After spending the past 4 hours attempting to solve what boiled down to a rather simple problem, I figure I’d better blog about it to save someone else the time and effort. If you’ve been leveraging Passenger’s new –nginx-config-template command line option to add CORS headers to static assets served … Continue reading
In part 2 we coded our PDF generator as a background job. But the PDF is still being stored on the local file system. Let’s store it in S3 instead and give our users a URL so they can download it. First let’s add the AWS SDK gem to our … Continue reading
In part 1 we learned why backgrounding is important. Now let’s dive into some code. First things first. Add wicked_pdf and delayed_job to your Gemfile: Now we can generate a PDF from inside our Rails app with this simple command: You’ll notice that the more complex the HTML, the longer … Continue reading
What do you get when you combine the slick PDF generation capabilities of wicked_pdf with the elegance and efficiency of delayed_job? A high performance way to convert HTML pages into beautiful PDF documents. I’ve been leveraging wicked_pdf to generate high school transcripts from my SaaS app, Teascript, since 2009. Prior … Continue reading
I’ve been hosting my flagship SaaS app on Heroku since 2008. Overall it’s been a stable, if a bit overpriced, platform. Over the past year, however, I’ve been experiencing mysterious performance problems. The app runs fine for several weeks. Then suddenly I begin receiving exception reports about certain methods not … Continue reading
I love OS X. It’s an incredibly reliable operating system and it’s usually a joy to operate. Unfortunately, since upgrading from OS X Mavericks to Yosemite I had been plagued with Bluetooth connectivity problems: My Apple keyboard would randomly disconnect from the computer. Once this happened, it became impossible to … Continue reading
I’ll admit it: I’ve been coveting a standing desk for years. The idea of escaping the uncomfortable prison of my 10-year-old desk chair is compelling. But standing desks are prohibitively expensive for many people, and up until recently that included me. It finally got to be too much, though. A … Continue reading
Muut (formerly Moot) is a lightweight, customizable commenting system. Octopress is a static blogging framework built on Jekyll. Mix the two and you have a delicious recipe enabling visitors to comment on static blog posts without having to resort to a database. My Octopress plugin makes this integration super easy. … Continue reading
I was initially quite irritated with Apple for choosing to charge existing iPod Touch users like myself a $20 bill to get a hold of their January update. I’m still a bit ticked since it seems quite unfair to punish the early adopters like this, but by last Tuesday I … Continue reading
Watch the inimitable David Pogue for a nice demo. OLPC’s $100 laptop debuts in the U.S. during a two-week window in November. It’s a buy one, get one deal. $400 sends one laptop to a poor kid in a third world country, and one laptop to you. Am I getting … Continue reading