Are you getting this error message when attempting to deploy your Radiant application? The fix is simple. Assuming you’re using a vendored copy of Radiant or Rails, you probably have an entry for “cache” in your .gitignore file or your svn:ignore property. Remove it, commit the changes, and deploy again. … Continue reading
In November, I was blessed with the opportunity to visit Hanging Rock State Park with some friends from church. Though the fall colors were past peak, it was still an enjoyable and invigorating hike. I took this video clip from the top of Hanging Rock with my iPod Nano. It … Continue reading
If anyone still happens to be using test_spec, you’ll be thrilled to know that the test_spec_on_rails plugin is now compatible with Rails 2.3. It has also been converted to a gem. Install with: Add to your Rails app’s test.rb like so: Enjoy the goodness of test-spec helpers from inside your … Continue reading
On a recent project, I had to implement a CSV parser that would gracefully handle malformed files. I’m talking about files with unescaped quotes, wacky UTF-8 chars, and various other abominations of nature. I originally assumed FasterCSV would handle this automagically, but it turns out that the library’s most commonly … Continue reading
The time zone warp code I posted about last week is now a gem: To configure in your Rails app, add this line to the bottom of test.rb: You can also fork the code from the project on GitHub.
One of my Rails projects makes heavy use of time zones. I’ve run into some issues writing good tests for this type of thing. In particular, I’ve needed my tests to run within a time zone outside my own. But I don’t want to permanently change the time zone within … Continue reading
“Secrets of Effective Nomading” was a lightning talk I was planning on giving at this year’s Ruby Hoedown. Due to my flight arrangements, however, I was unable to give the talk in person. I made a video recording instead. It’s about six minutes long. If you’re not familiar with the … Continue reading
I’ll be giving a presentation about Prawn at this month’s raleigh.rb meetup. Prawn is a Ruby gem that enables fast PDF generation. It is a dramatic improvement over previous libraries like PDF::Writer. It can be used standalone or inside your Rails applications. The markup is powerful and relatively painless to … Continue reading
BarCampRDU 2009 took place last weekend, and was a rousing success (as usual). I heard several attendees comment that the presentations outdid last year’s camp. One of the highlights for me was attending Nathaniel’s talk about startups. It was a longer version of the talk he gave at Ignite which … Continue reading
Ignite Raleigh looks quite interesting. It’s essentially a conference made up entirely of lightning talks. Voting is now taking place on submitted talks. The top 10 will be given on August 5th. I submitted a talk titled 3 Secrets to Effective Nomading. Check out the description and, if you feel … Continue reading