Andrew Chalkley's (Micro) Blog

I am doing the Rails Rumble this year!

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:21:31 +0100

I am doing the Rails Rumble this year!

402 is the Magic Number [Flickr]

chalkers — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:21:40 PDT

chalkers posted a photo:

Links for 2009-04-23 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Evolution of Man - BBC Science & Nature
Evolution of man on the BBC educations site
Evolution of Man - Human evolution on Wikipedia

Introducing RubyHelpers

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:12:00 +0100

I am pleased to announce RubyHelpers gem.

When building lightweight Ruby apps in Sinatra and the like, I often need some extra functionality that Ruby doesn’t have baked in. I end up repeating snippets of code hear and there. I thought I’d bundle it in a gem for my own use and contribute it to the Ruby community.

I have extended Object to include the blank? similar to that found in Rails. For example “”.blank?, nil.blank?, {}.blank?, [].blank? etc

I have extended String to have to_html to use RedCloth to convert textile to (X)HTML. For example “h1. *Hello World*”.to_html would produce “

Hello World

”

I have extended Hash to have dot notation to access values via keys and to have {key}_exists? method too. For example person.first_name instead of person[“first_name”], person.phone_numbers.office person.phone_numbers.mobile_exists?

The Hash extension is really handy after parsing a JSON object. It feels so much nicer to access values via dot notation.

So start using it in your projects:

sudo gem install rubyhelpers

Check out the docs and contribute other RubyHelpers on good old GitHub.

Imogen whispering “birdy”

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:38:40 +0000

Imogen whispering “birdy”

GMail in Safari 4 not working?

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:24:23 +0000

If you find yourself in the situation where GMail in Safari 4 is not working and you have reset Safari and still had no joy then it’s probably because you have Google Gears installed.

It seems that there’s some conflict somewhere so you just need to switch it off in the mean time in your Safari > Google Gears Settings… > mail.google.com> denied.

Source for 1234567890

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 02:34:58 +0000

Source for 1234567890

Is it >= 1234567890 in UNIX time?

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 02:32:57 +0000

Is it >= 1234567890 in UNIX time?

Me and my Open Source Nerd Merit Badge [Flickr]

chalkers — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:27:54 PST

chalkers posted a photo:

Yeah!

My very own Open Source githubbing Octocat Nerd Merit Badge! [Flickr]

chalkers — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:27:25 PST

chalkers posted a photo:

Beautiful!

Is that an octocat I see? [Flickr]

chalkers — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:26:32 PST

chalkers posted a photo:

Note the angle I took this picture at. Doesn't reveal anyones address! Privacy :)

Oooooh what's in here? [Flickr]

chalkers — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:25:55 PST

chalkers posted a photo:

This arrived this morning! I was very excited.

For those who don’t know what atheism is…

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:55:18 +0000

For those who don’t know what atheism is…

MacRumors Live Site Hacked

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:05:00 +0000

I was watching the feed when the words ”STEVE JOBS JUST DIED : ” appeared amongst other crazy stuff.

People are cruel at times.

Fixing "no such file to load -- sqlite3"

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:37:00 +0000

In your environment.rb

config.gem ‘sqlite3-ruby’, :lib => ‘sqlite3’

Introducing Revver4R

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:33:00 +0000

Here is my first RubyGem and Rails Plugin, Revver4R. A simple Ruby way of grabbing videos from Revver. Check it out on my github account.

Enjoy Revver for Ruby!

P.S. It’s realised under the MIT license

Twitter is down :( Chill!

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:21:00 +0000

Twitter is down :(

Chill!

"If it smells like shit and looks like shit, it probably is."

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:04:45 +0000

“If it smells like shit and looks like shit, it probably is.”

- My interpretation of Occam’s Razor

Apache Sites Enabled Loaded in Alphabetical Order

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:30:00 +0100

It’s appears that Apache loads sites-enabled in alphabetical order.

That’s why the styles and images from my assets.andrew.chalkley.org domain were trying to be loaded from my androo.co.uk redirect.

It’s all fixed now :)

Wow! This is above me lol

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:22:03 +0100

Wow! This is above me lol

Here’s my jQuery presentation given at the Spring User...

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:47:00 +0100

Here’s my jQuery presentation given at the Spring User Group in London.

Surprisingly people turned up to the Spring event just for my talk alone.

New Design

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:58:32 +0100

This is the new design.

Still ironing out some CSS kinks and adding some new snazzy features soon. :)

The explanation of my CV from 2002 to 2004.

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:57:56 +0100

The explanation of my CV from 2002 to 2004.

"Happy iCal Day!"

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:23:02 +0100

“Happy iCal Day!”

- Andrew Chalkley

Probably one of the most important videos of all time :) Watch...

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:18:01 +0100

Probably one of the most important videos of all time :) Watch it if you dare!

This is awesome! Wall-e is down to earth.

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:52:00 +0100

This is awesome!

Wall-e is down to earth.

Links for 2007-08-16 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:00:00 PDT

Author of the Year
Richard Dawkins' the God Delusion

Links for 2007-08-15 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 00:00:00 PDT

Atheism is Good website