Archive for the ‘Soft Where It Hurts’ Category


[BlogEntry] Entrepreneurial aspirations drive software innovation

I suspect that a large part of what makes Ruby on Rails so captivating has to do with its promise of rapid web site development driven by entrepreneurial pursuits. (I know that's true for me.) Certainly, that's what motivated the 37signals guys, and look at what they did with it (backpack, basecamp, etc.). Most big [...]

Read More...

[BlogEntry] SanitySaver is reborn

I'm telling you, I've done some cool stuff over the years. Okay, I've never actually told you before, but I'm telling you now: I've done some cool stuff over the years. Would someone who hasn't done cool stuff over the years have a blog category named Cool Stuff I've Done? I don't think so. Not [...]

Read More...

[BlogEntry] Returning and Executing JavaScript from a Rails URL

AuctionRelay.com has been running in Tomcat for a few years. A simple "include" script tag is all it takes to make AuctionRelay add HTML to the middle of an existing web page. The trick is in using the document.write command to make executable JavaScript write visible HTML at the location in the document where it [...]

Read More...

[BlogEntry] I'll be with you in 1frdtydangy

Microsoft Office Outlook 2003. A product so advanced that it understands time coordinates from other galaxii. When this ingenious product pops up a reminder for you, did you know that you can snooze it, not only with the drop-down list of options from minutes to weeks, but that you can also type in an arbitrary [...]

Read More...

[BlogEntry] Iterating over a Hash in Ruby

Let's say you define a simple Hash. irb(main):001:0> h1 = {"a"=>1,"b"=>2,"c"=>3} => {"a"=>1, "b"=>2, "c"=>3} What do you think you'll get when you send an each message to it? I figured either a, b, c or 1, 2, 3. Surprise: irb(main):003:0> h1.each{|a| puts a} a 1 b 2 c 3 => {"a"=>1, "b"=>2, "c"=>3} It [...]

Read More...