http://www.narf-lib.org/enpatsplat2008-02-23T08:04:20-08:0015125This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site, subject to copyright and fair use.http://www.narf-lib.org/2006/09/rehash-of-scaling-limits-discussion.htmlpatsplat2006-10-04T23:00:39-07:00This is a rehash of something I've written before, but I keep returning to this issue. I wrote this in response to the ongoing post about PHP. This is in follow up to the pro-PHP rant closing the discussion. Harry Fuecks is on target when he points to the execution model, but I think I can get more specific about two ways that PHP's execution model has made it successful: Cheap Hosting (a http://www.narf-lib.org/2006/07/support-for-plistrb.htmlpatsplat2006-07-30T09:23:05-07:00I've uploaded <data&gt; support to plist.rb. Special thanks goes to Mat Schaffer, who did the hard work of finding a test case. <data&gt; elements are returned as Tempfiles, and can be replaced with an IO or StringIO: # reading <data&gt; elements data = Plist::parse_xml("example.plist"); data['image'].read # changing <data&gt; elements bin = File.open("example.jpg"){ |f| f.read } data['image'] = http://www.narf-lib.org/2006/07/when-to-repeat-yourself.htmlpatsplat2006-07-25T06:44:32-07:00Flying over the Atlantic, I wondered about the reliability of the flight progress indicators. It's so hard to integrate software. How did the engineers pass the location of the plane to one critical system (autopilot) and one trivial system (cabin TVs) while ensuring that a short or other problem with the cabin TVs didn't knock out the autopilot. My memory of the East Coast blackout lingers. My http://www.narf-lib.org/2006/04/limits-to-scaling-ruby.htmlpatsplat2006-07-04T23:39:55-07:00When discussing whether a web technology "scales", usually the conversation alternates between two basic questions: Does the implementation perform acceptably? Does it continue to perform acceptably as load is increased in orders of magnatude? Can the implementation be maintained and enhanced? To show that a technology "scales", one must illustrate how both questions can be answered at the http://www.narf-lib.org/2006/02/full-text-indexing-with-swish-e.htmlpatsplat2006-02-25T15:59:13-08:00Swish-e is a command-line full text indexer similar to ht://Dig. Swish-e sports a brilliant hack. When indexing, one can ask Swish-e to index the output of a command: swish-e -S prog -i ./output_documents.rbThe output_documents.rb dumps out a series of html documents: #!/usr/bin/ruby require 'dbi' require 'pp' dbh = DBI.connect("dbi:Mysql:test:localhost", "user", "pass") # get server versionhttp://www.narf-lib.org/2006/02/meat-and-gravy.htmlpatsplat2006-02-11T22:29:58-08:00In the other half of my day, I am a painter. For about half of a year, I've been capturing snapshots of my work on some digital prints. I've been just showing these running down a page, but I haven't been happy with it: http://hexane.org/slider/artwork-old.htmlLast night I pulled this work together using dHTML: http://hexane.org/slider/artwork.htmlThe programming is nothing too exciting: http://www.narf-lib.org/2006/01/iphoto2.htmlpatsplat2006-01-08T22:00:13-08:00Just released a library for parsing iphoto databases: gem install plist gem install iphoto2 iphoto = IPhoto2.new # path to AlbumData.xml is optional iphoto.albums.each do |album| album.each do |image| puts image.path end end There's more, but I'm tired now. Update: oylenshpeegul pointed out a bug in the comments, I've put out another gem (iphoto2-1.0.1) to the problem with the Albumhttp://www.narf-lib.org/2006/01/plistxml-parser-for-ruby.htmlpatsplat2008-02-23T08:04:20-08:00To help with my AlbumData.xml parsing, I've thrown together a plist parser for Mac OS X plist.xml files. Api documentation: Plist::parse_xml( plist_xml_filename )http://www.narf-lib.org/2006/01/iphoto-2-database-format.htmlpatsplat2006-01-07T08:14:38-08:00~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/ 2006/01/07/fallow_keep.png.450x450.2005-12-04.jpgoriginal image 2006/01/07/Thumbs/7.jpga thumbnail AlbumData.xmlplist file with all the goodies Dir.databinary iPhoto.dbbinary iPhoto.ipspottext, perhaps for spotlight indexing? iPhotoLock.datablank at the moment Library.iPhotobinary Thumb32.databinary Thumb64.databinary ThumbJPG.databinary I kept the library pretty http://www.narf-lib.org/2005/12/windows-ruby-fastcgi-notes.htmlpatsplat2005-12-18T10:29:48-08:00Just a few notes from working on supporting FastCGI on windows: fcgi.rb is not compatible with Windows.Simple incompatiblities include trapping undefined symbols on Windows. $stdin is not always a socket on fastcgi on windows, so wrapping $stdin.fileno doesn't work libfcgi has OS dependent code to handle various windows cases compiling libfcgi for windows is difficultMakefiles have ahttp://www.narf-lib.org/2005/11/continuations-and-state.htmlpatsplat2005-11-13T10:26:54-08:00Ruby continuations have been described as "going back in time" in your program, but that's not really true. You go back into the stack, but all your state remains the same. This ruby snippet: state = "label 1" continuation = callcc { |c| c } puts "state: #{state}" state = "label 2" continuation.call if continuation Will produce the following output: state: label 1 state: label 2 Note that http://www.narf-lib.org/2005/11/1-narf-2-ruby-web-3-4-profit.htmlpatsplat2005-11-12T06:51:27-08:00Chad Fowler just linked to an article describing local maximums and career optimization. I guess Point C is the same as 3. ????. Each time I sit down and think about Ruby vs other web environments, I see so much room for improvement. I thought the scary stuff was behind me, and then I started thinking about database support. The next dip will be in sorting out the nitty gritty of database http://www.narf-lib.org/2005/11/drbdatasource.htmlpatsplat2005-11-09T00:22:55-08:00I've been working out a contradiction in web apps:it's nice for each page to be independent, without having to worry about changes from other enviroments it's nice to have just a few cached database connections I can use continuations to make repeated ruby requests independent, but the problem is that I want a few objects to persist. Implementing something that will roll back modifications to http://www.narf-lib.org/2005/10/mvc-with-ruby-web.htmlpatsplat2005-10-02T14:07:18-07:00You can get MVC action by combining two features of ruby-web. Before loading a page, ruby-web looks up the directory tree for an "application.rb" file. Then, in the application.rb file, you can define a Web::filter [1]. Let's use a basic hello.world.rb as an example: #!/usr/bin/env ruby-web puts "Hello World" When you visit this cgi script, you'll get "Hello World". If you add this http://www.narf-lib.org/2005/10/new-hope.htmlpatsplat2006-12-18T11:00:44-08:00This site was dedicated to the NARF web libraries. These have been moved to http://www.ruby-web.org. From now on, NARF will be dedicated to an attitude towards projects. That what Ruby needs isn't big ideas, but problem solving code. In other words, this site will be dedicated to the attitude that generated ruby-web and raainstall. I will celebrate the can do, pragmattic, software