michaelguterl.com

diminishing.org

Saving time and sanity with AppleScript

http://diminishing.org/saving-time-and-sanity-with-applescript

Saving time and sanity with AppleScript. Depending where I am at I have three possible monitor configurations for my MacBook. External and laptop display. Each time I change between these three workspaces I have to manually move the windows to the correct position for that particular configuration. This can become extremely annoying, especially when youre as OCD as I am. I cant even contemplate how much time Ive wasted putting each window in its perfect position. Open it with Script Editor.

diminishing.org

runit and delayed_job

http://diminishing.org/runit-and-delayed-job

Runit and delayed job. Weve been using Collective Ideas fork of Delayed Job. For quite some time now. Weve processed over 2 million jobs and were extremely reliant on it for the day-to-day operation of our site. For a long time the compelling reason behind us using Collective Ideas fork of delayed job was the built in support for daemonization. This functionality is added via the daemons gem, however, it is not without problems. Everyone has their own solutions. Too One of which. Runit is a cross-platfor...

diminishing.org

Fixing a mistake with attr_accessible

http://diminishing.org/fixing-a-mistake-with-attr_accessible

Fixing a mistake with attr accessible. It can happen to anyone, youre being a good Rails citizen. And you have setup ActiveRecord to force the use of attr accessible by using:. Next thing you know, you add a name attribute to your user model, update the forms and other views, deploy and youre on your way. Days go by and someone asks, why dont any of our users have names? You forgot to update your the user models attr accessible line. Use an established Rails log parser to extract the revelant data. I had...

diminishing.org

require 'spec_helper'

http://diminishing.org/require-spec-helper

The rspec command adds the spec directory on to $LOAD PATH so this is as simple as:. This has been ranted about by others many times and I never really understood the big deal. Now I do, especially after it shaved 5 seconds off our suite of specs. After some research I found out we were requiring our spec helpers in a bad way. Most of this is because of my own doing, but I thought I’d share with you guys. There were probably 4 or 5 variations of the syntax used to require spec helper.

diminishing.org

Writing Good Factories

http://diminishing.org/writing-good-factories

I really wanted to remember what Pratik had to say about writing good factories in his Rails Summit talk so I’m putting it up here as a reference. 1 Should be able to loop. 2 No associations in the base Factory. 3 Should pass validations. I am thinking that rule #2 can be broken in order to achieve #3. Sometimes an object has to have a parent. I think it may be more accurate to say No has many associations in the base Factory , but I’m still giving it some thought.

diminishing.org

Problems, difficulties, and frustrations

http://diminishing.org/problems-difficulties-and-frustrations

Problems, difficulties, and frustrations. After reading The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work. I couldn’t stop thinking about how Ward Cunningham describes the difference between problems and difficulties. As a software developer I love to solve problems, yet I become frustrated when dealing with difficulties. The more I think about it, I feel like frustration is a better word than difficulty. In fact, one of the definitions for frustration from Apple’s Dictionary is:. Frustration frəˈstrā sh ən.

diminishing.org

Extending Formtastic with a sprinkle of jQuery

http://diminishing.org/extending-formtastic-with-a-sprinkle-of-jquery

Extending Formtastic with a sprinkle of jQuery. If you’re not already using formtastic. You need to check it out. I’ll give you a short run down of formtastic, but I suggest checking the README as it is very comprehensive. Then I’ll go on to explain how we extended formtastic with jQuery allowing us to keep our form construction code nice and simple. Has and belongs to many. Has and belongs to many. Formtastic handles everything for you, rendering each of the roles as a check box. Now imagine you wanted ...