May
26
2006
retarded trademark of the day
And the winner is O’Reilly! Seriously, wtf m8?
May
26
2006
One sweet ride
Stopped by the Scottsdale Pavillions a couple weekends ago, I hadn’t gone in months because there was a little drama going on between the “imports” and “domestics”. People were trying to get the ricer’s kicked out, but trying to define ricer is like trying to define Web2.0. Anywho, it Pavillions was decent. There was as small showing of subies, but this beauty was my favorite. A Corvette concept car. Based on the styling of the 60s Corvette, but internals of a 2006. Total hotness.
May
26
2006
Grid7 Blog
The Grid7 Blog is now live. The whole site received a revamp as well. Check it out.
May
22
2006
acts_as_searchable
Looking at implementing full-text searching in your Rails app? Look no further than acts_as_searchable. Using Hyper Estraier, it allows you to easily implement full text searching. To setup acts_as_searchable, I basically followed the instructions over here. It was fairly self explainitory and easy to setup for Windows, but a couple of things caused me confusion:
- The yaml listed on the site doesn’t work because of the spacing. The “host” and “node” elements should be children of the “estraier” element NOT “port”.
- I couldn’t get the plugin to install (I may not have svn installed correctly?), so I ended up installing the hyper estraier gem using “gem install acts_as_searchable”
- Since I didn’t get the plugin to install I had to add “require ‘acts_as_searchable’” to my model.
- Once the hyper estraier server is running, you need to execute the re-index code. Run ActiveRecord.reindex! where ActiveRecord is the name of your model. I ended up creating a controller method that I could hit and reindex everything to get started (not a good idea for production).
- A bunch of files and directories get created upon reindexing. The name of the directory reflect the name of the index that’s being used. They are created in the current working directory.
- The server needs to be started from the same working directory each time. If you start the server from a different directory, you will not see any of the users or nodes that you created from previous sessions.
Hopefully this helps anyone trying to setup acts_as_searchable or looking for a full text search engine for their Rails app.
May
11
2006
taskbar shuffle
If you’re anything like me and have a million windows open at once (and you’re running windows… yes, i know, how lame), check out the Taskbar Shuffle. It’s a neat little mod that allows you to drag and reorder windows that are on your taskbar.
May
10
2006
ipod maps
Yahoo created a sweet little app that lets you add directions to your ipod:
http://www.ipod-directions.com/
It uses the photo ablum on the 5g ipod (and maybe earlier versions?) to display text directions followed by pics of map. It’s pretty sweet, another great use for my ipod. Now if they’d only make a mic for the 5g ipod I’d be happy.
Apr
26
2006
technical debt
I was listening to the Ruby on Rails podcast and a term I had never heard mentioned was brought up: Technical Debt. One of the things I constantly struggle with is how to explain the benefits of doing something a certain way to people who make decisions, but are not technical. Technical Debt is a perfect term to imply that doing something quick and dirty up front will cause real costs in the future.
Apr
26
2006
squaw_4-25 053
Pic of Laura on Squaw Peak with Camelback in the background. Nice short hike after work… it’s too bad that so many people hike it.
Apr
26
2006
squaw_4-25 034
Pic from the top of squaw peak, Laura and I hiked it yesterday after work.
