http://www.foliosus.com Plants, food and web design Mon, 05 May 2008 23:27:50 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Since I posted the first version of this article, there have been a couple of changes. The biggest one is that Intel has released Intel Mac versions of the InstantClient. Woohoo! That makes the previous version rather too complicated, so I've updated it here. This tutorial ... http://www.foliosus.com/2008/05/05/connecting-ruby-on-rails-to-oracle-on-an-intel-mac-in-leopard-take-2/ I know that some people really don't like monkeypatching, and I see why. But sometimes it's just unavoidable. Recently at work we came across a situation where the standard rake db:schema:dump task just wasn't working. So I started by writing the new version of the rake task that ... http://www.foliosus.com/2008/05/05/howto-monkeypatch-rake-overriding-a-rake-task/ Before I launch in to this, let me just say that, really, there's no universally right way to choose the ideal web designer. There is no idea web designer. There's just the best way for you, and the best web designer for you. I hope that the ... http://www.foliosus.com/2008/03/25/how-to-choose-a-web-designer-freelancer-or-agency/ I wish that I had a photo of these to show; they were just too delicious, though, and didn't last long enough. The addition of a little bit of almond meal to the crust gives them a complexity of flavor that plays very nicely with the clean tartness of ... http://www.foliosus.com/2008/03/11/lemon-bars/ Woohoo! Today, Microsoft made the right decision about IE8. The default rendering mode will be fully standards compliant. They're not going to punish the people who know what they're doing. This is truly great news, for several reasons. One is that Microsoft is now arguing for greater openness. That ... http://www.foliosus.com/2008/03/03/microsoft-has-seen-the-light-on-ie8/ Here's a neat trick I just learned from Obie Fernandez (The Rails Way, p. 30: you can see what your Rails app's HTML output is from the console. To make this work you have to fool the app into thinking that there's a request coming in by setting some environmental ... http://www.foliosus.com/2008/02/06/call-urls-on-your-app-from-the-rails-console/ One of the more annoying things about using Subversion for source code control when using rails is that every time you start a new project, you have to go through this dance to get the new project's Subversion setup done. Really, this means that you're repeating yourself every time ... http://www.foliosus.com/2008/01/31/a-rake-task-for-setting-up-new-rails-projects-for-subversion/ Yesterday two articles appeared at A List Apart discussing a Microsoft-backed proposal to change how the web works (round-up here). The proposal, on its face, is quite simple. Developers would put a meta tag in their documents (X-UA-Compatible) stating what version of a browser the pages were coded ... http://www.foliosus.com/2008/01/22/two-wrongs-dont-make-a-right-microsoft-needs-to-fix-themselves/ Who doesn't love chocolate? That's what I thought. Nobody raised their hands. I love to make desserts that finish a meal in style, and this chocolate mousse certainly fits the bill. The best part is that it's very easy to make. Choose your chocolate wisely Like with flourless chocolate cakes, you have ... http://www.foliosus.com/2008/01/13/pots-de-chocolat/ GRRRRR! Sometimes stupid software bugs just burn my bu**. For one of my clients, I designed a 8.5x11" flyer that's going to a real printer. It's a full-bleed piece, so the printer requested that I give them an eighth-inch bleed, with trim marks. I thought, "Oh. No worries. ... http://www.foliosus.com/2008/01/10/howto-get-printers-marks-and-correct-bleed-sizes-in-pdfs-output-from-illustrator-cs3/ Even though I've started a new job, which I love by the way, my freelance work continues. Last week I launched the newly redesigned Oregon Ki Society site, and it's now in my portfolio. This one is particularly near and dear to my heart, as I began training ... http://www.foliosus.com/2007/12/08/new-site-launch-for-oregon-ki-society/ NOTE: This tutorial has been superseded by a newer version that takes advantage of the newly-released Intel Mac version of the Oracle InstantClient. The new version is much, much simpler, and causes far fewer headaches. Updated (12/11/07): The ruby-oci8 library just went to full 1.0.0 release. I've updated that section ... http://www.foliosus.com/2007/11/19/connecting-ruby-on-rails-to-oracle-on-an-intel-mac-in-leopard-mac-osx-105/ This one's real easy. Leopard ships with a default Rails installation (/usr/bin/rails), but overriding it is quite simple, since it's just a gem. sudo gem install rails --source http://gems.rubyonrails.org Then, enter "y" at each prompt, to install all of the dependencies. That’s it! Check yourself with: rails -v Right now it ... http://www.foliosus.com/2007/11/13/howto-upgrade-your-ruby-on-rails-install-to-version-20-on-leopard-mac-osx-105/ Avalanche lilyReally, twice. First was at the end of June: I completely forgot to note it here. I took a photo of Erythronium montanum at the top of Larch Mountain outside of Portland. It was a rainy day, which usually doesn't make for good hiking, but we ... http://www.foliosus.com/2007/08/29/botany-photo-of-the-day-again/ Every time I get frustrated with an aspect of Rails, it turns out that it's just my idiocy and not actually something to do with Rails. Most recently, I wanted to code this algorithm: If on the current page show <a href="blah1">link 1</a> else show <a href="blah2>link 2</a> Rails has, of course, ... http://www.foliosus.com/2007/04/18/else_for_link_to_unless_current/ Once again it seems I owe my thanks to Daniel Mosquin from the UBC Botanical Garden for choosing my photo of Acer japonicum, the japanese maple, for yesterday's photo of the day. That's two in two months; we'll see if I can make a third. If you read ... http://www.foliosus.com/2007/03/05/acer_japonicum_photo_of_the_day/ Green tea cookies My upstairs neighbor gave us some macha: Japanese powdered green tea. The Japanese are the only people on the planet who still drink this stuff — it's a very primitive form of tea, and when brewed it's quite bitter. They eat it with sweets that are ... http://www.foliosus.com/2007/02/04/macha-cukkii-green-tea-cookies/ Many thanks to Daniel Mosquin from the UBC Botanical Garden for choosing my photo of Zantedeschia aethiopia, also known as the calla lily, for today's photo of the day. Woohoo! For the record, I shot this image in western Australia, where the calla lily is highly invasive and is causing ... http://www.foliosus.com/2007/01/18/im-ubcs-botany-photo-of-the-day/ Although this page went live a little while ago, I've just gotten around to writing it up. A scientist at the University of Santa Barbara contacted me about making a professional page for her. I've added it to my portfolio. I'm particularly happy about the image at ... http://www.foliosus.com/2006/12/10/new-page-in-my-portfolio/ I can't resist, this is too good to be true: there is such a thing as an urban cactus. It's a housing project in Rotterdam, based on a cactus. By placing the balconies as the architects did, every resident gets a double-height outdoor space and more sunlight than ... http://www.foliosus.com/2006/11/30/plant-inspired-architecture/