Help:

Anyone have any IP Geolocation software recommendations?

• MaxMind provides downloadable databases and updates
• Google provides an api called google.loader.ClientLocation

Firebug binds up and forces me to restart Firefox when modifying CSS.

• Try Safari or Webkit. You can add css styles to a class on an element by editing an existing element, finishing the current style with a semi-colon, and declaring a new style.

Interesting:

• Optional params to a lambda: declare the lambda with *args and get warning free lambda to which you can pass no arguments.

class MyClass
  named_scope :in_progress, lambda { |*args| param = (args.empty? ? true : args.first); {:conditions => {:in_progress => param} }}
  #MyClass.in_progress           # < return all in progress records
  #MyClass.in_progress(false) # < return all non-in-progress records
  #MyClass.in_progress(true)  # < return all in-progress records
end

• Rubymine 2.0 RC2 is out. Release notes include better performance and reduced memory usage.

• Pivotal Labs will be a stop on the Startup Crawl during Rubyconf.

Interesting Thing

• Dynamic use of Object#extend at runtime invalidates the global method cache, causing performance degradations. Consider a design that makes use of extend at class parse time. Here's a slide deck that explains in detail: What Makes Ruby Go

Help

*"Proxying Apache to Thin and getting 502 errors."

Interesting

• Beware: Health check ping every 3 seconds * 15 mongrels * 1 week = millions of session rows. Create skip_filter entry for your health ping action.

• Snow Leopard 10.6.2 is out. An unlucky upgrader attempted to go 10.6.1 -> 10.6.2 and it hosed the machine. This required the upgrader to reinstall Snow Leopard from disk, then upgrading to 10.6.2. Backup your data before upgrading!

• Redefining an aliased method may not do what you expect: When the aliased method is invoked the original implementation executes.

def do_something
  puts "hello"
end

alias :do_something_else :do_something

def do_something
  puts "goodbye"
end

do_something_else    # prints "hello"

Ask for Help

"We're getting id's from facebook that are overflowing INT columns in mysql tables. Should I use BIGINT to accommodate these ids? Is this wasteful?"

Use string columns instead. VARCHAR columns will only use as much space as the id needs.

"Are VARCHAR columns slower to join than INT columns?"

Not in mysql. Strings do not have join performance penalty compared to integers.

Interesting Things

• Edward was a guest lecturer for a Carnegie Mellon University course where students are learning to do Agile development. Course work involves pair programming, TDD, and using Ruby on Rails. The talk was well received and Edward is invited to come back next year!

• There is an apparent rails bug (2.3.2) when building associated objects and then saving them.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
 attr_accessor :bool
 before_validation_on_create :set_bool

 def set_bool
   self.bool = true
 end
end

class Child < User
 belongs_to :adult
 before_validation_on_create :create_adult

 def create_adult
   if adult.nil?
     self.build_adult()
   end
 end
end

class Adult < User
end

specify "should work" do
 child = Child.create!()
 child.bool.should be_true
 child.parent.bool.should be_true #fails
end