Hack to Learn

So Rails Templates have been around now since 2.3.0.  I have finally found the time to dig in and enjoy them, after watching Ryan Bates’ screencast episode 148.

Feel free to use my base_template or any of my rails generators which can be found at github.com/cblackburn.  My template is pretty basic, but I’ve wanted a way to do this kind of thing for years.  I used to write shell scripts to setup my default Rails applications. This is so much nicer!

To use it just do this:

rails appname -m http://github.com/cblackburn/rails-templates/raw/master/base_template.rb

  # Plugins
  plugin 'exception_notifier', :git => 'git://github.com/rails/exception_notification.git'

  # Gems
  if yes?("Will you need to paginate?")
    gem "mislav-will_paginate", :lib => 'will_paginate'
  end
  rake("gems:install", :sudo => true)

  # Generators
  generate :app_layout
  if yes?("Will you be using MySQL?")
    db_password = ask("What is the MySQL password for root?")
    puts "Type 'y' and Enter to overwrite the current database.yml file."
    generate( "database_yml_mysql #{db_password}") # This uses my own generator
  end
  if yes?("Do you need Authlogic?")
    generate :authlogic # This uses my authlogic-generator
  end
  generate :controller, "home index"
  route "map.root :controller => :home"

  # General cleanup
  rake "db:create:all"
  rake "db:migrate"
  run "echo TODO > README"
  run "rm -f public/index.html"

  # Files
  file ".gitignore", <<-END
  .DS_Store
  log/*.log
  log/*.pid
  tmp/**/*
  config/database.yml
  db/*.sqlite3
  END

  # Git
  git :init
  git :add => "."
  git :commit => "-m 'initial commit'"

If you decide to use this you’ll also want to take a look at my generators: http://github.com/cblackburn/personal-rails-generators

First, Merry Christmas! Now, my "bah humbug"!

I despise adware. Its not that it is evil, in and of itself. Its just that, well, it is irritating to be exposed to someone's attempt at persuading me that I need to buy something. Look, if I have a need for something, it is quite simple to research the existing products that fulfill that need, decide and make the purchase. Do we really need to put up with the corporate propaganda stream just to use otherwise "free" software?

Since NetNewsWire switched their model to adware, I'd been looking for something to replace it. Why didn't I just pay the fee to remove the ads, you may ask? Because Newsgator doesn't offer that option. Nope, if you want to use NetNewsWire you must eat their adstream while doing it.

I had used Vienna before. It wasn't as polished then, but they have done some great work and now it is, for my needs, every bit as good as NetNewsWire. The fact that it isn't adware made the choice simple. The interface is simple and clean and serves my purposes very well.

Some features:

• Subscribe to Atom/RSS news feeds and podcasts.
• Simple and intuitive user interface with customisable toolbar.
• Built-in tabbed browser.
• Global search of all retrieved articles.
• Automatic detection of newsfeeds on web pages.
• Smart folders for organising related feed articles.
• Custom article display styles.
• Three separate reading layouts.
• Blogging integration.
• Support for downloading enclosures in articles
• Filter the displayed articles.
• Manual reordering of the subscription list.
• Full AppleScript support.
• Localised into several languages.

So if you are tired of being forced to eat ads while reading your RSS feeds, switch to Vienna. You'll be glad you did.

Tags: adware, vienna, netnewswire, newsgator, rss readers, feed readers

While working on a project I found it necessary to generate some custom Google map markers and I wanted them numbered 1..999. I searched for a while and found a few php scripts and some snippets here and there, none of which did quite what I wanted. I decided to write my own. Here it is for your own mapping pleasure:

I saved mine as

gen_google_markers.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'rubygems'
require 'rmagick'
include Magick

WIDTH = 33
HEIGHT = 37
FONT_COLOR = "#000000"
MARKER_COLOR = "#CC0000"

def generate_marker(num, font_color, marker_color)
  throw "Number too big [#{num}], can only be 3 digits maximum." if num > 999
  canvas = Image.new(WIDTH, HEIGHT) {
    self.background_color = 'transparent'
    # self.background_color = 'white'
  }
  gc = Draw.new
  gc.fill_opacity(100)
  gc.fill(marker_color)
  gc.stroke('none')
  gc.stroke_width(1)

  # Draw triangle
  gc.path("M#{WIDTH*0.091},#{HEIGHT*0.433} L#{WIDTH/2},#{HEIGHT*0.966} L#{WIDTH*0.909},#{HEIGHT*0.433} z")

  # Draw ellipse on top of triangle
  gc.stroke(marker_color) # set stroke to fix the offset where elipse meets triangle
  gc.ellipse(WIDTH/2, HEIGHT*0.313, WIDTH*0.455, HEIGHT*0.267, 0, 360)

  # Annotate
  pointsize = (WIDTH*1.0/2) - 2
  gc.fill(font_color)
  gc.stroke('none')
  gc.pointsize = pointsize
  gc.gravity = NorthGravity
  gc.text_align(CenterAlign)
  gc.text_antialias(true)
  gc.text(WIDTH/2, (HEIGHT/2)-(HEIGHT/20), "#{num}")

  # Write file
  gc.draw(canvas)
  canvas.write("#{num}.png")
end

marker_color = ARGV.shift
font_color = ARGV.shift

for num in 1..999
  generate_marker(num, font_color, marker_color)
end

Happy mapping…