timbroder.com

Moving

2011-11-21T09:19:00-05:00

Moving servers and blogging engines. Details and fun to follow. Sorry if anything seems… off for a week or so

What Do You Listen to? (Podcast Edition)

2011-10-21T15:06:00-04:00

I tend to listen to a decent number of podcasts. Usually while doing the dishes, running, or something or other in the park. Some are book/comic related and help me keep up to date with what’s coming out and how some books were that I didn’t have time to read. Others are tech and help me get other opinions on the new libraries or trends. I’ve found a number of fun libraries/how-tos from listening. Check them out below, what do you listen to?

Tech

Sitepoint - Web Dev news, tutorials, interviews
http://www.sitepoint.com/
Official jQuery podcast* - Javascript library
http://podcast.jquery.com/
yayQuery* - Front End Dev podcast
http://yayquery.com/
djangodose* - Had great news about django, but I think its dead
http://djangodose.com/
techzinglive - Random tech/hacker news
http://techzinglive.com/
The Dev Show - Ruby,Php, Java, Javascript
http://5by5.tv/devshow
The changelog - Open source news
http://thechangelog.com/
ATX Web Show - web stuff
http://atxwebshow.com/
The javascript show* - great js news and library coverage
http://javascriptshow.com/

Non Tech

iFanboy* - Comic book news and reviews
http://ifanboy.com/
Sword and Laser* - Science Fiction and Fantasy book club
http://www.swordandlaser.com/
11 O’Clock Comics - Comic news and culture
http://bullpenbulletinspodcast.com/
Word Balloon - Comic creator interviews
http://wordballoon.com/
Fuzzy Typewriter - Random media / culture
http://fuzzytypewriter.wordpress.com/
I listen to every episode, others I cherry-pick

Creating a Stateless Request in Magento

2011-10-17T18:45:00-04:00

Have you ever wanted to create a stateless request in Magento? Something that doesn’t touch any of Matengo’s sessions? We were having issues with some of the ajax calls on our cart and checkout pages mucking with the user’s cart and had get stateless on these calls. The issue we were having was out checkout page was loading, then a javascript include was going out and bringing code from a 3rd party relevance engine into our dom, which was in turn calling back an ajax request to our servers. This issue with this being that at the start of the page load page load, the checkout session was being set to a certain state. This state was then being sent through the rest of the page load, and the ajax calls. Unfortunately, by the time the ajax call got back to our server, the session was different in both locations, creating a race condition. The ajax request usually won, removing the work the full page load had done with trying to process checkout. The good news was there was nothing in the ajax call that needed to touch the session, it was just some data lookup. So, nix the session part of that call, and our troubles should be over… Magento’s api controller is the only place that implements a stateless request this but its fairly easy to do (after a bit of digging).

As long as Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Action is a parent in your controller’s hierchy, you are good to go (it probably is). This class has a const FLAG_NO_START_SESSION which looks promising. Digging into the code a little we see that it controls whether cookies are processed or the session is started:

<?php … if (!$this->getFlag(”, self::FLAG_NO_START_SESSION)) { $checkCookie = in_array($this->getRequest()->getActionName(), $this->_cookieCheckActions); $checkCookie = $checkCookie && !$this->getRequest()->getParam(‘nocookie’, false); $cookies = Mage::getSingleton(‘core/cookie’)->get(); if ($checkCookie && empty($cookies)) { $this->setFlag(”, self::FLAG_NO_COOKIES_REDIRECT, true); } Mage::getSingleton(‘core/session’, array(‘name’ => $this->_sessionNamespace))->start(); }

By adding to the preDispatch() method of our Action or Controller we can toggle this:

<?php class Ai_AjaxCatalog_Controller_Action extends Mage_Core_Controller_Front_Action { public function preDispatch() { $this->setFlag(”, self::FLAG_NO_START_SESSION, 1); // Do not start standard session parent::preDispatch(); return $this; } } test

Now, any action in this controller will be stateless and not effect any sessions

Jira Tabs: Open all those Jira’s at once!

2011-04-22T18:21:22-04:00

Ever want to open all the Jiras on the screen in new tabs? Jess does, I do, and you should too!

For firefox and chrome we now have the JiraTabs bookmark button.

Drag this link up to your bookmarks bar: JiraTabs. Then, whenever you are on a filter or search view of Jira’s, click the button and all the jira’s on your screen will open up in new tabs

Demo:

Any updates will be made here.

Googles Groupon Competitor Goes Live

2011-04-21T21:43:56-04:00

http://bit.ly/eFvNwn

Skynet Becomes Self Aware Tonight

2011-04-19T21:25:05-04:00

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

April 21,2011.Judgment Day.Kyle Reese andDerek Reese witness the launch of U.S. missiles while playing ball in their yard.^[1]

As a result of temporal interference bySarah Connor, her sonJohn,Miles Dyson, and theT-800^[2] destroyingCyberdyne headquarters and all backups of the research in1995, the date for Judgment day is moved back to here.^[3] Skynet is destined to go online a few days earlier onApril 19,2011 at20:11

Extending a Magento Controller

2011-04-19T21:16:46-04:00

We’re ajaxing part of the Magento shopping cart so we need to modify/extend some of the cart controller functionality. Sometimes when modifying controller’s you have to worry about updating the routes. For this, we don’t need to, we still want all the urls to be used the same way.

app/code/local/Ai/Checkout/etc/config.xml:

<config>
    <modules>
        <Ai_Checkout>
             <version>0.0.1</version>
        </Ai_Checkout>
    </modules>
…
    <frontend>
        <routers>
            <checkout>
                <use>standard</use>
                <args>
                    <module>Ai_Checkout</module>
                    <frontName>checkout</frontName>
                </args>
            </checkout>
        </routers>
    </frontend>
</config>

app/code/local/Ai/Checkout/controllers/CartController.php:

<?php

require_once Mage::getModuleDir('controllers', 'Mage_Checkout') . DS . 'CartController.php';

class Ai_Checkout_CartController extends Mage_Checkout_CartController
{
   public function updatePostAction()
    {
      Mage::log(&quot;NEW CONTROLLER&quot;, null, 'tim.log');
        try {

Moving Gmail Gadgets to the Right Side

2011-04-07T14:56:39-04:00

I started using Remember the Milk recently but didn’t want the gmail gadget to be so far down on the left hand side of my screen. There is no built in way to move gadgets to the right hand side with the exception of chat (labels used to do this but was removed in favor of drag in drop back in late 2009).

If you don’t have anything in the right hand column, enable Right-Side Chat from Gmail Labs. We are going to add in some custom css to gmail so install either Stylist for Chrome or Stylish for Firefox.

Add the following style:

“` css div.TZ:nth-child(8) {

position:absolute !important;
right:0px;
top:165px;
width:164px;

}“`

In chrome you can also restrict the domain to mail.google.com. For me, the Remember the Milk gadget was the 8th child. Play with this until it looks right for you. You may also have to play with the “top” element depending on how much room your chat gadget takes up

New Digg reverse paywall coming

2011-04-06T13:45:21-04:00

Interesting: http://about.digg.com/blog/cha-ching

Welcome to the future of killing time on the internet, and getting paid for it: Digg is implementing a reverse pay wall! We believe this will greatly enhance the Digg experience. Early reaction from test users has been great. Can Duruk, developer at Digg, sums it up well: “I thought Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’ video was great now that I got paid to watch it!”

Now, I used to be on Digg for at least an hour a day. then v4 came… and it kind of sucks now….. Losing nested categories was a huge loss for me.

(9:39:48 AM) Tim: i would totally go back to digg to get paid http://about.digg.com/blog/cha-ching (9:40:46 AM) Laura: Hmm (9:41:00 AM) Laura: Digg is so horrible, that’s a little like being ok with becoming a prostitute (9:41:03 AM) Laura: I mean, you get paid

http://about.digg.com/blog/cha-ching

42.75” New Box Jump PR

2011-04-05T13:24:33-04:00

Firefox 4 landing

2011-03-21T20:01:55-04:00

It will be updating on your current installs tomorrow.

To download now: Windows, Mac, and Linux

Setting a project as the default redmine homepage

2011-03-15T23:31:01-04:00

Only have a single project running on redmine? want it to be the homepage? in config/routes.rb

in cofig/routes.rb ruby map.home ”, :controller => ‘projects’, :action => ‘show’, :id => ‘my_project_name’

Jump Higher

2011-03-15T21:22:42-04:00

Crossfit 2011. Are you Ready?

2011-03-04T18:25:24-05:00

Stress Relief: Blow things up

2011-02-28T20:09:35-05:00

Online Physics Games

Running Mongodb as a service on windows

2011-02-23T20:55:22-05:00

c:\mongodb\mongod.exe –logpath “c:\mongodb\logs\mongo.log” –logappend –dbpath “c:\mongodb\dat a” –directoryperdb –install all output going to: c:\mongodb\logs\mongo.log Creating service MongoDB. Service creation successful. Service can be started from the command line via ‘net start “MongoDB”’.

net start MongoDB The Mongo DB service was started successfully.

mongo MongoDB shell version: 1.6.5 connecting to: test

A note on Magento and multiple nodes using Memcached

2011-02-11T18:35:44-05:00

If you have multiple nodes using a shared memcached server, make sure you define a shared prefix for the keys to use.

In local.xml:

        <cache>
…
            <prefix>a1i</prefix>
            <id_prefix>a1i</id_prefix>
            <memcached>
…

Wolverine? Or 2 Batmen?

2011-02-08T20:59:49-05:00

Twitter recap of the superbowl halftime show

2011-02-07T01:36:05-05:00

Ok so, the superbowl halftime was just god awful

@tomkaters I just put Prince on the turntable. #MakeMyOwnHalftimeShow

@cskilpatrick This halftime show needs more Bieber. #superbowl

@CobraCommander Who is this tranny singer butchering Guns at halftime?

@iamunscared Fergie is a train wreck, just ruined G n R.

@amyasparklethe sound from the halftime show is completely messed up. awful.

@garyvee No more pls

@tomkaters Enjoy halftime by tom. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP48M2BEs0

@cskilpatrick They should play this halftime show when they’re trying to get cultists to leave their compound. #superbowl

@brianshaler Glad everyone already tweeted about all the flaws in the Super Bowl halftime show. Now I don’t have to.

@garyvee It’s time for a new format for superbowl halftime shows, how about interviews at the 50 yrd line …conan and Jon Stewart interview Prince

@brianshaler My favorite part of the halftime show was when they played the song “Where is the Lol? E”

@werty Pretty sure Fergie raided Ace Frehley’s closet for her Super Bowl halftime show costume. #superbowl #blackeyedpeas

Want to output the full xml config Magento is running?

2011-01-27T19:56:14-05:00

<?php

Mage::getConfig()->getNode()->asNiceXml('full_config.xml');

Where full_config.xml is the file you want it dumped to.