McCain is an Asshole

CSSEdit

 Here’s MacRabbit’s wonderful CSSEdit, which is pretty much the best CSS-editor on the market, bar-none.   
Even their webpage is amazing… 

CoverSutra

My first post is going to be on CoverSutra. It’s a pretty simple application for controlling iTunes. It does an effective job mimicking OS X’s Spotlight, IMHO.   
  

OS X Beauty

Okay, after having left this blog here for a while, I’ve decided to start writing about beautiful OS X applications. Yes, that sounds pretty silly, but I really think some applications are things of beauty, while some are complete pieces of crap. So I guess I’m hoping also to show people (developers included) what good UI is all about, by providing examples.

Ruby on Rails: Newbie Tips

Being a newbie myself, I thought I’d help out others with the following list of advice/solutions to common problems. I’ll be adding to this list as I learn more myself (through books and frustration)… Oh, and a lot of these tips are Mac OS X relevant only!

1. When you end your server process (for WEBrick at least), make sure you end it using control-c and not control-z. Doing the later causes the server to enter an unstoppable loop of destruction! If you do make the mistake, however, you can either restart you computer or simply change the port you use with the following command: script/server -p 3001.

   If you try to use the same port as a currently running instance of the server, you’ll get this error:
   WARN TCPServer Error: Address already in use - bind(2)

2. If you want to add a cron script or have something execute on a cycle, your best bet is to use backgroundrb. That said, make sure you read the manual and be sure to install both the daemons and slave gems.
3. If you are working with the JSON format and you want true .json output that includes the quotes with the hash key identifiers, run this line: ActiveSupport::JSON.unquote_hash_key_identifiers = false
4. If you need to output to a static file, you do so by writing to the public folder (duh!). Here’s some example code of how I did that in my last project:

   output = "my text output"
   open("#{RAILS_ROOT}/public/files/file.txt", "w") do |file|
      file.puts output
   end
   

Irony

I thought this was kind of ironic and some good timing on my part, at least.

Wahoo Reddit

The founders of Reddit are UVa grads, apparently. Go wahoos!

See a similarity?

Facebook Birthday!

This is what I received in my inbox for my nineteenth birthday.

Am I posting this to show you how extremely popular I am? Yes—just kidding… No, I’m posting this as an observation on the effect of facebook on birthdays. Receiving 30+ emails in the inbox just seems… impersonal to me.

The vast majority of the posts would never have happend if Facebook hadn’t notified others that it was my birthday. In this sense, I think facebook is effectively removing our responsibility to others; Facebook makes it all-too-easy to remember birthdays. If we really care about somebody, I think, we should make a point to remember when their birthday is, and not have to rely on Facebook, which notifies you only two or three days in advance.

Thoughts?

UVa 2.0

Here’s my web 2.0 version of my school’s logo. Go wahoos!

Made in illustrator.

12 miles…

I ran twelve miles today. It was fun.