10 September More books

Thursday, September 10th, 2009 - 10:58 pm

Since my last post on books, I’ve read the following:

  • Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
  • The Stars, Like Dust by Isaac Asimov

I’m currently reading Dune by Frank Herbert - what a fantastic book!  I also really enjoyed The Stars, Like Dust and so I picked up the Foundation Trilogy.  I’m looking forward to that as well as continuing with more books in the Dune series.

    21 August SSH hopping

    Friday, August 21st, 2009 - 01:50 pm

    Recently, two of the servers I normally SSH into had to be locked down to where they can only be accessed from computers at the main office.  Since I work remotely, this of course has been a bit of a pain.  I’ve had to SSH into a work machine, and then SSH from there.

    However, I’ve discovered there is a way to hop with SSH:

    Now, I can simply type ssh remote and get to the remote machine. Very handy.

    Note: Just for completeness, remember that SSH keys need to be properly configured on the “office” machine in order to connect from “office” to “remote”

    19 August ActiveRecord :joins

    Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 - 12:20 pm

    I didn’t know that the :joins option for ActiveRecord accepted named associations. This works perfectly when you want to join with a table to retrieve information without actually “including” the model. It also makes the query much simpler.

    Just be sure to always use :select when using :joins, or joined tables may overwrite attributes primary table in the result (i.e. the id attribute).

    4 August jQuery ‘or’ function

    Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 - 11:40 am

    I present a simple but useful jQuery ‘or’ selector function:

    14 July Books

    Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 - 02:05 pm

    My passion for programming outside of work is on an extended hiatus.  I don’t have any good reason to continue working on current projects, so I’ve been using my time for other things.  I’ve been enjoying my journey in the world of books, a passion I once had long ago (~10 years since my high school days, wow…).

    So far, I’ve read the following:

    • Fahrenheit 451
    • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
      • The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
      • Life, the Universe and Everything
      • So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
    • Neuromancer
    • Count Zero

    I tried to read Ender’s Game, but I was so wrapped up in Neuromancer at the time that I had to just return it.  I’ll probably give it another shot soon, though.  Right now, my list of books to read includes:

    • 1984
    • Slaughterhouse-Five
    • The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
    • Mona Lisa Overdrive
    • Foundation Series
    • Dune
    • Brave New World

    That’s quite a list, really, especially since the Foundation Series is something like 14 volumes.

    19 June Shut up about the gems, Rails

    Friday, June 19th, 2009 - 04:48 pm

    Add this to config/environment.rb above the Rails::Initializer block:

    Rails::VendorGemSourceIndex.silence_spec_warnings = true

    Bask in the silence - no more “gem has no specification file” etc.

    26 May Switched to Wordpress

    Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 - 01:08 am

    Here’s the thing: I simply don’t have enough time/motivation to work on my own blogging application (slate).  Now, I can hopefully focus on the most important piece - the content.  Even if no one reads it.