installed Ubuntu server on one of my machines, one of the nice things about it, is that it from install it configures a working LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) set up. Which is nice and saves lots of configuration. Unfortunately, I still need to get Subversion, Ruby, Tomcat, and other things installed and running on the system. Anyways since, I was going to have to set up a bunch of things and planned on using the system as a development machine I then installed Ubuntu desktop on the system as one of the aptitude scripts, which installs all the packages require for the desktop configuration. After that though, I realized that I was not able to complete any install with out causing an error in clvm, anything you install would cause a clvm error and make your install fail. So here is the fix if you install the Ubuntu server from CD and then install the desktop: Ultimately this post by npcomplete2000, was the solution for me:http://www.ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-186356.html removing clvm caused no problems for me and was something I never thought I would need. After that I could install other applications with out problems. More error information so those searching for error codes will find this post:Starting Cluster LVM Daemon clvmd could not connect to cluster managerConsult syslog for more informationinvoke-rc.d: initscript clvm, action “start” failed.dpkg: error processing clvm (–configure): subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 3Errors were encountered while processing: clvmE: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Ruby on Rails Gem error could not find gem

2006-07-10T00:00:00-07:00

I got this gem error on Ubuntu 6.06 over and over then finally I followed these instructions to install Ruby on Rails, Install Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu 6.06 and I changed one line: sudo gem update –system IS WRONG!!!! run: sudo gem update and thing all the sudo gem installs work perfectly fine for me. Why I have no idea. I hate computers sometimes, but at least ruby and rails now work for Ubuntu 6.06 on my system.

Old Computer Science Links

2006-07-03T00:00:00-07:00

General Links University of Colorado Web2gether Project L3D labs at CU My code online Machine Learning MITs class page on Machine Learning The Use of Java in Machine Learning AI: a modern approach Java Neural Networks Text Categorization Links Intelligent Information Retrieval Tutorial on Text Mining Open source spam filtering project Yet Another Multipurpose Chunk Annotator Weka Links WEKA Spam analysis LSA/LSI Links LSA @ CU LSI @ UTK SVM Links Technical Paper Describing SVM classification SVM Info / Lessons Comprehensive List of SVM publications Large Scale SVM Learning SVM Spam Filter Research paper SVM Tools: SVDLIBC SVMseq Tiny SVM SVM-Light

Coding tan lines

2006-05-21T00:00:00-07:00

This is funny, and probably far to true.

Java skills wanted in the market

2006-05-03T00:00:00-07:00

I have been looking around at what companies seem to want currently from a mi level Java programmer, it seems to be all over the map. I also have notice a big rise in the demand for C#/ASP programmers as well. So if your starting to hunt for a new Java developer position here is a list of things you might want to study up on a bit before going out on the job hunt:

  [Java RMI](http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/rmi/javarmiproperties.html)[Java Swing Basics / tutorials](http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/TOC.html)[EJB basics / tutorials](http://java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/EJBIntro/EJBIntro.html)[Some basic internationalization](http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Intl/IntlIntro/)[Java Date formatting](http://home.tiscali.nl/~bmc88/java/sbook/016.html) or more [Date timezones](http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/SimpleTimeZone.html)[Java Applet security](http://www.securingjava.com/chapter-two/)[Compressing serialized objects or other output files in Java](http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Programming/compression/)<a href="http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/kenb/com3337/rmi_tut.html>more about Java RMI[Threading issues of Array List](http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/util/ArrayList.html)[I know we all extend classes and work with interfaces, but they always ask questions about it at interviews](http://www.javacoffeebreak.com/java104/java104.html)There are also many [testing](http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/W/White_Box_Testing.html) positions [available](http://www.faqs.org/faqs/software-eng/testing-faq/section-13.html) which want experience with [JUnit](http://supportweb.cs.bham.ac.uk/documentation/tutorials/docsystem/build/tutorials/junit/junit.html).

So if your currently on a Java position and looking around a bit, here are some areas you should really brush up on a bit before starting your interview rounds.

Ant options

2006-01-30T00:00:00-08:00

if your running out of Java Heap space memory while running ant you probably just need to increase the memory size for ant when it is running to do this you set the enviroment variable ANT_OPTS. ANT_OPTS=-Xmx128M in windows you right click my computer go to properties, and then click advanced then set new enviroment variable name ANT_OPTS value -Xmx128M. If your running cygwin you must close current instances and reopen them to get the new settings to take effect, after opening up cygwin again try >echo $ANT_OPTS which should output your setting. If you still receive the error you can go higher with your memory. I have never had to go higher than 256.

Junit testing server states

2006-01-19T00:00:00-08:00

Alot of Junit docs and faq tells you that have bad design if your trying to extend test suite so that there is only one setUp() and testDown() for a whole sweet of tests, but that just isnt true when your trying to tests proper order of state changes each transaction should change the state of the server dpending on its current state, if the server is started up new for each test your only testing the start up state… my single unit tests have dependencies on previous tests that has cuased the server to be in its current state… So no where gives good documentation on how to do this the faq is un usefully short showing how to extend testSuite but not how to use it… so here is the best page for how to actually use it just ignore hte Turbine2 stuff: 16. Q: How can I setup Turbine once for my JUnit Test cases? And remember that Junit executes your tests in order alphabetically and numerically after the intial keyword test. ie TestA will run before TestB so if you running tests in order for state make sure that you have your tests named appropriately to be sure they will run in the expected order. hope this helps someone running into problems running Juint with a single setUp across a suite of tests.

Apache2 integrating Tomcat 5.5 on windows

2006-01-19T00:00:00-08:00

I have been trying to do this off and on for over a year and a half and every time i run into problems and I get pissed and quit. I have found hundreds of pages that all say different ways of how to solve the problem of integrating tomcat 5.5 with apache2. Non of them worked for me, but after combining tips from various install guides I can show you what finally worked for me. After wasting over all the time hours and hours… here is all that I did small changes to the apache configure file and small ones to tomcats… restart both of there servers and WHOOPIE it just works. Apache2 with Tomcat 5.5 on a windows server.

  httpdconf changes:    LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.soLoadModule proxy_connect_module modules/mod_proxy_connect.soLoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so    <VirtualHost *:80>ServerName special.myname.comDocumentRoot "C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/htdocs"    <ifmodule mod_proxy.c>ProxyRequests OnProxyPass /cool http://66.***.***.**3:8082/your/webapp/rootdir/## these are comments on the dir#C:\Program Files\Apache\Tomcat 5.5\webapps\you\webapp\rootdir\# if anyone was confused to how that would map to windows tomcat stuff#ProxyPass /*.jsp http://66.***.***.**3:8082</ifmodule>    tomcat's server.xml:        <connector acceptcount="100" disableuploadtimeout="true" enablelookups="false" connectiontimeout="20000" port="8082" maxsparethreads="75" minsparethreads="25" proxyport="80" maxthreads="150" />

thats it... you might have to change some of your jsps for how they find local directories and get all the lookups for the local directories to match your mapping, but you got it... it should all work now. Congradulations... if that didnt work for you here are some sites I was looking at for help:

  [Apache proxy forwarding](http://www.drewnoakes.com/snippets/ConfiguringApacheToRedirectASingleHostToMultiplePorts/)    [Apache 2 tomcat 5.5](http://forum.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=22381&tstart=210)    best of luck post comments here and i can try to help you if they are problems i have run into before.

Broken MailEnable

2005-12-20T00:00:00-08:00

Problem: Mail Enable Bad Mail folder became HUGE! Or MailEnable Bad Mail folder filled up! MailEnable was stuffing my hard drive with badmessages and outgoing that i didnt think it was allowed to send. Some spammers obviously found a way to attack my mail server and start making it work for them… Anyways it filled an entire 80GB hard drive with bad emails… The folders where so large that explorer would crash when trying to delete the files. So I search around and found this solution to emptying the folders. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;555408 After you make sure it is working remove the /s from the end of the line you wont see that it is deleting one at a time, but the process goes about 10x faster because you aren’t printing between each of the deletes. I also dissabled my entire mail server until i can figure out what the hell is going on and how to stop the spamming bastards that are trying to take over my server. windows server 2003 too many files to delete solved.Mail Enable can open config solved.Email Spam removed from system solved. The problem now is how slow it is going while deleting the files.

No Fluff just Stuff

2005-11-14T00:00:00-08:00

Well I am done with the Rocky Mountain Software Symposium (RMSS), No Fluff just Stuff. Which was excellent. I learned a ton I wish I could go to one of these ever 3 to 6 months… Anyways I learned alot and have some great stuff that I can put into use on my projects at work. I also learned a ton of just really cool and interesting stuff. That will make me a better programmer all the time, as well as get me moving on new technologies faster than others. Anyways, it was really cool and interesting. Hopefully I will get to use and play with some of the code before i forget all of the cool stuff that i just learned… check the new RSS feed reader that is on the front of wastedbrains to see something I coded up real quick… I highly recommend the no fluff just stuff tour to everyone.

Ruby on Rails

2005-11-10T00:00:00-08:00

I have been learning the language ruby, and have begun playing around with ruby on rails. Which is a development framework for web based applications. I have been really impressed with ruby on rails so far, I was worried about how extendable it would be to less general problems, but it seems to be fairly extendable. Which is cool. I highly recommend giving it a shot and I think this was the best tutorial I have gone through while learning ruby. Ruby on rails tutorial, building a cookbook I also recommend Agile web development with Rails, from the Pragmatic Programmers

CSS columns guides

2005-09-08T00:00:00-07:00

I needed some good CSS layouts so i looked around tinkered a bit and got what i want, and I thought i should share some of the best resources i found. I would like to give thanks to everyone that has made their CSS and XHTML layouts available as it is a very cool thing to do and help out with other web developers. Great threecolum css with header and footer Center floating three column a list apart liquid header Ordered columns float model Skidoo layouts

Apache XML RPC Asych

2005-08-08T00:00:00-07:00

Exception in thread “Thread-0” java.lang.NullPointerException at org.apache.xmlrpc.XmlRpcClient$XmlRpcClientAsyncThread.run(XmlRpcClient.java:271) If your getting any similar errors while trying to run executeAsync from the XmlRpcClient (org.apache.xmlrpc.XmlRpcClient) class. The problem is this bug, which has been fixed by apache, but hasn’t made it into the binaries or the src releases because they havent been updated fro some time. To get the fix use the anonymous cvs, or apply this patch to your src. It took me a few hours to figure out the problem with this and fix it after finding the patch. So if you build the jars and use the xmlrpc-2.0-beta that is built as the jar you include in your project that should fix everything.

java in cygwin

2005-07-21T00:00:00-07:00

man I had some serious problems running java in cygwin with a shell script (sh script)… So I am going to post my script to help you out… there are a couple things of note first… java a windows program expects windows paths your cygwin script proably uses unix paths. cygwin sh scripts treat ’;’ as a special character so when using multiple classpaths you must escape it ‘\;’ to make it work as expected… # test.shJAVAEXE=$JAVA_HOME/bin/java.execd ../IEP_HOME=C:\dev\dsmayer\sandbox\iepIEP_BIN=C:\dev\dsmayer\sandbox\iep\binIEP_LIB=C:\dev\dsmayer\sandbox\iep\libIEP_JAR=C:\dev\dsmayer\sandbox\iep\lib\iepio.jarIEP_IST=C:\dev\dsmayer\sandbox\iep\lib\istcustom.jarIEPB_JAR=C:\dev\dsmayer\sandbox\iep\lib\backport-util-concurrent.jarIEP_PROPS=C:\dev\dsmayer\sandbox\iep\properties echo java -cp $IEP_JAR\;$IEP_IST\;$IEPB_JAR RCS.example.RCSregechojava -cp $IEP_JAR\;$IEP_IST\;$IEPB_JAR RCS.example.RCSreg &java -cp $IEP_PROPS\;$IEP_JAR\;$IEPB_JAR\;$IEP_IST RCS.example.clients.ResourceClient &java -cp $IEP_PROPS\;$IEP_JAR\;$IEPB_JAR\;$IEP_IST RCS.example.clients.UserClient &

Java Source Code Examples

2005-06-28T00:00:00-07:00

A great collection of simple java source exmples. These are organized well and provide a wealth of information if your having problems doing something you know has been done before. http://www.java2s.com/ Java Source Examples

Computer Science Research Papers

2005-06-13T00:00:00-07:00

I have definately violated some of these and I think it would be good for people that are trying to do some serious analysis to follow these I do hate nothing more when marketing makes grapsh that essentially lie. Anyways if you have a computer science or any science for that matter paper, these are great rules to go by to remain creditable. A Rubic for IT Analysis Papers

Programming Links

2005-06-02T00:00:00-07:00

Since I haven’t been putting much interesting up here of my own code lately I figure I could point you to some things of note and interest: Java Form SpellChecking This is a great tool to allow users of your site or webapp to have access to spell checking much like from MS word. Java Image Galleries Ever wanted a great image gallery solution? Art of Illusion A cool 3d rendering studio entirely in Java. A good webservices and JAVA XML tutorial with lots of basic information

Converting XML with XSLT

2005-05-31T00:00:00-07:00

Problem: Converting XML to Excel I had to convert some XML to sort and display as we wished in excel. After reading a bunch of articles about XML-FO and other stuff about cacoon and other Java solutions I decided to go with just using a fairly simple XSLT stylesheet and convert the XML to HTML tables with the excel extension. This is even the recommended solution by microsoft (Which is probably because excel has a bloated and often changing format.) So converting this way leads to a well and easy and nice looking excel file and has the benifeit that anyone without excel can also view the file in a standard web browser. The microsoft tutorial on converting XML with XSTL is very good. If you have any problems or need more advanced XSTL this is also another very usefull set of XSTL examples. The basic idea is to make the stylesheet so that it can sort and create a easy to view html table. Then you can either let excel open the XML which can find the stylesheet and apply it for the user, or you can use a program to do the conversion for your user and output excel or html files. I needed to generate the files for my users so I went with Xalan from the apache foundation. Xalan is a XSL stylesheet processors in Java & C++ The example is simple to modify for whatever you need. I used the example file SimpleTransform, which can be found in the installation directory at \xalan-j_2_6_0\samples\SimpleTransform The result is simple and easy, below I will include my XSLT file to show how easy it is toe create simple large tables from a nice little XSLT file. I couldnt include it as text cause it tried to render it so here is a link to it...[Download file](http://WWW.bandddesigns.com/ml/arch/trans.xsl)

Java string to inputstream

2005-04-06T00:00:00-07:00

If you need to make a string into an input stream it is really easy. Many people say you shouldnt convert a string into an input stream and that it is bad code design though. Since I was using someone elses library that only took input streams and all of my input was created as strings i really had no choice but to do the conversion (which is wastefull of memory cause you essentially have exact copies of the same data). Making a string into an inputstream can be done like this: ByteArrayInputStream bs = new ByteArrayInputStream(site.getBytes()); If you have any problems leave a comment.

CVS stuff

2005-04-05T00:00:00-07:00

I always am forgettting this and that about CVS and this is just a really good resource on all the CVS stuff you would need to know when working with a regular CVS repository. Command Line CVS

java code tar

2005-03-30T00:00:00-08:00

I have released a development version of java tar with added support for various GNU tar features like multi file, verification, and breaking the 8GB barrier. It is pretty nice so if your into learning some java code or working with tar there is alot of good info here and well documentated source code. Java Tar upgrades

Java Tar and problems

2005-03-30T00:00:00-08:00

I have been working on adding a bunch of GNU tar features to java tar. I will release the source soon, but I just wanted to comment on the lack of good documentation on the format that makes it very hard to work with the GNU tar format… Simple things like regular tar takes char 32 as a null and ignored character… and so does GNUtar for the regular tar fields but in the offset field needed for multi volume tars 32 crashes the program giving you header errors. It only accepts char 48 as a null which in the other size field it accepts either 32 or 48… things like this are commented no where and i only discoved by writting and editing the GNU tar source. Which is also far under documentated in the code and very hard to follow. GNU Tar size field: If your working with GNU tar the size field is just like the standard tar field in ustar… except which is no where to be found in their documentation when you support unlimited size files. If you have a file larger than 8GB to support it you must write the number as bits in twos compliment notation. Also after doing the you have to flip the sign bit (the very most left 0) to a 1. Which would normally mean you have a negative number and now if you decode this as a twos compliment you end up with a huge negative number… but not encoded it normally as a positive number and flip that bit. I only figured this out after manually reading and decoding gnu tar and stanttard ustar headers for a long time. The is nothing that talks about how the support for unlimited files was added to gnu tar… well hopefully if you are having the same problem you found this page. So upgrading GNU tar or other programs to support GNU tar should be easier. I have added support for these gnu features to javatar:Multi volumeverificationunlimited filesizefast single file extractionTar Table of contents (xml of the files and there offsets with in the tar) If your interested in this or have any questions about GNU tar or JAva tar feel free to send me an email and ask.

Java Tar

2005-03-30T00:00:00-08:00

Java Tar source. This might not be the final draft, but it is getting pretty close. Most features seem to be working well and the source is very well documentated. So if you want or need the new GNU features you can get them from java tar here. The main java tar build hasnt incoporated these yet but all of the modifications have been sent off to them, so hopefully they will incorporate them soon. Java Tar homepage Until then feel free to download the java tar source from me. You can edit and modify as much as the orginal liscense allows, which says it is public domain use it as you wish. I would like to give a big thanks to Timothy Gerard Endres, who is the orginal author of Java Tar. If you have any questions comments or problems let me know. Download Java Tar

Java copy file code

2005-03-10T00:00:00-08:00

just cause i didnt find code on this fast enough here is code to copy a file using java. It reads the file in while writting it out using buffered readers and writters:

   public static void copy(String from, String to) throws IOException{   InputStream in = null;    OutputStream out = null;    try {        in = new FileInputStream(from);        out = new FileOutputStream(to);        int length = 128*10240; // danger!        byte[] bytes = new byte[length];        int read=0;        for(;;){        read=in.read(bytes,0,length);        if(read==-1){            break;        }        out.write(bytes,0,read);        }        } finally {            if (in != null) {                in.close();            }            if (out != null) {                out.close();            }        }    }

my neglected blog

2005-02-28T00:00:00-08:00

alright here is a post to my neglected blog. It always falls behind… Anyways i have been doing a ton of programming, but sadly none of it is very interesting or new right now. Alot of the stuff I am doing I have done before, but I am trying to build up a system which I can use to explore some new ideas and I need a nice simple toolset built up before doing anything else all the interesting. So it might be awhile, before I have any really interesting things to post on here, but i will try and we will see when I get a chance to get back to my AI interests.

GNU tar errors on windows

2005-02-08T00:00:00-08:00

I ran into a very odd error while running GNU tar on windows XP under dos or the cmd.exe (dos emulator). The error must be incredibly rare since i only found one other post with similiar problems. I will first explain the error and then how it was fixed or resolved. here is the one link that I found with the similiar GNU windows tar error tar error

  my error:C:\dev\dsmayer\sandbox\exe>tar cvf tester.tar newstar: Cannot add file news: No such file or directory (ENOENT)tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

news was a standard directory. the error we found was occuring because we were in the C:\dev\*.* directory apparently dev and aux (as the other user was having that error) are some sort of key words that screw up the program, I dont know why. I do know that moving tar.ext and my directory to a folder c:\temp or any other c:\*.*.\dsmayer\sandbox\exe and it would work. So if your having any erros similiar with GNU tar I suggest changing directories and seeing if that fixes your problems. Taring under cygwin in this directory worked fine it was only a problem when taring in dos. Good luck post any questions, comments, or other issues relating to GNU tar on windows here.

Jakarta org.apache.commons.fileupload

2005-02-07T00:00:00-08:00

Using this package caused a little more problems than one would have believed, but it was by far still the best option out there. I found some other beens, but they only would successfully upload Ascii files and were not writen properly to write out image files or other binary data. After having a problem with a few other packages I went to use Jakarta’s java fileupload and after figuring out multiple issues and reading alot of documentation I got all of it working as I wanted. I thought I should share th links I ended up using that were usefull and helped me get everything working.

File upload wrapper take a look at ProcessFileUpload.jsp

Jakarta's how to use the fileupload package

If you have any problems let me know and I can probably help you out.

Again Sorry

2004-11-03T00:00:00-08:00

Again I am truly sorry that i haven’t been posting anything here. School, My job hunt, and other things have b een taking my time. I have written quite a bit of code and hopefully will post it all soon. I have alot of little pocket pc applications and I also have done decision trees, neural networks, and probabilistic agents. I might have a pretty cool final project for my AI course to post but that will really depend on what I have time to end up doing for a project.

sorry busy

2004-10-12T00:00:00-07:00

Sorry there has been no updates and no new code posted for awhile. In fact comments were broken for the last couple months. Well I have fixed the comments and will slowly be getting back into some of the coding stuff. I have been busy with my job hunt, which seems to be going pretty well, but I dont want to jinx it. I have been doing some interesting stuff in my AI course and learning alot, we have been working with Agents and Probablistic Inference… We are now doing Utility funtions and feedback learning systems, which is pretty cool. I wish i knew more about knowlege representation. Since coding up the problems takes me so long in part because i dont know how to represent all of the data for the problems. Oh well all is going well and I am learning, and I guess that is what that matters. The concepts I get and the coding I can figure out with time.

Intelligent Agents

2004-09-09T00:00:00-07:00

Well I had to write a little one page paper for AI class about agents so here it is incase anyone else is ever thinking about a simple little agent that plays a wierd cave game called Wumpus world. Also, I guess some of the Ideas are a little interesting. The code to run and test everything is provided in my extended entry if you want it. (The code isn’t the prettiest or well commented seeing as I had other work to do and had to finish the entire assignement in less than two days, but it works and the smart agent does do better thant he simple one.)

Agents

I created the two agents, the dumb agent that was mostly random and the more intelligent agent. The dumb agent got an avg of -450 which was close to the naive agent the professor had coded up, which averaged -390. So everything with my world and agent seemed pretty close. I then began work on the intelligent agent. I found it significantly harder than expected to add features that improved performance. Many times adding rules that I thought would help improve the agents performance and these rules would actually result in far lower scores. After trying a few pretty simple ideas I developed what my final agent became. My final agent had an average score of -60 which wasn’t great, but still significantly better than the dumb agent. I added one extra constraint to the game for fun, since I am a vegetarian I decided that I would never kill the Wumpus. So my algorithm would simple avoided the Wumpus in attempts to navigate to the gold. This lead to more impossible maps and therefor a lower overall score. It will still be interesting to see how my animal friendly agent performed in comparison to others.My more intelligent agent worked on the right hand on the maze wall idea. I would go forward until i found a area that could present a problem. A problem being either a stench or a breeze, if this problem was found i would turn around and walk the other direction and then try a different route, with my right hand facing the problem. This worked well at avoiding pits since I also had a higher percent of the time the choice of moving forward, and always would move forward if there was no chance of danger. This quickly lead to the problem of certain pits providing an infinite loop. Lowering my score by getting in a safe, but useless route. To fix this if I encountered the same pit problem multiple times i would then just walk threw the sensed breeze in hopes that the pit was not the direction I was going. This could have been improved by first trying alternate routes around the pit, but could have then left the problem of many different infinite loops.The improvement of the agent was significant and noticeable, but also illustrated the difficulties of simple relying on a simple set of rules. I think a more effective route would have been to have the agent slowly walk along any known safe route while mapping problem areas to his known portion of the map and only after exhausting all safe possibilities (and trying to create safe possibilities by killing the Wumpus) picking at random a unsafe point of passage that would lead to the most possible options for a next move.