From the mind of a nerd

Setting up RubyEE and Rails 2 Development Environment on Ubuntu 10.04

2012-02-19T18:54:00.000-05:00

I decided to add this post as a supplement to my earlier post on setting up Ubuntu 11.10 for Rails 3 Development.

I recently had a need to set up a Rails 2 environment that used Ruby EE, and although I had documented that process elsewhere, I decided to share on my blog as well, in hopes it could help others.

Using Ubuntu 10.04 (LTS)

Make sure your install is fully patched:

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Getting everything installed and in place:

Do a quick install of git and curl so we can install RVM:

$ sudo apt-get install git-core curl

Install RVM:

$ bash -s stable < <(curl -s https://raw.github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/master/binscripts/rvm-installer)

Now, setup RVM function sorucing to your .bashrc

$ echo '[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && . "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" # Load RVM function' >> ~/.bashrc

And...reload your .bashrc (or just reopen your terminal):

$ . .bashrc

Next add this additional repository:

$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-on-rails && sudo apt-get update

Install a few packages:

$ sudo apt-get install libruby1.8 zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libreadline-dev build-essential ruby irb rdoc rake ruby gems rubygems1.8 ruby1.8-dev mysql-common mysql-client  mysql-server mysql-admin libfreeimage3 memcached libopenssl-ruby libmysqlclient15-dev libimage-science-ruby libimage-science-ruby-doc libmagickcore-dev libxml2-dev libxslt-dev libsasl2-dev zip libopenssl-ruby rdoc

Install Ruby. I found that I had to install 1.8.7 before I could install REE.

$ rvm install 1.8.7

$ rvm use 1.8.7

$ rvm install ree-1.8.7

$ rvm use ree-1.8.7

$ rvm install rubygems latest

Set up MySQL:

$ mysql -u root -p

mysql> create database <database_name>;

mysql> create database <database_name_development>;

mysql> GRANT ALL ON *.* TO '<username>'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '<username>';

Install Gems:

$ gem install bundler;

$ bundle

Zipping a directory using DotNetZip

2012-01-26T16:36:00.000-05:00

I just came across a problem where I needed to zip an entire directory up into a .zip file using C#. I quickly found a way using System.IO.Compression that would allow me to zip a single file up: This was so close, but not quite what I needed. I then found out about DotNetZip and was able to quickly throw together a little test app that did just what I needed: Pretty slick, and best of all DotNetZip is a free library - check it out!

Unity 2D: A Lighter Desktop Shell for Ubuntu

2012-01-21T15:25:00.001-05:00

Although my primary Desktop PC’s at both home and at work are running Windows 7 (although both have Ubuntu VM’s loaded in VirtualBox), I have 2 laptop computers that are running Ubuntu. Both machines are fairly low spec: A Dell Mini 9 Netbook with 1GB of RAM and an Intel Atom CPU, and an older Thinkpad Z60m with 1GB of RAM and a single-core 2GHz Pentium M (Centrino) CPU. Neither are speed demons, but are perfectly adequate for running Ubuntu for what I use them for (web-surfing and hosting irssi in a screen session for the Mini9, and web-surfing and (light) Ruby, JRuby and Ruby on Rails development on the Thinkpad).

Both of these machine actually run the full fledge 3D Unity interface ok, but both also seem to get quite hot when doing so, and both seem to get a little sluggish after having been up for a while.

I was thinking about paving both machines and going with a lighter weight variant such as Xubuntu or Lubuntu on these machines, but I *really* have grown to like Unity. On a whim I decided to try the Unity 2D interface, and it has worked out quite well. Memory usage seems a good bit lower, and both machines run cooler. Also, both machines seem a *lot* snappier with the Unity 2D interface, so it seems that it could be a nice alternative for those with older/slower machines that still want something close to the full-fledged Unity experience.

Does it have to be this hard?

2012-01-14T11:11:00.001-05:00

I decided *not* to use Synergy after spending a few hours toying around with it...then I thought it was going to take an act of congress to get the service uninstalled from my Windows machine - it doesn't uninstall w/ the program, so I had to *re-install* just to uninstall the service, and then uninstall the app again. There's got to be a better way.

Ubuntu 11.10 and Synergy

2012-01-14T00:48:00.001-05:00

I came across an interesting problem tonight. I have a laptop running Ubuntu 11.10 that I wanted to use as a Synergy client to my Windows 7 desktop. Everything would work fine, until I tried to move back to my desktop from the laptop – it was stuck there.

I discovered that if I used the 1.4.5 Beta on the Windows server, everything worked fine.

I’m posting this here because I found several posts online where others had the same problem with no real resolution (at least none that worked for me), hoping this will help someone out.

FizzBuzz Part II

2012-01-11T07:01:00.000-05:00

After my post last night, I noticed that a ton of traffic came in via search engine traffic from folks looking for help with the Codeacademy exercise.

If you are stuck at step one, read their directions again...carefully. In the first step all they want you to do, is return all the numbers from 1-20 using a "for" loop. Nothing more.

So, this will get you started:

This should get you started. Hope this helps!

FizzBuzz

2012-01-10T22:23:00.000-05:00

I recently discovered Codeacademy which is a great on-line learning resource for up and coming programmers. The most recent lesson involved solving FizzBuzz.

From the Codeacademy site:

FizzBuzz is a children's game where you count from 1 to 20. Easy, right?
Here's the catch: instead of saying numbers divisible by 3, say "Fizz". And instead of saying numbers divisible by 5, say "Buzz". For words divisible by both 3 and 5, say "FizzBuzz".
"1, 2, Fizz, 4, Buzz"...and so forth

Sounds easy enough - and yeah, I did find it pretty easy - I passed the course pretty easily (actually, I messed myself up thinking I was stuck by trying to solve the whole puzzle on their first step and they were breaking it up).

Apparently the FizzBuzz problem is a common hiring technique for folks looking to hire programmers, and I found where Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror has blogged about it a couple of times.

The quiz at Codeacademy had you solving it in JavaScript, but I went ahead and solved in Ruby and Python as well.

JavaScript:

Ruby:

Python:

Installing Fedora 16 in VirtualBox with Guest Additions and GNOME Shell

2012-01-04T20:36:00.001-05:00

Just wanted to document here for others trying to do the same.

First, create the virtual machine, and make sure to give it at least 64MB of Video Memory, and select Enable 3D Acceleration in the Display section of the VM’s settings.

Then, install Fedora 16 (I used the Live GNOME Media). Second, disable SELINUX by editing the /etc/selinux/config file and setting SELINUX=disabled. Reboot the VM.

Then, drop into a terminal and run sudo yum –y update kernel, once completed, reboot. After reboot go back to a terminal and run sudo yum –y install kernel-devel-kernel-headers dkms gcc gcc-c+

After this is completed, you can then select Install Guest Additions from the Devices menu in VirtualBox and run sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run in a terminal at the Install directory.

Finally, reboot the VM again, and you should have fully working Guest Additions, and a fully functional GNOME Shell environment.

Reflecting on the old year, anticipating the new

2012-01-01T16:45:00.001-05:00

Many blogs will have posts similar to this one today, and I started not to write this, but decided “why not?”. Everyone else is boring everyone else with their self-centered view of what they want to achieve over the next year, so I will join the club as well. Read on if you want to know more about me, and what makes me tick. I’ll try to keep it concise and too the point.

Overall 2011 was quite a year for me. Here are some highlights.

I continued improving my physical fitness:
Started Running:

Ran first 5K
(First 5K: 33:08 Time; Avg. Pace: 10:40/mi Best 5K: 24:08 Time; Avg. Pace: 8:50/mi)
Ran first Half-Marathon
(1:50:11 Time; Avg Pace: 8:24/mi)

Achieved >50% weight loss
Stopped having to take medicine for High Blood Pressure and High Cholesterol
Steady improvements in weight lifting
I got to travel a bit
Visited San Francisco

Attended Atlassian Summit 2011, learned lots.
Got to attend a SF Giants Game (They have been my favorite team for years, and I never thought I’d get to see them play).

Visited Seattle

Visited with Coworkers at “The City”, and did some “work stuff” while there.
Visited the Space Needle and surrounding area.
Drank some coffee.

Visited Denver

Attended AstriCon (learned lots, met cool people).
Experienced quite a snowstorm.
Ran with Prairie Dogs on the wonderful trails in Westminster, CO.
Saw the Rockies, drove to Boulder.

Began learning the art of Software Development

Ruby on Rails
ASP.NET MVC
JavaScript/jQuery
CSS/HTML
C#
Ruby
JRuby
SQL

What’s coming in 2012?

I don’t know. Nobody does. If I knew, I’d know the winning Powerball numbers for Tusday night, and this list would be quite different. However, since I can’t predict the future, I’ll share some things I’d like to achieve. I don’t set “resolutions”, as they are, in my opinion a recipe for failure. However, I do set goals. I would love to set a goal to run a full marathon. I won’t, not because I don’t think I can physically prepare (I know I could), but I’m not sure I’ll have the time/money resources to travel to one in order to make it happen.

I do want to continue improving my physical fitness. I *really* want to set the lofty goal of single-digit body fat. That is huge to me, but I think that’s more like a resolution, and is setting me up for failure, so I have a goal to simply continue improving physically every day. Improving my running pace, increasing distance, increasing my lifts at the gym and making even better choices at the table.

I want to do more than just continue to learn software development. I want to put the knowledge into practice. I will always be learning the art of software development. Learning should never stop. I love my job, I really do. I love the company I work for very much. However, I do want to transition from my current job as a Server Administrator to become a Software Developer. I do have faith that those I currently work for understand I have developed quite a passion for development, and want to nurture my new desires, and not hold me back (that’s why my company is so freakin’ great), and I know that those who I want to go to work for down the road share the same vision, and are going to be willing to give me a chance to prove I can do it (another reason why my company is so freakin’ great).

I want to continue to make knowledge a revolving door. I love to teach-back new things, and inspire an atmosphere of organic information. I will continue to teach-back and share my new-found knowledge with anyone who will listen, and strive to make any team I am a part of better in any way I can.

Finally, I just want to sincerely wish each and every one of you reading this blog the best, and most meaningful 2012 possible. If you want something badly enough, you can do it – you can make it happen. If you want to lose weight and get yourself more fit, do it – don’t think about it, just get up and move, and eat better. Make it a learning process. Learn as much about exercise science and nutrition as you can. It will be your ammunition in the war. If you want to learn something new, or change your career path, do it. Get online – find free materials on whatever subject it may be, buy books, enroll in classes. Just do something to make it happen. Nothing happens by wishing on a star – you have to put in the effort in order to make any change in your life, and once you make that commitment to yourself, it’s a stronger bond than any commitment made to another person. You have to want to do it for “you”.

Finally, I’ll share my personal motto:

Any day is a good day. Any day I learn something new is a great day.

Here’s to the new year!

More free learning resources

2011-12-28T21:23:00.001-05:00

Back in October, I posted an entry which listed out many of the awesome Ruby and Ruby on Rails tutorials and resources I had found online, and I felt since I should update with some additional resources I’ve found for C#, ASP.NET, JavaScript, jQuery and other techniques.

First, Here are a few sites I’ve found specifically for C#:
On Microsoft’s MSDN site, you’ll find this great collection of C# tutorials. Most of the basics are covered here and this will get you started quite nicely in your journey to learn the C# language. A similar set of tutorials can be found here, on the C# Station website. The one resource I can’t recommend highly enough is this nice collection of videos on Microsoft’s Channel9 site by Bob Tabor of LearnVisualStudio.net – I found Bob’s teaching style excellent, and the videos moved along at the perfect pace for me. Just a note – I found streaming these videos to be quite slow for me, even with my fast connection, so I downloaded the .wmv versions, which is nice to have, as I can save them locally for future reference.

Once you get the language basics down, it’s time to move onto applying those skills to a framework. An excellent place to start for ASP.NET is right on the ASP.NET homepage. From there you can find excellent tutorials such as the Movie Database Application Tutorial, and then the more advanced MVC Music Store Tutorial. I found both of these excellent and they taught me a lot about the ASP.NET MVC framework. There is also the NerdDinner tutorial which at the time of this writing is still on MVC 2, but there is supposed to be an updated tutorial coming soon to port it to MVC 3. Be sure to check out the other MVC tutorials as well as the free videos from Pluralsight on the ASP.NET MVC homepage. Also, don’t forget to further explore the MSDN site because there is a lot of information available to cover a wide range of topics from general .NET Development, C#, “How Do I?” videos and Test Driven Development.

There is more to web development than just learning a language such as Ruby or C#, or framework such as ASP.NET MVC, Rails or Sinatra. There is also JavaScript, jQuery CSS, HTML, XML and more. A great place to start is http://www.w3schools.com/ – you’ll find tons of general Web development oriented information, tutorials, exercises and even quizzes there. Also be sure to check out the Mozilla Developer Network JavaScript Guide as well. The jQuery JavaScript library is a “must-learn” as well. Besides the jQuery website itself, be sure to check out http://www.learningjquery.com/ and these free videos on JavaScript and jQuery at learn.appendto.com. I have also found jspin.com to be really great for tinkering with JavaScript right in my browser.

Although the purpose of this post was to share free resources, I have also purchased the following books I have found helpful:

Upgrade Time

2011-12-09T18:18:00.001-05:00

My home PC is about 2 years old now – it wasn’t exactly cutting edge when I built it, but it’s been getting the job done. It’s a AMD Phenom II Quad Core that I’ve been very pleased with so far overall. I’d toyed with the idea of some upgrades to help me get another year (or more) out of it, and finally bit the bullet on one today.

I noticed that RAM is unbelievably cheap (at least the DDR3 variety my machine needs). I was able to pick up 16GB of quality Corsair RAM for under $80 – you just can’t beat that. I use virtualization quite a bit, and I was very limited by the 6GB that was my current config. I’m sure that I will have more than enough breathing room with 16GB in there.

The other upgrade I’ve been thinking about is an SSD. I’m still really up in the air on this one. You look online, and read what many are saying, and it’s like they are the absolute holy-grail of computing, but I’m simply not convinced. Let me tell you why.

First, *yes* machines with an SSD as a boot drive do boot incredibly fast. But you know what? I very rarely reboot my machine. Perhaps I’m in a minority there, I don’t know. Yes, applications launch faster, but you know what else? Windows 7 Superfetch does an excellent job of keeping frequently used files cached (16GB of RAM can only help that even more), and most of my applications (including Visual Studio) start up nearly instantly. The only place I think I would see a dramatic improvement would be games, but to purchase an SSD with the capacity I need for my OS, major apps and all of my games would simply be out of my price range right now. I would rather hold off until my next machine. I am just not convinced I would see that much difference. I tend to just keep the apps that I use the most open anyway (again, 16GB of RAM is going to help with that even more), and I’m not just sitting here launching applications over and over again just to admire how quickly they launch.

The other factor, quite simply is complexity. I’ve tried reading through SSD reviews at Anandtech and to be quite honestly, even for an old hardware buff like me, they make my eyes cross after a while. They all seem to have different strengths and weaknesses, and there seems to be some compatibility issues with Windows 7 (SandForce3 controllers causing BSOD’s, etc). Also, there seems to be quite a bit of care, feeding and tweaking to get the best results. When it all boils down, I’m not sure all of that (including repaving my machine I just rebuilt on a Windows platform) would be worth all of that considering I have one of the fastest spindle drives already available in there.

I might be wrong, and the right SSD could make me wet my pants with excitement. I’m just going to wait until my next machine to find out.

Taking the next step…

2011-12-04T22:00:00.001-05:00

I am a learner by nature. This has even been confirmed the StrengthFinder tests. I not only love to learn new information (who doesn’t?), I love the very act of learning. I always have. It is something that is hardwired in my brain.

Since I started working with computers some 10 years ago (really? Gosh! I feel old just saying that), I’ve wanted to become a developer. In those years I’ve dabbled a bit with Visual Basic 6 (there I go making myself feel old again), Perl and Python (from my Linux stuff), and I even fixed a line of code in a C program and pushed it back upstream in Debian once. I started trying to learn C# and ASP .NET about 3 years ago, but abandoned the idea. I just had too much going on, and I simply wasn’t ready.

A lot has happened to me in those past 3 years. I started by stopping smoking, and then losing over 50% of my body weight, then I started running and just recently finished my first half-marathon. It was the weight loss process and starting to enjoy the sport of Running that taught me a lot about myself. It taught me that I can do *anything* I want to do, if I want it hard enough.

I decided a few months back that I wanted to learn Ruby on Rails. I want to change the direction of my career. It’s not that I don’t enjoy what I do, because I enjoy my job as a server admin very much. I simply want to make things happen – not just simply manage the computer that others use to make things happen.

I did very well catching on to Ruby on Rails. What was different than my previous attempts at learning a programming language and framework? I think part of it was finding just the right tutorial with Michael Hartl’s Ruby on Rails Tutorial. Another part was the fact that I had the will to follow through, followed up with the act of actually following through with it. It’s simply not something I was prepared to do a few years ago.

I’m not by any means a Ruby on Rails expert now. To put it into perspective, let’s look at my swimming skills. If you walked up to me and ask the question “Do you know how to swim?”, my response would be “No, but I know how to not die”. Which means, I don’t know all of the proper techniques that go into making one a swimmer, however I know how to use basic skills to keep my head above water and not drown. Am I a swimmer? No, but throw me in a lake and I won’t drown. That is kind of where I’m at with Ruby on Rails. I don’t claim to be a RoR expert, but I think if I was thrown into the deep end of a pool of code, I could find my way to the top and come out ok.

This is where the next step comes in. I also decided to loop back to the whole ASP .NET thing. I decided to see if I could use some of those basic “swimming” skills I learned in the Ruby on Rails pool to also swim a little in the ASP .NET pool. Since I *do* want to become a “Developer”, I think the more skills I have, the more marketable I can become. Right? Knowing both will only help making applications built in each of the frameworks communicate with each other better. Right? I hope so. In any event I’ve devoted some time to learning a little about ASP .NET this weekend, and I do think I can “not die” in that pool also. It seems a lot of the basic concepts of MVC I learned in Ruby on Rails are going to translate quite nicely to ASP .NET MVC. I’m really excited to be taking this next step in my life, and finally following a dream and passion I’ve (somewhat secretly) had for quite a while.

Community

2011-11-30T20:13:00.001-05:00

One of the most important features of any Linux distro, yet one of the most overlooked by many is the community surrounding it. I just want to go on record as saying that I have been using Linux for 10 years now, and I have yet to find a more friendly or helpful community as the folks surrounding openSUSE.

Textmate Themes in Sublime2 (Helping a reader)

2011-11-29T21:21:00.001-05:00

I had a reader leave the following comment on my blog post about using Textmate themes in Sublime2:

Hi! I added a theme Railscasts in Sublime and noticed that she's somewhat different. In TextMate it looks softer and more pleasant, as if the color is applied a filter. In Sublime the same color more contrasting. Do not you know you are with what it can be connected and how to do so in Sublime it was like in TextMate? Heres screenshot - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/858102/screenshots/models.py.png

I am usually pretty anal about such things myself, however I didn't notice the difference until it was pointed out, and I'm not really sure why it happens. I posted this in hopes another reader could help this fellow out.

Here is his screenshot from his comment (click for larger):

Here is the theme in Textmate on my Mac (click for larger):

Here is the theme in Sublime2 on my Mac (click for larger):

And here is the theme in Sublime2 under Linux on my home PC (click for larger):

They *all* look different to me, and I really have no answer.

Does anyone have any ideas to help out?

Update on my openSUSE experience

2011-11-26T23:24:00.001-05:00

It's been a little while since I posted about setting up openSUSE on my main desktop. Just wanted to update here that everything is going awesome - almost boring awesome (that's a good thing). I've gotten everything set up just right, and I've become very comfortable in the distro - I've finally found my Ubuntu replacement after all this time, and distrohopping. I did intend on using KDE with openSUSE, but I ended up on GNOME 3 - I've also finaly gotten used to Shell. I did try KDE initially, but I found it had a lot of features I'd never use (such as the "activities"), and more settings than I'll ever tweak. It did work well though, and I'm sure many who just *can't* adjust to GNOME-Shell or those who think XFCE is too basic will find it nice. With Shell, I've had to form a few new habits and break a few old habits, but I've finally gotten to the point to where I'm comfortable and I won't be switching again.

Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds: Setting up openSUSE 12.1/Tumbleweed

2011-11-19T15:44:00.001-05:00

For those that don't know, openSUSE introduced a "Tumbleweed" branch of their distro, so that if you choose to do so, you can turn openSUSE from a release-point distro into a rolling distro (like Arch, Gentoo and others).

I've been wanting to do a rolling distro for a while. I tried Arch and that didn't work out the way I wanted - I really just like sticking with mainstream distro's if possible. Debian's Testing branch can work ok as a rolling release, yet you run into freeze issues around release time.

I've also been wanting to find a good KDE distro, as I'd like to switch back to KDE full time. I stopped using KDE back when KDE 4 released, but it's re-matured now, and I'm ready to be a KDE'er again (I ran KDE exclusively until KDE 4). I decided to load up openSUSE 12.1 after it's release and set it a tumbling. I've been very happy with the results. Nobody does KDE as well as openSUSE, it's a mainstream distro, and it gives me the option of a rolling-release system - so it seems perfect for what I'm looking for.

Set-up Proccess:
There is official documentation, but here is my quick and dirty openSUSE setup guide.
First, install openSUSE 12.1, I chose the DVD for install (for more options - I'm also trying out Btrfs), but you can use live media if you choose. From the DVD you can choose your preferred Desktop Environment, but from the Live media, you simply choose the media for the desktop you want to run. There is live media for both KDE and GNOME, but I believe if you want to install XFCE or LXDE you need to either do a Net-install or install from the DVD.

After openSUSE is installed, open up the "Software Repository" module in YaST, and remove all of the repos that are there (including the DVD if you did the DVD install). After that, add the following repositories back:

You can also use the zypper command line tool to add the repositories as well:

These repos will always point to whatever the "current" openSUSE version is, so when 12.2 comes out, you don't have to come back here and change them out again! Next you need to add the Tumbleweed repo:

It is not recommended to have any other repositories enabled other than the OSS, Non-OSS, and Updates repo from the current distro along with the Tumbleweed distro enabled. I *did* find that there is a VirtualBox Tumbleweed repo here: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Virtualization:/VirtualBox_Tumbleweed/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/ which I also added, and I believe there is a Packman repo for Tumbleweed with extra codecs and stuff. I haven't added the Packman repo because I have mp3 playback by default, and that is all I really need - I don't like adding a bunch of unnecessary repos (I think that is what messed me up the last time I tried openSUSE). After that, I just installed Virtualbox, set up my Rails dev environment (using RVM) and installed a few other apps I like/prefer (such as Clementine for a music manager - I hate Amarok, htop, irssi and a few others). I'm very happy with openSUSE, and overjoyed with KDE 4.7 as well. I've been distro-hopping too much lately trying to find an alternative to Ubuntu, and I may have finally struck gold with openSUSE!

Specifying Rails version when creating an application

2011-11-08T20:20:00.002-05:00

As I've started working on multiple Rails apps on my machine, and using different Rails versions across applications, I've ended up with different versions of Rails installed. I've discovered a simple way to specify the Rails versions needed for an application when creating the application.
Format your command like this:

$ rails _3.0.9_ new testapp

This will, for example create a new Rails app named 'testapp' with the Rails version of 3.0.9. You can verify by running $rails -v in the application root.

Textmate Themes in Sublime 2

2011-11-06T22:11:00.002-05:00

As if I needed another reason to love Sublime 2, I discovered I can import and use Textmate themes.

Here's how:

Go to Preferences -> Browse Packages and put the tmTheme file in the User directory.
Restart Sublime 2
Then, go to Preferences -> Color Scheme and it should be in there.

My favorite scheme is the theme created by Ryan Bates of railscasts.com. You can find the theme on the 'about' page of railscasts.com

An editor that is simply Sublime

2011-11-04T21:28:00.001-04:00

I have been a consumer of Free/Open Source software for going on 10 years now, and I love being able to use open tools whenever possible. I am also not particularly religious about it as some folks are. I'm an even bigger believer in using the best tool for the job.

Since I have started learning Ruby on Rails, I have tried out quite a few editors. Some free, some open some free but not open and some that aren't free or open. In other words, I've tried a few. I primarily use two platforms: Linux and OS X. Switching platforms doesn't bother me nearly as much as switching tools. In other words, I prefer to use the same, or very similar applications on both platforms. While I liked TextMate on the Mac, there was no TextMate on Linux (although the GMate project does a good job at making Gedit more TextMate-like). On the Mac side, I've also tried out BBEdit and TextWranger, neither of which struck any bells with me (and provided no Linux equivalent).

For most of the time I've been working with Ruby, I've been using the old standby, Vim. With Vim, I could use gVim on Linux and MacVim on OS X or Vim in a Terminal on either and feel equally at home on both platforms. While I have no real problem with Vim...in fact I really love Vim, the problem is I only use about 1% of it's features and I've still only learned about 0.5% more that I don't use regularly. That leaves about 98.5% of the editor unusable by me, and I don't have time, nor do I need to take time to learn more...I have enough to learn with Ruby on Rails itself to devote a huge chunk of time to learn my main tool, the editor.

The other night, I was watching a very awesome intro to Rails screencast. I saw an editor in use during that screencast I hadn't heard of before: Sublime Text 2. Simply by just seeing it in action, I was very impressed with how elegantly simple, yet full-featured it seemed. If you check out the site, you'll see that you can evaluate it indefinitely (for now, at least), and if you decide you like it, purchase a license for around $60, which is I feel, a fair price for a powerful tool that helps you be more productive. Sublime 2 is available for all three major platforms (Lin, Win and Mac) and although I haven't tried the Windows version out yet, it feels (and looks) very similar across the Linux and OS X versions.

I'm still feeling it out, but it has some great features you can read about here.

Although I won't go into a huge amount of detail here (simply because I've spent probably only about 4 hours total using it so far), I'll mention a few of my favorite features:

Side by Side multi-pane editing
Built in automatic syntax highlighting for many languages
Autosave
Very customizable

I love the user interface - I can open a "folder" which gives me a side pane with a tree-view of my Rails project, and I can quickly breeze through multiple files, simply viewing them quickly or opening them in tabs.

I really felt a lot more productive using it over Vim, and I'm going to continue evaluating it for a while, and see what I think, but I think my bank account is going to be $60 less full very soon.

Creating a Random String in Ruby

2011-10-31T21:59:00.000-04:00

Every once in a while I want to create a totally random password that is not necessarily readable nor pronounceable. I decided to tinker around in Ruby and see what I could come up with. This isn't perfect by any means, and I'm definitely open to suggestions - I'd like to make it more accurate by specifying how many of each character types to include (I tried, but couldn't get it accurate yet). That'll be work for another night, but it was fun playing with it, and here is what I have gotten so far:

Using jQuery with Rails 3.0

2011-10-30T22:31:00.002-04:00

I've been working on a little Rails app that is based on Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial. I'm going back now (after some customization) and adding new functionality to the code. One of the exercises in the book was to add a simple JavaScript counter to the micropost textbox.

I decided to go with jQuery and found the implementation to be quite simple. First you need to install jQuery in Rails, and you can find instructions on how to do this here.

Once jQuery was installed, I simply had to add the jQuery code to my form, as well as modify the original form code to limit the characters to 140 with f.text_area :content, :maxlength => 140 :

Just for reference, the original code for the form (without the textbox countdown) was as follows:

Feel free to use or modify this code if you found it helpful to you!

Convert VirtualBox VDI disk for use with KVM

2011-10-22T21:25:00.000-04:00

Since I was playing with Fedora, which has a great implementation of KVM, I decided to give it a spin for my desktop virtualization solution over VirtualBox.

I can't quite make the switch just yet - I had issues getting Spice drivers installed in an XP guest (It's critical for me to have an XP guest with good video performance), and performance seemed slower overall. That's not the point I am writing about tonight though.

My XP VirtualBox machine has a VDI file that I have as a "D" drive in my XP guest - it's simply a data file that holds a few "portable" apps that don't need installation, and it also holds data (mostly video files and such). I wanted to attach that drive the the KVM machine that I created to ease migration should I get KVM working well. It seems that it's actually quite easy to convert a .vdi file to .qcow2 for use with a KVM machine -a simple command is all that is needed.

Open a terminal and navigate to the directory that holds your .vdi file and execute the following:

qemu-img convert -O qcow2 diskname.vdi newdiskname.qcow2

Simple as pie!

Looking for alternatives to Ubuntu?

2011-10-19T21:55:00.000-04:00

Many Linux users who have in the past been loyal to Ubuntu but for whatever reason don't like the way the project is heading, or simply don't like Unity, are looking for alternatives. Here are a few for you to consider.

The least obtrusive route would be to either stay with Ubuntu and try out GNOME-Shell instead of Unity, or try out on of the other Ubuntu variants. OMG! Ubuntu has a really good guide on GNOME-Shell under Ubuntu on their site that will get you started if you want to stay on GNOME. Other alternatives are Kubuntu, which uses the KDE Plasma Desktop, Xubuntu, which uses XFCE 4.8, Lubuntu which uses LXDE. Users wanting the most similar experience to GNOME 2 would probably enjoy Xubuntu and XFCE the most, however KDE is an awesome environment that you should definitely check out if you haven't considered it before.

A couple of other KDE contenders would be Mageia Linux which is a community fork of Mandriva now in it's first release. I will say in my trials in a Virtual Machine, it seems excellent (even for a 1.0 release), and if you've ever used (and liked) Mandriva or Mandrake before, you will like Mageia. Also worth considering is The Chakra Project which was originally based on Arch Linux and uses the Pacman package manager. It also strives to be a very lean and fast KDE environment and uses unique bundles to hand GTK applications and their dependencies.

A solid desktop agnostic and fully featured distro with a huge community is openSUSE. I recently took openSUSE for a spin and gave it serious consideration for the first time ever, and I really liked what I saw. I couldn't warm up to the package management system, and wound up missing a few things that I wanted and needed. Although it didn't work out for me, I recommend checking it out, as the community seemed very warm and helpful, and it would very possibly be a good fit for you regardless of your Desktop Environment of choice.

If you are the do-it-yourself type, and have a few years of Linux experience under your belt, give Arch Linux a try. It is also Desktop Agnostic, and probably the most customizable Linux distro out there. I ran into a weird issue with my hard drives I didn't have the time or will to solve, as I felt there were other distro's that met my needs better. It was a distro I'd always wanted to try, and since I was trying every distro under the Kitchen Sink, I decided to give it a go, and I'm glad I did (got it installed on the first try too)!

If you want a solid stable system that doesn't change often, be sure to check out both CentOS (which is build upon the solid Red Hat Enterprise Linux code-base, as well as Debian upon which Ubuntu is based. You can't get more solid than either of these, and if you like Debian, yet want something more like a rolling-release distro with more up-to-date packages, you can always run the Testing or Unstable (Sid) branches.

Linux Mint also seems to be pretty popular these days and they have a few versions to choose from (some Ubuntu based, some Debian based and several Desktop Environments available). This is one distro I still haven't tried for myself, but I've heard enough good reviews, and seen enough happy users online to feel comfortable reccomending it to you to check out if you'd like.

And lastly, Fedora. The original Red Hat Linux distro (before Fedora Core was introduced) was my intro to Linux, and I stayed with Fedora through Fedora Core 2 before switching to Slackware a long time ago. In the times I'd come back to Fedora I didn't find it to be very stable (it's always been very leading edge), however once I started using Ubuntu, I never really gave it serious consideration. Fedora *is* very up to date, and you *will* get a lot of updates, so if you stress over such things, perhaps Fedora isn't for you. I have seen a lot of Ubuntu users switch over to Fedora in the recent months, and all seem to be quite happy. You won't find a more friendly and helpful community anywhere, and because of it's enterprise heritage and relationship to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS (and other RHEL rebuilds) there is a lot of documentation and help to be found online. If you ever want to translate your Linux skills to the Business world, Red Hat skills are definitely a plus to have, and what better way to learn than by using...right? So be sure to give Fedora a spin - you might like it.

Ruby and Ruby on Rails Online Learning Resources

2011-10-19T21:24:00.002-04:00

I've been in sponge mode for a little while now trying to absorb as much information about Ruby and Ruby on Rails as possible. The great thing about an open source platform like RoR, is that there is an abundance of information available online. I know both Ruby and RoR are getting more and more popular, so I though I would share a few of the resources I have found useful.

First up, is Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial. This has to be hands down, the single most useful and helpful Rails guide anywhere. I plan to buy the book as well, even though the material is the same as the online tutorial, I like books, they make me feel smarter, and I really want to support the author of this great tutorial. Simply put, if you are interested in Rails programming, and don't follow any other link on this post, check this one out (or better yet, support Michael by buying the book!). Michael gives solid code examples, and teaches you to not only code an application, but code tests for the application as well, following the Red, Green, Refactor paradigm of Test Driven Development. You will develop solid habits here.

Next up, is TryRuby.org. This is a great little site that runs you through a nice little tutorial around the Ruby language using a browser based Ruby console. Although if you want to be a Rails developer you need to know Rails along with Ruby, it doesn't hurt to have as strong of a background in the Ruby language as possible. A few other Ruby resources are the Ruby Programming Wikibook and the Ruby User's Guide. These guides and others are linked from the documentation page on ruby-lang.org. One that I would like to mention specifically is Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby which is the single most enjoyable piece of technical documentation I have ever read. Another great interactive Ruby guide is RubyMonk, and I wanted to include it here since it's not on ruby-lang.org's Documentation page at this time.

A few more Rails specific resources are, of course, the Rails Wiki, The Meshplex Ruby and Ruby on Rails Tutorials and Rails for Zombies which is availible free from codeschool.com.

Also, no arsenal of online Rails information would be complete without a bookmark to railscast.com's Ruby on Rails Screencasts. These screencasts are searchable, and can help you find answers to many programming problems, and can help you overcome "coders block" when looking for ways to create an efficient solution.

Good luck to everyone on the journey of learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails, and I hope this little collection of links helps you as much as they have helped me. Obviously I haven't completed all of the tutorials (except Michael Hartl's), nor have I read through all of the documentation sites, but I continue to work toward expanding my knowledge nearly every night.

More thoughts on Vim as a Rails Editor

2011-10-01T23:15:00.000-04:00

I'm still using Vim as my editor for Rails development. After doing some more research on things I could do to make it more Rails-centric, I came across this post which gave me some additional ideas, and settings I could snag for my own .vimrc file, which is below:

Also, note that I am using the 'vividchalk' color scheme which isn't installed by default (at least on Ubuntu/Xubuntu), so you can download it here if you'd like to use it as well. Also, I am using the Ubuntu Mono font (in 11pt) as my default GUI font, if you'd like to try it (it's awesome) and aren't running a current Ubuntu Linux distribution, you can download it here (I use it on my Mac as well).

Don't take my settings as right for you though, read through the blog linked above to decide what settings would be right for you.