Firefox 3

Hardy provides Firefox 3(beta) by default, comparatively its a super fast browser now. I am desperately waiting for Firfox 3 final release. Once I was a bit upset to see that the Firbug is no more compatible with Firefox3 but then I found Firebug’s release 1.2 which works fine with Firefox3. Till yet have not found any problem and both are working fine. Firefox3 is certainly quite faster.

Ruby 1.8.6

Provides Ruby 1.8.6 (patchlevel 111). Good!
The libmagick is also available but still the RMagick needs to be installed the way I posted here.

Pidgin

A one stop shop for almost all the messenger services like gtalk, aim, yahoo, irc and many more. In previous dist I had to install gaim.

This new ubuntu is operating quite faster and I am enjoying it a lot.

AutoTags, an open source project, is a plugin for RubyOnRails applications to automatically generate the relevant tags for the provided content. Its quite simple to use and provide easy integration with ActiveRecord. The plugin is very useful for social applications, community websites and all those networking applications where there is a scope of user generate content to be tagged. No more heck for the admin to sit and add the tags to the content or waiting for the users to add the tags to their content.

For installation and usage read here.

If you liked the plugin then please recommend me on workingwithrails.

Currently for my rails applications I am running Ruby1.8… and exploring 1.9 to get ready as we are heading with nice speed in the rails developments. Modrails has already started making waves all around.
Soon I would be publishing a couple of posts on threads, processes and sockets in ruby… here is a bit on how they are going to be different in Ruby1.9.

In Ruby1.9 the threads implementation is going to be really different than what we all know/do in Ruby1.8. The Ruby1.8 uses a single native thread and runs all Ruby threads within that… which certainly protects the Ruby threads to take on much responsibilities and to completely leverage the hardware with multiple processors.

Now, the good news, the Ruby1.9 allocates a separate native thread for every Ruby thread. But at this very moment it is not fully functional… as because of some C libraries, used here, are not thread-safe that it will not allow Ruby1.9 to take control on multiple native threads. Still, great signs of improvements in these directions… It has been mentioned that this restriction will be removed in the upcoming versions of Ruby1.9 and there will be full fledged implementation of multithreading in Ruby with multiple native threads, and the charm of parallel execution… means a lot more scope of improvements for all related libraries, frameworks built on the top of Ruby.

Here in this post I admit that gaming, especially playing ‘Tekken3′ is one of the biggest distraction for me. As whenever I spend continuous hours on work, I get the time out and start playing ‘Tekken3′ which surely very much joyful. But, actually I know I make reason to myself to play that game and not actually to take some time off to have rest. Playing game certainly gives some enjoyment but not exactly the rest, I still be in the same position on my desk, sitting on my chair, and playing the game instead of doing the work… so its almost that I am doing work and not giving rest to my body. So, basically I was not willing enough to say that the game is a distraction for me… instead I kept on saying that I am playing it to take a time out of the work, But its for sure a wastage of time. And now I am sure enough to say its purely a wastage of time as I have made a resolution to say NO TO GAMES. I am in my 20s and need to conquer many of my dreams and need to work really hard to do so… which will certainly require killing of all these distractions in my life. And I’ve started very well by signing off from games… Though its true that I have a dream to run a Gaming company… and if I would be able to do so… the Gaming will also be my work
So, to take time out from my work I would rather now read my newspaper and I can now allocate the time I used to spend in reading newspaper back to work. Reading newspaper is a required task to be accomplished and would not be a reason to take a forced time out from the work… moreover I can relax while reading newspaper that I couldn’t do while gaming. I must say I have dumped a biggest distraction of mine.

Find all blogs with category ruby or rails

  Blog.find_by_solr("category:rails category:ruby", :operator => :or)

another way

  Blog.find_by_solr("category:rails OR category:ruby")

Find all blogs with categories ruby and rails

  Blog.find_by_solr("category:rails category:ruby", :operator => :and)

another way

  Blog.find_by_solr("category:rails AND category:ruby")

Grouping for more precision

NOTE: mind the grouping using parenthesis, you might get unexpected results without proper grouping.

Find all blogs with categories ruby or rails with author Sur

  Blog.find_by_solr("(category:rails OR category:ruby) author:sur")

Find all blogs with categories ruby AND rails with author Sur

  Blog.find_by_solr("(category:rails AND category:ruby) author:sur")

Find all blogs with categories ruby or rails with author Sur or David

  Blog.find_by_solr("(category:rails OR category:ruby) (author:sur OR author:David)")

Find all blogs with categories ruby and rails with author Sur or David

  Blog.find_by_solr("(category:rails AND category:ruby) (author:sur OR author:David)")

Install THIN by issuing

  sudo gem install thin

THIN accepts more or less similar switches as that of mongrel. You start THIN by issuing

  thin start -p 9090 -d -e production

-p — port, defaults to 3000
-e — environment, defaults to development
-d — daemonize mode

THIN provides an in built support for clustering and running multiple servers for the same applications. You can start say 3 servers for the single application by providing the -s switch as…

  thin start -p 9090 -d -e production -s 3

And similar to mongrel it will start three servers on the ports 9090, 9091 and 9092.

Great words from great design enginners…

With the market being ultra-competitive and high on style, it is not enough to just have a good product — it has to score good on looks too.

Design gives the consumer an experience and not just a product, which, in turn, leads to a loyal customer base. This is one area where investments are small when compared to the benefits a company can get out of it.

It takes time fort a startup to realize the worth of design. A startup is also, more often than not, cash strapped and thus does not have funds to invest in designing, which is an area that requires huge investments.

Say your app example.com is residing in /var/www/apps/example

Nginx configurations

say your existing configuration looks like…

  server{
      listen 80;
      server_name .example.com;
      location / {
           proxy_set_header  X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
           proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
           proxy_redirect false;
           proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:9002;
      }
  }

add the error page configurations

  server{
      listen 80;
      server_name .example.com;
      location / {
           proxy_set_header  X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
           proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
           proxy_redirect false;
           proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:9002;
      }
      error_page 500 502 503 504  /500.html;
      location = /500.html {
          root  /var/www/maintenance/example;
      }
  }

Create the required html error page at /var/www/maintenance/example/500.html.
Now, restart the nginx to reload the configurations by issuing /etc/init.d/nginx restart.
And you are done!

ruby <= 1.8

a = 9
p a # => 9
[1, 2, 3].each{|a|}
p a # => 3

ruby 1.9 (shadows the local variable a)

a = 9
p a # => 9
[1, 2, 3].each{|a|}
p a # => 9

Here is the solution for the same…

Step 1

Install gcc and make(if you don’t have already on your box)

  sudo apt-get install gcc make

Step 2

Install the system level OpenSSL and dev libraries

  sudo apt-get install openssl libssl-dev

Step 3

Install the ruby’s openssl interface to the system’s openssl

switch the directory to the ruby’s source code’s openssl

  cd /usr/local/src/ruby1.8.6/ext/openssl

install the ruby’s openssl interface

  sudo ruby extconf.rb
  make
  make install

try requiring the openssl in irb

  require 'openssl'

if returns true, installed successfully!