January 2012
1 post
1 tag
On Windows 8 and that ‘No Compromises’ Mantra —... →
minimalmac: Can you imagine running Lion on an iPad, or booting a MacBook Air and seeing Launchpad instead of the Finder? Apple allows its hardware to help dictate what software is best suited for it. The company is willing to compromise on software features for a better user experience. When Microsoft says “No compromises”, I hear “Can’t let go of the past.”
Jan 19th
14 notes
August 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Aug 7th
13 notes
5 tags
Textmate and Lion Woes
My recent upgrade to OSX Lion has Textmate unsettled. :-( In fact, it’s downright unstable. Textmate crashes several times a day, unexpectedly, sometimes simply just because I clicked on it. I find I can’t open projects from the Open… or the Open Recent commands in the File menu. I also find switching between Textmate windows (open projects) using the Window menu simply...
Aug 2nd
8 notes
July 2011
2 posts
6 tags
Customizing Active Admin (Part 2)
I’ve been mucking about with Active Admin, at times trying to bend it to my will. I’ve been frustrated as hell trying to get it to do some fairly simple stuff, and at times elated when I find a way to do it. The project documentation is, let’s say - progressing, and sometimes the best to work things out is to delve into the innards. I had some success today while integrating the...
Jul 1st
42 notes
Jul 1st
4 notes
June 2011
2 posts
Ruby Quicktips: Convert anything to boolean →
Just add !! (a.k.a. the double bang operator) before any statement: >> @document = Document.new => <Document id: nil, title: nil> >> @document.title => nil >> !!@document.title => false >> @document.title = "My new document" >> !!@document.title => true In Rails, you can use the name of your…
Jun 13th
18 notes
3 tags
Jun 6th
1 note
May 2011
2 posts
4 tags
Customizing Active Admin
I came across a new Ruby on Rails administration framework yesterday called Active Admin, thanks to the latest instalment (episode 165) of The Ruby Show.  I was immediately impressed by the professional landing page and the look and feel of the administration views generated by the gem. I was also very impressed by the elegant DSL. Active Admin is packaged as a gem and it abstracts away all of...
May 21st
32 notes
5 tags
May 3rd
1 note
April 2011
1 post
3 tags
LMFAO! Damn Auto-correct!
This has to be one of the funniest sites I’ve seen in a long time! DamnYouAutoCorrect.com
Apr 27th
2 notes
March 2011
5 posts
5 tags
Undo with Paper Trail in Rails 2.3.8
I was recently impressed by Ryan Bates recent Railscast on Undo with Paper Trail, but faced a few difficulties trying to port it into a Rails 2.3.8 project. Rails 3+ has access to the view_context in the controller. It took me a while to find this because I’ve never needed it, but Rails 2.3.8 has similar access to the link_to helper via @template. I also found that the undo action taken...
Mar 11th
2 notes
4 tags
Rails 3.1 to ship with jQuery as default JS stack
Awesome! I’ve never been a fan of Prototype and have been using jQuery for everything. It’s nice to know it’ll be the default from Rails 3.1. This has pretty much cemented my decision to stick with jQuery now. DHH announced this via Twitter earlier today.
Mar 10th
8 notes
2 tags
WatchWatch
Lego Black Ops - this is great!
Mar 9th
2 notes
3 tags
Using Knox to Secure my Code
Bought a Knox family license to secure source code and personal stuff. This Mac software is great in that each vault is a sparse bundle and is mounted and unmounted as a volume. You can even turn on Spotlight for the volume so OS X keeps working the way you expect it to with regard to searching. With 256-bit encryption my stuff will be safe in case of accidental loss now.
Mar 3rd
2 notes
3 tags
Tower for Git is Awesome!
Lashed out and bought Tower after trialling for 7 days! Very impressed with this great Mac software to add to my coding arsenal.
Mar 3rd
3 notes
February 2011
1 post
3 tags
WatchWatch
This is pretty cool. I bet a bit of work went in scripting, choreography and production for a few minutes of this funny surprise.
Feb 3rd
January 2011
1 post
4 tags
Jan 5th
4 notes
June 2010
7 posts
3 tags
Jun 24th
3 tags
Google's CAPTCHA Keeps Humans Out Too!
CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer. It is a contrived acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” While attempting to confirm I was human when verifying a Gmail account, this is the CAPTCHA I was presented with. I don’t know about you, but I was...
Jun 16th
7 tags
Industrial strength asset packaging in Ruby
BEFORE AFTER In the process of getting my first major Ruby application out the door, I’ve been assessing the various asset packaging systems. Asset packaging offers a number of advantages on production websites, including obfuscation through compression of CSS and JS files, and embedding of images and fonts. The biggest advantage however is the speed gained by reducing the number of...
Jun 11th
4 tags
Jun 10th
4 tags
Apple Showcases HTML5 & CSS3 →
These examples are outstanding. Safari’s typography support is stunning. This could effectively kill other typography solutions like SIFR. And I wonder what it will do to Typekit’s business model?
Jun 10th
6 tags
Jun 9th
5 tags
Safari 5 →
Both Safari 5 and Rails 2.3.8 released this week. It’s like two Christmases at once! HTML5, Forms 2.0 and CSS3 here I come. Safari 5 has some major new features: Reader (try it on Wikipedia),  greater HTML5 support, faster rendering,  additional search engine support (Bing and Yahoo!); and  a new extensions system supporting HTML/CSS/JS plugins (like FF has had forever). I’ve...
Jun 9th
March 2010
1 post
1 tag
Mar 5th
1 note