So. Here is the theme, should I ever do that again, or if you aren’t a big fan of the default themes.

Adding a new theme to SyntaxHighlighter

If you are use version 2.2.0 of the plugin you can run this patch against it (Add GitHub theme patch). To use the patch just run:

$>patch syntaxhighlighter.php add_github_theme.patch

Or you can simply open it up and duplicate how the default themes are in there.

Grab the GitHub SyntaxHighlighter Theme

GitHub SyntaxHighlighter theme (Gist) (It isn’t 100%, but it looks pretty nice for Ruby code)

Heres how it looks

GitHub Theme

Setting up the rescue_from methods were simple enough, but I noticed that when I was capturing my error 500s it wasn’t logging the exception. Here is a quick way to have it both display your custom 500 page and log the exception for later review:

  # application.rb
  include ExceptionLoggable

  unless ActionController::Base.consider_all_requests_local
    # yeah, its a long line
    rescue_from ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound, ActionController::RoutingError, ActionController::UnknownController, ActionController::UnknownAction, :with => :render_404
    rescue_from RuntimeError, :with => :render_500
  end

private

  def render_404
    render :template => "shared/error_404", :layout => 'application', :status => :not_found
  end

  def render_500
    # hacky, but works, this logs the exception in ExceptionLoggable
    log_exception $!
    render :template => "shared/error_500", :layout => 'application', :status => :internal_server_error
  end

To test this just change config.action_controller.consider_all_requests_local = true to config.action_controller.consider_all_requests_local = false in your config/environments/development.rb file.

Not the _best_ way or cleanest, but it gets the job done without too much trouble.

# RAILS_ROOT/config/app.yml

regions:
  - 'northeast'
  - 'southeast'
  - 'west'
  - 'central'
  - 'emerging east'
  - 'emerging west'
  - 'opportunity east'
  - 'opportunity west'
  - 'opportunity national east'
  - 'opportunity national west'

divisions:
  <%= (1..71).map{ |i| "Region #{i}" }.to_yaml %>

Loading it up using an initializer:

# RAILS_ROOT/config/initializers/load_app_config.rb

fdata =File.open(File.join(RAILS_ROOT, "config", "app.yml")).read
APP = YAML::load(ERB.new(fdata).result(binding)).symbolize_keys

Now we have our APP hash chock full o’ YAML goodness. My only problem with this is that I might want to eventually put this data set into a table and it is a pain to hunt and search for where the application references APP[:regions] and so on sooo: time to objectize.

I decided that since they are stupid simple objects they can all have the same parent: YamlArrayObject:

# RAILS_ROOT/app/models/yaml_array_object.rb
# or in lib

class YamlArrayObject
  attr_reader :name
  def id
    0
  end
  def initialize(name)
    @name = name
  end
  def to_s
    name
  end
  def display_name
    to_s.titleize
  end
  def <=>(b)
    name <=> b.name
  end
end

Simple enough. Now we just inherit and overload as appropriate.

# RAILS_ROOT/app/models/region.rb
class Region < YamlArrayObject
  def self.all
    APP[:regions].map{ |r| Region.new(r) }
  end
end

# RAILS_ROOT/app/models/division.rb
class Division < YamlArrayObject
  def <=>(b)
    name.to_i <=> b.name.to_i
  end
  def self.all
    APP[:divisions].map{ |d| Division.new(d) }
  end
end

This is all Jim Dandy right now since we can populate select boxes using cleaner code (bonus: won’t break if you decide to add Divisions to a database table)

# i like
<%= f.select :division, Division.all.sort.map{ |d| [d.display_name, d] } -%>
# better than
<%= f.select :division, APP[:divisions].sort{|a,b| a.to_i <=> b.to_i}.map{ |d| [d.titleize, d] } -%>

The only real issue is that calling Client.first.region still returns a string, which is bad since we want to keep our code as ambiguous as possible. The last step is to override the Client class’ methods for region and division (and whatever else we want to use):

# RAILS_ROOT/app/models/client.rb

def division
  Division.new(@attributes['division']) unless @attributes['division'].blank?
end
def region
  Region.new(@attributes['region']) unless @attributes['region'].blank?
end

Now in our views (client/show) we can simply call @client.region.display_name or whatever and not have to change the code when we finally get around to DBing those object.

(There might be better ways to do this that I’m missing, but this seems pretty okay for my needs right now.)

  def content_tag_each(items)
    items.inject(''){ |output, item| output << yield(item) }
  end

Usage

# urls = (string) semi-colon seperated URL list since this is
# from a legacy system and doesn't really need normalization
def display_urls(urls)
  link_options = {:target => :blank}
  urls = urls.split(';')

  # handle single url
  return link_to(urls.first, urls.first, link_options) unless urls.size > 1

  # handle multiple urls
  content_tag(:ul) do
    content_tag_each(urls) do |url|
      content_tag(:li){ link_to(url, url, link_options) }
    end
  end
end

Nothing special really, but can come in handy for certain cases.

  def default(object, default = 'n/a')
    return default if object.blank?
    block_given? ? yield(object) : object
  end

Usage

A very simple example:

#
# Simple Example
#

my_string = ''
puts default(my_string, 'String is empty')
# => 'String is empty'

my_string = 'hello world'
puts default(my_string, 'String is empty')
# => 'hello world'

my_string = 'hello world'
puts default(my_string, 'String is empty') { |str| str.titleize }
# => 'Hello World'

#
# Yielding example
#

puts default(current_user, 'Guest') { |user| user.name.titleize }

The default YAML output

This is what you will get if you simply throw the YAML.load result to an array or something. Nice, but I’m not a big fan of “Keys Like This” so…

irb(main):011:0> pp YAML.load(`svn info`)
{"Node Kind"=>"directory",
 "Last Changed Author"=>"rob",
 "URL"=>"http://example.com/share/lib",
 "Schedule"=>"normal",
 "Last Changed Rev"=>441,
 "Repository UUID"=>"0afc494f-e74d-0410-99f2-b94b27995134",
 "Repository Root"=>"http://example.com",
 "Last Changed Date"=>"2008-07-15 15:55:54 -0400 (Tue, 15 Jul 2008)",
 "Revision"=>446,
 "Path"=>"."}
=> nil

A nice class wrapper for the SVN Info

Heres what I ended up with. Nothing fancy, just a simple wrapper around the subversion info dump.

require 'yaml'
class SVNInfo
  def initialize
      YAML.load(`svn info`).each do |k,v|
          key = k.gsub(/\s/, '_').downcase
          instance_variable_set "@#{key}", v
          instance_eval %{ def #{key}; @#{key}; end }
      end
  end
end

Here is the end result:

irb(main):013:0> svn_info = SVNInfo.new
# ... snip ...
irb(main):014:0> pp svn_info
<SVNInfo:0x57f378
 @last_changed_author="rob",
 @last_changed_date="2008-07-15 15:55:54 -0400 (Tue, 15 Jul 2008)",
 @last_changed_rev=441,
 @node_kind="directory",
 @path=".",
 @repository_root="http://example.com",
 @repository_uuid="0afc494f-e74d-0410-99f2-b94b27995134",
 @revision=446,
 @schedule="normal",
 @url="http://example.com/share/lib">
=> nil
irb(main):015:0>

Messing Around

irb(main):018:0> pp svn_info.methods - Object.methods
["last_changed_author",
 "revision",
 "repository_root",
 "last_changed_rev",
 "path",
 "url",
 "node_kind",
 "last_changed_date",
 "repository_uuid",
 "schedule"]
=> nil
irb(main):019:0> svn_info.revision
=> 446
irb(main):020:0> svn_info.last_changed_author
=> "rob"
irb(main):021:0>

Hope that comes in handy

If you’re curious to see which commands you use the most just run:

$>history | awk '{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' | sort -rn | head

# local server
133 l
70 cd
47 svn
38 ..
29 e
26 mv
20 ll
10 rm
10 cp
8 ror

# remote server
123 l
74 cd
35 svn
31 touch
26 ..
23 exit
23 cat
20 ll
18 rm
16 rake

A few notes

here are those goofy aliases that you see:

alias ll='ls -lah'
alias la='ls -a'
alias l='ls -lh'
alias ..='cd ..'
alias ~='cd ~'
alias e='mate '

alias ss='./script/server'
alias console='./script/console'
alias migration='./script/migration'

alias ror='/var/rubydev'
alias www='/var/www'

I was just goin around on the interblagosphere today and stumbled upon Erling Ellingsen’s smackbook pro. If you’ve never heard of this then you’re in for a shock. The basic idea behind what he has created is a way to switch virtual desktops simply by tapping the side of the laptop’s monitor.

I was immediately in love and wanted to play with it a bit but he was using DesktopManager to do the space switching. Since I’m running leopard on the laptop I figured that was a waste of time and I’d never actually use a 3′d party virtual desktop switching app… and so the journey began. I turned to my mortal enemy, applescript, to accomplish this. After some browsing and hacking I found that this simple code can send CONTROL-# keystrokes to get the job done:

tell application "System Events"
	tell process "Finder"
		keystroke "[SPACENUMBER]" using control down
	end tell
end tell

If you toss that into osascript from the command line we can finally start to get somewhere. So the next step was to grab that sudden motion sensor app. Erling was using AMSTracker by Amit Singh so that seemed a good place to start. After that a quick ruby script tied the SMS dump to the applescript and a fun new project was born. It is a lotta bit rough around the edges and needs some sensitivity tuning, but it _does_ get the job done… just be a little rough*

I am definitely not responsible for any damage caused by using this script — it was a proof of concept hack.

Based off “SmackBook Pro”

YouTube Video

This is not mine, but mine does essentially the same thing, only using native Leopard spaces… and ruby.

Where to get the script?

• shakebook project site

Running it is as simple as $>AMSTracker -S -u0.01 | shakebook.rb then tap away (or shake if you want to be careful)

Revisions will probably be made to sensitize it once I have time to mess around with it — if you come up with anything shoot me back a comment

iCal can publish to a password protected directory just fine — but to my surprise, google calendar could _not_ read from one… _only_ public urls. Wtf? I’m really hoping I overlooked something because this is just pathetic.

Anyway, the solution turned out to be dirt simple. Keep all protected calendars in a /private folder on my domain and have a public facing script to route stuff. So I went to work, and a few minutes later, here it is.

I tested this just now and google calendar can indeed read my password protected calendar so thats cool. It isn’t the best way I’m sure — but, hey, it only took a few minutes (edit: less time than it took to write this post in fact) and it gets the job done. (Plus I don’t exactly have a “personal” personal calendar, I’d just rather it not be public.)

view the protected ical calendars in google project page

Hope that can help someone. Or if there were any suggestions feel free to e-mail me

Here is the input extension to make a text field (actually, _any_ input, but you can add that logic yourself:) ) self clearing:

Requires Prototype Javascript Library!
I used v1.6 but I’m sure others will work fine.

// input_extensions.js

// extends HTMLInputElement to include a self-clearing method
// @author Rob Hurring
// @date 2008-04-23
// UPDATED: 12/02/08 -- thanks to Shawn for pointing out the IE flaw

var SelfClearingInput = Class.create();
SelfClearingInput.prototype = {
	initialize:function(element)
	{
		this.element = $(element);
		this.original_value = this.element.value
		Event.observe(this.element, 'focus', this.focus.bind(this));
		Event.observe(this.element, 'blur', this.blur.bind(this));
	},
	focus:function(e)
	{
		if(this.element.value == this.original_value)
			this.element.value = '';
	},
	blur:function(e)
	{
		if(this.element.value == '')
			this.element.value = this.original_value;
	}
};

when you want to use it, something like this can work:

// In your javascript file somewhere
document.observe("dom:loaded", function()
{
	new SelfClearingInput('ID_OF_INPUT_BOX');
});