House 9

Inspect all jQuery events on an element

2011-12-30T14:44:00.000-08:00

Very useful

$("SELECTOR").data("events");

All bound event handlers are stored in the elements data context under the events key
This can be very useful when debugging with tools like FireBug

$("form").submit(function () { alert('submit form'); });
$("form").data("events");
> Object { submit=[1] }

Resources

http://www.bennadel.com/blog/1727-Viewing-jQuery-DOM-Event-Bindings-With-FireBug.htm

Get table and column information in postgres

2011-12-02T07:07:00.000-08:00

Use the information_schema catalog - http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/information-schema.html

Get table and columns from the public schema

This can be useful, maybe you want to auto generate some text that creates foreign keys based on a naming convention - for instance let's say we have a ruby/rails method called make_fk_unless_exists

The 'code' column would render something like

make_fk_unless_exists :projects, :milestone_id, :milestones
make_fk_unless_exists :tasks, :project_id, :projects
...

Sample Routes and Links with Rails 3 in the console

2011-11-12T15:38:00.000-08:00

The content for this post is all from a gist, hopefully someone finds it useful

Resources

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2778074/recognize-routes-in-rails-console-session

Postgres: get the number of days in an interval

2011-11-09T13:48:00.000-08:00

-- seconds / 60 = minutes / 60 = hours / 24 = days
select (((EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM INTERVAL '2 years') / 60) / 60) / 24)::integer as number_of_days

good resource - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/952493/how-do-i-convert-an-interval-into-a-number-of-hours-with-postgres

Generating barcodes with ruby and rails

2011-10-15T09:07:00.000-07:00

Recently I had to convert some functionality from an old MS Access system to a Ruby on Rails application. The Access system generated a report that included a barcode; they were using a barcode font installed on the machine running access. I figured generating the barcode server side in the web app was going to be much nicer than installing barcode fonts on the client browsers. And since this is Ruby, I figured...

There must be a gem for that

Sure enough, the barby gem. It allows you to output your barcode as png, gif, svg, pdf, etc...

In my case I generated png barcodes and included image references to those in my view files.

Sample code

There is no pixel setting, it uses some other type of unit to determine size; using the xdim, margin and height options you can tweak the size, but I found that it was not very precise - for my use case it was good enough.

The generated barcode does not include the value, it is just the image which can be scanned using a barcode scanner, but it would be nice if there was an option to include the value below that. This is somewhat trivial to add in your view using html.

Overall I was really pleased with this gem!

Resources

NFL 2011 Sunday Night HD Stream for Free from NBC

2011-09-18T17:04:00.000-07:00

Check it out here - http://snfallaccess.nbcsports.com/

CoffeeScript with Rails 2.3 and Rails 3.0

2011-08-22T09:35:00.000-07:00

I just uploaded a sample application that uses guard, coffee-script and a rake task to enable use of coffee-script with a rails 2.3 or 3.0 application. Check out the README file on github for details.

https://github.com/house9/with_coffee

Grow vegetables go to jail?

2011-07-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

Oak Park resident Julie Bass now faces serious charges for setting up a vegetable garden in her front yard.

Help her out sign the petition here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/oak-park-hates-veggies/

We are requesting that the City of Oak Park, MI cease its prosecution against its resident Julie Bass for the supposed crime of growing vegetables in her front yard. The bylaw they are pursuing criminal charges under is poorly written and does not explicitly state that you cannot grow vegetables. The prosecutor representing the city wants to take this case to trial, and the associated charge carries a maximum sentence of 93 days in jail. It would be a travesty for this mother of six to be sentenced to 93 days in jail for the simple act of growing tomatoes in her front yard.

Details about the case can be found at http://oakparkhatesveggies.wordpress.com/

rails 3.1 and ruby-1.9.2-p180 - rake aborted! stack level too deep

2011-06-24T19:32:00.000-07:00

Ran into the following error when running rake with a rails 3.1 (rc4) app on ruby-1.9.2-p180 (RVM)

rake aborted! stack level too deep

Full error stack

$> rake --tasks

/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/version.rb:4: warning: already initialized constant MAJOR
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/version.rb:5: warning: already initialized constant MINOR
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/version.rb:6: warning: already initialized constant BUILD
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/version.rb:3: warning: already initialized constant NUMBERS
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/version.rb:9: warning: already initialized constant VERSION
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake.rb:26: warning: already initialized constant RAKEVERSION
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/early_time.rb:17: warning: already initialized constant EARLY
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/alt_system.rb:32: warning: already initialized constant WINDOWS
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/application.rb:28: warning: already initialized constant DEFAULT_RAKEFILES
WARNING: Possible conflict with Rake extension: String#ext already exists
WARNING: Possible conflict with Rake extension: String#pathmap already exists
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/task_arguments.rb:73: warning: already initialized constant EMPTY_TASK_ARGS
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/invocation_chain.rb:49: warning: already initialized constant EMPTY
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_utils.rb:10: warning: already initialized constant RUBY
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_utils.rb:84: warning: already initialized constant LN_SUPPORTED
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/dsl_definition.rb:143: warning: already initialized constant Commands
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_list.rb:44: warning: already initialized constant ARRAY_METHODS
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_list.rb:47: warning: already initialized constant MUST_DEFINE
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_list.rb:51: warning: already initialized constant MUST_NOT_DEFINE
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_list.rb:55: warning: already initialized constant SPECIAL_RETURN
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_list.rb:61: warning: already initialized constant DELEGATING_METHODS
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_list.rb:364: warning: already initialized constant DEFAULT_IGNORE_PATTERNS
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake/file_list.rb:370: warning: already initialized constant DEFAULT_IGNORE_PROCS
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake.rb:64: warning: already initialized constant FileList
/Users/HOME_DIR/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/rake-0.9.2/lib/rake.rb:65: warning: already initialized constant RakeFileUtils
rake aborted!
stack level too deep

(See full trace by running task with --trace)

Steps to replicate, from the command line

rails new sample_app
cd sample_app
rake --tasks

The solution, prefix calls to rake with bundle exec

bundle exec rake --tasks

Resources

rails 3.1 asset gem

2011-06-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

Package up assets into a gem for use in rails 3.1 applications. Example uses javascript files, but the same should work for images and css.

I recommend you click the HD link on the player and view it on Vimeo in full screen mode, this embed version is not so crisp.

Resources

robocopy fix for exit code of 2

2011-06-01T18:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you want to use robocopy from nant, a sql job or another build tool, robocopy will return 2 during a successful run, this gets interpreted as an error, a google search on the issue returned this article Fixing Robocopy for SQL Server Jobs.

Robocopy is now installed by default on Windows7 and Windows Server 2008
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc733145(WS.10).aspx

here is robocopy_fix.bat based on the code in the "Fixing Robocopy for SQL Server Jobs" article

rails 3.1 javascript execution

2011-05-29T14:47:00.000-07:00

Looking at a few different ways to execute javascript in rails 3.1. By default all javascript is compiled into one file and embedded in anonymous functions which all execute on each page.

We often want to be selective in how our javascript executes, based on controller and actions. We look at 3 different approaches

use selectors based on form id
use selectors based on css classes on the body
namespaced javascript objects

if you know of any other approaches I would love to hear those as well

I recommend you click the HD link on the player and view it on Vimeo in full screen mode, this embed version is not so crisp.

Resources

rails 3.1 asset pipeline

2011-05-26T19:39:00.000-07:00

a quick look at app, lib, vendor and gem assets for rails 3.1 rc1

It is a pretty rough screen cast, but hopefully has some useful information for you

I recommend you click the HD link on the player and view it on Vimeo in full screen mode, this embed version is not so crisp.

Resources:

Stream Tennis - 2011 Roland Garros

2011-05-25T17:00:00.000-07:00

if your ISP supports ESPN3 they have live and replay streams for 2011 Roland Garros

AT&T site has some serious issues

2011-05-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

I went to check on the price of DSL, I've been a long time Comcast customer and getting tired of the high cost. So I went to check it out on AT&T - all I can say is WTF?

Select 'DSL without phone', but then my choices are everything except what I am looking for?
I think they need to go back and do some more QA

Now I get to choose my phone service - WTF: I selected 'without phone service' for a reason

Simple.Data and MongoDB

2011-05-03T16:48:00.000-07:00

Get really dynamic with Simple.Data and MongoDB

took me awhile to figure out the proper way to establish a connection with Simple.Data.MongoDB

Resources

You can install all of the dlls using Nuget, search for Simple.Data.MongoDB and install that package it will bring in the rest

Some of the errors I received on my journey

From Simple.Data

Message=No valid exports were found that match the constraint '((exportDefinition.ContractName == "Ado") AndAlso (exportDefinition.Metadata.ContainsKey("ExportTypeIdentity") AndAlso "Simple.Data.Adapter".Equals(exportDefinition.Metadata.get_Item("ExportTypeIdentity"))))', invalid exports may have been rejected.

And from mongo driver when my connection string was not in the correct format, I was using the wrong port

Message=No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 127.0.0.1:

Fixing asp.net MVC AuthorizeAttribute

2011-04-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

With very little code we can fix asp.net MVC AuthorizeAttribute
What problems does it have? Too much redirection.

When making ajax calls a HTTP 401 (Unauthorized) would be better than a redirection
If I am already logged in but access a secure resource (controller / action) redirecting to the login page is far from ideal, an access denied view makes more sense

When is the built in redirection appropriate? When making standard HTTP request and the user is not authenticated.

it turns out it is relatively easy to fix these issues

inherit AuthorizeAttribute
override HandleUnauthorizedRequest

#1: Ajax request should not return redirection / html response

if the user cannot authorize an action and the request is made via ajax we don't want 200 or 302 response codes

we do want 401 Unauthorized, but we have to settle for a 403 Forbidden

The code to fix this

#2: Authenticated users should not redirect to the login page, they should get an Access Denied page

The code to fix this

Turns out very little code is needed - but seems like some of this should just be built in? Using the 401 response won't work because the asp mvc framework must be picking that up later on and forcing the redirection to the login page, the 403 is not ideal but it is effective.

The code for our class - AuthorizeFor

Usage of our AuthorizeFor attribute

Resources

MSDN AuthorizeAttribute
Stack Overflow post about the 401 403 issue

Log: Wildlife sightings summer 2010

2011-04-15T06:47:00.000-07:00

Came across some notes from my vacation last summer, figured I might as well post them on the net (better late then never). Not in any order and contains both spelling and grammer errors, enjoy:

2010-06-27 UT,AZ,ID:
Swainsons Hawk
Black Throated Sparrow

2010-06-30 Zion
Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep

2010-07-01 Uinta, UT:
Tanager
Kestrel
Robins

2010-07-01 Near Yellowstone:
Bald Eagle
Osprey

2010-07-01 - 2010-07-04 Yellowstone:
Grizzley Bear + 2 cubs
Girizley Bear + 3 cubs
Red Tail
Gray Jay
Mtn Blue Bird
Mule Deer
Cyotes
Otters
Junco
Common Muskrat
Deer Mouse
Chipping Sparrow
Cassins Finch
Cliff Swallow
Brewers Blackbird
Cowbird

2010-07-04 Leaving Yellowstone -> Cody, WY:
Black Bears
Sandhill Cranes
2 Coopers Hawks
2 Golden Eagles
Harrier (Male)
Waxwings
Terns

2010-07-06 Big Horn National Forest, WY:
Moose
Marmots

we went on to the Black Hills of South Dakota, Montana, and Alberta after this, but I must have stopped keeping track of sightings, there were plenty more...

Notes - TeamCity setup on Ubuntu

2011-04-09T08:40:00.000-07:00

Notes from setting up TeamCity on Ubuntu

TeamCity on Ubuntu
==================================================================
Go to http://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/download/ and download the linux distribution

set JAVA_HOME : update .bashrc add the following lines
--------------------------
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk/bin/java
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk/bin

tar xfz TeamCity-6.0.3.tar.gz
put extracted TeamCity directory under ~/TeamCity

open terminal and run bin/runAll.sh start from the ~/TeamCity directory

install tcWebHook plugin
==================================================================
http://tcplugins.sourceforge.net/files/tcWebHooks
- http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/tcplugins/wiki/TcWebHooks

create directory at ~/.BuildServer/plugins - tcWebHooks
put the jar file in that directory
restart the teamcity server
there should be a new tab 'web hooks' on the build results, not in the admin section

Some notes - Ubuntu install rails 3 environment

2011-04-09T08:38:00.000-07:00

Had this on my desktop, notes to set up Ubuntu install rails 3 environment

Ubuntu install rails 3 environment
================================================

1) Get RVM installed with ruby 1.9.2
 - http://www.christopherirish.com/2010/08/25/how-to-install-rvm-on-ubuntu-10-04/

2) Install Rails 3 gem
 - gem install rails --no-rdoc --no-ri
 - .... Successfully installed rails-3.0.5 ... 23 gems installed

3) Install redcar 'ruby ide'
 - check out
 - http://azazeal.xelixis.net/post/How-to-install-Redcar-editor-under-Ubuntu-1010-with-RVM.aspx
 - for my situation I am only installing it on ruby 1.9.2, if you plan to run multiple versions of ruby this probably will not work when you have your rvm switched to another version
  - gem install redcar --no-rdoc --no-ri
  - redcar install
 - now you should be able to type redcar at the terminal to launch the gui
 - lets make a desktop shortcut
  - right click on the desktop : Create Launcher
   - Type: Application
   - Name: Redcar
   - Command: /home/YOUR_USER_NAME/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-head/gems/redcar-0.11/bin/redcar
   - Comment: Ruby IDE
  - need a tight icon for our launcher
   - right click > Properties > click the emblem icon
   - Path: /home/YOUR_USER_NAME/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-head/gems/redcar-0.11/share/icons/redcar-icon-beta.png
  - drag the desktop icon up to the launcher bar if you want one there as well
   - need to set the icon path again for that one

4) Create a rails application 
 - mkdir projects; cd projects
 - rails new sample_app_01; cd sample_app_01
 - in redcar > File > Open Directory > projects/sample_app_01
  - ctrl+T > type Gem > open Gemfile
  - verify line : gem 'sqlite3'
 - back to the terminal
  - bundle 
  - rails g scaffold post title:string body:text
  - rake db:migrate
  - rails s
 - in a browser go to http://localhost:3000/posts

Sorry the links above are not hot, just cut and paste from my notes into a pre tag - quick and dirty

Could not find generator delayed_job_migration.

2011-04-08T17:39:00.000-07:00

Maybe this post will help somebody? just installed delayed_job on a rails 3 application. The readme for delayed_job is for the older version, here is a link to the newer docs.

Running this command

rails g delayed_job_migration

Returned this error

Could not find generator delayed_job_migration.

With rails 3 the command should be

rails g delayed_job

Ping Guest OS from Host OS with VirtualBox

2011-04-07T08:18:00.000-07:00

I am running a host Windows 7 machine with a Guest Windows Server 2008 RC2. The guest machine is hosted inside of VirtualBox. It appears that this issue can occur with any number of OS host or guest machines.

From the guest machine I could access the internet and access the host machine, but I could not ping or access the guest machine from the host. Turns out there is a network setting that needs to be changed.

On the guests 'container' go to Devices > Network Adapters

Then change 'Attached to' from 'NAT' to 'Bridged Adapter'

at that point you should be good to go

Resources

virtualbox forums: Host can't ping guest in Different OS ??

Add tf.exe and other .net command line tools to your powershell path

2011-03-29T16:07:00.000-07:00

I really don't like cmd.exe, it is difficult to work with. PowerShell ISE is much nicer and the bonus is you can run non powershell programs from this environment as well.

I needed to run some TFS commands, adding the ide directory to the path is easy

$env:path += ";C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE"

another directory you might want to add if you are messing about with IIS7

$env:path += ";C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv"

now you can do things like recycle all of the AppPools on your machine

appcmd list apppool /xml | appcmd recycle apppool /in

Rows and Columns with CSS

2011-03-29T08:35:00.000-07:00

here is a code snippet for creating rows and columns with css - I guess you could say this is a table?

View the Gist

Resources

webmaster world css forum

asp mvc jquery from cdn with fallback to localhost

2011-03-15T20:19:00.000-07:00

Paul Irish has some nice code for loading jquery from cdn but then falling back to localhost if it cannot be loaded from cdn. Check it out here.

For asp mvc you usually also want jquery.valdiater and possibly unobtrusive validation as well. Here is an html helper to generate html mark up that handles loading these via cdn with fallback

The helper

/// render script tag to include javascript file from cdn, but fallback to local if cannot be loaded
///
///
///
///
public static MvcHtmlString JavascriptIncludeFromCdnWithFallback(this HtmlHelper helper, string cdnPath, string localPath, string javascriptCondition)
{
var urlHelper = new UrlHelper(helper.ViewContext.RequestContext);
var cdnBuilder = new TagBuilder("script");
var localBuilder = new TagBuilder("script");

// src for cdn resource
cdnBuilder.Attributes.Add("src", cdnPath);
// js to build a local script tag if needed
localBuilder.InnerHtml = String.Format
(
"{0} && document.write(unescape('%3Cscript src=\"{1}\"%3E%3C/script%3E'))",
javascriptCondition,
urlHelper.Content(localPath)
);
// return markup
var built = String.Format("{0}\n\t{1}", cdnBuilder.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal), localBuilder.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal));
return MvcHtmlString.Create(built);
}
}

Usage, most likely from your layout file

And the rendered html

!window.jQuery && document.write(unescape('%3Cscript src="/Scripts/lib/jquery/jquery-1.4.4.min.js"%3E%3C/script%3E'))!window.jQuery.validator && document.write(unescape('%3Cscript src="/Scripts/lib/jquery/jquery.validate.min.js"%3E%3C/script%3E'))!window.jQuery.validator.unobtrusive && document.write(unescape('%3Cscript src="/Scripts/lib/jquery/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.min.js"%3E%3C/script%3E'))

Powershell script to generate a TODO report

2011-03-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

You can use this from your CI build process, help keep the code base clean. I am a big fan of the TODO: comment, but you don't want too many building up in the code base at some point you either need 'TO DO IT' or else forget about it.

the above script is excluding all files found under lib or Test directories, and selecting only a subset of file types. Modify to your needs

MSTest output result to HTML

2011-03-11T13:32:00.000-08:00

MSTest generates trx (xml) files which can be viewed in Visual Studio. But often you will be executing MSTest from the command line via your Continuous Integration (CI) server and you will want to view them in an html format outside Visual Studio.

trx2html to the rescue!

download the zip file here - http://trx2html.codeplex.com/
unzip and put the files somewhere

I choose C:\Program Files (x86)\trx2html

execute it from the command line

# in YourTestProject\bin\Release
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\mstest.exe" /testcontainer:YourTestProject.dll /resultsfile:TestResult.trx

"C:\Program Files (x86)\trx2html\0.6\trx2html.exe" TestResult.trx
# outputs TestResult.trx.htm

Visual Studio Solution Items in a sub directory

2011-03-09T09:11:00.000-08:00

Visual Studio Solutions have the "Add New Solution Folder" option.

I don't know about you but this makes me think it is going to create a physical directory on the hard drive to emulate what is in the solution, but this is not the case.

The thing that really drives me crazy is if you try to add Test1.txt to the SubFolder it will throw an error because it is really trying to write to the root directory. I think solution folders are only really supposed to be used to organize Visual Studio projects.

In my case I want to have a set of files that are not really part of a Visual Studio project but I want them available in the solution. It turns out there is a Project type called "Empty Project".

This is exactly what the doctor ordered!

You will probably want to do one additional step. Set this "Empty Project" to not build, otherwise you will get a compile time error. Right click on the Solution > Properties > Configuration Properties > Configuration, then un-check the "Build" for this project.

Found out about this from this stackoverflow post.

Here is a good link explaining what you would use a solution folder for, besides a ReadMe.txt

Ergonomic keyboard for the Mac

2011-03-06T12:42:00.000-08:00

The keyboards that come with Macs look really nice, the quality seems pretty good, but I just cannot use a flat keyboard, after a few days my wrists and hands started complaining big time.

After some searching I came across the Kinesis Freestyle keyboard, they make one with Windows layout and another with Mac layout. They are not cheap, however I use a keyboard all day, every day so for me it is worth the money.

If you get the Freestyle you also need to get the Freestyle VIP - Keyboard accessories kit, otherwise you basically just have a flat keyboard again

The VIP accessory kit will give you 10 and 15 degree angles, they also have some other accessory kits that will give you up to 90 degree angle, I believe that kit is very expensive, the 15 degree works fine for me, but the Ascent kit looks interesting.

Some pics

Eight inches of cable between each side of the keyboard, put them where you want

pivot point if you want them close and asymmetrical

10 degree

15 degree

varchar (MAX) SqlParameter length

2011-03-03T09:46:00.000-08:00

I am using log4net and the AdoNetAppender to log all entries to MSSQL server. The exception column by default is 2000, sometimes the stack traces get large. Not wanting to lose any information I changed the DDL to use varchar (MAX) but I also had to update the appender configuration. Using a size of -1 for the @exception parameter seemed to do the trick.

Resources

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb399384.aspx

CQRS with .NET and C#

2011-02-25T08:16:00.000-08:00

I've been intrigued with the idea of CQRS for some time; ever since I watched an infoQ presentation by Greg Young on the subject. What is CQRS?

Command-Query Responsibility Segregation

See the links below to for more information from the experts.

Over the last month I've actually had the opportunity to work with CQRS, so far I am really enjoying it. Separating your reads from your writes is truly liberating! Listed below are a bunch of resources related to CQRS:

Informational:

Presentations:

Greg Young on infoQ - Unshackle Your Domain
Command Query Responsibility Segregation - Udi Dahan

CQRS examples:

https://github.com/MarkNijhof/Fohjin/tree/master/Fohjin.DDD.Example

Some CQRS Frameworks:

OSHA Safety Software

2011-02-21T12:00:00.000-08:00

I've been working on this project off and on for quite sometime. If you are a small to mid size business in California and you need Safety Documents and Safety Management Software check out www.safetysanity.com.

Use this code to save $100 off the setup fees

2011-SAVE-100

We've simplified the process of creating a Safety Program; starting with Safety Document creation through managing Employee Training, Equipment Inspections and Accident Reporting.

www.safetysanity.com

Our software application generates a Safety Program which is compliant with Cal/OSHA regulations. Every business in California is required by law to not only have a Safety Program, but also prove that they are following their program. Safety Sanity makes it easy! Learn more at www.safetysanity.com.

LibreOffice - the real Open Office

2011-02-20T11:27:00.000-08:00

LibreOffice - http://www.libreoffice.org/

LibreOffice is the free power-packed Open Source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and Linux

this is basically Open Office, but without the Oracle factor

ASP MVC Razor templates with nested layout and sections

2010-11-17T07:32:00.000-08:00

Using ASP MVC 3 with Razor views.

Ran into an issue with nested layouts and wanting to render a section in a top level layout, but define it in the view which uses a 'child' layout (master) page. This was generating a runtime error of:

The following sections have been defined but have not been rendered for the layout page...

I posted some code to the asp.net forum and github. A nice workaround was supplied by 'Imran Baloch'

Automapper Datatable to List

2010-11-16T08:08:00.000-08:00

I did a few Google searches for "c# automapper datatable to list" but nothing good showed up right away, maybe this post will help someone in the future?

The solution showed up on stackoverflow here is the link

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2429194/automapper-mapping-ienumerable-to-datareader-issue

and here is a code snippet

Note that we are actually mapping IDataReader to a list, and DataTable has convenience method to do that for us 'CreateDataReader'

Automapper

Get the date of the beginning and end of a month using Ruby

2010-11-05T16:51:00.000-07:00

Sometimes Ruby blows my mind, I needed to get the start date and end date of the previous month. Guess what Ruby just happens to have methods to handle this - beginning_of_month, end_of_month, there is even beginning_of_quarter and end_of_quarter if you need them!

last_month = Date.today.last_month # => Tue, 05 Oct 2010

last_month.beginning_of_month # => Fri, 01 Oct 2010
last_month.end_of_month # => Sun, 31 Oct 2010

last_month.beginning_of_quarter # => Fri, 01 Oct 2010
last_month.end_of_quarter # => Fri, 31 Dec 2010

Remote desktop mac OSX to Ubuntu

2010-10-29T15:12:00.000-07:00

There is a good program (free) for remote connections between mac OSX and Ubuntu. It is called Chicken of the VNC - in my case I needed to remote into an Ubuntu (9.04) desktop from my mac.

First step - allow remote access on the Ubuntu machine

Install Chicken of the VNC

download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/
install the dmg file
then drag the Chicken into your Applications folder

Then open the program and type in the IP address of the machine you wish to connect to.
Done - you are now remoted!

The best overload for 'RenderSection' does not have a parameter named 'optional'

2010-10-29T08:12:00.000-07:00

I've been taking a look at asp.net mvc 3 beta with razor view templates.

some of the examples on the net are from previous releases and things have changed; one that I came across was the RenderSection method which can be used in layout (master) files

@RenderSection("Header", optional:true)

will throw an exception

The best overload for 'RenderSection' does not have a parameter named 'optional'

the newer syntax for rendering an optional section appears to be

@RenderSection("Header", false)

jQuery iframe auto height plugin

2010-10-22T17:21:00.000-07:00

This week I needed to automatically size the height of an iframe to the height of its contents. After a bunch of Google searches I came across this post from Nathan Smith here; It used jquery but applied the auto height to every iframe on the page, I could not use the code out of the box and so the 'jQuery iframe auto height plugin' was born. I made a few slight changes to the original code and wrapped it in a jquery plugin.

Download from github

http://github.com/house9/jquery-iframe-auto-height

see the README file for usage

Geek Desk in Action!

2010-10-13T17:17:00.000-07:00

My Geek Desk showed up last week!

I work standing up most of the time, but I do like to sit down a few times through out the day. In the past I used a "Drafting Chair", but they create a funky angle for your legs as your feet must sit on the bottom ring. So far I am really loving the Geek Desk! - check them out at http://www.geekdesk.com/

here is a short vid of the adjustable height desk in operation

and some pics

VirutalBox - Increase the memory on an existing guest machine

2010-09-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

I use VirtualBox to run a guest Windows XP machine on my Mac. When I set up the virtual guest I set it to use 512MB of memory. And of course now I decide I want to bump it to 1GB. I could not find anyway to do this using the GUI but it can be done from the Terminal.

When the virtual machine is not running execute this command

VBoxManage modifyvm XP1 --memory 1024

XP1 is the name of my guest machine, so replace with yours. The memory parameter takes the amount in MB, in this case 1GB

The first time I ran it I received the following error message

ERROR: The machine is not mutable (state is Saved)

Last time I turned off the guest machine I had selected the save state option. You need to Power the virtual machine down before you can run this command.

Textmate Go to File now available in Visual Studio 2010

2010-09-29T20:53:00.000-07:00

Finally! Visual Studio has a feature similar to Textmates "Go to File" (Command key + T), I love this feature. It means that you rarely need to look around in the project tree for a file, just type part of the file name and bam!

In visual studio it is called "Navigate to" (Ctrl + ,) it takes it one step further and even brings up methods matching the name, not sure if that is a good thing or not, so far so good.

Found out about it here. Guess it has been around for awhile

A code smell - try catch that swallows an exception

2010-09-29T17:05:00.000-07:00

Came across a code smell this week - try catch that swallows an exception

and yes the code that it wraps has some issues....

NFL Live Stream Thursday and Sunday night on NBC

2010-09-09T17:47:00.000-07:00

Awesome!

does not seem like NBC or NFL is doing a lot to advertise the official free stream, but here we go!

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/26393211

2010 US Open live high quality stream

2010-09-04T12:59:00.000-07:00

US Open has their high quality stream going again this year!

http://www.usopen.org/en_US/interactive/video/live.html?promo=slamtracker

You have got to be kidding

2010-09-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

Just did a search and ended up on msdn

I use Google Chrome for most of my web browsing - the msdn site pops up this 'Ad' to 'upgrade' to IE 8 - LOL!!!

ruby 1.9.2 and rails 3rc with rvm

2010-08-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

Get up and running with rails 3 release candidate on ruby 1.9.2

First step install rvm (ruby version manager) - note that rvm does not work on windows, for windows try pik

You will need to wait between each step as installation times will vary

# install 1.9.2 using rvm
rvm install 1.9.2
# this installed the official release 1.9.2-p0

# switch to 1.9.2
rvm 1.9.2
# gem install rails rc
gem install rails --pre

# create a new rails app, in this case 'sample-r3', this differs from older versions of rails; new is a required arg

rails new sample-r3
# navigate to the root of your new rails app
cd sample-r3
# install the app dependencies - in this case sqlite3, see Gemfile in the root dir
bundle install

# generate a user scaffold, note g is shortcut for generate

rails g scaffold User name:string email:string

# create the database table users

rake db:migrate

# start up the rails server, note s is shortcut for server

rails s

Browse to http://localhost:3000/users and we are up and running and yes the scaffold pages still have the same old look and feel

In the past I have tried installing and running rails3 beta and rc on different versions of ruby and ran into some serious difficulties; but it has been painless on the official release of ruby 1.9.2

As a final step we want to add a .rvmrc file to the root of the rails project, this will force rvm to load the correct ruby version when we are in this directory. This can be quite handy, if we were on a different version of ruby running 'rails s' would create a new rails app directory named 's' instead of running the server; from the terminal run

echo "rvm 1.9.2" > .rvmrc

I learned about the .rvmrc file from this post

Updated Look!

2010-08-19T12:50:00.000-07:00

Just switched to a different Blogger Template - much wider and mo better!

Also consolidated my posting, I had 20+ code samples on another blog. Used the Blogger import / export tool which was pretty seamless; needed to move a few code blocks over to gists to get proper formatting but that was it!

valid? vs errors.any? in rails

2010-08-18T12:02:00.000-07:00

Recently got bit by checking valid? in some rails code, thought I would share.

In this situation I was manually adding to the errors collection of an ActiveRecord object and then calling valid? to see if the object was ok; this is not the normal style of validation on ActiveRecord objects, if I had been playing by the rules valid? would have done what I needed; it would check the current state of my objects attributes and 're-validate' the object.

This screen shot of an irb console session shows the issue I was running into

Taking a look at the source code for valid? it becomes obvious why the manually added errors get cleared, just not what I expected to happen

Adjustable Height Desks

2010-07-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

Both of these look like pretty sweet adjustable height desks;

- Geek Desk electronic and runs $750 to $800

- Airtouch uses air and no electronics - twice the price at $1500

hopefully I'll be able to try one of these out soon

Offsides? I think not...

2010-06-18T11:57:00.000-07:00

Pomodoro Timer application

2010-06-01T13:34:00.000-07:00

After reading an article on infoQ, I started using the Pomodoro technique. It works pretty good, but I do still strugle with making my self take a break after the 25 minutes is up.

I recently spent a few days and created a simple timer application to monitor my pomodoros, it is pretty rough around the edges, but good enough for a first release.

I wanted to check out Appcelerator and their Titanium framework, this seemed like a simple enough app to get started with. Titanium allows you to build an app using html, css and javascript then the Titanium framework will 'compile' your code into a desktop application that targets all major operating systems; Windows, Mac and Linux.

In the end I did not really use any of the Titanium Api in my code, just jquery, css and html.

Code is available here: http://github.com/house9/tick-tock-desktop

or download the binaries here:

http://api.appcelerator.net/p/pages/app_page?token=H4m4AYM4

jsfiddle is awesome!

2010-05-27T09:47:00.000-07:00

http://jsfiddle.net/

I had seen some blog posts on jsfiddle before, but just checked it out for the first time, a great way to experiment with javascript code, comes built in with jquery, mootools and more

Snag-it for the Mac

2010-05-24T08:39:00.000-07:00

I have used Snag-it on Windows for many years - it is a great product!

During the last year I have been using Ubuntu and Mac and been missing Snag-it; Shutter on Ubuntu is 'ok', but not quite on the same level as Snag-it

I was happy to discover that there was a beta of Snag-it for the Mac

http://www.techsmith.com/snagitmac/

Free right now, been using it for the last month - it seems even better than the version for windows!

Need to find real estate comps? www.redfin.com

2010-04-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

Need to find real estate comps? www.redfin.com is a sweet site. Not only can you search for new homes on the MLS listings but you can also search previous Sale Records. I don't know of any other site that offers the same functionality. Click the 'More Options' link by the 'Search Listings' button.

Another really nice feature, If you find a bunch of homes for sale in a viewable area on the map, click the 'DOWNLOAD' link to get all of the info in excel (csv).

Uptime and performance monitoring made easy - pingdom.com

2010-04-20T08:54:00.000-07:00

This is a nice service - http://pingdom.com/

Get an email or SMS alert if your site is not responding. They ping your site from multiple servers in both North America and Europe.

They offer one free account where you can ping a single url or get one of their payed monthly plans if you have additional sites to monitor.

GIMP install on MAC

2010-04-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

Don't bother installing GIMP using MacPorts; I started this process and it ran for over an hour before I stopped the install. It has alot of dependencies and MacPorts was busy installing all of them.

Just go to http://gimp.lisanet.de/Website/Download.html and download the package for your OS version

around 75mb download but installed in minutes :)

sorting rails view with will_paginate plugin

2010-03-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

This solution for sorting data on rails index actions does NOT use ajax. Sometimes sorting with ajax is nice but often it is not actually as user friendly; breaking the browser back button, etc...

Disclaimer 1: this code is probably using all kinds of ruby anti-patterns :) - but it is a very simple implementation and so I just went with it...

Disclaimer 2: the title of the post might be a little miss leading as you can use this with or without the will_paginate plugin. In my case I am using it with the will_paginate plugin - and I highly recommend it!

put this file in your rails lib directory /lib/sort_index.rb

in your controller code, set up the SortIndex::Config (you can have more than one if you have multiple actions that need to support sorting

then in your view code render your table headers using the sort object

Does not support the following:

additional attributes on the anchor tags
additional attributes on the table header tags
additional query string parameters - might add this later, would be nice for search results

Digg style css for will_paginate plugin

2010-03-15T09:37:00.001-07:00

Just started using the will_paginate plugin for my rails application. I wanted a Flickr or Digg style applied to the paging controls, did not find anything that came 'out 0f the box'. After a few google searches I came across this link which had an example - apparently from an older version of the README file.

here is that css for reference

exclude .svn results with egrep recursive search

2010-03-11T09:04:00.000-08:00

The exclude-dir option works nicely, I was previously was using --exclude and it would include some sub-dir .svn files

egrep --exclude-dir=\.svn -r -n {search-criteria} {directory}

i.e. find all TODO comments in the current directory and all sub directories

egrep --exclude-dir=\.svn -r -n TODO .

Found this in the comments on this post - http://antoniolorusso.com/2008/05/12/grep-excluding-svn-dirs/

cut back on the blog reading

2010-03-05T15:11:00.001-08:00

I had 200+ subscriptions in my rss reader - way too many

I just cut it back to a short list. No doubt the list will start to grow again...

"Impossible to connect to file" error opening dBase file with open office on ubuntu

2010-03-04T07:55:00.000-08:00

Turns out the ubuntu distribution of Open Office does not include the 'Database' product by default, it tries to open the file with the spread sheet program which can not handle it and errors with "Impossible to connect to file". The fix is to install the database product

System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager

install openoffice.org-base

After installing you should see the 'Open Office.org Database' under Applications menu

Found the answer from this post.

rails send_data fails on IE when SSL enabled

2010-02-17T07:39:00.001-08:00

Came across a nasty issue using rails send_data with IE. Everything worked fine until the pages were running under SSL / HTTPS. Turns out the issue is with file download over SSL when the Cache-Control and Pragma html headers are set to no-cache.

The error message from IE

Internet Explorer was unable to open this site. The requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found. Please try again later.

The fix...

# before calling send_data
response.headers.delete("Pragma")
response.headers.delete('Cache-Control')

This issue is not restricted to rails, any server side code that sets no-cache is subject to the same issue. Glad I was able to find this post.

Google Webmaster Tools Sitemap.xml issues

2010-02-16T09:34:00.000-08:00

After uploading my sitemap.xml file to Google Webmaster Tools I received the following error message and no additional error details were included:

Error: The last attempt at downloading the Sitemap failed. The details below are representative of the last successful download.

I searched around a bit and found a forum post where someone said they get this error 'sometimes', but after switching to use a gzip formatted sitemap.xml file the error went away

on ubuntu

gzip ./sitemap.xml

compresses the file to ./sitemap.xml.gz and deletes the sitemap.xml file by default

after uploading Google was able to process without issue

install older version of rails and without the docs

2010-01-26T13:36:00.000-08:00

I always forget these

sudo gem install --no-rdoc --no-ri --version 2.3.4 rails

Neat site to generate graphics

2010-01-18T07:21:00.000-08:00

I needed to generate a sign up button - this site is so much easier than opening photoshop

http://cooltext.com/

Thanks cooltext!

Ruby Http Get with Net::HTTP

2010-01-06T10:03:00.000-08:00

Resources

Ruby Regex to remove script tags

2010-01-06T09:56:00.000-08:00

Resources

imeem acquired by myspace - bummer

2009-12-09T10:21:00.000-08:00

nothing else to say really, imeem was a great service

I've never liked myspace

Heroku - HTTP 502 Error

2009-11-12T09:55:00.000-08:00

This might be helpful to someone?

I was receiving 'App Failed To Respond (HTTP 502) Bad Gateway' errors when deploying my application on Heroku. Reading the error codes page did not help me solve the problem, it took awhile but I was finally able to track it down.

The error was being generated in the browser but checking the rails logs, the requests were returning HTTP 200 success codes, so the problem was being generated at the web server level on the Heroku stack.

Turns out the problem was caused by setting response.header for no browser caching. I was using code similar to this post. Everything worked fine after I removed this line

response.headers["Expires"] = 0

Heroku - sending email with Gmail

2009-11-12T09:36:00.000-08:00

I have been working on deploying a Rails application to Heroku. A couple of gotchas I ran into when following this post "Sending email with Gmail"

Don't use a dollar sign ($) in your password
this can work locally if you put single quotes around the value, but on the heroku server it saved the entire string but at runtime would truncate it at the dollar sign
for example using the password 'left-side$right-side'
heroku config:add GMAIL_SMTP_PASSWORD=left-side$right-side
heroku config returns > GMAIL_SMTP_PASSWORD=left-side$right-side
heroku console
type ENV['GMAIL_SMTP_PASSWORD'] returns > left-side

Heroku is running Ruby 1.8.6, locally I am running Ruby 1.8.7, I made a small hack to the plugin to avoid errors in development mode

./vendor/plugins/gmail_smtp/init.rb
changed the first line to
require 'smtp_tls' if RUBY_VERSION < "1.8.7"

tls is already handled in 1.8.7 and this code must have been creating some type of conflict

imeem on 64-bit ubuntu

2009-10-25T08:34:00.000-07:00

Getting flash to work correctly on 64-bit Ubuntu can be challenging. By following various blog and forum posts I was able to get it to work, but never the flash player for imeem. Every now and again I would try to re-install flash and see if it would work for imeem but until last night I was never successful.

It turns out that imeem will only work with the 32-bit flash player. After so much work to get the 64-bit player working in Firefox 3.0 and 3.5 I did not want to remove it so I downloaded Opera and installed the 32-bit player under its plugin directory and imeem works great!

Download and install Opera
verify that you cannot play music in imeem
Close Opera
download the 32-bit flash player in '.tar.gz' format
extract the libflashplayer.so file from the archive
then you will need to put this in the directory /usr/lib/opera/plugins/
you won't have permissions to write to that directory unless you are in sudo mode
open a terminal and type 'sudo nautilus'
copy the file into the directory (you could do this from the terminal window also probably 'sudo mv libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/opera/plugins/libflashplayer.so'
Open Opera
check the plugins - type opera:plugins in the address bar
you should see Shockwave Flash and it should be pointing to the libflashplayer.so file under opera plugins, by default my opera installation was pointing to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ for the flash plugin, my guess is opera looks for plugins in its own directory and if not found then looks in mozilla directory
you should now be able to play music with imeem!

I am running Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope by the way. Here are some links that might work to get the 64-bit player working for Firefox

http://art.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1297385
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-install-adobe-flash-player-10-in-ubuntu-804-hardy-heron.html
http://art.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1292438
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/install-flash-10-ubuntu-linux-64bit.html
this last one is probably the best bet, check the comments there

Factory Girl makes rails testing so much easier

2009-10-24T22:16:00.000-07:00

Factory Girl makes rails testing so much easier. I watched a Railscasts on Factory Girl recently but had been putting off trying it out until last week. Glad I gave it a try - now I can say good-bye to fixtures and just write my tests!

Factory Girl is developed by thoughbot; they have some great open source projects, check out Shoulda to make your rails testing even easier.

convert mkv files to dvd with ubuntu

2009-10-17T08:48:00.000-07:00

Turns out there is a great program for this - my guess is it works well with other formats such as avi, mpeg, etc...

DeVeDe, if you are running 9.04 (jaunty) or higher it is in the repositories

System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager

enter 'devede' in the search and then install

Attribute "target" exists, but can not be used for this element.

2009-09-25T07:58:00.000-07:00

These days I am all about valid xhtml and was surprised to receive this validation error when using the target attribute on an anchor tag.

Attribute "target" exists, but can not be used for this element.

I found a nice work around that does not involve window.open, using jquery we can hack the attribute on 'after' the dom has loaded.

Now instead of target='_blank' you can just use class='target-blank', if the browser does not support javascript it will not open in a new window but the link will still work - and we have our valid xhtml.

Resources

Procedure sp_droplogin, Line 93 Login is aliased or mapped to a user in one or more database(s)

2009-09-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

Trying to remove a MSSQL login from a database server, recieve the following eror

Msg 15175, Level 16, State 1, Procedure sp_droplogin, Line 93
Login 'qa' is aliased or mapped to a user in one or more database(s). Drop the user or alias before dropping the login.

Solution: run this command to determine what alias or groups the login is associated with and then remove those; might be nice if they just added this to the error message?

sp_helpuser 'qa'

scrolling screen shot on ubuntu

2009-08-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

I've been using ubuntu for the last 6 months, really like it! But also really missing SnagIt :(

so far I have come across these screen shot tools

built in 'save screen' program - read this post for info about that and others
Shutter

but none that I came across would do scrolling screen shots; currently I only needed scrolling screen shots of web pages and I just came across a great tool for that - a firefox add-on called Abduction, it is really easy to use.

For full page screen shots (including all scrollable regions) or for cropped sections of a page. Just right click on the page and select 'Save Page as Image', if you are over an 'element' it will auto select that as the cropped area, you can then adjust the crop and save, if you want the entire page the easiest seems to be right clicking where there are no elements below the mouse and then adjust the fully selected page as needed

The saved png can then be opened in Shutter for applying arrows, boxes, etc...

Ajax error handling with ruby on rails and jquery

2009-08-21T13:09:00.000-07:00

This sample is just a slight modification of this post 'Handling AJAX errors and displaying friendly error messages to users'. Basically I wanted to maintain the existing rails error handling for non-ajax pages and then have good handling for errors in both development and production mode; i.e. get errors in the browser when in development mode and show a nice message when in production mode.

Modify /app/controllers/application.rb; add the rescue_from macro and the handler_exception method

Then add a global javascript method for presenting the errors; most likely in application.js

Then a sample usage, jquery making an ajax post to a rails controller action

in development mode the error message is returned in an easier to read view in the firebug console and an alert message is presented that has a truncated version of the error

in production mode just a friendly error message.

Resources

Handling AJAX errors and displaying friendly error messages to users
Rails source code rescue.rb
Rails views source on your install lib/action_controller/templates/rescues
jquery ajax

Get list of MSSQL jobs that are currently running

2009-08-04T13:54:00.000-07:00

The following sql statement will return information about the currently executing MSSQL jobs.

Run it against the msdb database

Resources

replace keyboard on Sony Vaio laptop PCG-K23 (PCG-9RLF)

2009-07-18T16:40:00.000-07:00

just replaced the keyboard on my sisters Sony Vaio laptop - on the bottom is says it is a PCG-9RLF, but then it also says it is a PCG-K23? anyhow I had a hard time finding anything on the web, then I finally stumbled on this page which helped alot

http://www.laptoprepair101.com/laptop/2007/08/30/removing-replacing-laptop-keyboard/

You don't need to loosen any screws on the bottom - I thought this would be needed and ended up wasting a bit of time going in the wrong direction.
At the top of the keyboard is a plate that you need to pry up, there are 4 slots you can stick a flat screw driver under (you can't see them unless you press the keys down), this plate is also part of the screen hinge and the power cord that goes to the screen is attached so be CAREFUL!
Then there are 3 screws that hold the keyboard in place, loosen those
The keyboard will hinge up from the bottom
Then you need to disconnect the cable that goes to the motherboard
I ended up pulling this out without much effort
but then it was really hard to get the new one back in
turns out the slot has an open / closed 'mode', using a small screw driver I was able to get it to open up
Then just put everything back, turned out to be relatively easy in the end, I am definitely not an expert when it comes to computer hardware but so far this has been a success!

Frontair Congress, Barcelona Spain

2009-06-27T16:18:00.000-07:00

Alberedes 16
Sant Boi de Llobregat, Barcelona 08830
Spain

We ended up staying here our last night because it was 'close' to the airport and included a free shuttle to the airport. But since we were traveling by train and bus it was not so easy to get here the night before. If I was going to do it again I would stay somewhere closer to a metro stop near 'downtown'; there are trains running direct to the airport all the time.

They did have an indoor pool.

View Larger Map

Husa Imperial Tarraco, Tarragona Spain

2009-06-27T16:10:00.000-07:00

Paseo De Las Palmeras, S/n
Tarragona, TA 43003
Spain

Great hotel. if you stay here I recommend spending extra for a room with a sea view!

View Larger Map

Hotel Costabella (Sercotel), Girona Spain

2009-06-27T16:03:00.000-07:00

Avinguda De Franca 61 Sant Ponc
Girona, GI 17007
Spain

View Larger Map

The hotel is right across the street from the hospital - north of the old town. They have a great pool.

Medplaya Aparthotel Esmeraldas, Tossa de Mar Spain

2009-06-27T15:28:00.000-07:00

Calle Vilafranca del Penedés s/n,
Costa Brava
Tossa de Mar, Girona 17320
Spain

Great town! and this was a perfect place to stay, very inexpensive, functional not fancy

View Larger Map

The hotel is not near the beach but the walk is very enjoyable, probably 10 minutes or so.

Hotel Front Maritim, Barcelona Spain

2009-06-27T14:31:00.000-07:00

Paseo Garcia Faria 69
Barcelona 08019
Spain

View Larger Map

This was a really nice hotel. It is a bit far from the 'downtown' areas but really close to a really nice beach!

It is 4 blocks from the 'Selva de Mar' metro stop. If you are coming from the airport take a metro to 'Passeig de Gracia' and then get on the line to 'La Pau', the Selva stop is 4th to the last stop.

There is also a stop near the hotel on the red tourist bus route; a nice day out to grab the bus and see the sights of town and then get dropped off right out side the hotel.

There is an awesome place to eat two blocks from the hotel Els Peixaters de la Mediterrania. They have great tapas and we ate dinner there one night - one of the best I have ever had!

The beach was crowded on a very warm Sunday - there were not too many people on the weekdays.

Spain

2009-06-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

We just returned from 2 weeks in Spain (Catalonia really). One of the best vacations ever! Great food, great beaches and great history and culture!

below are some links to hotels we stayed at, might be of use to someone?

Secure your Gmail

2009-05-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

yeah - you DO want to run gmail over https; I am surprised this is not the default and I am surprised I did not already have this setting turned on.

In gmail click the settings link in the upper right hand corner

Then scroll to the bottom and select 'Always use https' in the Browser connection section
This came up while I was watching a great screen cast 'Security - What rails will and won't do for you', it was from 'Scotland On Rails Presentations', there are 27 different presentations and all downloadable

PGError: ERROR: duplicate key value violates unique constraint "tablename_pkey"

2009-05-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

Using Postgresql I ran into the following error when trying to create a new record through my rails application

PGError: ERROR: duplicate key value violates unique constraint "tablename_pkey"

Found this link which had the needed fix;

Dealing with 'duplicate key violates unique constraint' on the primary key

apparently with Postgresql after bulk loading records where the auto incrementing id is specified you then need to update the sequence value

bash scirpt to launch rails development environment

2009-05-03T15:20:00.001-07:00

here is a bash script I put together to launch my rails development environment, i got tired of opening multiple terminal windows and cd to the project dir, this script

launches script/server in a terminal window
launches a new terminal and cd to the trunk
launches firefox at http://localhost:3000 with a specific firefox profile
and launches Komodo Edit - go ahead and pick the editor of your choice

this works on Ubuntu, probably on other Linux distro's that use Gnome

I saved this in a file ~/scripts/launch_YOUR_PROJECT.sh
to execute this open a terminal and type ~$ bash ./scripts/launch_YOUR_PROJECT.sh
or create a symlink in your home directory

then execute using ~$ bash launch_YOUR_PROJECT

NOTE: in theory you should not need to even specify bash at the command prompt, when I did not I received the following error "bash: launch_YOUR_PROJECT: command not found"
running 'which bash' returns '/bin/bash' which is specified in the shell script?, something to look into later.

Strange behavior with Rails find_or_initialize_by_id and Postgresql

2009-04-25T08:48:00.000-07:00

The following code sample worked as I would expect when using MySql database - when the :widget_id is 0 it creates a new record with an id of 1; but after switching to Postgresql it was inserting a record into the database with an id of 0 (zero)?

Note: params[:widget_id] does have a value of 0 (zero) when I want to generate a new record vs an actual value when doing an edit. This is a non-standard rails form, I did not experience any issues with a standard new/create view/action scenario.

PGError: ERROR: invalid byte sequence for encoding "UTF8": 0xa7 (ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid)

2009-04-23T22:06:00.001-07:00

Now that Oracle is buying Sun I am switching from MySql to Postgresql

Ran into the following error with my rails application after switching over

PGError: ERROR: invalid byte sequence for encoding "UTF8": 0xa7 (ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid)
HINT: This error can also happen if the byte sequence does not match the encoding expected by the server, which is controlled by "client_encoding".

Found a work-around, check it out here

PGError: ERROR: invalid byte sequence for encoding "UTF8": 0xa7 (ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid)

2009-04-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

Working on a rails application and have decided to make the switch from MySql to Postgresql; ran into a few minor issues along the way and one really annoying and unexpected issue

PGError: ERROR: invalid byte sequence for encoding "UTF8": 0xa7 (ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid)
HINT: This error can also happen if the byte sequence does not match the encoding expected by the server, which is controlled by "client_encoding".

The above error was being generated when I was trying to save model objects that had their string and text attributes assigned from data that had been scrapped using http with scRUBYt. After searching on Google the only 'work-around' I found was to use base64 encode and decode when reading and writing to these model attributes / database columns

Given the following migration

Our model before and then after applying the work-around

Resources

rails collection_select to prompt or include_blank?

2009-04-12T18:09:00.000-07:00

Well I just wasted a bit of time but learned something in the end. When working with the rails form helper collection_select you might be interested in the difference between the prompt option and include_blank? option

include_blank will always create an option tag, prompt will only create an option tag when creating a new record - in most cases I prefer include_blank

both take either a boolean or a string, if true is passed then include_blank will create an option with no display text and prompt defaults to the display text of 'Please Select'

collection_select(:product,
  :category_id,
  Category.all,    
  :id,    
  :title,    
  {:prompt => true}
)

collection_select(:product,    
  :category_id,    
  Category.all,    
  :id,    
  :title,    
  {:include_blank => 'Please Select'}
)

both of these result in the same html, but the first one will not include the 'Please Select' option when you return to edit the previously created Product

accesskey attribute on the select tag is not valid?

2009-04-11T10:02:00.000-07:00

Was just running some validation on a html form and it failed with the following error

"Invalid markup: line 68: Attribute "accesskey" exists, but can not be used for this element."

From w3c spec - "The following elements support the accesskey attribute: A, AREA, BUTTON, INPUT, LABEL, and LEGEND, and TEXTAREA."

I have no idea why input and textarea would be supported but not select? this seems like a mistake? At least there is an easy work around - apply the accesskey attribute to the label tag that references the select menu.

IE8 multiple cookies for the same site

2009-04-09T19:21:00.001-07:00

Internet Explorer 8 is here - oh joy....

As a web application developer I spend a lot of time logging into sites as different users and prefer to be able to toggle back and forth between multiple instances of a browser maintaining the separate sessions in each instance. With IE 7 this was not an issue as long as IE was launched from the toolbar. In IE 8 sessions are shared by default, once again a Google search delivers the goods!

This post explains the -no-merge switch

as easy as Start -> Run ->

iexplore.exe -nomerge

FireFox has a similar issue, but the only work around I know of with FireFox is to create separate profiles, see this post - FireFox and multiple cookies for the same site

'file version' is not in the normal 'major.minor.build.revision' format

2009-04-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

At work we use TFS for source control and NAnt for building our application, yesterday our NAnt build started failing with the following error message "Assembly generation The version '2.7.1.65559' specified for the 'file version' is not in the normal 'major.minor.build.revision' format"

After a quick Google search it turns out that each segment in a .net assembly cannot be larger then 65534. We use the TFS changeset for the revision segment but this will no longer work for us as we are now beyond changeset 65534 - doh! As a work around we are now using only the last 4 digits of the changeset, so instead of 2.7.1.65559 we are using the version 2.7.1.5559

this required a small change to the Nant build script

the update is here
and the original is here

this version constraint is documented here

UPDATE: NAnt build with TFS changeset as revision number

2009-04-09T11:51:00.000-07:00

this is a small revision to a previous post NAnt build with TFS changeset as revision number

apparently there is a limitation on the size of the number used in each segment of a .net assembly version so this is a slight update to the c# code that gets the latest changeset from TFS - changes start at "if(latestChangsetId > 65534)"

see also AssemblyVersion - BuildNo Limitation

Get Filenames and Database names from MSSQL

2009-03-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

I was doing some clean up on one of our database servers; we have many databases created with backup/restore for testing purposes I was checking for the largest ldf files and making sure those databases were in simple mode and then shirking the data files, there were a few files I could not match to the databases because the mdf and ldf file names were different from the actual database file name - found the following queries using a few google searches

Acephalix

2009-03-12T21:55:00.000-07:00

My brothers latest band - Acephalix

Track 1 - Acephalix

jqueryUI effect error with Google Chrome and Safari

2009-03-02T07:49:00.001-08:00

Ran into a strange issue using jqueryUI highlight effect, the issue only occurred with Webkit browsers (Google Chrome and Safari) and only when I was manipulating the background property of the element that was being highlighted.

Using a slightly modified version of the demo. I tweak the background image before applying the highlight effect


$("#highlight").click(function() {
  $(this).css("background", "url(some_image.png) no-repeat");
  $(this).effect("highlight");
});

This resulted in the highlight appearing but not going away. Then checking it in the debugger the following javascript error was being generated - "Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property '0' of undefined," Changing the background manipulation to the following fixed the issue.


$(this).css("background-image", "url(some_image.png)");
$(this).css("background-repeat", "no-repeat");
$(this).effect("highlight");

Update 2009-03-06: You also need to make sure that if there is an existing style on the element being highlighted it is using the more verbose style tags of background-image and background-repeat or the same error will be encountered