Every once in a while I stumble into something that changes the universe for me, allowing me rethink how I approach problems and develop solutions. Stumble because, while I can't necessarily plan on things like this happening, if I try to listen to people and keep my eyes open, I figure I'll eventually get lucky. When Meteor buzzed in a...

Every once in a while I stumble into something that changes the universe for me, allowing me rethink how I approach problems and develop solutions. Stumble because, while I can't necessarily plan on things like this happening, if I try to listen to people and keep my eyes open, I figure I'll eventually get lucky. When Meteor buzzed in a...

The AR Parrot Drone seems to be all the rage these days, especially here at the Neo Cincinnati office. Two officemates have drones, and they've taken to the office space and the hallways during lunchtime. The drone comes with piloting apps that control it in real time - but they can also be controlled programmatically. Work on drone drivers is...

The AR Parrot Drone seems to be all the rage these days, especially here at the Neo Cincinnati office. Two officemates have drones, and they've taken to the office space and the hallways during lunchtime. The drone comes with piloting apps that control it in real time - but they can also be controlled programmatically. Work on drone drivers is...

Starting on the day before Mardi Gras, I will be joining EdgeCase working in their Cincinnati office. To me, a much bigger party than they'll be having in the French Quarter!This is a phenomenal opportunity, working alongside the genius of Jim Weirich and Scott Barron every day, and collocated with the Gaslight Software crew. (Let me tell you,...

Starting on the day before Mardi Gras, I will be joining EdgeCase working in their Cincinnati office. To me, a much bigger party than they'll be having in the French Quarter!This is a phenomenal opportunity, working alongside the genius of Jim Weirich and Scott Barron every day, and collocated with the Gaslight Software crew. (Let me tell you,...

When things work differently in one part of a package than they do in another - for no apparently good reason - programming indigestion may occur. When you beat your head against the code for too long trying to figure out why things are screwing up, big headaches are sure to come. The cause of my current indigestion and headache? Element.insert...

When things work differently in one part of a package than they do in another - for no apparently good reason - programming indigestion may occur. When you beat your head against the code for too long trying to figure out why things are screwing up, big headaches are sure to come. The cause of my current indigestion and headache? Element.insert...

Some quick refactoring this weekend had me throwing together some tidbits.module Enumerable # return Hash of enumeration to yielded values def collect_hash hash={} inject(hash) {|h,e| h[e] = block_given? ? yield(e) : nil; h } end # return Hash of enumeration to non-nil yielded values def select_hash hash={}, &block...

Some quick refactoring this weekend had me throwing together some tidbits.module Enumerable # return Hash of enumeration to yielded values def collect_hash hash={} inject(hash) {|h,e| h[e] = block_given? ? yield(e) : nil; h } end # return Hash of enumeration to non-nil yielded values def select_hash hash={}, &block...

One of the things that make Ruby and Rails my respective current language and web framework of choice is the collective ingenuity that has made building things easy. These folks have thought of everything, gosh darn it, and I get to use it. A good day is when I get something working, and with Ruby and Rails I have a lot of those days.Imagine my...

One of the things that make Ruby and Rails my respective current language and web framework of choice is the collective ingenuity that has made building things easy. These folks have thought of everything, gosh darn it, and I get to use it. A good day is when I get something working, and with Ruby and Rails I have a lot of those days.Imagine my...

While building a browser-based graphical editor in Rails for a client, I ran across an cross-technology compatibility problem. The reason was not immediately apparent and caused me quite a bit of head-scratching. After sleeping on it for a night, I finally figured it out and found a workaround.In the graphical editing app that I'm building, one...

While building a browser-based graphical editor in Rails for a client, I ran across an cross-technology compatibility problem. The reason was not immediately apparent and caused me quite a bit of head-scratching. After sleeping on it for a night, I finally figured it out and found a workaround.In the graphical editing app that I'm building, one...

Chad Fowler's Rails Recipes book lays out authorization as the interrogation of the many-to-many connections between users and roles, and between roles and rights, a right being a named controller-action pair. The many-to-many relationships are established using roles_users and rights_roles tables in the database. This indirection makes bulk...