Posts
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The Road to Rails - Part 2
So now I’ve got hold of a copy of Agile Web Development With Rails. It basically comes in the form of one giant tutorial that splits up into many small and easily digestible chunks. Those chunks also happen to be the sort of steps you’d make in the development of an application. It’s amazing how fast your application develops.
I did find that after about an hour I had messed something up early on, so I started using a Subversion repository for the application. This’ll hopefully allow me to go back when I do make a mistake. Because of the large number of small changes, it makes sense to make a commit to the repository often, and with a good description of what’s changed that includes a page number.
Version 2 of the book is out soon, and will hopefully cover all the latest updates in Rails.
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Snow Patrol at Meadowbank, Edinburgh
Just a quick summary of the Snow Patrol gig at Meadowbank.
- It was pretty crushed, and we unfortunately had 2 idiots next too us that took a fair telling to calm down!
- It was awesome, they played all their big hits, and a few for just the ’core fans.
- Elbow and Hazy James(?) were pretty damn good as support. Fugitive hotel by Elbow was especially good to hear live.
- 27,000 fans make a lot of noise, and for one very happy band!
- 27,000 fans also makes it easy to lose people when you leave.
- 27,000 fans phoning their mates to rave about the concert also consumes all the available cellphone connections in the area, meaning you can’t use your phone to find your mates!
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The Road to Rails - Part 1
I’ve decided to write a mini-series documenting the learning curve of Rails.
Being based on Ruby, I decided that learning Ruby itself would be a good place to start. I wnet back to something I had a play with several months ago: TryRuby. As the name says, it let’s you try Ruby! It’s nice to see how classes, methods and the like work. In some ways it’s very similar to Java, except with a less complicated command structure. TryRuby is definitely a good place to start, especially if you want to know what the colon ( : ) in front of a word means! -
Radiohead at Meadowbank, Edinburgh
Last night me and some chums went to see the wonderful Radiohead at Meadowbank. Suffice to say, the gig was really amazing! They are as good live as I had imagined they would be. They played some sing-along stuff, some of the more abstract (but still amazing stuff) and some new stuff that I honestly thought was great. And on the new album? “I just have to get the finger out and record it” – Thom Yorke
Beck were supporting, and amused us all with their bear suit antics and puppet show.
Update – I found a setlist for the gig. Go check it out. 24 tracks is a pretty impressive set!
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Spam Begone 2 - The not-so-good sequel!
Due to the fact that the spammers seem very persistent, and the lack of time I have to work on my site at the moment, I’ve completely disabled the comments system. This is unfortunate as I did enjoy reading the few comments I got from those who read my site. :o(
In a few weeks I’ll look at maybe using something ‘off-the-shelf’ such as Wordpress or building a whole new site under Rails. Building a new one under Rails would be a good learning experience, and should help to satisfy my new found enthusiasm for Rails. Also it’ll mean I can add lots of new features to the site, such as Textile formatting as opposed to the current rather clunky BBCode formatting. :o) -
Ruby on Rails
The past few days I’ve been having a play with Ruby on Rails. After all the praise on the web for it, i thought it was about time I gave it a try.
Most languages and frameworks require you to have a server, either as a stand-alone or running on your desktop system, to test the code. Rails comes complete with it’s own server, Webrick allowing you change and test code very quickly, The shipped version of Ruby on OS X 10.4 is unfortunately broken; you need to compile it yourself using the Xcode Tools (a free download from Apple) and these instructions. The instructions tell you to install Lighhttpd and fastCGI, but I just used Webrick, as it seems to involve a lot less fiddling around when I don’t need a fully blown server on my Macbook. Thankfully OS X 10.5 ‘Leopard’ is going to come with Rails already installed.
When I actually got down to doing some code, it was pretty easy to pick up. Compared to the time it takes to prototype and build a blog app or similar in PHP, it took about 15 minutes in Rails, and that’s with no previous Rails nor Ruby Experience! It’s very impressive how Rails matched your database with your business objectts, and I look forward to trying to build some more complex web apps using it.
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SITS 2006
Sleepless in the Saddle 2006 started nice and dry, with some fast laps to be had. I was using my 2.2in Bonty tyres, which are the widest tyres I’ve used in years, but were a requirement for such a bumpy course on the hardtail.
After my third night lap (6th in total) it started tipping it down with rain, making the course slightly less fun. I went to sleep for a few hours, and when I woke up it was pretty much me on my own. Steven had done his fifth lap and was now complaining of a sore back (A perennial excuse). Eddy had gone out for his 4th lap only to have one gear due to a snapped gear cable (Poor bike maintenance). Despite having this fixed, his enthusiasm for the now horribly muddy course was gone. Ally went out for another two laps, but ended up running most of the second lap due to a snapped chain.
By this point it was around 6am. I went out for another lap, then came back to try and gauge enthusiasm and eat some breakfast. The guys considered going back out, but by the time I had completed my 8th lap I was knackered and a bit disappointed I was the only one left doing laps. I decided to pack it in at this point, as me doing a few extra laps was just going to destroy my legs for the rest of the weak, and not really make much impact on our placings.
On the up side, Ally’s ‘F_CK IT’ note on our lap timings did make the Howies Blog. The Howies guys were camped next to us, and seemed to have a similar opinion on the two contrasting courses with and without the rain.
I doubt I will be making the trip down next year, not unless the course organisers get their finger out and make a weatherproof course. If 10 Under The Ben can survive 10 hours of rain and still be rideable, why can’t other courses?
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Review: Matt Kirshen - Have You Seen This Boy?
Last night we decided to go see a random show at the Pleasance. We basically asked what the next show was with free seats. The result? A preview of Matt Kirshen’s Fringe show for £5 each!
If you ever thought you were the only one who is easily distracted by random thoughts, then Matt’s show is for you! Despite looking like a small child (Even in hiS own words), he’s not. He is in fact a very funny guy, with rants customer service, and poking fun at his own faults and failures.
The hour can get pretty hot with a room full of people laughing, but Matt has solved the unbearable heat by handing out ice lollies halfway through! Bonus! This is a show well worth going to see, just don’t spill your pint while laughing…
Details on Matt’s show can be found on the EdFringe website or on Matt’s own webpage.
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Spam begone!
For the moment
I have disabled automatic publishing of commentsuntil I implement a spam filtering system. Some of my very popular posts such as my K750i review are attracting a lot of spam I would prefer not to have. It is annoying that a proprietary comments system can be leveraged by the spam monkeys, they obviously have too much time on their hands.I am still accepting comments, but I will have to review them before they are published on the site.
Update – Comments are automatically posted again! Except if you’re a spam bot, as you’ll see…
I have now installed the Akismet spam filtering system on my blog. Is very easy to set up, and only took me a few minutes. It’s primarily a Wordpress tool, but there are various different implementations of it available for other blogging tools, as well as barebone PHP4 classes, PHP5 classes, and many other web scripting languages. Go take a look if you want this sort of functionality on your blog.
Update 2 – It seems word has got round all the spammers about my site! Now hat I have erradicated the comment spam, I am getting referer spam which fills my stats with false users and addresses for sites of questionable legality and ethics. Suffice to say I’ll be installing Bad Behaviour at the first opportunity I have!
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TwentyFour 12 - Not flowy enough?
The EUCC posse headed down to Lodgewood Park in Shropshire for the inaugural running of the Bontrager TwentyFour 12, a new 12 and 24 hour endurance event. Traveling down on the friday gave us the opportunity to muck about in Tesco in Wrexham, laugh at the boy racers in the car park, and generally not make much progress.
When we arrived Tim had already set his tent up in the non-quiet camping area. Being a rowdy lot, and wanting to make a nuisance for everyone, we all helped move Tim’s erected tent about half a mile down the campsite. We stuck the gazebo and tents up, then got some kip for the day ahead.
The following morning we got up and pretty much just lay around in the hot sun, ate, and hydrated. Some of the lads went off to the briefing, which was more recap on passing politely and drinking lots. Just before 12 midday we made our way to the start line.
The start was pretty fast, with dust throughout the air making it hard to see in the first singletrack sections. At the end of my lap I had to take my contact lenses out to give them a clean. The course itself was a bit of a tardis. The camping fields were flat as a pancake, but as soon as you dipped into the woods you were soon faced with a series of short sharp descents and climbs. The majority of the course was on tight rooty singletrack, which I loved! Most of the remainder was on part of a motocross track, with humped climbs and flat sections making otherwise boring parts somewhat interesting. The surface appeared to be mulched-up reclaimed landfill, with bits of plastic and glass visible on the surface.
The dust was soon seen to just before 6pm. Just as I was heading out for my 3rd lap, a storm blew in and started to totally dump on the course. The previously dusty course was now an ice rink, and some serious time was to be made on competitors by running fast as they slipped around trying to stay upright. The course didn’t really dry out much till about 8am the next day when the hot sun came out again.
Throughout the race our team had quite a few mechanicals. On Geoff’s first lap his contact lenses fell out. Adam broke his saddle rails on his 2nd lap, meaning he had to stand up for half a lap. His third lap saw him break the chain twice. On his first night lap his lights failed, and he broke his chain another two times. I then had a light failure on my second night lap, but was still having great fun passing people in the really dark singletrack. Gavin the snapped his frame behind the bottom bracket on the chain stays, meaning he could only cycle slowly and run the harder sections. Adam then snapped his chain unrepairably on his final lap, and like the legend he is, he ran the last 6km of the lap. Top effort!
My final lap was by far the most fun, the now dryer course allowing me to totally fly, and clean the whole thing without even dabbing once! This is probably a good time to mention that throughout the whole race, everyone was very polite, even when I screwed up lines while passing people in the wet. I gave lots of encouragement to other riders, and got lots in return, and some major respect from two marshalls who were wandering around and saw me riding without lights through the singletrack. Even the great Gary Fisher was kind enough to let me past on my final lap, and was most polite about pulling to the side as he heard me coming (Hope Pro II Hubs are the daddy at these events, everyone hears you coming).
In the end our team finished 7th overall, and first Uni! The champagne Geoff had cheekily bought on the friday was put to good use, most of it being sprayed over Gavin.
Our lap times are in the table below…
Shout outs – Big thanks and congrats to all the other EUCC teams: EUCC Phoneys – Chris, Ramsay, David and Doug; EUCC Fresick – Tim, Max, Sandy and Matt; Fat Tread Bikes – Euan and James.
Thanks also to Holly and James’ dad for helping us out.
Great banter as always from Mr Andy Mee, and respect for cleaning all the climbs on your singlespeed. Less respect for going to bed for the whole night!! Lol.
Best Moments – Giving riders we didn’t know random names and cheering them on for their final lap. They all loved it!
Cheering our own riders on, and shouting the now legendary “Pull a wheeeeeelie!”, especially the support Geoff got on his final lap, we were all going mental. All those roundabout us were loving it! Doug has a great video of this sort of abuse from the first lap, I’ll see if I can get this of him.
Tim shouting “Get your fisher out!” at a certain moutainbike legend.
I’ll definitely be back next year, I had such a good time, and the tired legs were more than worth it. Always one for self promotion, a pic of me can be found on the Jools Dymond site. Nice chatting to Jools after the race too.
