Posted by Deirdre
Sun, 24 Sep 2006 13:58:00 GMT
Or, "Migrating a blog is always more painful than you think."
I hope you can see this. If all goes well, this blog has been migrated from WordPress to Typo, running Ruby on Rails over Lighttpd. I've seen a few feed hits coming through, but I'll check when I wake up (yes, it's almost 7 a.m. and I haven't been to sleep yet...)
I've broken a lot of links, and I'm starting to go through them, so if there's something you don't see, realize that I am putting everything back together and it'll take just a tidge of time, especially to get the redirects for the old permalinks up.
I'm changing the categories to be broader and instead going with more of a tag approach, as I think that offers finer granularity with less long-term hassle.
Posted in Notes, Ruby on Rails | Tags rubyonrails, typo | no comments
Posted by deirdre
Thu, 20 Jul 2006 02:29:40 GMT
Shopify has been touted as one of those Rails apps that's going to change the face of the web. I don't think so, and my comments about why it wasn't appropriate for me (for fuzzyorange.com) went completely unanswered.
Since others may be considering shopify, here's my critique:
- There's no easy way to charge tax only in one vicinity, but not others. In the US, if you charge tax in your state, you may not charge it in others. Canada, where Shopify was developed, has both a national GST and a provincial one, so its tax structure is fundamentally different.
- There's no practical way to charge actual cost for shipping. But that's what I do already (though I ship priority mail and charge for the median zone price for that weight with an estimate of box and packing material weight). In shopify, shipping rates are a function of state. Priority mail rates do not break down by state, but rather by zip code ranges. Frequently, these do not follow state boundaries. Yet, with web services, calculating actual cost should be easy, right?
- Most e-commerce sites are poorly designed for people selling one-offs. Honestly, I wasn't expecting a lot (because it is fairly unusual), but sometimes a store consists entirely of one-offs. Like mine.
- No API, thus no easy way to develop add-on tools, e.g. bulk info uploaders, especially handy for those of us selling one-offs.
Posted in Reviews, Ruby on Rails | 1 comment | no trackbacks
Posted by deirdre
Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:09:59 GMT
Well, I missed it (busy doing things I couldn't move in time), but I thought I'd see who used which plugins for Railsday, just to see if there were any cool new ones.
Here's the list.
I got it by checking out the source for all the projects and trawling through the vendor/plugins directories.
Posted in Ruby on Rails | 3 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by deirdre
Fri, 09 Jun 2006 17:36:30 GMT
Yesterday, I went up to the city to spend time at Geoffrey Grosenbach's Rails workshop, offered by Carson Workshops. While I was already better-versed in Rails than most anyone there, there's always things you pick up from other people, and it was an excellent recharger for the mental batteries.
I highly recommend anyone new to Rails go to the workshop when possible.
Posted in Notes, Ruby on Rails | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by deirdre
Sun, 23 Apr 2006 15:42:06 GMT
Chris Wanstrath offers a pretty complete transcription of a very flawed talk by Alex Chaffee. There were some really interesting talks, but one thing I was hoping for in the domain-specific language talk was, you know, an actual example for creating a DSL.
(edited to add)
I have been meaning to write up notes about the conference (rather than just a few criticisms), but I haven't gotten to it yet. Tonight's out, so probably tomorrow.
Posted in Ruby on Rails | 1 comment | no trackbacks
Posted by deirdre
Sun, 12 Mar 2006 15:18:35 GMT
A few days ago, I changed the table name of the wrong table (without realizing it, of course). Suddenly, my rails app wouldn't start at all, and no errors in the development log. Naturally, I had a client demo in less than an hour....
What I'd done is change the name of the sessions table to something other than what was in environment.rb.
So, if you happen to have this problem, that's one place to look.
Posted in Ruby on Rails | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by deirdre
Fri, 23 Dec 2005 14:12:21 GMT
Trips taken: 7
Seattle, Calgary, Glasgow, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Diego.
Airlines flown: 5
United, Air Canada, British Airways, American, Southwest
Traveler's Century Club countries visited: 4
United States (Continental), Canada, England, Scotland (none new)
Conventions where I was a speaker: 3
Further Confusion, BayCon, Loscon (I had to cancel Conjecture, alas, because I was coming to San Diego the following week for RubyConf)
Conventions/Conferences where I was a volunteer (either for that convention or representing another): 7
Further Confusion, San Francisco Writer's Conference, Norwescon, BayCon, Westercon, Loscon, LISA.
Obsure music found and acquired: 3
Boney M (German import), Florian Zabach (old vinyl, yeah), Blancmange (UK import)
Artists whose tunes I bought off iTunes: 76
Backstreet Boys, Guided by Voices, Marcy Playground, White Stripes, Daft Punk, Caesars, Tears for Fears, Dorothy Hall, Faith No More, Gary Hoey, The Gypsy Hombres, Mojo Nixon, Marie Osmond, The Stranglers, Erasure, Beck, 4 to the Bar, Yaz, Thurle Ravenscroft, Dublin City Ramblers, Toni Basil, Devo, The Nylons, M, Boney M, Lenny Kravitz, The Rubinoos, Duffy, Rockpile, The Monkees, Billy Connolly, The Real McKenzies, The Presidents of the USA, U2, David Lee Roth, Buggles, Scritti Politti, Sparks, Weezer, Jack Costanzo, Jack Johnson, The J. Geils Band, Miriam Makeba, Die Lollipops, No Doubt, Harry Belafonte, Cake, Enya, Daler Mehndi, Donny and Marie Osmond, Puffy AmiYumi, REM, Split Enz, The Wallflowers, American Bread, Bay City Rollers, Bowling for Soup, Martin Mull, Mocedades, The Dandy Warhols, Osibisa, El General, David, Wes Montgomery, Thalia, Madness, Jonathan Butler, ABC, Jean Knight, Tom Jones, Wild Cherry, Asleep at the Wheel, Bob Wills, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, The Weavers
Favorite Guilty Pleasure bought off iTunes:
Die Lollipops, Pata Pata (Safari-Song)
Movies seen in theatre: 1
Serenity, which I loved.
Programming Languages Learned: 1
Ruby, of course. You knew that.
Ruby on Rails projects shipped: 3
Rails projects in progress: 5, maybe 6 as of later today....
Posted in Notes, Ruby on Rails | 2 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by deirdre
Fri, 23 Dec 2005 13:45:23 GMT
Back when there was the virus/viri/virii/viruses/virus and octopus/octopi/octopodes/octopuses debate on the Rails list, somehow I missed this article on my husband's web site. In short, in classical Latin usage, virus was an uncountable noun, thus its lack of a definitive plural. It is only the change in usage that renders a plural necessary.
Posted in Writing, Ruby on Rails | 2 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by deirdre
Tue, 13 Dec 2005 13:18:02 GMT
Ruby on Rails 1.0 is out, along with the new and improved web site. One of the things I like most is the featuring of Why the Lucky Stiff's Poignant Guide.
Chunky bacon!
sudo gem update rails --include-dependencies
Posted in Ruby on Rails | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by deirdre
Mon, 05 Dec 2005 02:58:25 GMT
I realized I haven't been writing too much about Ruby on Rails lately, but there's been a grand flurry of activity.
At one point, I had nine Ruby on Rails projects in the air, which was driving me crazy because I can't wrap my brain around that many projects (four really is about my limit).
Recently, two were finished, one is in a limited deployment until I get the next feature set going, one was deemed irrelevant, and two others were combined into a single application.
Currently, I've got six, including the one in limited deployment, including a new small job from a client.
So, if you haven't heard from me and think I don't love you, that's not it. I'm just slammed.
Posted in Notes, Ruby on Rails | no comments | no trackbacks
