Interesting
libxml 0.96 and 0.97 leak massive amounts of memory. Don't forget that libxml has other problems, too, as mentioned by us before. That said, it's our go-to XML parser.
Several teams have had success with the IE6 PNG fix "DD_belatedPNG" by Drew Diller. But, do not attempt with
<tr>or<td>elements, though<td><span>...</span></td>does work.Want to speed up ruby? Who doesn't? Check it out: when you do not set the TZ environment variable, ruby shells out several times per second to see if the timezone has changed. To avoid this, run the following:
$ export TZ=:/etc/localtime
Thank you Joe Damato!
- One project recently switched to Passenger with great success. Hundreds of mongrel processes are now gone, deploys are easier and speedier, and the site is faster. WIN!
It's the first Wednesday of the month, and that means another outside.in + Pivotal happy hour, with beer and pizza, at outside.in’s offices: 20 Jay Street Suite 1019 (10th Floor), Brooklyn, NY (map)
If you’re planning on coming, please RSVP in the comments here or Cory's post.
Harlan Wood, one of our client developers, has founded a monthly hackfest project that may be of interest to the Rails community. From Harlan:
"I am putting together a monthly Hackfest for the Light, kicking off in late January. The idea is to put some of the great skills in our community to use on socially responsible software projects of any sort, with a preference toward open source, ruby/rails, and great testing, but open to just about anything. Participants will introduce projects of interest, or just bring their coding/UI skills, and developers and designers will work together on whichever projects inspire them.
An example project I'm working on is a creative collaboration remixing engine -- like a github for creative commons licenced creative works. More on that here: http://enlightenedstructure.info/pub/WikiDragon.
I've created a meetup group ( http://www.meetup.com/Hackfest-for-the-Light/ ) -- this is the best way to stay in touch if you're interested.
H@rlan Knight Wood"
This is suddenly more relevant after Adam's excellent post on Aristotle and software (and while you're at it don't miss There Is No Agile). The following is just an application of virtues to writing...and in my opinion, very relevant to the practice of making software.
Following from the assertion that you can apply writing advice to code...
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (book, wikipedia) is an exploration of Quality (wikipedia) (not in the sense of QA or building cars). This is a long passage from Chapter 17 - Phaedrus is teaching a writing course at a local college - one of my favorite parts of the book, it's a model for examination that I keep coming back to. My comments follow at the bottom.
"I think there is such a thing as Quality, but that as soon as you try to define it, something goes haywire. You can't do it."
(continued after the jump)
On occasion, someone will ask me what I do or, more commonly, ask me what Pivotal does. The title on my business card says "Agile Developer," which nearly inevitably leads to one of a few reactions, almost all of which boil down to this:
"What exactly does Agile mean?"
You know what? It's a good question. And, after thinking about Agile for several years now, here's my answer: Agile originally was, and still is, a marketing term.
Allow me to explain.
With the recent holidays, along with a hint of flu season, things have slowed down a bit, and I've finally had some free time to go back and watch a few of the talks I missed at RubyConf this year (recordings are available here). Notably, I also took the opportunity to re-watch Jonathan Dahl's talk on Aristotle and the Art of Software Development. For anyone who missed it, I highly recommend you check it out. It was, in my opinion, one of the best talks of the conference.
You may be wondering what philosophy has to do with writing software. Watch the video. Listen to what Jonathan has to say. I believe fairly strongly that questions of how we think, how we communicate, how we interact with one another, etc. will become increasingly, and overshadowingly, important as the software industry continues to grope its way toward some sense of what it is we're all doing, and what it means to do it well.