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
Continue ReadingRailsConf 2009
It’s highly unlikely that I’ll make it to RailsConf this year, due to continuing employment uncertainties. Too bad, since it’s close by in Las Vegas. Vegas is hurting, so I understand the room rates are still at $99 a night. I went to the first RailsConf 2006 in Chicago on my own dime, just to have the bragging rights. It was great fun, and all the presentations were good quality. I haven’t been able to attend since O’Reilly took over the event, but it looks pretty professional. Here’s a pic of me at RailsConf 2006. A couple of wise guys were working the event, and taking pictures of people who… Read More
Continue Readingauthlogic gem – and a step backwards
I was alerted to the authlogic gem yesterday, so I had to try it out. To my surprise, I discovered that the rails command was no longer working – WTF? I had also lost the rake tasks from my restful_authentication test case. Another mystery. Could the addition of the gems I installed couple of days ago have caused this problem? (See previous post.) Ultimately, I rebuilt my local gem repository with just the basic rails gems, and I got my rails and rake commands working again. Sheesh! That done, I installed the authlogic gem, and I set up a rails app for testing authlogic. Pretty cool – I’ll spend some… Read More
Continue ReadingTesting restful_authentication (Part 1)
The restful_authentication plugin is really nice, and it’s a critical part of any eCommerce site, so you have to test the hell out of it – unless you actually like irate customers. Anyway, unit tests won’t be enough, and Rick Olson (a.k.a. technoweenie) has already stated that he wants to use RSpec going forward, so that’s the first thing to set up. But, Cucumber is getting a lot of air play lately, so I decided to check that out too, as it may be a viable solution for integration testing. So – on to the set up. After viewing Ryan’s Railscasts 71, 155 and 156, I decided to install the… Read More
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