http://www.flester.com/blog You can't have it both ways Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:30:36 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In a Rails system with a pretty standard user model, views, and controller, I recently found that the users_controller was getting pretty large. There was a pretty significant amount of code that I wanted to add to deal with the users using a different set of views under some circumstances ... http://www.flester.com/blog/2008/08/12/aliasing-a-ruby-class I may write up a better review of the new Canon A650 that I got for my birthday once I figure out a little more about how to use all of the fine features and get a little more experience. I've been too busy to take very many pictures recently, ... http://www.flester.com/blog/2008/08/09/canon-a650-panorama-mode I got sucked into a trap. In a Rails migration it's so easy to use an ActiveRecord::Base model object to update some stuff, and it looks nice and DRY. But it is extremely fragile. For example suppose your domain has a user and sponsor model. Each user has a sponsor. ... http://www.flester.com/blog/2008/08/05/using-model-objects-in-migrations-is-fragile The typical Ruby on Rails flash area is only drawn when there is a message to flash. I think something like this is fairly common (this example is haml, but that's not the point) usually done in a partial, something like app/views/shared/_flash.html.haml: - %w(info notice error).each do |type| - if ... http://www.flester.com/blog/2008/08/01/rails-flash-with-ajax Here's my summer-time recipe for cold-filtered iced-coffee. If you have had iced-coffee before but it was normal hot-brewed coffee, well, please be seated before taking your first sip. : - ) Measure 8 tbs ground coffee into a quart mason jar - a nice full-city roast would be good, or a ... http://www.flester.com/blog/2008/07/15/cold-filtered-iced-coffee Pocket Bible, the html version. King James Version American Standard Version update: fixed links http://www.flester.com/blog/2008/07/02/pocket-bible This is a test, thanks, Sam. A lot has changed in four years since Sam wrote that article. But there is still a lot of borked UTF-8 i18n handling out there. So there -- Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn. I'll leave the RTL test to someone braver. http://www.flester.com/blog/2008/07/01/internationaliz%c3%a6ti%c3%b8n I guess this would be in the "You know you have a problem when..." category, but I don't want to make one of those because, well, uh, too many things might end up there. But when you first see one of these, a chisel bladed jack-hammer bit, and the first though ... http://www.flester.com/blog/2008/06/21/asynchronous-jackhammer-and Want Biscuit with that Cornus Kousa? http://www.flester.com/blog/2008/06/21/cornus-kousa Mr. Ryrie's notes have it that when Jacob deceived Isaac, Isaac being old and thinking that he was preparing to die, that Isaac went on to live another 43 years. It's not obvious how he gets this and so here is how it's done, first in text, then with a ... http://www.flester.com/blog/2008/06/05/ages-of-isaac-jacob-and-joseph