Back in the old days (pre-2000), the various flavors of UNIX had very little security other than the “baked-in” stuff such as encrypted passwords, root vs normal users, the standard file permissions, etc. Later, things like SELinux and firewalls were added. I still get tripped up on that occasionally. I recently moved my Rails apps from the mongrel-based server model to Phusion Passenger (documented in a previous post). This worked fine, but it was time to let all the machines on my home network see the web sites, if only to see what they look like on Windows PCs. A Google search shows that a lot of people have trouble… Read More
Continue ReadingFun With Regular Expressions
If I wrote code all day, every day, I’m sure I could become really good at manipulating regular expressions. The obscure syntax is sort of Zen-like with a large dose of Perl obfuscation-fu. A one-liner that does a lot of cool text parsing appeals to the Nerd part of my DNA string. In reality, I have to grab my books when it’s regex time. The classic is Jeff Friedl’s “Mastering Regular Expressions”, published by O’Reilly, but this week I ran across a copy of O’Reilly’s “Regular Expressions Cookbook” by Goyvaerts and Levithan (Amazon link for both here), It covers 8 different languages, including Ruby. Worth a look. The Cookbook also… Read More
Continue ReadingWatir on Windows XP – Installation
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
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