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I’ve written several helper methods to assist me throughout an application. I’m not fluent in the Ruby language, so these helper methods don’t always go perfect the first time. Usually they aren’t too complicated, though. What I’m finding is that each time I write one, I think, “I’m sure I’m not the only one who has done this.” And sure enough, I’m not. So much, in fact, that Ruby has very similar methods built right into the language. Things like strip_links and pluralize. Simple, but very handy. And perhaps most importantly, they’re time savers.

For instance, just recently I wrote a function to find all of the new line (\n) characters within the comments, and “gsub” them into line break tags. This is a simple function, obviously, but it still wasted my time because I later found out about simple_format which does that very thing. It will treat one \n as a break tag and two \n’s as a new paragraph. I know what you’re thinking, “Why aren’t you using Textile?” I don’t have an answer for that. I haven’t looked into it much, but I believe you simply pass the text to an instance of a new RedCloth object, and then convert it back using .to_html? I think I’m a little skeptical when it comes to installing plugins/gems since I often have trouble getting things of that nature to work correctly on Dreamhost. Then again, it’s often a more effective way for me to learn when something is broken. And I’m usually good at that. Anyway, the point is the Ruby language is brilliant and it really was designed for productivity.

My security clearance is in the final stage. I don’t know how many stages there are, and considering it’s been nearly a year, the “final stage” doesn’t mean much to me. However, supposedly it’s going to be done in two weeks or so (it’s not the first time I’ve heard that). Before, I was ready to go just to rid myself of that project I WAS working on. But I’ve been switched over to another project until the clearance comes through, and it just so happens to be developing an application using Ruby on Rails. How nice is that? But my time is limited, unfortunately.

There are a lot of things I don’t do that I should when I develop (like use subversion), but I’m hoping I can pick up a few good habits before I head over to Lockheed. I’ve been staying somewhat involved in the project, simply because I love web applications and this one in particular seems pretty cool. I never really worked on it much, but I had several conversations concerning its goals and potential. I’m excited. I’ve been given total control over the interface design, which I should be able to knock out rather quickly. And as always, it will be tweaked throughout the process. That’s the nice thing about working for a small business… creative control. I’m now hoping Lockheed drags their feet on the clearance, but knowing my luck it will come through tomorrow.

I’m good driving a standard, but it’s sometimes difficult in sandals. I guess it depends on which pair. Long story short, I stalled my car yesterday. Well, I turned it back on, and the little yellow engine light came on. I kept going where I needed to go, hoping it would go off shortly. Nope. So I then began to hope for the next day (today)... it’s still on. I broke out the manual. It said the light can come on when the emissions are slightly off. I looked online about it, and some said it has come on for them by simply turning the gas cap past 2 clicks. Supposedly, it has a pretty touchy fuel system.

Out of my inability to let it go, knowing there was nothing wrong, I called the VW service department this morning in hopes to schedule a time to bring it in. I figured they would hook it up to the computer, tell me it’s nothing, and reset it so I could move on with my life. However, even better yet, the guy told me that it’s nothing to worry about unless it starts flashing, and in that case, turn off the car immediately. He said the light will reset itself otherwise, so there’s no need to service it, but it might take a day or two. What had probably happened was some air or a little piece of dirt got injected when I stalled. Anyway, that’s a lot better than a trip to Clarksburg, so I’ll take it. Hopefully it goes off soon.

Welcome to the most atypical habit I’ve yet to form. My glasses are slightly crooked (maybe 5 degrees off), but it’s just enough for me to notice. They are the frameless glasses, but I can still see the outline of the lenses. Subconsciously, I think I’m trying to adjust to the crooked glasses, but not by turning my head in the opposite direction (to make them straight), but by turning my head the same direction as the tilt. I guess I’m accomodating to the glasses instead of making the glasses accomodate to me. Well, trying to align the glasses with my eyes that way is like chasing my shadow. Lately I’ve been catching myself with my head further and further to the right, to the point where I think someone would question what I was doing if they saw me. I’ve tried bending them back myself, but I’m a little nervous because it’s about 5x more $ to repair glasses with no frames, because the only connection to the lens and the ear bracket thingy are two little screws. If they snap, the lens will crack. Anyway, I’ve been putting off the fact that I need to take my glasses in for repair. It’s such a small issue, but it could be the reason my neck has been sore, which often causes my head to hurt. Now it’s to the point where I’m afraid I might tilt my head to the right without having glasses on. Wouldn’t that be wonderful. Maybe I could lay sideways on the floor and put book’s under my laptop to angle it as needed… or I could go get my glasses fixed.

I recently received word that my long awaited security clearance is in its final stage and will be done in a week or two. Yeah, it’s the same clearance I submitted in November of 2005 (Thanksgiving break). I’ve been full-time in the Fairmont office of IRC while I wait on the clearance. I’m anxious to get this process overwith, but I wonder what it will be like at Lockheed Martin. I know I’ll be working in a UNIX based environment with Java as the core language; but, I don’t know any of the people I’ll be working with, what my office space will look like (cubicle?), if I’ll have outside internet access and so on. I’m sort of nervous. It’s almost as if I’m starting all over again. I guess I am starting all over again. I’ll have a new project, new co-workers, new language and no more web-development. Although, I have to say, the last month or two at work has been rough. I’ve been switched over to a project that I’m not particularly fond of. It’s to the point where I’m almost ready to leave for Lockheed because of this project. It’s just not for me. It’s entirely not IRC’s fault, though – they were kind enough to let me go full-time back in January while I wait on the FBI, which basically means I work on several different projects. I’ve been able to save a lot of money and pay off a couple of those annoying bills that never seem to go away.

I guess there are high points and low points about leaving, but I can sum it up briefly. The reason(s) I want to go is to get a break from the current project I’m on, plus it will be a really good experience. The reason(s) I don’t want to leave is because of the people I work with. They are the absolute best, and the atmosphere around the office could never be replaced. It’s a great place to work. System.out.println("So, I guess it's time to get out the Java book again. Redundant, lengthy code, here I come!");

As you may know by now, I’ve added a verification field to the comments to try and filter out the spam that will inevitably try to attack this site. I have tested this to no end, and I cannot find anything wrong with it. However, I have recieved a few complaints that the comments are not going through, even with the required fields correctly filled in. I can’t seem to ever have this happen to me when testing. Here are the basic rules:

1. The Name, Comment, and Image-text fields are required.
2. The Image reads “ruhuman” and it is case insensitive.
3. The site field is not required, and you do not have to put “http://” in front of your site.

So, that’s the gist of it. Pretty straight forward. About the favor, if you are reading this, can you leave a comment (even if it is one word) just to make sure everything is working ok? If you do get errors, and are unable to submit the comment, please email me: rpheath “at” gmail “dot” com. Thanks for helping out.

Note: Also, the Name, Site (if entered) and Image-text fields should store cookies. If those fields are not filled in upon return, please let me know.

I thought this was pretty interesting. On the 37signals blog, I caught a post about some stats for Basecamp, Backpack, Campfire, and Ta-da list. Firefox has climbed well above the other browsers… in every application. This means one of two things, or maybe a little of both. It could either show that Firefox is becoming a popular browsing alternative a lot faster than I had hoped; or, most of the people who use those applications understand what makes them so great, which in turn, might indicate they understand why Firefox is superior to IE. That’s definitely a possibility, because 37signals has a great audience. In either case, I hope Firefox (and others) flip the stats on IE completely. I vote for 0% MSIE. Even though IE 7 is supposed to be much better, look how long it took them to realize it. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t want that kind of support for my browser.

I use Firefox as my primary browser and I love it. For whatever reason, I’m extremely picky about my bookmarks. I use folders on the toolbar to keep everything organized. I gave up on live bookmarking, because honestly, I would rather use my feed reader or just visit the site (I enjoy site designs almost as much as reading the content). Someone tried to convert me over to Flock, but it didn’t work. I completely see where Flock is going, and the benefits of what the browser can do, but I didn’t like the way it handled my bookmarks. Sometimes they wouldn’t be there, or they were in the wrong folder and so on.

Anyway, I maintain two computers consistently. Because of my compulsion’s, I have to update my desktop with any new bookmark my laptop get’s. That get’s old. So, you can imagine my excitement when Google came out with a browser sync for Firefox. I immediately installed it the day it came out, and I have to say, it’s been flawless for me. It not only updates my bookmarks, but it syncs my history, saved passwords, cookies, etc. It’s awesome. If you maintain two computers, use Firefox and not the browser sync, you’re crazy. Go get it.

Let’s say you are building an application for a general audience, such as teachers. Well, in order for your software to be successful, you should find out what teacher’s like, as well as what they’re used to. Or should you? Often a client (or audience) has a massive impact on business decisions. And to play it safe, maybe that’s how it should be. But as you probably know, sometimes the client/audience isn’t as tech savvy as you would like, or maybe even expect. This can make things difficult.

An honest assumption might be most teachers aren’t keeping up with the latest technology. While you have insight into what’s better, they might not “get it.” Yet. Just like email, many of the so-called current trends are here for the long haul, too. Being the web specialist that you are, do you put it on them anyway? Or do you hear them out on things like “Why would I want to use email?” or now “Why would I ‘tag’ when I can search?” When is it alright to do what’s best in your own eyes? Those who get it, get it; those who don’t, eventually will. Is it fair to take on this type of attitude when developing? How much should you worry about your audience understanding your cutting edge application? If passion is a large part of making a good product or service, it seems like you should build what you want and worry about the audience later. Then again, that can come off as immature.

The way to success is to make something different. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel – new ideas, new methods and new technologies are what drive the web today. But I’m never really sure how far you should take it, before it starts to alter the clarity of its purpose. I guess you could always refine your audience to only the “tech savvy teachers,” but then you might have less users. Where do you draw the line? Anyway, I was just thinking about a recent situation and wondering how/when you go with what YOU think is best vs. the others involved, generally speaking.

I use web-based documents every day. For general, random needs, I use 37signals’ Writeboard. For more sophisticated, organizational word processing needs, I use Writely. I’ve been using Writely long before Google bought it, but never daily until now. It really is a great way to collaborate and log ideas. I even use Writely for school. I would much rather have a Writely document than a 5 lb. notebook that get’s piled into the crate on my closet floor. I never thought I would be one of those who takes notes on a laptop, though. It’s also a good tool for project collaboration… much better than sorting through the multiple revisions of a document floating around in my email. Of course there are downfalls (like diagrams), but I can usually work around those issues. To me, the benefits exceed the drawbacks.

Being in the SE program, both creativity and design are a large part of our assignments. I think webdoc’s work out extremely well for preliminary design, because I can keep my thoughts and ideas logged as they come to me, at any time and any place. Although I am a bit of a web-junky, and maybe I reason it out to be useful, but I’m really beginning to break away from the standard desktop approach to files, specifically documents. To me, it’s just easier.

The wedding site has been getting blasted with comment spam. I’ve had over 50 random Viagra and Rx comments today alone. In light of this, I’m taking steps toward preventing comment spam on this site. More than likely it’s a temporary solution, but I wanted to get something up quickly. It’s driving me crazy.

I made a disgustingly ugly verification image to prove that you aren’t an automated POS. I know this is by far the worst method to take toward preventing this, but I don’t have the time (right now) to implement a sophisticated spam filter. In order to keep it somewhat user friendly, I’m now storing cookies for your name, site and verification fields. So, you’ll only have to enter it once. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, but I couldn’t ask you to enter it everytime you want to comment. It’s bad enough I’m doing it at all, but that would be much, much worse.

Do you know if storing the verification in a cookie has any drawbacks? If so, please let me know. Oh, and I tested this for about 5-10 minutes and it seems to be working fine. If you come across any bugs, you can email me – rpheath “at” gmail “dot” com. Thanks, and I’m sorry for the annoying solution.

Note: the verification word is “ruhuman” just in case it isn’t clear.

I’ve been partial toward Windows, and not because I agree with and love all of the abundant and cluttered features, but because I’m familiar with it. I know the file system, I’m used to “hacking” when I need to hack, and so on. I’ve alwasy been reluctant when it comes to getting something else. But lately, I’ve been pondering the thought of owning a Mac. I think I would like it. It would take some time to get used to, sure… but in the end, I think it’s a small price to pay for what I would get out of it.

Apparently OS X allows you to run LAMP (+L+inux +A+pache +M+ySQL [+P+erl, +P+HP, +P+ython]) solutions locally on the desktop. Other things will work well, too, but that’s a comforting move in itself since (I think) globally around 64% of web servers run Linux/Apache. And it has available tools, such as shell scripting, FTP, SSH, CVS, (WebDAV?), etc., built right in. It looks like they have the design tools covered as well: Adobe, BBEdit and Macromedia all come with the package. I use Photoshop extensively when I’m designing something, so that’s a major plus. It get’s better. The last few projects I’ve done have been in Ruby on Rails. Well, it looks like the next edition of Mac OS X (10.5) will ship with Ruby on Rails. The advantage, here, isn’t the fact that Ruby and Rails will come pre-installed, it’s the welcoming effort that Apple provides toward all the things I see crucial in web development. Ruby on Rails is relatively new, and Apple is already taking steps to integrate this into their package, because they realize it’s potential and growth. I think it’s impressive.

Just like a lot of other things I do (and have done), if I did make the conversion to Apple, I think I would look back and wonder how I ever handled developing on Windows. There is one downfall to this whole idea, and that’s money. I can’t justify the money, or the reasoning, to go out and get a Mac. Maybe the issue will work itself out. For now, I’ve still got some researching to do, as I know very little about the true benefits and consequences of leaving Windows.

When Newshutch first came out, I was amazed. I immediately exported my OPML from my current reader, and started using it. Then, it’s wonderful interface became known by the guys at 37Signals (they have an awesome audience), and they posted about Newshutch on their blog. The traffic to Newshutch immediately exploded and their server started overheating. It became entirely too slow for me, so I jumped over to Bloglines until they got things under control. Bloglines is really fast, but it’s not very clear on navigation and I find myself often wondering, “What does this do?” The Bloglines interface needs a lot of work. Anyway, I decided to check up on Newshutch to see how they were coming along, and not to my surprise, they’re running very smooth. A lot of their complications were due to a lack of optimization of their SQL statements, which was taking way too long to get the data for all of those new users. I believe they now have a dedicated server just to host MySQL, and they’ve tweeked all of their queries to be much more efficient.

So, I’m making the switch back to one of the few readers I can actually tolerate. There are still a couple of things I’d like to see added on to Newshutch, but I’ll save that for another time on a different day.

Last night I visited the site, and noticed that my del.icio.us links were doubled. Instead of showing 6, it was showing 12. It wasn’t the most recent 12, but the same recent 6 (tagged as ‘rpheath’) listed twice. I didn’t know what was going on. So I reloaded the browser, then I had 18 listed. The same 6 listed 3 times. I think you get the pattern. What was weird, though, as others would visit, it would increase my view as well. So it wasn’t just my browser view. So I thought maybe the @delicious_links << link line was somehow never clearing (even though I haven’t had this problem until now), and just kept building up. I made sure the variable was cleaned out before hand, but that didn’t help. At an attempt just to try and figure things out, I limited the loop to only 6 repetitions, thinking that would surely stop it no matter what was in the object. Nope. Still listed a ton of links (by that time I was up to around 84). Then I came across this updated security version of the del.icio.us API. Others seemed to be having difficulty with the way it parsed after the upgrade, so I blamed it on that and went to sleep. I thought I was going to have a headache this morning trying to figure it out, but it works now. Any ideas as to what was going on? Do you think the upgrade (even though it was updated August 9th) was the catalyst?

I don’t understand this. I get the importance of updates, but unfortunately, the only time I can update my computer is right before I turn it off. If you have a job where you’re on a computer all day (and use Windows), you’ll know what I’m talking about. The reason I can’t update until I’m nearly done with my day is because that little annoying pop-up will remind me about every 15 minutes that I need to restart my computer. Usually, I don’t find out about the updates until about an hour after the computer is on, and by that time, I already have my task bar full of the programs, editors, browsers, and documents that I want open. And, they’re in the order I want them in. I really don’t want to shut down at this time, but it looks like I don’t have a choice. If I’m lucky, I’ll be in the middle of typing and that popup will sneak right in there, and before I know it, I hit space bar. Nothing is saved… wonderful. It’s the fastest popup ever made—great design!

Anyway, that’s just one of the many odd things I don’t understand about Windows. Why was there a majority vote that it would be good idea to have a pop-up constantly remind you that you need to restart? Who had the final say? Microsoft is such a big corporation, you would think someone would come up with reason enough to not do that. Plus, I might be more apt to reboot if Windows didn’t take a century to reload.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not perfect. And for the most part, I think I’m conscious about my flaws. I would have to say my level of patience (or lack there of) is probably the most dominating, though. I’ve always been impatient, but it’s the worst when I’m in traffic.

I don’t really understand how someone can handle slow, restraining traffic. It’s impossible for me. The thing is, I’m not really in a hurry to get anywhere, but I just want to get there at my own pace. I don’t necessarily have road rage, but I guess to some, I might. I don’t act crazy or do anything stupid, I’m just easily annoyed. To me, a person with road rage is a person who is abnoxious, vulgar and/or violent to others, and I’m not like that. The most dramatic thing I do is speed up and/or pass someone in the slow lane. And just so you know, I rarely go faster than 80 mph—I probably average 76-77 mph.

My top two irritations in traffic are: 1) when a car in the fast lane is along side of (and going the same speed as) a car in the slow lane, and I’m behind the car in the fast lane wanting to go faster and 2) when a car cruises along side of me (when I’m in the slow lane) in my blind spot for a long period of time. I cringe just thinking about it.

Update: I forgot to mention, this mostly concerns interstate traffic, although I do have many issues driving through town.

I scheduled through the summer thinking I would be able to get four classes out of the way (2 each summer semester). Little did I know, for grad school, there are no Summer 1 and Summer 2 sessions – it’s all one long, drawn-out semester. Needless to say, I was disappointed. The semester just ended and school starts up again August 21st. I took my last final on Wednesday, and I was so relieved to be done for the semester. Finally, I get a break. Oh wait, not really. Having two semesters in the summer would have done nothing for my break, but I would have accepted my fate, had I been able to get four of them knocked out instead of only two.

This past semester I had the absolute worst class in the world. It was so frustrating and dumb. But even if I loved the class, obviously there will be times when I’m not in the mood. Because of that class, I found that I was not in the mood most weeks.

Overall I think the program is 33 hours and a thesis. That works out to be 11 classes. It’s hard for me to think I’ll be taking evening classes until December 2007, with (at best) a week off between semesters. This week is currently my off week, and I couldn’t be more ready for it. I can’t wait to be finished. Only 16 months left, right? I could use another vacation… one without missing a week of class.

My last big assignment for one of my classes took me 7-8 hours; it was supposedly going to take 10-15 days. It did require a lot, but there were parts I simply didn’t know. From this assignment (and past things I’ve done), I’m finding it can be easier when I don’t know how to do it, simply because I’ll put “whatever” just to get it done. However, I think there are a couple of factors: 1) Knowing less or not caring? 2) Deadlines.

I think this is in direct relationship to simply not caring. To be honest, if I cared, I wouldn’t have put it off and crammed it in the little time space I had available (and while at work). But, since I didn’t care, there was no desire to start it.

Another thing that directly affects this thought is deadlines. I honestly work best under pressure. If I know I have time, I’ll take my time. If I know I only have 4 hours to do a 8 hour task, I’ll work twice as fast (and usually twice as efficient).

So, maybe the ultimate combination would be to “not care while approaching a deadline.” I think I could really get some work done, then. On a side note, the assignment sucked and I hated it.

I believe it was the Getting Real PDF book from 37Signals that mentioned designing for 3 states; or, as they like to call it, the “Three State Solution.” It’s funny, because I fell right into the predictions they made. I totally ignored the blank view. I pumped this site up with data while designing, just to make sure everything would fit nicely, but I never really thought about the first impression the site gives when there is only one post, one category, two tags and no comments. It’s quite bland. I find myself wanting to shove some more stuff in the database in order to “bulk up” the site a little more.

This design was so sparatic, though. I never really gave it my complete attention. Had this been a project for work, or perhaps something more than my own site (where there were users and the users had accounts), I would have been more prone to think about all facets of the design (including the blank view).

All in all, I don’t know what I would have done differently had I remembered the blank view, but it’s an interesting thought.

I’ve had this site ready to deploy since Wednesday/Thursday last week, but have been unable to do so because of the issues I’ve been having with my server. Actually, the site itself has been done for a long time, but I wanted to touch up a few things, and never got around to it until last week. So, once I was back into the swing of things, I wanted to get it uploaded by the end of the day on Thursday. Being the good worker that I am, I tried to do it over lunch, and had no luck.

Initially, it worked. But I had my password wrong for the database, so it crashed out on me. I changed that, restarted my processes, refreshed the browser… nothing. It made it to the 120 second mark when FastCGI times out. I thought, ok, must be something going on with Dreamhost. I tried again later, still didn’t work. It’s now time to hit the forums/blogs/wiki’s and so on. I even emailed Dreamhost support about the issue (they didn’t help).

To make a long story short, I tried everything under the sun. I was surprised that I found at least 10 different solutions to the EXACT same problem I was having, the only difference was none of them worked for me. Eventually, I gave up on fixing it, and followed Chris’ path. Everything works, but don’t be surprised if something is a little screwy (although I’m not sure why it would be).