acts_as

Got an e-mail from site5 today saying that Phusion Passenger was going to be upgraded and that I needed to add the directive "PassengerAppRoot /home/user/applicationroot" to my .htaccess file in order for my site to continue working after the upgrade.

I had some issues with the upgrade initially, and figured out that you need to know the correct .htaccess file in order for the directive to not break your site.  My issue was that I put the directive in the base public_html directory .htaccess initially when I first got the e-mail.  This totally hosed my typo blog's admin section, to the point of giving me 404 not found errors.  I later realized that I needed to stick the directive in the .htaccess file that resided in the public directory of my rails application directory as well.  So now everything is working fine (obviously since I'm writing this post....)

Here's a link to a forum post I made for it:

http://forums.site5.com/showthread.php?p=152489#post152489

So I'm working on this project that involves talking to routers.  What baffles me is a Cisco router has a feature in its copy command to do and "scp" secure copy, but it gives you no way to configure what port you want to have it talk on.  Sure thats fine and good if your ssh server is running on a standard port 22.

Unfortunately for me the ssh server I need it to talk to is not on a standard port

RESULT: mike is sad.

So i finally finished my initial work on an Android application that lets me walk off ranges using GPS.

The application doesn't have a flashy UI or anything but it does allow you to see your current long and lat, along with the accuracy of the position.  When you're ready you can mark your current position and walk to wherever you want, and when you mark again it gives you the total distance in yards between those two points in a straight line.

Essentially I made this app because it would be useful to me when I'm golfing to know the dstances I'm hitting my clubs.  Plus it ended up being a good exercise in writing a basic android app using the Location API.  There were a bunch of pitfalls I had to work out. Most of them got worked out by this helpful stackoverflow q/a.

Anyway here's the GitHub link:

http://github.com/mikeisgo/RangeWalker/tree/master

If I ever make a google android market account I'll post the app there, but currently this is too rough for me to care about that at the moment.

 

Today I found the following blog post from a site that has a few interesting rails-casts:
http://blog.edgecase.com/2009/6/2/a-rant-about-testing

It got me thinking about my feelings on testing in general. Yes, I'll raise my hand, I'm totally not the best person to talk to for being thorough with my testing. Honestly, I'm just not drawn to it. The way I learn new technologies and develop software is very much reactionary to a personal drive to do or build a given thing. Something in my head tells me that I need to drive a certain thing into the ground, and then I just do. Unfortunately, testing doesn't seem to get first billing with that drive. I have to say though, once I get into it I can in fact make good thorough tests and they inevitably save me later. Its just getting that kick-start to go down the road of testing is the tough part.

My worst flaw by far, though, is that while I may test a feature and ensure that it works how I intended it, I don't necessarily create a "Test" for that feature. What I mean by this is that someone who is not me, can't just run a test script to re-do my method of testing, and see if any changes have broken things. If i could get into that habit in general, whether it be at integration or lower, I'd probably be way better off when i start making some serious Rails applications. That or I need to find me a Testing Monkey. Someone who, for whatever reason, doesn't want to build things, but instead wants to break things.

Yeah I think i really need to go the route of a test monkey, that's the ticket....

Getting a rails app working on Site5. After reading a bunch of confusing stuff and going down a lot of dead ends i finally figured out four simple things to getting a rails app running on site5.

Essentially its this:

1. Get the ability to install local gems, with this nice thread.
2. Make an .htaccess file with the only contents being "PassengerEnabled on" in it.
3. Setup the .htaccess file in 'public_html' to follow symlinks
4. Setup a symlink from where your app sits in your account, to a place in 'public_html'

Ok so that list is far from a tutorial but if you want to figure out the symlink stuff go here. I'd ignore the stuff in that thread that doesn't talk about making the symbolic links work, since the Phusion Passenger deployment of rails is far simpler to get a rails app running. Another helpful page is the scripting and development page on site5's wiki as well (though at the time I'm writing this I feel its slightly confusing for a newbie).