Adam Wisniewski’s Blog

Javascript helper tool for HTML AREA

adamw523 — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:40:01 +0000

A quick and easy tool and reference for the HTML AREA tag.

http://adamw523.com/tools/img_map_area/img_tool.html

Code Tip – Delete all Rails Sessions

adamw523 — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:49:02 +0000

Never can remember this one:
CGI::Session::ActiveRecordStore::Session.destroy_all

Reggy – OS X Regular Expression Tool

adamw523 — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:33:07 +0000

Simple Regular Expression Matching

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I’ve been searching for a simple regular expression matching tool for quite a while. But, I never thought of searching the Apple software directory. Until now….

Reggy has helped me out a few times already, and many more times to come, I’m sure. Now, gotta learn some Objective-C to try to add a feature or two. First one that comes to mind… Show each multiple match individually… Should be pretty easy, right?

Developing in Ruby on Rails is like using a Mac

adamw523 — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:39:22 +0000

I’ve heard this said many times about the OS X operating system: “Every so often you come across a simple feature that makes you appreciate the forethought of it’s creators”

Running BackgrounDRb wasn’t running because the frozen packet gem wasn’t loading. After a little Google research, I came across a nice solution.

I didn’t originally know that you could specify which Rails plugins you want to load or not load by specifying a list of plugins with config.plugins.

So, to ensure that Gems On Rails, and all of the gems froze with it always load first, I added the following to environment.rb:
config.plugins = [ :gemsonrails, :all ]

Gotta love a simple solution like that

Ruby/Rails Project Nights, Hosted By TSOT – Starting January 8th

adamw523 — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:54:36 +0000

Image enhancements courtesy of Joey “Accordion Guy” deVilla

We are hosting the inaugural Ruby/Rails Project Night event on January 8th at the TSOT development office. More details and registration information can be found on Joey’s blog entry, or at the Upcoming.org Event page. Some food and drinks will be provided and the presentations by Andrew Burke, the Unspace Team and Joey will surely be worth the trip out.

Our Ruby/Rails Project Night will be monthly event held on every Second Tuesday of every month. Mark your calendars. If you’d like to present at a future event or would like more information, contact Joey at joey.devilla@tsotinc.com.

Find us at 151 Bloor St W, Toronto, Ontario.

Annual UOIT Robotics Competition

adamw523 — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 05:56:36 +0000

For the second year in a row, I was given the honor to be one of four judges at the annual UOIT Robotics Competition. The number of competing teams has increased substantially since last years inaugural event, from 6 local teams to 24 teams representing 22 High Schools from as far away as Barrie and Mississauga.

Each teams LEGO Mindstorms robot is built over about an 8 week period. The robots main 2 goals are to stay on the table platform without falling off the side or the diamond cutout in the middle and to push other competing robots off the platform. Each robot is built only from the materials sourced from the LEGO Mindstorms box, and is restricted to a specific size.

This year the event had some great media attention. Discovery Canada was on scene filming the battles and interviewing various members involved. And our local Rogers Cable 10 crew showed up to shoot a short segment.

As a judge, my job was to interview each team and grade them on their design process. An Engineering award was awarded to the team who had overall highest grades from all judges. Pictured above is the robot built by the Albert Campbell Collegiate Institute team. We selected them to as the winners of the Engineering Award for the second year in a row. Congrats! Hope to see everyone again next year!

Ruby Geonames API 0.2.1 – Added find_nearest_intersection

adamw523 — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:45:28 +0000

The Ruby Geonames is jumping to 0.2.1 already… just released 0.2.0 last night (this morning).

Andrew Turner of High Earth Orbit contributed find_nearest_intersection. Thanks Andrew.

Example:

Ruby Geonames API 0.2.0 – Added Wikipedia Search

adamw523 — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 06:09:36 +0000

I’ve added an interface to the Geonames Wikipedia Geocoding Webservice. It provides the ability to search for Wikipedia articles within a certain distance of a longitude / latitude coordinate, or within a bounding rectangle. See in action here: Ruby Geonames / Wikipedia Articles / Google Maps API example.

Install:
# gem install geonames

Or download at Google code hosting

Ruby irb usefulness

adamw523 — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 19:15:01 +0000

Thanks to Amy Hoy blogging about Secrets of the Rails Console Ninjas ruby’s irb has just become even more useful. It’s going to be hard logging onto hosts without Wirble installed from now on.

I haven’t really used the console script in my rails applications, but after playing with it a bit, I’m not sure why I haven’t.

Back in Business

adamw523 — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 17:46:37 +0000

The positive: YakAlike and all services are back up and running.
The negative: A whole week of downtime… yuck!

All major hardware components of the main server running YakAlike, Carpool Connect and some other small applications have been replaced. Things started out about a month ago when the server crashed randomly and needed several hard reboots. The road to recovery started with replacement of the CPU fan and hard drive. Then came a complete replacement of all major hardware. The old hard drive was FedExed to me for recovery. Things seem stable now, so hopefully no more service interruptions will be experienced. When those big ad revenues are coming in a more reliable solution will be in place.

I am particularly interested in setting things up on Amazon’s EC2 service. This should eliminate any worries about hardware failures. I’m just waiting for them to allow a new round of accounts to use it.