http://www.kiakroas.com/A nonsensical, mostly useless, blog written by an anti-social nerd with no life.en-ushttp://www.rssboard.org/rss-specificationkiafaldorius@gmail.com (Kia Kroas)kiafaldorius@gmail.com (Kia Kroas)Copyright Kia Kroas 2009 All rights Reservedhttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/50Welcome to 1/1/11. Only one more year until the apocalypse comes. Is everyone ready? Anyway, as with the New Year comes the New Years Resolution. My New Years Resolution is quite simple: gain 50 pounds by June 1 and then trim that down to the "recommended" or "ideal" weight of around 135 to 145 by the end of the year. If I don't make it by June 1, I'll shift the goal line to the end of the year.Thu, 06 Jan 2011 02:01:56 CST6CDThttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/50http://www.kiakroas.com/blog/49OK, so there are a whole bunch of amazing portfolios by web designers out there. I won't name any names, but many of them are amazing, beautiful and astonishingly creative--even by designer standards (that is to say beautiful standards). Inherently though, the portfolio sites are a simple single page or a handful of pages. The actual portfolio listing screenshots of the design, the about page with background information and a couple brief paragraphs about history, personality, and skill set, and lastly the contact page. That's all they really need, anymore would be wasteful. However, it doesn't show any of their knowledge in web development--by which I mean the workings of the functionality behind the design: JavaScript interaction, database abstractions, and business logic. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing on the designers or their sites. The issue is I am not a web designer, I am a web developer.Fri, 17 Dec 2010 02:25:56 CST6CDThttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/49http://www.kiakroas.com/blog/48Ok, so you have a project using Delayed Job but need to queue a class method. But oh no! You can't queue a class method because of either "ArgumentError: Cannot enqueue items which do not respond to perform" or "TypeError: can't dump anonymous class Class". What do you do now? The simple and clean solution: use Resque [1] instead. It scales a lot better and doesn't put extra overhead on your database. Seriously consider for a moment that each delayed job worker is querying the database once every second...the same database that your application is probably using to load its models. Resque offsets that by using a fast keystore database separate from the other models (unless you're using redis models, but if you do that then ... haha?). But for those of you who can't use resque for one reason or another, here's a little piece of code that will give something similar. [1] I don't like how resque is supposed to be pronounced like rescue, it should be pronounced like resk.Fri, 17 Dec 2010 02:14:02 CST6CDThttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/48http://www.kiakroas.com/blog/47Halloween - the only time of the year when parents encourage kids to walk around at night and take candy from strangers. It's been way too long since I've written anything, so I think it's about time I started picking up my pencil again. Anyway, in recent developments: not much.Sun, 17 Oct 2010 13:45:12 CST6CDThttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/47http://www.kiakroas.com/blog/46I wrote in the last article that this week I would be giving some code samples to further explain my position on why I consider code to be ugly. That will probably be the last time I mention a follow up on a post inside the post. Anyway, here it is.Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:29:44 CST6CDThttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/46http://www.kiakroas.com/blog/45As a programmer, I've done a lot of coding over the years. I've come to the realization that most code is ugly. Not ugly enough that I'm repulsed by it, but ugly enough to be called ugly rather than just not pretty. Beautiful code does exist, but it's usually in tiny little snippets and very rare. Ugly is too strong of a four-letter word to describe the majority of code that I have not seen and probably will never see in my lifetime. However, I will use it here for lack of a better, more pronounced term. Don't take me wrong, I'm not saying it's the formatting that's causing ugly code, I'm saying it's a fundamental property of all programming languages. (Written language to me is ugly as well, but that's for some other time.) The syntax, the grammar, the vocabulary, the keywords, and the punctuation are just so absolutely not beautiful. And...considering the hack-ish code necessary in order to parse and tokenize all that ugly, I really think I'm right to say code is ugly.Sun, 04 Apr 2010 18:47:07 CST6CDThttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/45http://www.kiakroas.com/blog/44I've been doing lots of work with Heroku. Since Heroku only deals with with application side and the filesystem is treated as though it were read-only, file storing has been done through Amazon S3. thoughtbot's Paperclip is being used to make file maintenance easier. However, since clients nowadays want the fanciness of Web 2.0, the uploads were to have progress bars. So, because the sites were using jQuery the applications ended up being integrated with Uploadify.Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:06:47 CST6CDThttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/44http://www.kiakroas.com/blog/43What do I have to say? This is just another of my ramblings. I've been staying up too late these days. Need to start sleeping earlier again. My sleep schedule's so whacked up these days. Blah... Work's slowed down, so I finally have some time to write for this blog. I might start blogging a lot more soon, very soon.Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:44:29 CST6CDThttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/43http://www.kiakroas.com/blog/42This can also be titled: Update Early, Rewrite Often I've seen a bunch of really crappy code and in this post I'll give my take on code maintenance, refactoring and upgrades. When you maintain code, the purpose is not just to keep the code working. Some people spend their time making sure the code is working properly. Working properly isn't good enough. When you maintain code, you have to make sure it will be working in the future. A metaphor would be maintaining a house. You make sure that all the appliances are working, the water is running, and the phone line has a tone. However, you must also make sure that the foundation of the house is strong and firm. You can't wait until the roof falls down before noticing that termites have eaten holes through the frame. Or for rats and cockroaches to bite your face before noticing them.Sat, 16 Jan 2010 18:11:36 CST6CDThttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/42http://www.kiakroas.com/blog/41In my short time working in the workforce, I've noticed a lot of things. I do not like working in the customer service industry. I do not like any work that deals with the general public directly. I can't handle people. Anyone that knows me knows that I'm not really a people person. But everyone's gotta work. So here's my take on it: Choose something you really like doing. Sounds pretty obvious doesn't it? I can sum up this entire article in one sentence: You're fucked no matter what you choose, so you might as well choose something you like fucking. This could apply to a lot of stuff. I am applying this to professions and careers. And yes, I've become cynical. It seems being a nice, reserved and quiet good boy doesn't quite awe the girls.Sat, 16 Jan 2010 05:11:59 CST6CDThttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/41http://www.kiakroas.com/blog/40Eh...it's been forever since I've written anything. I really should, but life has been way too busy. But in any case, happy birthday GHOST. Hope your day's going well.Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:49:46 CST6CDThttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/40http://www.kiakroas.com/blog/39Happy belated Thanksgiving. I didn't think about writing a post on Thanksgiving day for some reason, so I'll write it here now. A few days late, but oh well, not like it matters.Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:30:36 CST6CDThttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/39http://www.kiakroas.com/blog/38It's been a while since I posted about my thoughts and musings. I've finally found some time to just sit back and write out my thoughts. So, here are my thoughts about abstraction and how complex things become easy.Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:45:30 CST6CDThttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/38http://www.kiakroas.com/blog/37So today's Brittany's 19th birthday. Happy Birthday.Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:42:25 CST6CDThttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/37http://www.kiakroas.com/blog/36It's been way too long since I posted. I planned on writing some stuff about my trip over the summer, but bleh..there's no time now. There's never any time now. So I'll be very brief.Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:26:56 CST6CDThttp://www.kiakroas.com/blog/36