google.com/s2/favicons?domain=xxx. Here’s tracker’s favicon: 
One client decided that Web 2.0-style rounded corners are only needed in Firefox and Webkit-based browsers because they are “free” with CSS properties built in for those rendering engines: -moz-border-radius and -webkit-border-radius. Internet Explorer is going to be left in the 1.0 world, at least for now, due to the over head of managing rounded corners.
Feel free to promote your personal favorite rounded corner techniques in the comments.
From CNN.com:
Program brings Web’s collective wisdom to patent process
“The concept behind the program, called Peer-to-Patent, is straightforward: Publish patent applications on the Web for all to see and let anyone with relevant expertise — academics, colleagues, even potential rivals — offer input to be passed along to the Patent Office.
By using the power of the Internet to tap the wisdom of the masses, Peer-to-Patent aims to dig up hard-to-find “prior art” — evidence that an invention already exists or is obvious and therefore doesn’t deserve a patent.”
More Peer to Patent articles available on the Pivotal clients page.
“We need to hide a flash widget without setting it to
display:none, which causes it to be loaded from the server again whendisplay:noneis removed.”
Hit me with your div-hiding techniques!
position:absolute; left:-9000pxvisibility:hidden;height:0;width:0 but watch out for any IE 6 minimum height/width issueswidth:0;overflow:hidden;
Kent Beck gave a great ‘story-driven’ talk at RailsConf 2008 regarding Patterns, Test Driven Development, and XP/Agile/Responsible development. Go see it now at Blip.tv along with all the other big presentations from RailsConf.
Yeah, yeah. This was posted ages ago, but I just made it around to watching it tonight.
Two great quotes. First, re: TDD
Testing really isn’t the point. The point here is about responsibility. When you say it’s done, is it done. Can you go to sleep at night, do you know that the software you finished today . . . works. And will help. And isn’t going to take anything away from people.
Second, more generally about ideas:
Smart ideas are useless. Nobody else is going to be dumb enough not to try them – or rather, Everybody’s going to try them if it’s a smart idea. Ideas with punch are the ones that are really ridiculous…until you try them.
Like Mole. Mole sauce. Chocolate? Chicken? Phbbblblltt! HahahaHA!
ActiveRecord::Base.connection.select_all reads all records into an array, which is not good if you have a very large result set. Use a combination of ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute with .each, or .each_hash if you want the same column<=>value mappings you get with select_all, only streamed.
There was some confusion about BlueCloth:
A recent MySql trigger experience:
During a discussion about humanize, a couple other nifty transforms were mentioned:
If you want to send SMTP mail via localhost on Mac OSX Leopard (for example, from ActiveRecord/Rails/CruiseControl.rb/etc), you need to run postfix at boot. This took me a quite a while to figure out, so here is what worked for me on a work-imaged box and my personal box. YMMV.
fatal: file /opt/local/etc/postfix/main.cf: parameter mail_owner: user postfix has same user ID as _postfixfatal: open /usr/local/etc/postfix/main.cf: No such file or directoryfatal: open /opt/local/etc/postfix/main.cf: No such file or directory$ sudo port uninstall postfix
sudo port list postfix“, even though the uninstall was apparently successful. I don’t know enough about MacPorts to know why, maybe this is reporting the Leopard-installed one???$ sudo vi /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postfix.master.plist`
<key>RunAtLoad</key> <true> <key>OnDemand</key> </true><false> </false>
$ telnet localhost 25Trying ::1... telnet: connect to address ::1: Connection refused Trying fe80::1... telnet: connect to address fe80::1: Connection refused Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. 220 citestbox.localhost ESMTP Postfix
And that was it! CruiseControl.rb was now sending email from OSX, which was all I really wanted in the first place…
“JSUnit tests do not show line numbers for assertion failures, which makes it hard to know which assertion failed. Suggestions?”
Have fewer assertions per test, or use the message argument, such as assertEquals(foo, bar, 'foo should be the same as bar.').
“Is there any way to see test failure stack traces as soon as a test fails or errors? This would be especially nice for slow-running Selenium tests.”
A few Pivots remember hacking on Test::Unit and Rspec to display failure details immediately, but more research is needed. Perhaps there’s a plugin?
“Design Adam’s beard!”
Pivot Adam is shaving is beard and is looking for facial hair suggestions. Over the years he has displayed many of the “standard” beards and mustaches, so it’s time to get creative. Look to The Quest For Every Beard Type for inspiration. Here is your canvas:
“Is there something wrong with Net::SSH in the latest versions of Capistrano? I can’t deploy to localhost…”
Not that anyone knows of. Have you tried turning it off and on again? The power button… it’s the little glowing button on the front… the button on the front… Are you from the PAST?
“Is there a good ruby Gem or Plugin for working with the Google Charts API?”
One pair used gchartrb but abandoned it almost immediately. So far, it’s string << string << string.
“How do you use Javascript included in a Desert plugin? Is it included automatically with Desert-magic?”
Unfortunately not. Desert plugins should have an install.rb that copies the Javascript to the public/javascripts directory in your project, but few actually have this (at least at Pivotal.) For now you have to copy any Javascript into that directory yourself.