More IconBuffet icons arrived today! I have deliveries of Shanghai Tech left, too. Email me at jowensbysandifer [at] gmail [dot] com, if you would like a delivery.

Frustration: The drag and drop functionality that I have been working on isn’t working at all in IE. I have no idea what the issue is. I guess it might be something about the way prototype, which the library I am working with, works with IE.

Getting past the suck threshold: (from Creating Passionate Users) *Try new things *Get certified *Attend a conference *Do things differently

Saturday: Brush your teeth with your ‘wrong’ hand and take a shower with your eyes closed.

Sunday:Do the crossword or Sudoku puzzle in your Sunday paper and take a brisk walk.

Monday:Have oily fish for dinner, and either cycle, walk or take the bus into work.

Tuesday:Select unfamiliar words from the dictionary and work them into conversations.

Wednesday: Go to yoga, Pilates or a meditation class, and talk to someone you don’t know.

Thursday: Take a different route to work; watch Countdown or Brainteaser.

Friday: Avoid caffeine or alcohol; memorise your shopping list.

The redirect command: This command is very simple, but useful. Currently, I am using it to redirect the welcome page to the main control page after the user logs on.

redirect_to(”/controller/action”)

• Place the redirect command in controller under the needed action, and link to the action in that controller.
• Make sure you begin the path with a slash.

For me there was this a bit of a RadRails setup ‘dilemma’. I wanted to use RadRails to view existing files rather than importing files into a brand new (i.e. copied version) project. My main reason for not wanting to create a new project in RadRails was the Rad Rails web viewer is apparently based on Internet Explorer. The drag and drop functionality that I have been working on isn’t working at all in IE. I have no idea what the issue is. But I don’t want to deal with that right now—I have a lot of momentum built up.

To use an existing folder as the default location of a new project in RadRails, try this: File >> New >> Simple >> Project >> Unclick “Use default” and select the folder you want to access and give the folder a name.

I have recently installed RadRails. I have never been a big fan of Eclipse, but I was getting really tired of opening up all of the files in vi and then the stylesheets in my html editor (HTML-Kit—which cannot open rhtml files by the way). You do not need to have Eclipse installed to use RadRails, although Java 1.4+ is required along with ruby and rails. There is also an RadRails Eclipse plugin if you already have Eclipse installed.

You can import existing rails applications into RadRails. And once again yours truly has forgotten another password…this time it’s the login for my web app! Firefox has the password stored so I can sign in that way, but when I login from RadRails, I have to know the password – the application is on a different port in RadRails. If the human readable version of the password were stored in my dev database, then RadRails would let me see the password, but rails (I guess rails and not MySQL -I’ve never looked at how this works) encrypts the password before storing it. I am thinking that I will dev in RadRails and export the app weekly to the original location of the app on my file systems.

Right now I am working full time on finishing my master’s thesis. So, I have been employing whatever motivation/ time management/ efficiency/ productivity strategies I can to write and be done with the thing. One that has been useful is the Hipster PDA. You can get all of the organization of a Covey planner with the flexibility of sticky notes. Write to do lists quickly, track calorie consumption, jot down tips that have worked for you, keep frequently used phone numbers—all without opening a binder. I have been reviewing my quarterly goals more often because they are so easy to view with the Hipster PDA. Also, being a student I don’t have a lot of money, so, the price of a pack of index cards is about all I have to spend on a calendar.

Having worked two internships in Corporate America, I know that the hipster PDA will most likely be looked down upon. My fear is that once I return to the world of corporate America (an inevitable return), I won’t be able to use the planner because it is well… different. Alas! One strategy would be to take the clip off the PDA and set the index cards on your desk—this way they don’t look so homemade and …different. In meetings, notes can be taken on a single card, or if the meeting is actually productive, you could write in a notebook. Even still, if you want to jot something down when someone catches you in the hall or at lunch, you would have to pull out your hipster PDA for the corporate world to see. Maybe if enough people start using them, they will be accepted and seen for the tools they are rather than the crafty cards they appear to be…Na!

A little chart I found somewhere (in the Programming Ruby book, I think):

Example variable and class names Local: name, fishAndChips, x_axis, thx1138, _26

Global (accessible by the program): $debug, $CUSTOMER, $_, $plan9, $Global

Instance (accessible by the object): @name, @point_1, @X, @_, @plan9

Class: @total, @symtab, @N, @x_pos, @@SINGLE

Constants and Class Names: PI, FeetPerMile, String, MyClass, Jazz_Song

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Because it is so easy to forget the command line commands… To list the version of rails installed, type gem list rails . To start the server, type ruby script\server. To create a new application, type rails name_of_application. To create a new controller, type ruby script/generate controller name_of_controller. To generate the entire scaffold, type ruby script/generate scaffold Table_Name Controller_Name.

And don’t forget form helpers like: <%= link_to “Display_Link_Name”, :action => “corresponding_action_in_the_controller” %>

Now that I have gotten drag and drop to work for the most part (I’ve retaken it apart to add more functionality), I know that the obstacles I had to overcome to get the thing to work were not the mountains that I thought they were.

I didn’t have the latest version of the script.aculo.us library installed, and once I updated the files, I stopped getting the error message that I have been getting for two days straight. :( Yes, I am retarded.

The other thing that I learned while getting this first part of drag and drop to work (I now have to get the app to create a new piece from line items in the cart) was to use the a.to_i string function. For whatever reason the objects in the cart are storred as strings rather than intergers, and they need to be cast back into integers if you want to use them as ids.

Ok, hacks like this one make me feel guilty. Ah! I have so many ideas that should be implemented, but aren’t.

create your own visited states map

or check out these Google Hacks.

I figure if I write down the list of little programs I would like to write (in Ruby of course) that would at least be movement in the right direction; so, here they are:

• Suduko Puzzle Game
• Random Word Generator something (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random)
• Concentration Game
• Re-write the getContent of URL program that I wrote in Java (and this time have program download images to a specific location)
• Header creator