Updates from November, 2006 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Dark Liquid
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Dark Liquid
Static site development
When developing a static site, or editing an existing one, its a bitch to try and remember things like relative and absolute paths, etc etc. I didn’t want to have to mess with that and I certainly didn’t want the hassle of setting up apache or lighty just to serve files from the directory I had mirrored the site.
So, Ruby to the rescue! 2 minutes later and I had this serving my files for me:
12345678910111213141516<code class='ruby'>#!/usr/local/bin/rubyrequire 'webrick'include WEBrickdef webserve(port, directory)server = HTTPServer.new(:Port => port,:DocumentRoot => directory)trap("INT"){ server.shutdown }server.startendport = ARGV[0] || 3000directory = ARGV[1] || Dir::pwdwebserve(port, directory)</code>Just run it in the directory that has your files in, or call it like:
12<code>webserver 3000 /path/to/my/files</code>and voila, instant server.
I don’t know how people live without this stuff.
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Dark Liquid
Mephisto Comment Hack
For some reason, mephisto was breaking when comments were posted. Basically it wouldn’t allow you to post comments if one had already been posted – even if you deleted it afterwards.
Turned out it had something to do with comment caching. Therefore, I just turned it off by adding
@skip_caching = true
to the beginning of the dispatchcomments and dispatchcomment functions in the mephisto_controller. I tried messing around with the other ideas mentioned in the Developers Tips page on the mephisto wiki but had no luck. Hmmmm….
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Dark Liquid
First Laptop
Well, I bought myself a nice black 13.3” MacBook and it arrived yesterday! I’m mostly going to be using it for work-style stuff, so Mac OSX stays for TextMate (though it is nice and shiny).
When Leopard is released, I expect I shall be dual booting it with Linux, probably some form of Ubuntu.
So far though, I’m really impressed with it and everything seems well polished and finished off.
Yay!
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Dark Liquid
Propelling
It’s a great feeling when you finally manage to put something live that you’ve made for yourself.
Last night we all got that feeling when we deployed the teaser site for Propel’r, a new GTD-based project/time management web application we are building.
If you’re interested in GTD, life hacking and personal productivity, then feel free to check out propelr.com. We are all pretty excited about it at SonicIQ, we look forwards to seeing peoples responses.
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Dark Liquid
Casino Royale
Before reading further, there may be very, very mild spoilers, but I wouldn’t worry unless you’ve never seen or heard anything about the movie. A trailer probably gives more away than I do here.
I saw Casino Royale last night with Dru in a rare occurrence of a thing called a date.
We arrived a little late for the 15:30 showing, so we instead went to Borders where they were giving out free chocolate! Woohoo! We browsed around the books and DVDs for a bit then realised we only had 30 minutes till the 16:30 showing so quickly went and grabbed me a burger (Dru wasn’t hungry) and then headed off to the 16:30 showing.
While we were waiting for the film to start they were playing Bond theme songs, which was cool, we kept trying to guess which films they were from, but failed miserably. The film started off quite well, I enjoyed the intro sequence, I thought it very well done and quite creative. I also quite like this new Bond theme song, I’ve not really enjoyed many of the others (though Duran Duran’s A View To A Kill is awesome), but this was pretty cool, I shall probably we getting the soundtrack to the film at some point.
I think Daniel Craig pulls of Bond very well. He has more of the grittiness I remember from reading the books (damn that was a long time ago, I need to get them again). Also, it’s refreshing to see a departure from the standard Bond look, Bond in blonde works quite well.
I liked the prequel style of the film, which is unusual as prequels don’t often impress me. Also, the sheer lack of over-the-top, in-your-face action with all the associated glitz and glamour was a breath of fresh air. It was great to see Bond getting back to basics and doing what he is meant to do, be a spy, a killer and a charismatic gentleman. In the recent films, he has been nothing but a vehicle for flashy gadgets and effects, much like the villains. That was also nice, the villain. Simple, not some ridiculous world dominating orbiting super laser, shark attacking psycho, but a cold and calculating villain whose character flaws didn’t make him seem like a retard. Of course, they couldn’t throw away every cliché, he had to have the ol’ scar over the eye, but that was okay.
I really liked the new Bond girl. She was a really good character and was also quite beautiful in a non-glossy, plastic way that a lot of other Bond girls have seemed to be. Also, she couldn’t really have been any worse as Halle Berry anyway, even if it had turned out she was rubbish. But thats not an issue since she pulled of the part very well and looked good while doing it.
There was a cliff-hanger ending, which was nice for a change, as usually there is a cheesy line, some kind of sex and the other MI6 characters doing the ‘oh Bond, you crazy character you’ style routine which undermines the entire film and makes it seems like a bad comedy sketch. It worked for the other films, because they had a certain fun quality that alluded to that kind of silliness, but it would have ruined this film’s, in my opinion, vastly superior feel.
Not that they didn’t have their fun in the film. There were lots of well placed puns about various Bond clichés in there which were funny and well placed. They weren’t exactly subtle, but they blended I well enough with the other dialogue to not linger and ruin the joke.
All in all, very enjoyable and one of the best films, and Bonds, I’ve seen for a while.
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Dark Liquid
Working with Rails
Looks like a new sites been released that serves as a directory listing all the people working with Rails out there.
Unsurprisingly, its called WorkingWithRails.
What I was surprised though, is that I was on there! Turns out its from when I added myself to the Rails wiki, but still it’s cool. I updated my entry a little so now it has a bit more info.
Of course though, no-one knows who I am since I haven’t made (m)any splashes in the Rails community yet so I’m waaaay down the ranking popularity-wise
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Dark Liquid
Fixed
Well, I have managed to fix my site theme it seems. Woohoo!
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Dark Liquid
Theme
I really need to upgrade this theme, its become really broken since I upgraded mephisto.
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Dark Liquid
Disappointing
I went to see Mitchell and Webb live the other day and was quite disappointed. There was basically no original content at all except for maybe 2 sketches.
If you’ve seen their TV show, their DVD sketch show and heard their radio show, you wont miss anything by not seeing them live.
The best thing about going to see them was buying myself a ‘Numberwang’ t-shirt as I left.
Mitchell and Webb live – that’s not numberwang.
