Watir – Web Application Testing in Ruby – I’m thinking about adding this as part of my standard Rails integration tests. I like the idea of capturing keystokes that a user might actually run. Plus, it makes for a dandy demo tool. Here’s the summary of installation steps. I’m assuming you’re Rails-aware enough to have an application in place, and you know how to install Ruby gems: Rails Side – gem install watir gem install tg4rb Firefox Side – Install the TestGen4Web add-on Install the JSSH extension – start here to determine which version, and follow all the instructions on the page. Once you restart Firefox, the TestGen4Web icon should… Read More
Continue ReadingSoftware S&M: Rails Development on Windows XP
(Professionals on closed course. Do not attempt this at home.) I love my new company, but it’s an IT staffing outfit, not a software development organization. Sure, it would have been nice to equip the Rails team with new Macs and a dedicated SQL server, but what was actually available was a couple of Dell desktops running Windows XP. So be it – three people on the team, one on a Mac, two on Windows. Can we make this work? The first order of business was to move the design environment from SVN to the Git versioning system. You can do this by installing git as part of the Cygwin… Read More
Continue ReadingThoughts on the Job Search
A short deviation from the technical content of this blog, as I complete my first week at the new job. (Shameless promotion of my new employer here.) There are a lot of people out of work right now, and many of them are my friends and colleagues. So, I want to spend a bit of time explaining what worked, what didn’t work, and post a few thoughts on finding employment during the current unpleasantness. Your resume is your marketing brochure, so get some help if you can. When I was terminated from IBM, I was provided with a generous package from Right Management. I am particularly indebted to the folks… Read More
Continue ReadingTweetDeck on Linux and KDE
Summarizing all I learned in one place…. I use the KDE window manager on Linux mainly because it’s been the de facto standard for the semiconductor industry since the Dark Ages, and I don’t want to burn the time switching to GNOME right now. TweetDeck seems to be GNOME-centric, BTW. On Fedora Core 8, 32-bit Linux, with KDE: You need these RPMs installed on your machine: adobeair1.0-1.5.1-8210, adobe-certs-1.0-8210, flash-plugin-10.0.22.87-release. You can get the AIR package at http://get.adobe.com/air/ and the Flash 10 RPM at http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/. The adobe certs RPM should be available through the Yum channel, if it’s not already installed on your system. Download and install the TweetDeck AIR file:… Read More
Continue ReadingOS Installs Under VMware Server 2.0
My Linux server is running Fedora Core 8 – pretty old by Internet standards (the bleeding edge is FC 11). But now that the kernel patches have died off, my VMware Server 2.0 installation is stable, so I wanted to create a few Linux OS images of interest. Here’s a summary of the results: Ubuntu 8.10 – I’m really starting to like this OS. One disk, twenty minutes, no gotchas to trip up a rookie. It’s clean, and updates are easy. Ubuntu blurs the distinction between the root user and a normal user, which concerns me from a security standpoint, but it’s ideal for a single desktop or a laptop… Read More
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