http://cricketsinperil.com computer magic et cetera Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:10:23 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I came across a little snag while using Rick Olson's excellent attachment_fu plugin to resize images via ImageScience. The problem is that ImageScience version 1.1.3 gets very unhappy when asked to resize a file that isn't an image. As mentioned here, if you pass ImageScience a simple ASCII ... http://cricketsinperil.com/2008/01/31/stricter-validation-for-rails-attachment_fu-plugin/ From Code Like a Pythonista: Idiomatic Python, an excellent introduction to python idiom: from module import * You've probably seen this "wild card" form of the import statement. You may even like it. Don't use it. To paraphrase a well-known exchange: (Exterior Dagobah, jungle, swamp, and mist.) LUKE: Is from module import * better than ... http://cricketsinperil.com/2008/01/25/more-from-the-geek-humor-dept/ We're targeting amazon's amazing ec2 service to host our alpha. Computing in the cloud is great for us -- no installation/maintenance hassles, elastic expansibility as we need to scale, ability to create peripheral instances (such as staging) on the fly and turn them off when we're done. However, I was ... http://cricketsinperil.com/2007/12/22/new-machine-profiles-at-amazon-ec2/ Reading code can be more difficult than writing it.   Coding Horror quoting Stan Kelley-Bootle's book "The Devil's Dp Dictionary": your program (n): a maze of non-sequiturs littered with clever-clever tricks and irrelevant comments. Compare MY PROGRAM. my program (n): a gem of algorithmic precision, offering the most sublime balance between compact, efficient ... http://cricketsinperil.com/2007/11/14/reading-your-code/ If you want to add search to your site, I highly recommend solr, a search server that builds on the lucene java information retrieval library. It does many powerful things out of the box--faceted search, highlighting, caching, etc--and the community around it is stellar. Plus it plays ... http://cricketsinperil.com/2007/11/14/solr-rocks/ Very powerful, very well-written, very dark.I would have like a more hopeful ending. It took me a day to get over the feeling I closed the book with. While disintegration of humanity is memorable and powerful, it's also irresponsible to leave it in shambles with no hope. Feed made ... http://cricketsinperil.com/2007/11/11/feed-by-mt-anderson/