In my last Git, Capistrano, SSH, and WordPress tutorial, I showed you how to setup your WordPress theme to be easily deployable. Now, I've simplified the process even more by eliminating a large amount of duplicate code.
I recently published my first Ruby Gem, capistrano-wordpress (source). This gem adds a new "recipe" that is available to any Capistrano deploy script. So now, our deploy script from the last tutorial becomes this:
A little-known HTML tag can save a lot of headache when it comes to displaying file-paths, lines of code, or other long lines of text:
As I was working on my last post, I was running into a problem with the word wrap:
I've been working with Spree over the past few weeks for my senior project. So far, I've really enjoyed working with it. For being a below-1.0 software, it is very stable, and very full-featured. Even better, it's very easy to create extensions and integrate them into the e-commerce framework. However, I was running into a permissions issue with an extended controller method.
First, a little bit of background. One thing I've liked about Spree, especially compared to other offerings I was looking at, is how easy it is to modify or append to the existing e-commerce framework. For example, to extend the LineItemsController, all I have to include is this bit of code in my extension's startup file (variable_data_products_extension.rb in this case):
I've been looking for a solid PDF library to use with Ruby on Rails. After researching various possibilities, including prawn and Ruby Ghostscript, I finally decided on iText.
iText is a Java library that allows you to generate PDFs on the fly. From the iText website:
Ferris State University uses Blackboard (sadly) for its online classes. For a while, there were times that I didn't know if I was receiving a message from a teacher or other student. After digging through the settings, I found an option to automatically forward all messages to my personal email account.
To set up forwarding, login to your Blackboard (or Ferris Connect, as we call it), and go to My Settings.
I am currently researching a Dropbox-based preference syncing solution for Mac OS X. In my research, I came across a really handy terminal tip. If you want to symbolically link (ln -s source target) a file or folder to another location that follows a named pattern, such as com.adobe.*, you can supply the pattern for the link source parameter.
For example, running this command:
[update]Alright, it looks like Facebook removed this feature… why, Facebook?[/update]
For all of you that despise the new Facebook layout, there is an alternative: Facebook Lite.
If you use a Mac, there are tons of text navigation tools at your disposal. One of the little known is navigating text by word:
Facebook has been through several iterations. Through those, I think they have made a lot of great improvements. They've added more features for people to communicate and share with, added the ability for third parties to extend Facebook with custom apps, and allow for other web sites to share information within a user's feed. However, with one of their updates, giving the ability of custom apps, a new form of spam has come.
Users can request you to add an app to your Facebook profile. Now, this would normally not be a problem, but people seem to love requesting everyone they are friends with to install their favorite apps. Personally, I hate getting these notifications. I just want the basic functionality out of Facebook: communicate with friends, share some photos, links, and other pieces from around the web, and that's about it.
As far as social networking goes, Facebook is one the best out there. It has a huge feature set, can be extended by apps, and almost everyone I know has one. However, that doesn't mean there aren't areas for improvement.
I honestly hate getting emails every time something occurs. Someone tagged me in a post or a photo, someone wants me to join Farmville or Mafia Wars, they think I'm a family member, etc, etc, and etc! I have over 5000 Facebook notifications in my Gmail (yeah, I don't delete anything). It gets a little overwhelming.