May 18, 2009 -
0 Comments -
ruby
tools
Given the recent discussion of tools this blog has hosted, I thought I’d link up to this interesting and very well-designed site, The Ruby Toolbox. This site tracks which Ruby libraries and tools are getting the most use, by categories such as testing frameworks and deployment automation, as well as a global list (which, unsurprisingly, is topped by Rails itself).
The data for this site is based upon the number of watchers and forks at GitHub, so it’s not all-inclusive, but it definitely provides for a great reference point. It’s also a cool way to just snoop around and see what’s out there. Check it out!
May 17, 2009 -
0 Comments -
css
tools
Look closely and you may notice that I’ve taken a little time to tune the vertical rhythm of the layout for code.isdangero.us. Lines of text fall upon a consistent division, unbroken by headings and other blocks. Notice how the text in the sidebar remains lined up with the text in the main body of the layout. This is the effect of a consistent vertical rhythm.
I found Syncotype utterly indispensable in adding this touch to the site’s design. Many thanks to Rob Goodlatte for his hard work in contributing this tool to the community.
I also found this article from 24 ways by Richard Rutter useful for its descriptions of the technical details of maintaining vertical rhythm in CSS layouts. Thanks, Richard!
I still have more work to do to get things just right; I haven’t yet factored in images, captions, or code snippets. If it comes down to it, I may reconstruct this layout using Blueprint, and perhaps add Compass to augment my existing…
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May 12, 2009 -
8 Comments -
ruby
tdd
tools
I am a relatively recent convert to the mantra of TDD:
- Write a failing test
- Make the test pass
- Refactor
It took my involvement in writing an analytics API for the iPhone to help me see the light. This API was receiving millions of requests per day from hundreds of thousands of unique users, so every deployment of new code had to be rock-solid.
Of course, back then I was just using vanilla Test::Unit; we didn’t know any better. Since then, as I urged my colleagues to give TDD a shot, I have researched a number of libraries which take a lot of the pain out of writing tests. Here follows a description of my testing stack, along with brief explanations of why I went with them over the alternatives.
Shoulda
I love Shoulda. Stringified test names + nestable contexts + easy macros makes for well-organized, concise tests. The readable output it generates is also a great feature; consider the test below:
When this is run and it invariably fails, we get the following output:
Failure has never …
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May 11, 2009 -
1 Comment -
ruby
tools
I love tiny ideas which are well-executed and useful. How many times in a single lifetime will a developer write code to output a progress indicator from a long-running shell script? dots alleviates this once and for all while borrowing the Test::Unit style we all know and love.
Just write this:
And get this output over the course of about 50 seconds:
..................................................
Finished in 50.23425 seconds.
50 total, 50 passed, 0 failed, 0 erred
Simple to add to your code, and nice, familiar output to let you know that, yes, the script is still working (or at least doing something). :)
Kudos to Stephen Celis for sharing this with us! You can git it here: http://github.com/stephencelis/dots/tree/master
May 10, 2009 -
1 Comment -
san francisco
bicycling
When I moved to San Francisco just over a year ago, I did so without a car, truck, Segway, or what have you. Completely reliant on public transportation and my own two legs, the monthly $45 MUNI pass was my tax-deductible key to the city.
All MUNI busses are also either zero emissions or run on biodiesel, so they’re pretty damn green.
San Francisco’s MUNI system is highly capable compared to where I was coming from, and really helped me out as I established my new life on the western frontier, but it could only work for so long. After landing an apartment in the middle of the Richmond, the bus’s tendency to stop at every other corner seemed less cordial and more annoying; at an average speed of 7 MPH, it took my bus about 40 minutes to get me downtown, which didn’t include the waiting time which could be up to 15 minutes or so. The two hours I spent on the bus each day began to steadily take its toll on my sanity.
Enter the bike
The greenest form of transportation around. Everybody’s doing it!
I purchased myself the cheapest bike tha…
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May 09, 2009 -
3 Comments -
me
After years of silence, I have decided to resurrect my public presence online, to the tune of King Crimson’s The World’s My Oyster Soup Kitchen Floor Wax Museum.
You may remember me from such popular blogs as Maybe Tomorrow and Passive Digressive, the former of which actually gained a noticeable slice of the web traffic pie, mostly due to Google Image searches for the term “lollipop”, but also due to D- or E-list notoriety within the blogs about web design by those concerned with web standards ring. I even have an official entry in the venerable CSS Zen Garden to vouch for my former street cred.
Currently working in the software industry as a Ruby on Rails engineer, there’s a good chance that Ruby- and Rails-related topics will make semi-regular appearances here. Given my deep interest in music and music production, these are also topics which will probably see some coverage. And maybe even politics on occasion, although my level of interest in such dissertation has waned relative to where it was back when I ran Passive Digressive. (Yeah, that’s right, I ran that shit.)
You can also expect some occasional...
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