Ruby: Cloud Crowd

This post is only a heads up. Seen Cloud Crowd talked about. Looks interesting, but not used it myself yet.

Gnoll110

Ruby: Playing with Colour

Had an idea for a new twitter background.

I wrote it in ruby, using the rmagick API wrapper for ImageMagick.

Pretty straight forward:

• make a big black background,


• create a lot of random coloured squares and write the colour on them while you're at it,


• write to jpeg file

Here's the code.

require 'rubygems'
require 'RMagick' 
include Magick

buffer = Magick::Image.new(1700,1040) { self.background_color = "#000000" }

x = 10
y = 10
tone = [ '0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', 
         '8', '9', 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F' ]

srand 1234
1118.times do
  puts '* '+x.to_s+' '+y.to_s
  red = rand(16)
  green = rand(16)
  blue = rand(16)
  ligthness = red+green+blue
  co = '#'+tone[red]+tone[green]+tone[blue]
  patchObj = Magick::Draw.new
  patchObj.fill = co
  patchObj.polygon(x,y,x,y+30,x+30,y+30,x+30,y)
  patchObj.matte(3,3,PaintMethod::ReplaceMethod)
  patchObj.draw(buffer)
  textObj = Magick::Draw.new
  textObj.font = './fonts/Ghoul.ttf'
  textObj.pointsize=12
  if ligthness > 25 || green > 11 
    textObj.fill = '#000'
  else
    textObj.fill = '#fff'
  end
  textObj.text(x, y+12, co)
  textObj.draw(buffer)
  x = x+40
  if x > 1690
    x = 10
    y = y+40
  end
end 

buffer.display
buffer.write("random_colour.jpg")

exit

Enjoy.

#ToDo: use a resource pool so don't have the cost of creating over 2K Draw objects.

BarCamp Brisbane

I came, I saw, I had fun.

Lots of great talkfest on tech, culture & business.

Should have posted this almost two weeks ago.

BarCamp Brisbane III was in East Brisbane on the 18 July. Well worth the trip. It's part on BarCamp Queensland (yes, there is a BarCamp Gold Coast).

Gnoll110

Git & Capistrano

Last month I got my first Vertial Private Server (VPS) at slicehost.

Got it setup. Used Git & Capistrano for the first time, Happy with Both.

Found a good into tutorial for them, that I can't find atm Doh!

Will post links when I do.

Cheers,

Gnoll110

Update: Found it, it's called 'the building of jetrecord episode 3 git capistrano and a test release'.

Whole Series:
the tabula rasa of doom
tell me a story
git capistrano and a test release
cucumbers and webrats

CSS background images & Rails

Setting a CSS background image in Rails have one quirk, when using a relative url, the base directory is not the base directory of the project. It's the directory where the stylesheet CSS file lives. So the correct relative url is this;

#wrapper1 {
background: url(../images/background.gif) repeat left top;
}

when the image & stylesheet live in the usual places.

Gnoll110

Symfony: rails-ish PHP?

A friend has asked me to help on a site he wants to develop. It's in a PHP environment. This is not a language I've worked in before. A chance to learn.

Looking around I've come across what look like a rails like framework called Symfony. Not used it yet.

I have a project directory structure like rails and is based in the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern.

Should be interesting. Anyone got any comments?


Gnoll110

Don't default the disk

Playing with Mythbuntu this weekend.

First lesson, don't let it default to one partition. I had problems finding /boot (I think). After some googling, the most likely cause is partitioning?

About to repartition. Lets see how it goes.


Gnoll110

Nagios and Ruby

Found these links that might interest people.

This looks like a project with some potential.
http://lusislog.blogspot.com/2008/04/nagios-and-ruby.html

Here is an example that looks like it worth pulling apart to see how it ticks.
http://blog.hungrymachine.com/2007/08/14/using-a-ruby-based-aim-notifier-in-nagios/

I've not had a chance to run either, sorry.

Enjoy.


Gnoll110

RailsCamp4: BackgrounDRb

It has been two week since I got back from Railscamp4 in Adelaide. Been off the grid mainly. Took lots of notes and idea point during the weekend.

The first I'd like to note in a background processing utility. It looks interesting but I've not had a chance to use it. Hopefully I will in the next month or so.

Here is the link to BackgrounDRb.

Enjoy


Gnoll110

Ruby scripts (book)

Found out about Basement Books in the Railway Square arcades near Central Station in Sydney.

One on the books I picked up was 'Practical Ruby for Systems Administration' by Andre Ben Hamou (Apress). ISBN-13 978-1-59059-821-4 ISBN-10 1-59059-821-0.

Chapter 2 has a cool beginners script. The first bit on work script in the text.

It's a script to build an empty script and open it in an editor.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

path = ARGV[0]
fail "specify filename to create" unless path

File.open(path, "w") { |f| f.puts "#!/usr/bin/env ruby" }
File.chmod(0755, path)
system "pico", path 

pico is the text editor I use. The example code used "open".

Currently I'm up to chapter 5 and have learn a few thing about Ruby and its what and how.


Gnoll110

Merb in Action

This week, the newest 'Merb in Action' PDF 'arrived' in the mail.

The new version includes chapter 3.

I've been thinking about a Merb play project. I think I'll spike a blog.

There are a few things I'ld like to see in a blog, but seldom do.

One is a nice 'printable' view. You never see one with two printable views, with and without comments. Also with a nice list of footnoted links, you can't double click a print.

What other things should I have in a features list?


Gnoll110

Ads as online tip jar?

Over at twitter, I just twittered this comment.

@gnoll110 Ads as online tip jar? - Seth Godin is wrong http://tinyurl.com/6fb5pg - JD is right http://tinyurl.com/3hrm27

Seth Godin has blogged a string of posts that ended with a post entitled "Ads are the new online tip jar".

I agree with JD. Just click when you have no interest and then not buying sends distorting info to the advertiser. It tell 'em there is something wrong with the ads landing page. When in fact the problem is in the embedded ad or more generally, simply offering a product no one wants.


Gnoll110

Digital Nomads

During the week this great quip and blog post appeared in my RSS reader stream (Google reader).

It introduces a great new community site for those of us trying to use information and communication tech to do our jobs from where we want to do them. That is, not within the commuter zone of some big city.

Should be a great resource!


Noel Kelly
Gnoll110

Agile podcasts: Better late than never.

This month, I got around to checking Rob Payne’s Agile Toolkit site for new podcasts.

Last month Rob put up six new podcasts. One from this year and the reminder from last year’s Agile2007 conference.


1/ Agile IT Experience 2008 Panel Discussion.
Direct download: AgileITx_Panel.mp3

2/ Agile2007 - Esther Derby and Diana Larsen
Direct download: Agile2007_Ester_Diana.mp3

3/ Agile2007 - Nancy Van Schooenderwoert
Direct download: Agile2007_Nancy_V.mp3

4/ Agile2007 - Deb Hartman
Direct download: Agile2007_Deb_Hartman.mp3

5/ Agile2007 - Ole Jepson
Direct download: Agile2007_Ole_Jepson.mp3

6/ Agile2007 - Rick Mugridge
Direct download: Agile2007_Rick_Mugridge.mp3

They all proved to be great listening. Thanks for the time & effort Rob.


Gnoll110

Discovery: Rubyspaces

At Rail Camp, the weekend before last.

While flicking through the index of the pickaxe, I came across an entry for JavaSpaces. Went to the indicated section and found a little bit of sample code that shows the concept.

Run it, worked great. This discovery alone make the trek up to Brisbane Water all worth it.

Gnoll110

Rail sand box!

While at the Canberra Ruby Crew night, on the 30th May, I was introduced to the heroku site.

An IDE (Integrated Development Environment) in a browser.

In this case it a build environment for the Ruby On Rails framework.

Looking forward to playing it.

Will keep people posted, in my copious spear time ;)


Gnoll110

BarCampCanberra1: I

Hi All

Well last saturday saw the first BarCampCanberra. @trib, @pureCaffeine and the other orginazers did a great job.

About 50 to 60 people attended.

During one of the Open Source session we got onto Open Source design of physical objects and then sustainable manufacturing of goods.

I had one comment to contribute. A major book on the subject is 'Cradle to Cradle', written be an American architect and a German chemist. I also noted Ford and a major up market chair maker were doing this kinda work.

Here a the details:
Title: Cradle to Cradle
By: William McDonough & Michael Braungart.
Ford redeveloped its River Rogue plant at Dearborn Michigan using these principles.
The up market chair maker is Herman Miller.
And the book is not made of paper. It's made of polymer, is waterproof and can be used as an industrial feedstock as is.

Hope this help those interested.


Gnoll110

ruby, xml and hpricot

I'm starting to play with xml in ruby. After asking around on IRC, using hpricot was recommend to me.

I've been play a city at myminicity.com.

You can get xml of city details from an URL like this http://gnollford.myminicity.com/xml

I've written a small chunk of ruby that read & analysis the xml and generates a web address the help build the city to best advantage.

require 'net/http'
require 'rubygems'
require 'hpricot'

url = ['http://gnollford.myminicity.com/',
       'http://extremesville.myminicity.com/',
       'http://froosh.myminicity.com/',
       'http://griff-stadt.myminicity.com/',
       'http://warlach.myminicity.com/',
       'http://aeoth.myminicity.com/',
       'http://halloranelder.myminicity.com/',
       'http://cricklewood.myminicity.com/',
       'http://twodogs.myminicity.com/',
       'http://iliad.myminicity.com/',
       'http://meatteam.myminicity.com/',
       'http://aushpb.myminicity.com/',
       'http://brisbane.myminicity.com/']
       
source="NET"
#source="FILE"
       
url.each do |cityurl|

  if source == "NET" 
    xml_data = Net::HTTP.get_response(URI.parse(cityurl+"xml")).body
  else # FILE branch
    xml_data = File.open('data1.xml')
  end

  doc = Hpricot::XML(xml_data)
  (doc/:city).each do |xml_city|
    #puts doc.search("/city/bases").first.attributes["ind"] 
    #puts doc.search("/city/bases").first.attributes["tra"] 
    #puts doc.search("/city/bases").first.attributes["sec"] 
    #puts doc.search("/city/bases").first.attributes["env"] 
    
    region = doc.search("/city/region").first.attributes["code"]
    nm = doc.search("/city/name").first.innerHTML
    ranking = doc.search("/city/ranking").first.innerHTML
   
    typ = ""
    vector = 0
    
    uem = doc.search("/city/unemployment").first.innerHTML.to_i
    if uem > vector
      vector = uem
      typ = "ind"
    end
    
    tra = doc.search("/city/transport").first.innerHTML.to_i
    trap = 100-tra
    if trap > vector
      vector = trap
      typ = "tra"
    end
    
    cri = doc.search("/city/criminality").first.innerHTML.to_i
    if cri > vector
      vector = cri
      typ = "sec"
    end
    
    pol = doc.search("/city/pollution").first.innerHTML.to_i
    if pol > vector
      vector = pol
      typ = "env"
    end

    printf(cityurl+typ+" "+nm+" "+typ+" "+region+" "+ranking+"\n")
  end
end

the output

http://gnollford.myminicity.com/ Gnollford  AU 1743
http://extremesville.myminicity.com/ Extremesville  AU 1450
http://froosh.myminicity.com/tra Froosh tra AU 803
http://griff-stadt.myminicity.com/tra Griff-Stadt tra AU 1029
http://warlach.myminicity.com/ Warlach  AU 1196
http://aeoth.myminicity.com/ind Aeoth ind AU 1304
http://halloranelder.myminicity.com/ HalloranElder  AU 505
http://cricklewood.myminicity.com/ cricklewood  GB 452
http://twodogs.myminicity.com/ TwoDogs  AU 779
http://iliad.myminicity.com/tra Iliad tra AU 81
http://meatteam.myminicity.com/ meatteam  AU 14644
http://aushpb.myminicity.com/env aushpb env AU 82
http://brisbane.myminicity.com/tra brisbane tra AU 3

It easy to take the next step and generate html, I didn't just to keep this blog post's html simple.


Gnoll110

Canberra Ruby Crew

Last Friday night saw the second crew event.

Talked about lots of stuff, both geeky tech and social.

Learn about some new gem and wrapper lib.

Agree that, given the Sydney meets are on the 2nd Wednesday, we would use the 4th Friday of the month. That way our meeting is never less than a week after Sydney. keen peeps can make both ;)

See http://rubyonrails.com.au/canberra-meetups for more info.

Canberra Ruby Crew

There is a new special interest group in town.

The Canberra Ruby Crew (CRC). The first get together was earlier this month.

The second will be of the night of 15 Feb. I'll be there. Don't know the venue yet, stay tune.


Gnoll110