Negativity on Rails
April 25, 2012rails railsconf
In attending my first Railsconf, one thing I noticed that I did not expect was a theme of negativity around Rails itself. Read more...
Why open source tools are the future
April 19, 2012ruby open-source
The octocat above is a rendition of Github's logo, created by cameronmcefee and relevant not only because they exemplify open source, but also since I went to an awesome Giants game last night! Read more...
The element NoSQL is missing
January 18, 2012nosql backup
I'm a big fan of NoSQL products. MongoDB, Redis, CouchDB– it's really awesome stuff. However, I almost always just use a relational database. I feel much more comfortable with RDBs actually. Read more...
Send email from your domain? Make sure your SPF headers are set.
December 16, 2011
Here's a quick thing you can do to make sure your email doesn't end up in spam folders. I'll keep this simple for people that don't know much about how email works. Read more...
Python vs Ruby: Maintainability
December 15, 2011python ruby
One of my favorite subjects is comparing and contrasting tools and frameworks available today. Python and Ruby are probably the big 2 languages right now in web development. Read more...
Pixelmator rocks
December 13, 2011design pixelmator
I love pixelmator. It's one of the best applications that I own, and I would buy a mac just to use it.
Pixelmator is an image-editing tool VERY similar to Photoshop. It's available only on OSX for $30. Photoshop right now is running for $700. Read more...
Can we fix HTML/CSS/JS syntax?
December 12, 2011javascript html css
As in my last post on how we need to stop abstracting, I wanted to talk about the syntax itself of the big 3 web languages, HTML/CSS/JS. Read more...
We need to stop abstracting
December 11, 2011programming abstraction
Abstraction has been essential to make computing what it is today. Without it, we would all be writing assembly code. Abstraction allows us to think at a higher level and be comfortable the lower level is working well. It promotes reuse of code. It's a cornerstone of object-oriented programming. Read more...
Keep your project running locally
December 7, 2011programming deployment
Every web project starts out with the best intentions, running locally, unit testing, easy deployments, provisioning of servers. As a project moves on, some of these niceties drop by the wayside, specifically: The ability to run locally. Read more...
Cache correctly: stop invalidating
December 4, 2011rails caching
There are only two hard problems in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. - Phil Karlton
One of my favorite things about Rails is that when I read the docs, sometimes I find little gems that just jump out and make me cheer with happiness. Read more...
Commenting systems: Disqus vs Livefyre
December 3, 2011disqus commenting livefyre
Commenting systems are the big thing nowadays. I think pretty much all sites should use something rather than rolling their own. Read more...
CloudFront vs CloudFlare: We have a winner.
December 2, 2011cloudfront CloudFlare architecture
This a follow-up to my first post on CloudFlare. This will make more sense if you read that one first.
John from CloudFlare was kind enough to invite me (well, technically I kind of invited myself) down to the CloudFlare offices. Conveniently located just a few blocks from where I'm working! Gotta love San Francisco's SOMA district. We talked about my earlier post. Read more...
What would a web engineer certification look like?
December 1, 2011rails security php
Image credit to Randall Munroe
I did a couple of Google searches for this, but surprisingly came up short. Someone must've came up with something, so if you know of a similar write-up, please leave it in the comments. I would love to see it! Read more...
CloudFlare review: not snake oil, but it feels like it
November 30, 2011CloudFlare architecture cdn
I had the opportunity to meet with John from CloudFlare in his office after writing this article. Read the follow-up after reading this. Read more...
Why I love making CMS's
November 29, 2011programming CMS personal
The most common application that I have built has been the good old fashioned content management system. This includes more than blogs though, I would argue that anything where a user can edit content without changing a codebase is a CMS. However, just off the top of my head, Jekyll is absolutely a CMS but still doesn't fit into that already generous bucket. Read more...
memcache on Heroku's cedar stack in Rails 3.1
November 28, 2011memcache rails heroku
If you're building a Rails site, you almost definitely need to have caching. memcache is the best solution for that problem right now. It's not too hard, but there are only bits on the internet on how to do it. Read more...
node.js introduction
November 26, 2011programming javascript node-js
node.js is an event-driven web server written in javascript.
node.js is popular with big CS nerds. I had a very difficult time understanding exactly 'what it was' when I first heard about it. This is my attempt to explain it for those of us without a neckbeard. Read more...
CarrierWave on Heroku with CloudFront
November 25, 2011programming rails carrierwave
This post will enable you to have your Rails app accept file uploads through a gem called CarrierWave. Optionally, you can use CloudFront in order to have a CDN backbone for those files. This is currently the best method for file uploading on Heroku. Read more...
Unix tips du jour
November 24, 2011programming unix bash
The thing about unix tools is they are incredibly hard to learn. Even if you understand a tool, you need to build it into your workflow, which takes serious time and experience. Here's just a quick intro into 2 simple ones, and one complex one for you to chew on: Read more...
The Great Redis Misapprehension
November 23, 2011redis databases memcache
Redis is NOT a database.
It's closer to memcache than mysql, for example. However, it's not a cache either. Read more...
The soapbox is open for business
November 22, 2011blogging personal
Muahaha. I am now a blogger. I suppose technically this isn't my first time blogging, but it's the first time I'm blogging about something that isn't what I had for breakfast. Read more...