Being Lean

Here's an interesting article I'd like to share. It's about keeping your company fast and light:

http://venturehacks.com/articles/lean-startups


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Interesting Ideas

Check out this talk by Jason Fried from 37signals. Definitely some very good ideas and insight.

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=375


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Shuffling an Array

I just found a very interesting article about shuffling an array correctly!

http://adrianquark.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-shuffle-array-correctly.html

Enjoy!


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Dropbox

Recently, there has been a lot of buzz around Dropbox. It is now open to beta testing, and many people say it's awesome.

In short, Dropbox can be thought of as storage that you can access from anywhere you have an internet connection. It'll automatically sync your local and remote files, and also work on PCs, Macs, and *nix machines.

For those of you that move around a lot and need your files reliably without the hassle, check out Dropbox.


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Google: AdWords Algorithm

Sorry, this isn't a post about Google's algorithm :P

But, there is news that they're planning to modify it! That's big news to people using AdWords. Go and check it out.

Quick summary:

- dynamic calculations of Quality Score at search time
- keywords are no longer labeled as "inactive for search"
- no more "minimum bids"... in comes "first page bid estimates"

In other words, Google wants more money ;)


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Y Combinator

Y Combinator is a venture firm that specializes in funding startups in their early stages. I recently discovered their news section, which, as a technical person, I find very interesting. It is a Digg type site that gives links to interesting articles. Every so often, I will also see RoR articles on there. Check it out:

http://news.ycombinator.com/


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Ubuntu: Volume Problems

Recently, my audio has been much softer than it has been when I first installed Ubuntu. Even if I turn my volume up completely, the audio was only at a normal volume. I found this odd because before, when I turned it up, it would blast my ears off.

I managed to find out why! If you go to your Volume Control, Edit > Preferences, and select PCM. Then turn the PCM volume up to the desired level. Mine, for some reason, was set at a very low volume.

I'm not quite sure what happened, as I never played with my settings. My only guess is that some particular update fooled with the settings.


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OpenOffice Spellchecker

OpenOffice is a little biased when including language dictionaries for spellchecking. For instance, the Canadian English dictionary is not included by default. However, this can easily be remedied by doing the following:

1. File > Wizard > Install new dictionaries...
2. follow the wizard and install the appropriate languages you want
3. Close all OpenOffice programs
4. Restart OpenOffice

Now, when you go to:

Tools > Options... > Language Settings > Languages > Default languages for documents > Western

you should be able to select "English (Canada)" and it should have an "ABC" with a checkmark icon. This means you can now spellcheck in Canadian English!


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Ubuntu + AMD64 + Flash

Well, apparently, this combination just doesn't go well together. I'm running Gutsy right now, and having a horrible time with Flash. I've already tried using the install script given in the Ubuntu forums, only to have it half working. Sometimes, everything plays, sometimes, nothing plays. I can usually get YouTube working, but there are some Flash sites that just don't work.

I was recently trying to play a .swf file by simply dragging it into FireFox. To my dismay, I ended up with a gray screen. Sucks!

I finally found a workaround... at least for .swf files. I downloaded the Windows Flash Player 9 Projector content debugger (standalone player) from the Adobe site. I then created a launcher using the command:

wine /path/to/standalone_player

BAM! It works wonderfully. However, still no hope for the stuff that is online T.T


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Ubuntu: .docx files

OpenOffice is amazing when it comes to opening up .doc files created from Microsoft Word. However, there's a slight problem when it comes to opening .docx. Simply put, OpenOffice doesn't recognize it!

Don't worry though... there's always a solution! Check this out and follow the instructions posted by stuporglue.

Enjoy!


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Software Freedom Day

September 20th, 2008 is Software Freedom Day! If your interested in promoting and celebrating software freedom, check this out:

http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/


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VMware Server: Adding a new HDD

I'm running WinXP through VMware Server (as it comes free and is in the Ubuntu repos!!!). It runs really, really well and am completely satisified with it. However, I wanted to add a new HDD to my VM.

Well, I did the obvious, which was to power down my VM and edit the settings. I went to go add a new vitual HDD and pre-allocated it (all the defaults).

I then powered on my VM and lo-and-behold, no new disk! What?!?!?! Well, I found a very nice little tutorial on YouTube that teaches you how to do it properly. Apparently, there's a few extra steps required inside of WinXP to detect and setup the newly added disk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3GciNMYLlo

Hopefully, this'll help anyone that is stuck.


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Ubuntu + Compiz Fusion plugins

Gutsy Gibbon already has Compiz Fusion packaged with it, but apparently, there are numerous plugins that can be added on as well!

This guy has written a lovely script to get you started:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=620000

Enjoy!


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Support ODF

I've recently been reading more and more material about open formats. Apparently, there's been a ripple in the pond, as Microsoft is trying to push through their own format, which is obviously inferior and not much of a standard at all (again, the usual Microsoft bullying antics).

I found an interesting link I'd like to share if anyone is passionate about this fight. It's to get your government to support the OpenDocument Format. I'd just like to share this with you guys:

http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/odf-letter-template


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IE Address Bar

This is really starting to annoy me. In FF, if you type in a URL in the address bar without the http:// and no www, it is smart enough to put them in for you.

However, in IE, without the www, it doesn't know how to prepend the http:// to your address. This gets really annoying when you're constantly trying to go to localhost or a specific IP address for testing.

Sorry for the rant...


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BackgrounDRb

There are often times when you want to perform scheduled tasks, such as email reminders. These tasks are usually triggered at a specific time, and not necessarily by a user action.

On a unix machine, cron jobs do exactly this. They are triggered at a particular time, do their work, then go away. I looked around for a bit to see if there was a rails plugin to handle jobs like these.

Behold: backgrounDRb. This is a rails plugin that runs its own server to do a multitude of jobs. It supports cron jobs, but at the same time, it handles jobs in the background. For instance, if you are generating a large document, you don't want the user to wait for a long time. Instead, it will spawn a job in the background, allow the user to continue doing his/her stuff, and periodically check when the job is done.

For my purposes, I only needed the simple ability to create cron jobs, so I have yet to experiment with the background tasks. However, I found it to be super easy to use and everything is very straightforward.

If you're looking for a scheduler type plugin, look no further. This baby is amazing!


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Ubuntu beats out Mac and Vista

The results are final from the 3-day-long hack-fest and guess who came out on top? Yup, that would be Ubuntu!

A hacking contest was held in Vancouver recently which featured 3 laptops, 1 was a MacBook Air, the other a Vista, and the 3rd was an Ubuntu.

The first to be compromised was the MacBook Air. Amazingly, Vista held its ground until the 3rd day, where it was finally pwned.

More details can be found here:

http://dvlabs.tippingpoint.com/blog/2008/03/28/pwn-to-own-final-day-and-wrap-up


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Named Routes: url vs path

So I spent a good 30 minutes trying to figure out why my links were missing the host part of the URL.

What I was trying to do was send emails using ActionMailer and generating urls inside the ActionMailer instead of the ActionController. The documentation says that you can use url_for and named routes if you do what it says.

Well, for a while there, I was completely stumped as to why my named routes were missing the host part, until I realized I was using the path method for named routes instead of the url method:

users_path #/users
users_url #http://www.mysite.com/users

The difference is obvious. However, if you're used to using path instead of url, you may be stumped as well. Hopefully, you guys won't have to go through the trouble I did ;)


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Mixins

In Ruby, there's something called mixins. What is this? Basically, they are mix of a class and modules. Modules can be thought of as relatively independent pieces of code that you may want to mix into your classes. Modules are used to keep the code modular and easier to maintain.

For example, if we wanted to have the ability to compare objects, we could create a Comparable module. This module would define the functions in order to compare objects. Some objects do not require this function however, so we do not need to add it to a base class. Instead, we can include this module to only those classes that require it. This is, of course, overly simplified, but it is only to illustrate the purposes of modules.

For a quick tutorial on mixins, visit this site:

http://www.juixe.com/techknow/index.php/2006/06/15/mixins-in-ruby/


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Vector Graphics

I've always liked the look of vector graphics. I always find the effects produced from these images to be captivating and appealing. Hence, since we're playing around with RoR, I thought it would be neat to generate some vector graphics.

At first, I thought this would be a daunting task for someone who rarely touches any type of art. I was almost scared to open up Photoshop CS2. However, I found a website that was enough to get me going. I had to play around with the functions of CS2 first though to get the hang of things since I'm a total newbie! However, as I became more comfortable with what I was doing, I found that it was pretty simple to create vector graphics.

I'll post up some examples of my work later!

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