Messed up sleep schedule is the new black... lies.

If you're like me and have erratic sleep schedules once in awhile, you end up looking at stats in the middle of the night. Specifically Google Analytics cause you want to know who's been doing drive-bys on your site, right? Oh just agree with me please. Thank you.

What peaked my interest were the site referrals. The two notable ones were code.google.com and blog.huikau.com of Mike McKinney. Huikau? Is that Japanese?!? Oh no -- it's not. It's Hawaiian. Short Story : I'm happy someone else found my port of the theme to NetBeans useful. Although past that, I never got around to trying NetBeans further. /sad face

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Update: [March 14, 2008] After scouring the internet to try to remember which theme inspired it, I finally found it! Eureka! It was by Idlefingers

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I'm scratching my head now with the referral from code.google.com and mumbling at the same time at 2 am. WTF did I post anything on google code. I mean c'mon I can barely juggle my time around nowadays. (Acronym cursing is great!) You should hear me saying it in real life double-you-tee-ef mahhn! Anyway, back to the topic. I found out it was a linked credit from bparanj's Simply Rich Authenticator for the Restful-Authetication post I did awhile back.

Thanks to these two great folks for entertaining me tonight with such fine blog posts while I'm sleep hunting if thats even a word or phrase. LOL

Well the Internet isn't the internet when links don't come back in a full circle so I did my share tonight.

I'm going to sleep now before I start googling myself!!

Good night and if I counted sheep instead, I would be at 158!

Cause I just love my theme...don't you love yours? :)

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Update: [March 14, 2008] After scrouring the internet to try to remember which theme inspired it, I finally found it! Eureka! It was by Idlefingers

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I thought I would give NetBeans/Ruby (nightly build) for MAC a try after reading George Cook's very convincing article on "Netbeans THE best ruby on rails IDE". Oddly enough, I just got so used to my TextMate theme that I also ported it into Coda awhile back. Now, I felt I had to port it on NetBeans too. It takes 6 steps and 3 xml files. It's really easy and anyone can do it too. It's not as perfect as I'd wish it could be but close enough.

UPDATE: I'm a NetBeans Newb! Here's a link/resource for packaging a theme (etc): http://www.netbeans.org/kb/50/substance-look-and-feel.html. I don't feel like packaging 3 xml files. /woops. Anyway, it's nice to know the folder structure if you're new to NetBeans too.

Here's a screen shot of the theme:

Onward with the steps....

Step 1. Duplicate any existing theme in NetBeans under Preferences / Fonts & Colors; name it whatever you want. I named mine "Karuh Dida" for no particular reason.

Step 2. Open Terminal/iTerm

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cd home
mate .netbeans

Step 3. Folder Structure

Step 4. Copy & paste xml file:
org-netbeans-modules-editor-settings-CustomFontsColors-highlights.xml
into folder => .netbeans/dev/config/Editors/FontsColors/Karuh Dida

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontscolors PUBLIC "-//NetBeans//DTD Editor Fonts and Colors settings 1.1//EN" "http://www.netbeans.org/dtds/EditorFontsColors-1_1.dtd">
<fontscolors>
    <fontcolor bgColor="darkGray" name="guarded"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="yellow" name="caret-color-insert-mode"/>
    <fontcolor bgColor="ff121e31" foreColor="white" name="status-bar"/>
    <fontcolor bgColor="ff253e5a" name="highlight-caret-row"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ffcccccc" name="line-number"/>
    <fontcolor bgColor="ffe0e8f1" name="block-search"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ff253e5a" name="code-folding-bar"/>
    <fontcolor bgColor="ff38566f" name="selection"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ff253e5a" name="text-limit-line-color"/>
    <fontcolor bgColor="ff38566f" name="highlight-search"/>
    <fontcolor bgColor="ff386f4c" foreColor="white" name="nbeditor-bracesMatching-match">
        <font style="bold"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor bgColor="red" name="status-bar-bold"/>
    <fontcolor bgColor="ff38566f" name="inc-search"/>
    <fontcolor bgColor="ff6f3757" foreColor="white" name="nbeditor-bracesMatching-mismatch">
        <font style="bold"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor bgColor="ff253e5a" foreColor="white" name="code-folding"/>
</fontscolors>

Step 5. Copy & paste another xml file:
org-netbeans-modules-editor-settings-CustomFontsColors-tokenColorings.xml
into folder => .netbeans/dev/config/Editors/FontsColors/Karuh Dida

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontscolors PUBLIC "-//NetBeans//DTD Editor Fonts and Colors settings 1.1//EN" "http://www.netbeans.org/dtds/EditorFontsColors-1_1.dtd">
<fontscolors>
    <fontcolor name="whitespace"/>
    <fontcolor default="string" name="markup-attribute-value"/>
    <fontcolor bgColor="ff2b2b2b" foreColor="ffdddddd" name="default">
        <font name="Monaco" size="12"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ff00ccff" name="operator"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ff7b7b7b" name="comment">
        <font style="italic"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor bgColor="red" foreColor="white" name="error"/>
    <fontcolor default="keyword" name="markup-element"/>
    <fontcolor default="default" name="entity-reference"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ffd27522" name="keyword"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="white" name="char"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ff669933" name="string"/>
    <fontcolor default="identifier" name="field"/>
    <fontcolor name="identifier"/>
    <fontcolor default="field" name="markup-attribute"/>
    <fontcolor default="identifier" foreColor="white" name="method"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ffeddd3d" name="number"/>
</fontscolors>

Step 6. Copy & paste 3rd xml file:
org-netbeans-modules-editor-settings-CustomFontsColors-tokenColorings.xml
into folder => .netbeans/dev/config/Editors/text/x-ruby/FontsColors/Karuh Dida

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontscolors PUBLIC "-//NetBeans//DTD Editor Fonts and Colors settings 1.1//EN" "http://www.netbeans.org/dtds/EditorFontsColors-1_1.dtd">
<fontscolors>
    <fontcolor default="number" name="GSF_INT_LITERAL"/>
    <fontcolor default="number" foreColor="ff66cc00" name="GSF_FLOAT_LITERAL"/>
    <fontcolor name="mod-interface"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ffd1ceff" name="GSF_INSTANCE">
        <font style="bold"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor name="mod-public"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ff99006b" name="COMMENT_TODO">
        <font style="bold"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor name="mod-constructor">
        <font style="bold"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor name="mod-enum"/>
    <fontcolor default="number" name="GSF_DOUBLE_LITERAL"/>
    <fontcolor default="string" name="STRING_TEXT"/>
    <fontcolor default="number" name="GSF_LONG_LITERAL"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ffeddd37" name="STRING_ESCAPE">
        <font style="bold"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor name="mod-deprecated" strikeThrough="darkGray"/>
    <fontcolor name="mod-annotation-type"/>
    <fontcolor default="comment" foreColor="ffaaaaff" name="COMMENT_RDOC">
        <font style="bold"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor default="default" foreColor="blue" name="COMMENT_LINK" underline="blue"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ff8aa6c1" name="mod-parameter"/>
    <fontcolor default="whitespace" name="GSF_WHITESPACE"/>
    <fontcolor default="keyword" foreColor="ffdd7522" name="GSF_ANY_KEYWORD"/>
    <fontcolor name="mod-package-private"/>
    <fontcolor name="mod-static">
        <font style="italic"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ff99006b" name="GSF_TODO">
        <font style="bold"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor default="default" name="COMMENT_BOLD">
        <font style="bold"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor default="comment" name="COMMENT_HTMLTAG">
        <font style="bold"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ff99ffff" name="GSF_CLASS">
        <font style="bold+italic"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor bgColor="ff38566f" name="mark-occurrences"/>
    <fontcolor default="comment" name="COMMENT_TEXT"/>
    <fontcolor default="8AA6C1" name="GSF_ANY_OPERATOR"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ffd1ceff" name="GSF_GLOBAL">
        <font style="italic"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor foreColor="white" name="mod-field">
        <font style="bold"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor foreColor="fff3c55f" name="mod-method">
        <font style="bold"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor name="mod-protected"/>
    <fontcolor default="string" name="GSF_STRING_LITERAL"/>
    <fontcolor default="comment" name="GSF_BLOCK_COMMENT"/>
    <fontcolor default="comment" name="GSF_DOCUMENTATION"/>
    <fontcolor name="mod-local-variable"/>
    <fontcolor name="mod-private"/>
    <fontcolor default="error" name="GSF_ERROR"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ffca4344" name="GSF_REGEXP_LITERAL"/>
    <fontcolor default="comment" name="GSF_LINE_COMMENT"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="yellow" name="mod-class"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ffcc3333" name="GSF_CONSTANT"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ff5098c2" name="GSF_TYPESYMBOL"/>
    <fontcolor name="mod-unused" waveUnderlined="ffff8888"/>
    <fontcolor default="identifier" name="GSF_IDENTIFIER"/>
    <fontcolor foreColor="ffff006b" name="STRING_INVALID" strikeThrough="ffff006b">
        <font style="bold"/>
    </fontcolor>
    <fontcolor default="string" name="QUOTED_STRING_LITERAL"/>
    <fontcolor name="mod-abstract"/>
    <fontcolor default="char" name="GSF_CHAR_LITERAL"/>
    <fontcolor default="default" name="COMMENT_ITALIC">
        <font style="italic"/>
    </fontcolor>
</fontscolors>

Of course, you can take it from here and customize it further. I wish there was an easier way to export/import themes in NetBeans. If you can easily grab TextMate bundles, then themes should be as easy to grab too, right?

As far as how NetBeans ranks in my books, I don't know yet. I still have to find out but I can't stand not seeing my usual theme in it so I spent two hours doing that first. Imagine that!

Show your support...

I created the ribbon in Photoshop. It is available for download if you need a vector ribbon, feel free to use. No attributions required. Breast Cancer Ribbon.

Sydney White..... and the 7 dudes....

I haven't laughed so bad in a long time while watching a movie. Must admit that the script is a bit predictable. What kept me laughing so bad was the dorky lines in the movie. I totally could relate to them all. I guess that's not a surprise since I am after all a dork. They got me at the Dr.Who theme song part. At the same time, Matt Long played Tyler. He's dreamy hot, more like will you marry me hot. I did not mean to say that out loud!

Amanda Bynes is a great commedian -- way utterly funny, yet cute and irresistibly charming but her acting was exactly the same in She's the Man. I love how she portrays her characters and I hope she's like that in real life. Wholesome. She's a breathe of fresh air compared to Lindsay Lohan.

I saw The Game Plan too and that was too disappointing. Bleh.

For secrecy and edges... NOT

Its an O'reilly Series: Women In Technology

I am another female in tech here. I've only read one essay so far and it was by Amy Hoy: "I Don't Like Articles about Women in Technology". Then as soon as I read the comments, I started feeling iffy. Why does everyone argue negatively? The people who made comments argued negatively with the author. I can understand then why Amy didn't like Articles about Women in Tech. A few months ago (maybe weeks), I brought up an idea about writing an article that had a positive connotation -- about being a happy successful female developer but I've lost the interest to write it when I heard some negativity.

It forced me to have a different outlook now more than ever. I celebrate for the Women in Tech. I care that women who strive do succeed. I care that you care about other women in Tech. I care that you try and pave for other women who wants to take on a tech career. That's pretty much my stand. Who needs that negativity? As Naruto would put it: "I like my positive chakra". I don't dwell any more on the negative side of being one of the few females in a male dominated environment/career. I'm just being more vocal about enjoying my life and career in technology. It's fun!

Playground -- rails needing ldap

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cd /usr/local/src
curl -O http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/ruby-ldap/ruby-ldap-0.9.7.tar.gz
tar xzvf ruby-ldap-0.9.7.tar.gz
cd ruby-ldap-0.9.7
ruby extconf.rb
make
make install

And here we go after some time collectin'...

Automatically remove files missing from subversion

svn status | grep '\!' | awk '{print $2;}' | xargs svn rm 

Extension of Railscasts Episode 67

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Update: [March 12, 2008] This blog post is outdated so if you found this page using google, I'd recommend reading something more up-to-date. Unfortunately, I don't know where else to refer you right now. I shared my thoughts and experience with the plugin at the time I was using it for a project. Living in the now, you can grab Obie's Book "The Rails Way". That comes highly recommended!

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Ryan showed us how to set up restful_authentication a plugin by Rick Olson with his 67th Railscasts Episode: restful_authentication. Pretty awesome! Now, we will extend it to the activation part.

./script/generate authenticated user sessions --include-activation

With the added --include-activation option, more files and codes will be generated to handle "Activation for a User who just registered".

Shall we break them down in steps... baby steps and with codes. I would be happy to do a screencast for this but I dont own a podcast mic yet so lets do it the old school way. I know we're all spoiled by Ryan's RailsCasts and Geoffrey's PeepCodes. We are the little Brats! :)

After generating the files for restful_authentication, follow the 67th episode set up plus these...

Step 1: All about Environment.rb

Open your environment.rb file and set up the following:

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# First, specify the Host that we will be using later for user_notifier.rb
HOST = 'http://www.yourrailsapp.com'

# Second, add the :user_observer
Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
  # The user observer goes inside the Rails::Initializer block
  config.active_record.observers = :user_observer
end

# Third, add your SMTP settings
ActionMailer::Base.delivery_method = :smtp
ActionMailer::Base.smtp_settings = {
  :address => "mail.yourrailsapp.com",
  :port => 25,
  :domain => "mail.yourrailsapp.com",
  :user_name => "carmelyne@yourrailsapp.com",
  :password => "yourrailsapp",
  :authentication => :login
}

Note: Just a heads up -- if you're on SliceHost like I am, I can't get this to work on just Postfix on Ubuntu. I needed to set up the SMTP settings on the environment.rb file.

Step 2: All about app/models/user_notifier.rb

Now you can see how we set a dryer way to add the HOST via #{HOST}. The codes below is also an example if you've extended it to handle resetting the passwords. Although you will have to add an additional user migration for "password_reset_code" and adding it to your user model/controller codes and more to your routes....
Anyway, code snippets below:

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class UserNotifier < ActionMailer::Base
  def signup_notification(user)
    setup_email(user)
    @subject    += 'Please activate your new account'  
    @body[:url]  = "#{HOST}/activate/#{user.activation_code}"
  
  end
  
  def activation(user)
    setup_email(user)
    @subject    += 'Your account has been activated!'
    @body[:url]  = "Visit #{HOST}!"
  end
  
  def forgot_password(user)
    setup_email(user)
    @subject    += 'You have requested to change your password'
    @body[:url]  = "#{HOST}/reset_password/#{user.password_reset_code}" 
  end

  def reset_password(user)
    setup_email(user)
    @subject    += 'Your password has been reset.'
  end   
  
  protected
    def setup_email(user)
      @recipients  = "#{user.email}"
      @from        = %("/Poke by carmelyne" <CT@yourrailsapp.com>) # Sets the User FROM Name and Email
      @subject     = "[YourRailsApp] "
      @sent_on     = Time.now
      @body[:user] = user
    end
end

Step 3: All about app/views/user_notifier/activation.rhtml

This gets sent out for the activation email so you can change the verbiage to something like this:

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Thank you!

<%= @user.login %>, your account has been activated.  You may now start using the member only features.

<%= @url %>

I think that should be it. :)

I wrote this up to give you an idea for activation. If you extended it way beyond for forgot_password/reset_password, make sure you extend your user model and controller to handle these additional functions. More snippets....

Extras

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# more for routes
map.forgot_password '/forgot_password', :controller => 'users', :action => 'forgot_password'
map.reset_password '/reset_password', :controller => 'users', :action => 'reset_password'

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# app/models/user_observer.rb
class UserObserver < ActiveRecord::Observer
  def after_create(user)
    UserNotifier.deliver_signup_notification(user)
  end

  def after_save(user) 
    UserNotifier.deliver_activation(user) if user.recently_activated?
    UserNotifier.deliver_forgot_password(user) if user.recently_forgot_password?
    UserNotifier.deliver_reset_password(user) if user.recently_reset_password?   
  end
end

Update

But of course, there's a much better resource for the plugins, I was just referred to it after this long post from the man himself => Rick's Stikipad for Acts As Authenticated and RESTful authentication.

The additional methods for activation/forgot_password/reset_password does not fall under REST.

New tools new tool new tools

1. Aliases in bash

I'm a mac newbie. It sounds like a bad thing but it's not. Many moons ago, I only watched people type ss on their terminals and tada! it magically starts the built in webrick/mongrel server. I've been meaning to get aliases working since I converted but never got around to actually doing it. Thankfully, John Nunemaker posted his I Can Has Command Line? article. I can do bash magic now. My bash talk: ss sc a e et sup wu omg inbd idk my bff jill tinf! I think I'll use those for shortcuts anyway. ;p

2. Growl

I am a happy peepcoder. I recently saw the RSPEC Basics PeepCode. Geoffrey had a happy face/ sad face flashing bar on his screen when he would run tests. Oh, I so want. I want! You'll just have to buy the peepcode now, dont you? Anyway, it was Growl. I installed Growl but can't get it to work with autotest. Now I just do "a" to run autotest but I get this error: "177 examples, 0 failures sh: line 1: growlnotify: command not found". Obviously, I missed something here. I copied the .autotest file to ~
I'm off to search for a fix and will post it here too as an update.....

Update:

I knew I was missing something. I had to install growlnotify that came with the install files. (http://growl.info/documentation/growlnotify.php). I got my happy/sad bars now!

3.RSpec

New to RSpec and would you hold it against me if I said lazy with writing test? Ok then no, I love writing tests!!! Learning RSpec makes it easier to do test. I find that I do like BDD. I'm no expert but it's very fun to do, that I can say.

High to low precedence of Ruby operators

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::
[]
**
-(unary) +(unary) ! ~
*  /  %
+  -
<<  >>
&
|  ^
>  >=  <  <=
<=> == === != =~ !~
&&
||
.. ...
= += -=...
not
and or

Source:
http://migo.sixbit.org/papers/Introduction_to_Ruby/slide-21.html
http://www.meshplex.org/wiki/Ruby/Variables_Datatypes_Operators4

Rule Of Thumb:
Use logical operator for logical statements use logical composition sparingly.

ID + permalink. The id gets a to_i

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# using .join
def to_param
  [id, permalink].join('-')
end

# just another way to do it
def to_param
  "#{id}-#{permalink}"
end

The big picture is with the redirects.

The quick work around...

If you've read my post about FreeImage, then you might be interested to know about the conflict I encountered with a RESTful app on LiteSpeed and using attachment_fu.

This was quite perplexing to be honest. I installed attachment_fu on a restful app, tested on my dev environment which is using Mongrel. I committed to my svn, updated files served on LiteSpeed and uh oh, the upload feature wont work. There's no error message, nothing gets saved at all and returns back as a 200 code. I couldn't debug alas I'm not the all perfect coder either. /wink /wink. I resorted to finding a work around.

First let's get some things clear, the conflict with REST, LiteSpeed and Attachment_fu is on another slice but not on this blog's slice. When I was looking for a work-around the first thing I did was to test the attachment_fu on this blog done by Rick Olson. Justin Palmer did the UI which is great. First, it wouldn't work since I had to give proper permissions to the assigned public image folder. Then everything after that was fine and dandy. Why does it work on here and not on the other slice. I go deep into the code reading line by line but time is running short. I need the upload feature working like yesterday.

For a quick fix, I thought to myself that I will just get LiteSpeed to work with Mongrel for the time being till I get a fix. I visited PickledOnion's excellent blog because he has the LiteSpeed set up goodies. I couldn't find any about Mongrel. That's fine since you really don't need Mongrel if you've chosen LiteSpeed. I emailed Paul aka PickledOnion and told him about my scenario. He said he was looking to getting attachment_fu to work on his project so he'll let me know if he ran into any issues. Us slicers have that special slicer bond. I don't know what that means but OK. ;p

I'm very happy with using LiteSpeed. The free version is good for a simple less traversed site like this blog of mine. Now having said all that, back to the workaround. I went now to the LiteSpeed and Mongrel sites to find some docs on how to set it up. Unfortunately, no docs on LiteSpeed with Mongrel at the LiteSpeed site but there was a short version on the Mongrel site. The one on the Mongrel site is a bit too complex, I can write down my fewer steps for a next blog post. After that, the work around was great. The upload function works under LiteSpeed, Mongrel using attachment_fu.

It continues....

It doesnt stop there. A few nights ago, just one of those long coding nights, I get an email back from Paul saying he has encountered the same issues I was having with LiteSpeed. He's heavy into the detailed configurations and was able to figure out some fixes. He's posted a ticket on the LiteSpeed forums to look into the issue. It looks like the LSapi version has issues with the restful redirects. The LiteSpeed support team is now looking into this so we'll see but for now, I'll be trying Paul's fix. The ticket is right here. It has the fix Paul suggested. I hope they patch it.

Update: (Aug. 5, 2007)

The LiteSpeed Team has updated the LSapi version to perform redirection more intelligently and to do redirect if there is an index file under that directory, otherwise, return it as a 404; that way the URI will be kept when handled by rails dispatcher. The thread

I've tested the LiteSpeed Enterprise version and all works perfectly. Restful Rails app with Attachement_fu on LiteSpeed is a happy little working wonder now.

Unrelated Windows Issue: (Aug. 7, 2007)

If you found this post while looking for a windows solution to error: 'Size is not in the list', I recommend adding the :size option on the model. Starting from 0.kilobytes to your max upload limit as sampled below.

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has_attachment :content_type => :image,
               :size => 0.kilobytes..500.kilobytes

Doodling for the sake of doodling flowers

Port Forwarding & connecting remotely to MySQL on your Slice

First, lets set up the forwarding ports using the SSH Tunnel Manager. I usually start with the 29000 ports so there's no conflicts with registered ports. Go to the preferences on SSHTM and add a new connection. Pictures are better than words so here's how the SSHTM set up looks like:

Lastly, setting up CocoaMySQL to connect remotely to the MySQL on your slice using the forwarded ports under preferences:

It's easy and you can easily put two and two together with the screenshots. That's it!

Note:
The SSHTM user/login is generally your server/slice login and the MySQL login is usually different than the sever login so just take note. This set up is for SliceHost but should be general enough to use on other VPS set ups.

Some Random Images from 2007, July 28 @ Six Flags

More of carmelyne's photos

Note: Photos not available via RSS. Please visit the site or Flickr. Thanks :)

FreeImage woes are better than RMagick woes.

First I tried installing FreeImage using this article:
http://seattlerb.rubyforge.org/ImageScience.html

Unfortunately, I get an error with make:

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Source/Metadata/Exif.cpp:498: error: cast from 'BYTE*' to 'DWORD' loses precision
make[1]: *** [Source/Metadata/Exif.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/FreeImage'
make: *** [default] Error 2

And If I proceeded with sudo make install, another error:

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make -f Makefile.gnu install 
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/local/src/FreeImage'
install -m 644 -o root -g root Source/FreeImage.h /usr/include
install -m 644 -o root -g root libfreeimage.a /usr/lib
install: cannot stat `libfreeimage.a': No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [install] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/FreeImage'
make: *** [install] Error 2

After Googling awhile I found another repo for FreeImage.

So Let's try this again:

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cd /usr/local/src
sudo wget http://ftp.cica.es/ubuntu/ubuntu/pool/universe/f/freeimage/freeimage_3.9.3.orig.tar.gz
sudo tar -xvf freeimage_3.9.3.orig.tar.gz
cd freeimage-3.9.3.repacked/FreeImage
make
sudo make install

Then I did:

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gem install -y rubyinline
gem install -y image_science

Now off to my attachment_fu and crossing my fingers that it works.... Yup it works.

I'm not sure if freeimage_3.9.3.orig.tar.gz is the latest version but I'm happy enough that it works with attachment_fu.

I really have no idea why I got the errors above but one thing is for sure: It didn't work for me!

Generates a gem's list

gem list | egrep -v "^( |$)"

Random image I took during an afternoon walk...

Not an intention to hide...

I have unconsciously forgotten to link my contact form on the site.

I do apologize to people trying to get a hold of me through my blog. Of course, I'd want to hear from you.

I'm really not that hard to get a hold of as I'm all over the web under the same name as this site or as Wrap/dida. Pretty sure you can guess my gmail address :)

To make it simpler, feel free to use my contact form. Thanks.

Photoshop shapes, brushes and filters...

Shitft + Alt + Click == deletes Custom Shapes from group

Lets do this quickly:

Note: This is not for an upgrade.

1. cd /usr/src
2. sudo wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/18421/ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz
3. sudo tar -xvf ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz
4. cd ruby-1.8.6
5. sudo apt-get install build-essential
6. ./configure
7. make test
8. make
9. sudo make install
10. ruby -v (# == ruby 1.8.6 (2007-03-13 patchlevel 0) [x86_64-linux])
11. irb (# make sure irb works)

Then just do a quick update sweep for ubuntu:

1. apt-get update
2. apt-get dist-upgrade

UPDATE: Getting script/console to work

Error:
/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/irb/completion.rb:10:in `require’: no such file to load – readline (LoadError)

Eeek now script/console won't work. So let's fix that. We'll go back to the archive and do the following:

1. cd /usr/src/ruby-1.8.6/ext/readline
2. ruby extconf.rb
3. make
4. sudo make install

Do I need a disclaimer? Hey! I was on my own too when I did this compile. ;p

Miles: 2.755

Time: 61 mins. | Cals: 227 | Speed: 2.7 - 3.0

Miles: 2.704

Time: 60 mins. | Cals: 269 | Speed: 2.7 - 3.0

Some Random Images from 2007, July 12 Walk by the Lake

More of carmelyne's photos

Note: Photos not available via RSS. Please visit the site or Flickr. Thanks :)

Some Random Images from 2007, July 4 Afternoon

More of carmelyne's photos

Note: Photos not available via RSS. Please visit the site or Flickr. Thanks :)

Quick cheat method to see errors on production mode without the Exception Notifier plugin or having to look at the production log.

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# application.rb
# replace "XXX.X.X.1" with your IP in the local_request method below

protected

def local_request?
  request.remote_ip == "XXX.X.X.1"
end  

Transformers! More than meets the eye...

Photo Credit: Transformer's Official Movie site

July 3, I went to see the first showing of Transformers. I didn't really know there was a movie coming out till my friend Paige mentioned it the weekend before. I was expecting a whole 3d-ish movie type like Shrek or Ice Age 2. It bit my curiosity so I searched it on the world-web-web-web when I got home. Lo and behold, the trailers on Yahoo were decent enough to catch my attention.

The funniest part of going to the movie was not the movie itself. As we were leaving the theater, we ran into some kids in makeshift transformer box costumes. I wish I had the chance to take some pics on my cellphone but alas it was out of battery -- a typical scenario with my phone. :)

It's definitely a movie with a lot of action, effects, stunts, robot stunts and scenes that will make you say.. You go darn robot you!

Peekabooo. Oooops wha? I don't see you.

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<cfoutput>
#repeatString("*",len(qPayment.CreditCardNumber))#
</cfoutput>

Halt who goes there!

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<cfif CGI.REMOTE_HOST IS NOT "127.0.0.1" 
  AND CGI.REMOTE_HOST IS NOT "192.168.0.1">
  <cfabort>
</cfif>

Yes! SJ and his mighty ninja!

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// mathematical operators
+  addition
-  subtraction
*  multiplication
/  division
%  modulus (this is the remainder when you divide something)

//comparison operators
>   Greater Than
<   Less Than
>=  Greater Than or equal to
<=  Less Than or equal to
==  Equal to
!=  Not equal to 

Note:
("=" sign assigns a value to a variable, "==" compares two values for equality.)

'A'..'Z' paging cause I'm being lazy & I don't want to mess around with default paginate.

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# Starts with 'A'..'Z' Paginate / model
def self.sort(sort)
  if sort
    find(:all, :conditions => ['name LIKE ?', "#{sort}%"])
  else
    find(:all, :order => 'name')
  end  
end
  
# index action / controller
@models = Model.sort(params[:sort]) 
 
# Sort link A-Z / view
<a href="models?sort=A">A</a>

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case foo
   when 1    then puts "Foo is equal to 1"
   when 2..9 then puts "Foo is between 2 and 9"
   when 10   then puts "Foo is equal to 10"
end

Source: http://railsforum.com/viewtopic.php?pid=27834#p27834

• Part I (MP3, 26 minutes): Women in Development I
• Part II (MP3, 20 minutes): Women in Development II

My apologies. It just didn't cross my mind to post about the Women in Development podcast when it first came out. I had a lot in my plate right after the conference. I was mostly trying to catch up with tasks at work since I'm acting as Lead Developer at PWIM for the time being.

Anyhow, in these podcasts you will hear the views of women on the absence decline of women in development and absence during conferences. Desi shares her vision and goals about where she wants devChix to be. devChix is a collective group of women with backgrounds in Computer Science and Computing. It was so immensely uplifting to be in the company of such great women that day. I enjoyed participating in the discussion. I was more nervous than anything else during the entire podcast session. Mind you, I was sitting two feet away from Geoffrey Grosenbach. Cool, right?

After hearing the podcast again, I think it's time to live up to my nickname "multi-talented". Oh the pressure mounts!

Practice, practice, practice.

I think it's obvious by now that my color preference leans on the really obnoxiously bold end. After reading ThinkVitamin's article on Web Design-isms: 7 Surefire Styles that Work by Lisa Meek, I thought it would be nice to follow along and respond with a redesign. Implementing what you learn and read is always the best route to just hone in on that skill. Here we go then. Please let me know if there's anything out of the ordinary that I should be fixing. Thanks :)

Sleepless friday nights == me taking quiz from random links. Break time.

I thought I was more creative as an individual. Now I'm torn. Left brain, right brain, left, right.

"You Are 50% Left Brained, 50% Right Brained"

The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning. Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others. If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic. Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet.

The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility. Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way. If you're right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art. Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

Take the Quiz: Are You Right or Left Brained?

Mission to share the fun completed!

Two days ago, I was im-ed by an old guildie-friend and asked if he could use my old design for the guild site I made back in 2005 for a World of Warcraft Guild on [fill in the blanks] server (Not telling!). Of course, I said yes and he may recycle the design for his DOTA guild but it drew out the memories. Good times raiding and leading 40-man raids on Ventrillo to clear out Molten Core and Black Wing Lair. 98% of raid goers are guys. Oh yes, girls are on the intraweb leading raids. I've had my share. That's our secret. Shhhhh...

This was my design of the site and you can still view what's left of it:

Sorry, some links and CSS may not work anymore on that site.

Below are some of the screen shots I took while playing the game. I played with these screen shots on photoshop to make them more vivid and added "text".

I have more screen shots but that would require digging and resizing so I leave you with just those above. :)

If you're a fan of the tv show Star Trek: The Next Generation and remember those episodes where they simulate worlds virtually in their cabins, then you should check out Photosynth. I feel like this is the start. Seamlessly patch all images to create some 3d-ish environment. Give or take 5-10 years or maybe sooner, we can all step into our virtual domains.

Check out Blaise Aguera y Arcas' demo of Photosynth on TED: www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

Download the windows demo: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/installing.htm.

So I took the quiz : Which Programming Language Are You? According to my answers, I am Java! Oh Man!

Which Programming Language are You?

I thought I was sluggish because of the junk food. It looks like I was wrong.

Good news. Today, the tragic lost of my domains have come to past. Thanks to Mike Nudell, a Customer Orientation Consultant, of godaddy.com. This was all from the registerfly.com fiasco a few months back. I had a post about it on the devchix site. I have all my 42 domains back. Why do I have with 42 domains? They're all playground sites. Just clean fun. A good example would be this site I designed and customized for flash games:

Godaddy have been very instrumental in getting things done - the right way. I even have my own personal Domain Concierge (for now at least).

Relieved of the fact I don't have to pay $375.00 to reclaim just one domain. It's definitely good to be patient.

I was very disappointed with ICANN. At first, I felt they didn't care at all. They finally came through!

If something nice and good happens, take it and let it happen. Enjoy!

I am no Mac Developer but I may know a few here and there. Cough cough cough. I think ;p

Seth Dillingham, a real cool guy, is trying to reach the $6,600 goal for the cancer-care-and-treatment charity. It's a great cause. Read the details over at his site.

Image Credit: - me, I have no mac app ;p

Single line comments:

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AppleScript (*Hello I am a comment*) 
ASP <% 'Hello I am a comment. %>
Bash # Hello I am a comment 
C // Hello I am a comment
C++ /* Hello I am a comment */
CSS /*  Hello I am a comment */
Coldfusion <!--- Hello I am a comment --->
DOS :: Hello I am a comment 
Erlang % Hello I am a comment 
HTML <!-- Hello I am a comment -->
Java // Hello I am a comment 
JavaScript  /* Hello I am a comment */ 
Liquid {% comment %} Hello I am a comment {% endcomment %} 
Lua -- Hello I am a comment --
Perl # Hello I am a comment  
PHP <?php // Hello I am a comment ?>
Python # Hello I am a comment  
Regex (?#Hello I am a comment)
Rails <%# Hello I am a comment %>
Ruby # Hello I am a comment 
Smarty {* Hello I am a comment *}
XML <!-- Hello I am a comment -->
YAML # Hello I am a comment  

I've been wondering what comment style is used in Liquid.

Got any to share?

What is Hackety Hack?

That's a very good question. It all started with this article by _why back in 2003 titled "The Little Coder's Predicament". But I think the Hackety Hack manifesto is a better way to understand what it is than me babbling about it. :) So click on it and read on => The Hackety Manifesto.

My interest in it:

I've mentioned Hackety Hack on my RailsConf recap which was one of the topics of a BOF session I attended. Jaj and I were actually playing with it before I left for Portland. She finished lesson 1 and totally dug the whole experience. Since I came back, there is a newer version which doesn't spew gecko render errors. I am on Win XP 64bit and she's on Win XP Media. I was the only one that got the errors. I am glad that I don't get any errors anymore with v.0.5.1.

I am playing with Hackety Hack right now and going through the lessons since I was considering mentoring other kids at Jaj's school next school year. It'd be nice to know the ins and outs of the entire Hackety Hack app before I do any mentoring.

The target audience of the app is 13 and over. The eleven year olds seem to follow along well. There shouldn't be any problems for any adult to follow along. This in fact is one of the best way to start learning Ruby.

You can head on over to other Hackety Hack member pages and download their shared files. That's brilliant! There's also a forum that you can go to if you find yourself stuck on something and just want to ask others.

I am very pleased that the Linux version came out today. Waiting for the Mac version soon so I can fire it up on my MBP and say Hackety Hack on my Lapity Lap. (Oh AOK (Andrea) would be so proud of my rhyming!)

Update: (05/29/2007)
For further reading, check out Eric Mill's post on "Hackety Hack: A Growing Contingent".

One of the memorable thing from the conference was the big.first.name site considering our name badges done by Oreilly were not so user friendly when it comes to legibility.

Check them out if you ever need name badges. The first tier account set up is free with a limit of 100 name badges. It's really simple yet pretty slick.

Image Credit: Dave Thomas' Website

What did I like most about the conference?

That would have to be the keynotes.

DHH didn't announce anything life changing but I think it's a challenge to continue exploring the beauty of REST and the simplicity with a great productivity feel of the whole Rails on Ruby architecture. On the other end of the spectrum, we have Avi Bryant who I'd teasingly call now the Adam Brody of computing. It was great to hear Avi's perspective.

Tim Bray's reality check that Java, PHP, .NET will not go away and will be there to stay. That's fine. As a developer, I do prefer that because if we're all doing Rails then it would be plain silly. Imagine the 5 sec maintenance and off to the beach skit by RailsEnvy? I'd get no beach spot! Tim also mentioned that there were no women in the conference or perhaps the lack of. As a male geek in the development world, would you encourage your daughters to enter it? I would like to hear your thoughts on that.

Koz and Buck. That was really cool to see them refactor and why they recommend the different things they recommend. I am a big fan of The Rails Way blog.

I love Cyndi Mitchell's final slide on the enterprise during the keynote "Bring Ruby to the Enterprise. Not the Other Way 'Round." She's an excellent speaker and I met her briefly at Rock Bottom during one of the party nights.

Dave Thomas is The Uber! I wanted to yell I love you Dave! when he briefly mentions rubychix.com and turned around and showed their very own white male version site. I wish someone would send me my pic from the rubychix site cause I never got the chance to see the pic.

Ze! That keynote made me cry and laugh at the same time. I actually checked the safety cards and was looking for the bags on the plane on my way home to Chicago.

Lastly, RailsEnvy's series of "Hi, I'm Ruby on Rails".

What were my favorite sessions?

Spam I Have Known by Jim Weirich and Memcaching Rails by Chris Wanstrath.

What were my favorite BOF sessions?

Hackety Hack with Snackety Snack. Err was that the right title? It was engaging. All the thoughts and suggestions were so brilliant that I wish _why heard them all.

Cool people I met?

I can't even begin to enumerate them all. There were a TON of wonderful people. Let's do the reverse instead. Who were the people I wish I got the chance to approach, say hi to and chat with for a bit? Those would be Damon Clinkscales, Eric Hodel for sharing his Coda notes with me, Marcel, Tobias, Koz and Jamis of the core team, PragDave, Mike Clark and Ze!

Coolest thing during the conference

As of today, $33,000 was raised for charity by attendees. Now how cool is that?

Getting female tees from Peepcode from Geoffrey Grosenbach!!!

Sitting down with other female developers in room 201 on Sunday to participate in the DevChix podcast interview by Geoffrey. That was really cool. I'm looking forward to its release.

Updated: 05/22/2007

Forgot Chad Fowler's and Joey Devilla's ode to DHH via "I'm A Noob".

Drama (Classical Greek δρᾶμα) is a literary form involving parts written for actors to perform. It is a Greek word meaning "action", drawn from the (Classical Greek δρᾶν), "to do".

Dramas can be performed in various media: live performance, radio, film, and-or television. "Closet dramas" are works written in the same form as plays (with dialogue, scenes, and "stage directions"), but meant to be read rather than staged; examples include the plays of Seneca, Manfred by Byron, and Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Other dramatic literature may not resemble plays at all, such as the Imaginary Conversations of Walter Savage Landor. Drama is also often combined with music and dance, such as in opera which is sung throughout, musicals which include spoken dialog and songs, or plays that have musical accompaniment, such as the Japanese Noh drama.

Content testing: SEO purposes. Source: Wikipedia

Recently saw the movie - "In The Land of Women" with some friends. I was dared to make a wallpaper of who else but Brody and post in on my blog. LOL. Obviously, I am not one who'd back out of such a dare.

The movie itself is a bit contrived. I did like seeing Adam since The OC ended. He is more matured but still had the goofiness in him. I was rofl-ing when he was jogging and crashed into the tree.

I just noticed that it's that time of the year. Well, the rankings updated. Maybe the update was quite sometime ago but I just noticed. I use this page rank extension on FF.

Surprisingly this site earned a PR4. So if you do a link:www.carmelyne.com, I got 2 results. I am thinking that maybe cause the domain is 3 years old? I've done little to nothing with regards to promoting this site cause why would I? There is no substantial content and just musings that's not that(!) notable. I am exposed to alot of SEO at work and I tend to pick the brains of our SEO staff when I work side by side with them to develop/improve sites. I suppose PR4 is no PR8 but it's still nice to see that it went up from PR1 to PR4.

Looking back from last year's archives on whois, I found a thumbnail of the old look. It was intentionally made plain and boring for testing purposes. The content was just a book list and the PR jumped back and forth from PR1 to PR2 for about a year. I put a blog on it just around March of this year and now I got a decent PR. Google likes pages. Honestly, my content is blah. I am now encouraged to improve my blog writing skills and rise to the blog writing needs..............(not!) That was in my best Borat not! mimic version. :)

On a parting note, my middle name should have been Maria. There are 3 people in my family celebrating their b-day today - Cinco de Mayo. My Aunt Maria, my cousin Maria and me. Happy b-day to them!

Photo Credits: Alija (iStockPhoto: Free Image of the Week)

One lazy Wed. night I got the urge to play with Camtasia Studio to test for screencasts. I fired up my decade old $6.00 mic and (off I go...) I randomly babbled about Slicehost, Tunnelier and SQLYog. It's probably my last attempt at screencasting! Anyway I had fun. I laughed at the result ....

My fatal first and last attempt at screencasting .

Must warn you that the background Music is awesome though!

On April 15, the TV series Drive premiered. I am amazed at how director Greg Yaitanes pioneered an awesome real-time director commentary via Twitter while the show is being aired. I say great foresight and (he) really added a Rails App (Twitter) to his/their arsenal of communication and marketing strategies.

There was one not so great feature. The time zone problem. Tweets have to address time zone differences on such occasions. Tweet post were duplicated once the West Cost air time commenced and there were more tweets for the West Coast group too. Duplicated? Simply meaning the director had to re-post his previous tweets from the East Coast premiere. Simple cut and paste. I guess that's what real-time is.

It felt as if the director was just one of "us", easily accessible by fans and was also engaging in a cool dialog while he answers tweets while twittering during the premiere.

Overall the show Drive is a thrill ride you wouldn't want to miss.

Pen tool practice time. Scribbled in paper and penned in PS (Photoshop CS2) as custom shapes. Original sketch has white outs. Woops.

I'm frustrated I woke up at 5a.m. on a Saturday but I guess that's what I get by sleeping at 9 last night which is way too early for me. It was a well needed sleep though.

Thanks to a kind push, I figured now is a good time as any to convert my one static page into the Mephisto blog I set up 12 days ago.

I guess that's it and I'm officially a casual blogger in my own right.

I used the Simpla Theme as my base code . A couple of adjustments and class additions were done to fit my design from the old one static page set up. Liquid is a no brainer and I'm glad for that.

I preferred FeedBurner so I added that too, plugged in my Askimet key and now I am set. The migration of the design was done from 5am to 11:30am but I was multi-tasking on a few things while doing it. It's safe to say it took 5 hours. A decent project completed. I'm happy about that.

Hi! Test Mephisto set up.

For a mere $20 and a few reading here and there with some fallbacks and re-installs, I got my slice on Slicehost set up over the weekend. Its fairly cheap but guess what I got away with by investing just 20 dollars on a slice, I thinks it's PRICELESS. I learned to set up a rails production server on my slice using Ubuntu and LiteSpeed. I'm pretty happy with what I've learned. I did set up everything from scratch. First was getting Ruby1.8, Ruby Gem, Rails1.2, PostFix, MySql, Subversion and finally LiteSpeed3.0. I was always intimidated by having to do so much playing around with server side stuff. But not this time. I think this is one of the cleanest and easiest way to deploy a Rails app in production mode.

By Monday night, I have a Mephisto Blog up on carmelyne.mobi which will eventually replace this site. and a Beast forum on intricate.mobi for kicks. Now I just have to learn Liquid for templating which doesnt look so hard.

So what's your $20 worth to you :)

It's quite the month. I'm just glad for the wide range of cool stuff to be done. There's some major re-designs, additional features to an existing coldfusion coded site, online catalog launches; I was able to implement javascript framework (prototype and scriptaculous) to some free-lance projects. Ah SMS in the mix too.

NDA's == :(

When it's lifted I can talk about certain projects more.

This leaves me little time to give my own site the loving it needs.

I am happy when I am busy though. ;p

I've been getting my hands dirty with some contributing work for DevChix.

After a day of designing the template in photoshop th