SoByteMe

MiniTest, Rails functional tests and Devise

Here's the Gist for my test_helper.rb file which gets you running Rails functional tests as MiniTest specs...

Padrino CMS Template

I have just pushed my first draft of my Padrino CMS Template onto Github. It aims to enhance the standard Padrino Admin app with a Content model which is keyed by path.

Hotrod Hayride

Wall of Death, Drag Racing, Soapbox Derby and loads of Kustom Karzzz...

Most Rated

A developer friend has just launched a very cool new music / event promotion website coupled with streamed audio for registered artists. Each artist's airtime is influenced by the listener's votes. It's a very good looking application with some simple but very effective features. Check out Most Rated

ActionView date_select calendar logic in javascript

ActionView's date_select helper doesn't produce valid dates where the date select element is visible. i.e it's possible to select February 31st for example. Here's my 10 min fix in javascript (using prototype minimally).

Javascript bitwise encoding

A quick example of Javascript bitwise encoding...

Independent Stove Installations

Another Radiant and Heroku site I made wiv my 'ands

RubyProf, Oink and ActiveRecord bloat

A client's CMS application was hogging up to 1.2gb RAM for the passenger ruby processes, we set to work on putting the big fella on a diet and with the help of the ruby profiler, some very useful tips on finding active record bloat and the wonderful oink gem we achieved a huge performance boost and reduced resource usage.

Fun fun fun fun fun

... till the pigs come round.

Ruby 1.9 String encoding shitfest

I've just spent the past 3 days working out a bunch of character encoding problems on an application running in Ruby 1.9 By the end of it I felt like my eyes were bleeding, I shall recount the horror as a lesson to you all...

None Meaner...

DLH funday 2010...

Brown Sauce for life

I recently spent a couple of hours building the Ooh! Saucy! site for a friend who makes her own special recipe brown sauce. The site is content managed using Radiant and freely hosted on Heroku, here's how I jabbed relentlessly at the keyboard until shit appeared right...

Simple content management for Rails

A requirement on a recent project was to have editable content slots throughout the application. Here's what I done wiv my 'ands and my brains...

Le Mans Spotters Guide

I'm off to Le Mans for the 24hr race. Here's the spotters guide from spottersguides.com.

Guerilla BMX

Tucked away in a shady little location in the West Country is this amazing set of hand built dirt jumps. One of the shovel wielding bikers gave us a short demo...

Computers

• Vim Cheatsheet
• Jasmine + Require + BackboneJS
• MiniTest ActiveRecord associations test helper
• Apache2 / Nginx reverse proxy config
• String to function in Javascript

Ruby Debugger Commands

I can never find or remember these commands when I need them, often frowned upon by the BDD community the debugger is how most programmers cut their teeth. Ruby's is a bit backdoor but it does the job when you know the basic commands.

Don't try this at home kids...

Scratching in the kitchen for Keith...

Mean Wheels

Spotted outside the Electric Ballroom, Camden, night of the Reverend Horton Heat gig...

Active Record for Javascript

The eggheads at activerecordjs.org have brought sunshine to the cloudy world of javascript persistence mechanisms with Active Record js.

His name is called Busta

We got another dog from the RSPCA last week, his name is called Busta and he's a very happy chap...

Cheat sheet gem

cheat is a useful gem for access to command line cheatsheets.

Richard Dawkins would have a seizure...

When you start to think there might be something extraordinary about your giant pet, what do you do? Phone the RSPCA? Consult a vet? Or call a medium.

We don't advise you...

Stuff you shouldn't be doing...

10 minute javascript logger

A quick and cheap js logger class to help you get out of alert hell...