Picasa vs Flickr

Pat got me a new camera for my birthday this past October so I have been trying to take more pictures lately. One of my new years resolutions is to take more pictures! As a result, I’ve been trying out Yahoo’s Flickr and Google’s Picasa over the past couple of weeks. With Picasa recently added support on the Mac and Apple announcing iPhoto out-of-the-box Flickr integration, the feature sets from the desktop are pretty much identical. Both support (or will support) face recognition, tagging, and exporting.

For the web galleries, I really liked Picasa’s layout over Flickr’s. The web site is a lot more simplistic and easy to navigate. Maybe it’s becase I’m so familiar with other Google services. Flickr’s slideshow is so awesome though. Viewing your photostream through Cooliris is such beautiful eye candy.

cooliris

I started with the free accounts. Google gives you a gig of space for the free account and you can create as many albums as you want. Flickr’s free account gives you 100 mb of upload per month and limits you to three sets.

For me, it really came down to pricing. In order to get more disk space for Picasa, you have to purchase more storage. Starting purchase goes for $20/yr for 10gigs up to $500/yr for 400GB. This storage is actually not specific to Picasa but is shared by all other Google services that need to use extra space. Flickr offers a Pro account, which gives you unlimited storage space for your videos and photos and allows you to create any number of sets and collections, for $24.95.

Given the number of photos I want to upload and my budget, I went with Flickr. Today, storage is so cheap. For $25 bucks, I should be able to get unlimited storage for a service like photo sharing. I’ve started to upload some photos I’ve had for awhile and never really shared them with those who would most enjoy them. It’s been really fun going through old pictures. My photostream can be found here.

Picasa vs Flickr

tiny URLs? HA! diminutive URLs for the win!

Inspired by a discussion of URL shortening, I took a weekend and implemented one of my own. When thinking about tiny URLs, a quote always came to mind.

Don’t use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.

So after finding out the domain was available, diminutiveurl.com was born. Yes, it’s poking a little fun at the idea of a tiny url but it was fun to hack on. It’s very minimilistic at this point but I hope to add some interesting features.

diminutiveurl.com

For no other reason than to build something, I hope you enjoy it! I am glad to present diminitiveurl.com! Please let me know what you think.

tiny URLs? HA! diminutive URLs for the win!

Introducing theoandpat.com

Over the course of the past months in her free time between work and planning a wedding, Pat’s been hard at work at creating a web site for our wedding. We felt we had enough to show it off to the rest o the world so I finally got around to deploying it. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. I think she did a pretty awesome job. I contributed in a small way by setting up the web server, create the RSVP site, and installing the guestbook. The whole concept and design is Pat’s creation. She did all of the page layout and flash work. I’m so proud of her. She’s turning into a web geek and she doesn’t even know it.

theoandpat.com

I’m sure there are some kinks to iron out but please check out theoandpat.com and let us know what you think. Oh, yeah also, RSVP for the wedding. If you’re reading my blog, chances are I know you and you’re invited. 🙂

-Theo

Introducing theoandpat.com

Reduce MySQL memory usage

As I am running more and more on my 256mb slice, I’m trying to squeeze more performance out of the system. After a bit of digging, I’ve made a few changes.

First thing I did was switch out the default mysql config with one tweaked for smaller boxes. This configuration actually came with the mysql installation under /usr/share/doc/mysql-server-5.0/examples/. Just backup your existing my.cnf (mine is located under /etc/mysql) and use the following:

# The following options will be passed to all MySQL clients
[client]
port		= 3306
socket		= /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

# Here follows entries for some specific programs

# The MySQL server
[mysqld]
port		= 3306
socket		= /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
skip-locking
key_buffer = 16K
max_allowed_packet = 1M
table_cache = 4
sort_buffer_size = 64K
read_buffer_size = 256K
read_rnd_buffer_size = 256K
net_buffer_length = 2K
thread_stack = 64K

# Don't listen on a TCP/IP port at all. This can be a security enhancement,
# if all processes that need to connect to mysqld run on the same host.
# All interaction with mysqld must be made via Unix sockets or named pipes.
# Note that using this option without enabling named pipes on Windows
# (using the "enable-named-pipe" option) will render mysqld useless!
# 
#skip-networking
server-id	= 1

# Uncomment the following if you want to log updates
#log-bin=mysql-bin

# Uncomment the following if you are NOT using BDB tables
#skip-bdb

# Uncomment the following if you are using InnoDB tables
#innodb_data_home_dir = /var/lib/mysql/
#innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:10M:autoextend
#innodb_log_group_home_dir = /var/lib/mysql/
#innodb_log_arch_dir = /var/lib/mysql/
# You can set .._buffer_pool_size up to 50 - 80 %
# of RAM but beware of setting memory usage too high
#innodb_buffer_pool_size = 16M
#innodb_additional_mem_pool_size = 2M
# Set .._log_file_size to 25 % of buffer pool size
#innodb_log_file_size = 5M
#innodb_log_buffer_size = 8M
#innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 1
#innodb_lock_wait_timeout = 50

[mysqldump]
quick
max_allowed_packet = 16M

[mysql]
no-auto-rehash
# Remove the next comment character if you are not familiar with SQL
#safe-updates

[isamchk]
key_buffer = 8M
sort_buffer_size = 8M

[myisamchk]
key_buffer = 8M
sort_buffer_size = 8M

[mysqlhotcopy]
interactive-timeout

You can see estimated memory usage with a config if you just copy paste the configuration file here.

Restart MySQL (/etc/init.d/mysql restart).

The second thing I did was check out MySQLTuner. Just download the perl script and run it. It will run some analysis on your mysql setup and provide some performance and configuration tweak recommendations.

Sample output looks like this:

 >>  MySQLTuner 1.0.0 - Major Hayden 
 >>  Bug reports, feature requests, and downloads at http://mysqltuner.com/
 >>  Run with '--help' for additional options and output filtering
Please enter your MySQL administrative login: root
Please enter your MySQL administrative password: 

-------- General Statistics --------------------------------------------------
[--] Skipped version check for MySQLTuner script
[OK] Currently running supported MySQL version 5.0.51a-3ubuntu5.4
[OK] Operating on 64-bit architecture

-------- Storage Engine Statistics -------------------------------------------
[--] Status: +Archive -BDB -Federated +InnoDB -ISAM -NDBCluster 
[--] Data in MyISAM tables: 867K (Tables: 18)
[--] Data in InnoDB tables: 704K (Tables: 40)
[!!] Total fragmented tables: 2

-------- Performance Metrics -------------------------------------------------
[--] Up for: 14h 57m 0s (17K q [0.316 qps], 699 conn, TX: 55M, RX: 3M)
[--] Reads / Writes: 96% / 4%
[--] Total buffers: 26.0M global + 824.0K per thread (100 max threads)
[OK] Maximum possible memory usage: 106.5M (41% of installed RAM)
[OK] Slow queries: 0% (0/17K)
[OK] Highest usage of available connections: 6% (6/100)
[!!] Key buffer size / total MyISAM indexes: 16.0K/381.0K
[!!] Key buffer hit rate: 88.5% (154K cached / 17K reads)
[!!] Query cache is disabled
[OK] Sorts requiring temporary tables: 0% (0 temp sorts / 4K sorts)
[!!] Temporary tables created on disk: 30% (1K on disk / 4K total)
[!!] Thread cache is disabled
[!!] Table cache hit rate: 0% (4 open / 7K opened)
[OK] Open file limit used: 0% (8/1K)
[OK] Table locks acquired immediately: 99% (17K immediate / 17K locks)
[OK] InnoDB data size / buffer pool: 704.0K/8.0M

-------- Recommendations -----------------------------------------------------
General recommendations:
    Run OPTIMIZE TABLE to defragment tables for better performance
    MySQL started within last 24 hours - recommendations may be inaccurate
    Enable the slow query log to troubleshoot bad queries
    When making adjustments, make tmp_table_size/max_heap_table_size equal
    Reduce your SELECT DISTINCT queries without LIMIT clauses
    Set thread_cache_size to 4 as a starting value
    Increase table_cache gradually to avoid file descriptor limits
Variables to adjust:
    key_buffer_size (> 381.0K)
    query_cache_size (>= 8M)
    tmp_table_size (> 32M)
    max_heap_table_size (> 16M)
    thread_cache_size (start at 4)
    table_cache (> 4)

I haven’t made any of the recommended changes yet though. I am going to try to see how this default small config performs.

I’ll try to follow up with any of my findings.

Reduce MySQL memory usage

Rails initial request slow with mod_rails

Following up on my previous post , I’ve been experience slow load times (10-15 secs) on the initial request after application restarts. This has to do with the way mod_rails manages application instances (Although, I experienced this when using mongrel_cluster and proxy balancers). It will spin up instances on page request and each instance has an idle timeout. This just means after the timeout expires, mod_rails will shutdown that instance to conserve memory allocation. While you can change timeout value (see PassengerPoolIdleTime), this will only cause all instances that get spin up to live longer. After high load times, these instances will stick around longer than neccessary.

For low traffic sites (like mine), this idle timeout may be reached causing the next visitor to our website to experience a really long delay before page load. What we really want is an option to set a minimum number of instances. This would allow us to automatically spin up an instance during start up and keep it around. Unfortunately at this time, it doesn’t look like there is a way to set this.

As a workaround, I’ve setup a crontab that makes a request to my application every 5 minutes to prevent mod_rails from killing off all application instances.

To do this just run:

crontab -e

And then specific the following cron

*/5 * * * * wget -O /dev/null http://www.myapp.com 2>/dev/null

You can verify this is working correctly but just tailing your application logs and verify every 5 minutes you get a request.

You can also run

 passenger-status

You should see at least the count variable to be at least 1 instance.

Note, this workaround will not immediate start up an instance upon restart. You can add an initial request as part of your post deploy capistrano task though. You probably should be making sure your application is up after deploying or restarting the application anyways.

Rails initial request slow with mod_rails

Setting up Phusion Passenger (mod_rails) with Capistrano support

I had heard of mod_rails awhile back but never had the time to take a closer look at it. While setting up a new rails app, I was getting frustrated with all of the configuration I needed to do to get the mongrel clusters and proxy balancers setup. So I decided to give passenger a chance. I’m a fan now 🙂

The process was dead simple.

  1. Install the passenger gem
    sudo gem install passenger
  2. Install passenger as an Apache module
    passenger-install-apache2-module
  3. Load the passenger apache module by editing the Apache config
    LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.5/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
    PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.5
    PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby1.8
    
  4. Restart Apache

If all things went well, you have everything installed you need. If there were some missing dependencies, you should be presented with how to install those dependencies.

In the installation output, it tells you how to mod_railsify your apps by creating a vhost as such:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName www.mywebsite.com
    DocumentRoot /home/deploy/mywebsite/public
</VirtualHost>

That’s it! No more of this proxy balancer and mongrel_cluster.yml configuration.

There’s some magic going on in the background. As requests come in, passenger will spin up more application instances. For more tweaking your configuration options check out the user guide.

Go to your website and you should see your rails app up and running.

So now we have your app up and running, how do we update or restart our app? Passenger provides two ways for us to do this.

The first is whenever apache is restarted, your application is restarted.

The second way allows us to restart a specified application without affecting Apache. Whenever passenger detects tmp/restart.txt, it will restart the application instances for us. We can integrate this into our Capistrano deploy flow by adding the following our config/deploy.rb

namespace :passenger do
  desc "Restart Application"
  task :restart do
    run "touch #{current_path}/tmp/restart.txt"
  end
end

after :deploy, "passenger:restart"

This will create that restart.txt after the cap:deploy task gets executed, causing the application to restart.

Finally, passenger comes with some pretty useful utilities.

Check out passenger-status which produces output showing current passenger server statuses.

Sample output:

----------- General information -----------
max      = 6
count    = 1
active   = 0
inactive = 1
Using global queue: no
Waiting on global queue: 0

----------- Applications -----------
/home/deploy/www.myapp.com/releases/20081206183156: 
  PID: 30784     Sessions: 0

Another utility passenger-memory-status gives you insight into how much memory is being used by apache and passenger.

Sample output:

-------------- Apache processes ---------------
PID    PPID   Threads  VMSize    Private  Name
-----------------------------------------------
12841  1      1        225.9 MB  0.0 MB   /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
28294  12841  1        248.4 MB  21.4 MB  /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
28300  12841  1        243.7 MB  0.5 MB   /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
28306  12841  1        248.4 MB  4.4 MB   /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
28357  12841  1        249.1 MB  19.8 MB  /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
29400  12841  1        249.4 MB  3.7 MB   /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
29788  12841  1        249.3 MB  21.7 MB  /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
29834  12841  1        245.8 MB  18.9 MB  /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
29836  12841  1        245.8 MB  9.3 MB   /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
29868  12841  1        245.8 MB  2.4 MB   /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
29870  12841  1        246.5 MB  5.2 MB   /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
### Processes: 11
### Total private dirty RSS: 107.44 MB

--------- Passenger processes ----------
PID    Threads  VMSize    Private  Name
----------------------------------------
28031  10       15.3 MB   0.1 MB   /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.5/ext/apache2/ApplicationPoolServerExecutable 0 /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.5/bin/passenger-spawn-server  /usr/bin/ruby1.8  /tmp/passenger_status.12841.fifo
28032  2        48.7 MB   0.6 MB   Passenger spawn server
29161  1        114.8 MB  0.7 MB   Passenger FrameworkSpawner: 2.1.2
30461  1        122.8 MB  32.3 MB  Passenger ApplicationSpawner: /home/deploy/www.myapp.com/releases/20081206183156
30784  1        129.3 MB  33.4 MB  Rails: /home/deploy/www.myapp.com/releases/20081206183156
### Processes: 5
### Total private dirty RSS: 67.08 MB

Pretty sweet.

Setting up Phusion Passenger (mod_rails) with Capistrano support

2 ways to fix transparent PNG files in IE6

I fired up Photoshop for the first time in a long time. I created a transparent PNG for an image that would be used as a CSS background-image. It keeps displaying with a gray background even though the page background color was something else.

This is a pretty well documented bug. Luckily, there are a couple of ways to fix this.

Here are my two favorites:

The first solution is well documented:

Download iepngfix.zip. The development version 2.0 Alpha 3 has support for background position and repeat. Extract the zip and copy iepngfix.htc and blank.gif somewhere. I put in under stylesheets.

Add the following snippet to your CSS stylesheet:

img { 
	behavior: url(/stylesheets/iepngfix.htc); 
}

And you’re done! Hit refresh in IE6 and transparent PNG images should render correctly now.

You can add apply this fix to other elements that may be using PNG images as CSS background images as such:

img, #logo { 
	behavior: url(/stylesheets/iepngfix.htc); 
}

where logo is a div that has a background-image that is a transparent PNG.

Note: If you are using v2.0 and want to take advantage of background-repeat and position support, copy iepngfix_tilebg.js to your javascripts folder and include the js file in the HTML files you need it for.

The second way to fix this is to get everyone off IE6 but I guess that’s just wishful thinking…

2 ways to fix transparent PNG files in IE6

undefined local variable or method `remote_gemspecs’

I decided I wanted to dedicate some time this weekend working on some side projects. Of course before I start, I needed to get the latest and greatest updates so I ran gem update and got the following error

theo@theo~/dev $ sudo gem update
Updating installed gems
...
Updating rubygems-update
Successfully installed rubygems-update-1.3.1
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (NameError)
    undefined local variable or method `remote_gemspecs' for #

Reading the release notes:

NOTE: RubyGems 1.1 and 1.2 have problems upgrading when there is no
rubygems-update installed. You will need to follow the second set of update
instructions if you see “Nothing to update”.

shows that we need to install and run the rubygem-update gem to get this fixed

  theo@theo~/dev $ sudo gem install rubygems-update
Successfully installed rubygems-update-1.3.1
1 gem installed
  theo@theo~/dev $ sudo update_rubygems 
Installing RubyGems 1.3.1
mkdir -p /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8
mkdir -p /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin
install -c -m 0644 rbconfig/datadir.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rbconfig/datadir.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/builder.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/builder.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/command_manager.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/command_manager.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/build_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/build_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/cert_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/cert_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/check_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/check_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/cleanup_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/cleanup_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/contents_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/contents_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/dependency_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/dependency_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/environment_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/environment_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/fetch_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/fetch_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/generate_index_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/generate_index_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/help_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/help_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/install_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/install_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/list_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/list_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/lock_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/lock_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/mirror_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/mirror_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/outdated_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/outdated_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/pristine_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/pristine_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/query_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/query_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/rdoc_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/rdoc_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/search_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/search_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/server_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/server_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/sources_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/sources_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/specification_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/specification_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/stale_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/stale_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/uninstall_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/uninstall_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/unpack_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/unpack_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/update_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/update_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/commands/which_command.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/commands/which_command.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/config_file.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/config_file.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/custom_require.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/defaults.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/defaults.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/dependency.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/dependency.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/dependency_installer.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/dependency_installer.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/dependency_list.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/dependency_list.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/digest/digest_adapter.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/digest/digest_adapter.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/digest/md5.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/digest/md5.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/digest/sha1.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/digest/sha1.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/digest/sha2.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/digest/sha2.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/doc_manager.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/doc_manager.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/exceptions.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/exceptions.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/ext/builder.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/ext/builder.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/ext/configure_builder.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/ext/configure_builder.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/ext/ext_conf_builder.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/ext/ext_conf_builder.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/ext/rake_builder.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/ext/rake_builder.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/ext.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/ext.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/format.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/format.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/gem_openssl.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/gem_openssl.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/gem_path_searcher.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/gem_path_searcher.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/gem_runner.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/gem_runner.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/indexer.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/indexer.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/install_update_options.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/install_update_options.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/installer.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/installer.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/local_remote_options.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/local_remote_options.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/old_format.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/old_format.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/package/f_sync_dir.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/package/f_sync_dir.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/package/tar_header.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/package/tar_header.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/package/tar_input.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/package/tar_input.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/package/tar_output.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/package/tar_output.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/package/tar_reader/entry.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/package/tar_reader/entry.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/package/tar_reader.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/package/tar_reader.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/package/tar_writer.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/package/tar_writer.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/package.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/package.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/platform.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/platform.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/remote_fetcher.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/remote_fetcher.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/require_paths_builder.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/require_paths_builder.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/requirement.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/requirement.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/rubygems_version.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/rubygems_version.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/security.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/security.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/server.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/server.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/source_index.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/source_index.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/source_info_cache.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/source_info_cache.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/source_info_cache_entry.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/source_info_cache_entry.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/spec_fetcher.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/spec_fetcher.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/specification.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/specification.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/test_utilities.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/test_utilities.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/timer.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/timer.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/uninstaller.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/uninstaller.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/user_interaction.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/user_interaction.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/validator.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/validator.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/version.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/version.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems/version_option.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/version_option.rb
install -c -m 0644 rubygems.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems.rb
install -c -m 0644 ubygems.rb /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/ubygems.rb
cp gem /tmp/gem
install -c -m 0755 /tmp/gem /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/gem
rm /tmp/gem
rm -f /Users/theo/.gem/source_cache
rm -f /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/source_cache
Removing old RubyGems RDoc and ri
rm -rf /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/doc/rubygems-1.2.0
Installing rubygems-1.3.1 ri into /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/doc/rubygems-1.3.1/ri
Installing rubygems-1.3.1 rdoc into /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/doc/rubygems-1.3.1/rdoc

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

= Announce: RubyGems Release 1.3.0

NOTE:  RubyGems 1.1 and 1.2 have problems upgrading when there is no
rubygems-update installed.  You will need to follow the second set of update
instructions if you see "Nothing to update".

Release 1.3.0 fixes some bugs.

Bugs fixed:

* Disregard ownership of ~ under Windows while creating ~/.gem.  Fixes
  issues related to no uid support under Windows.
* Fix requires for Gem::inflate, Gem::deflate, etc.
* Make Gem.dir respect :gemhome value from config.  (Note: this feature may be
  removed since it is hard to implement on 1.9.)
* Kernel methods are now private.  Patch #20801 by Stefan Rusterholz.
* Gem::location_of_caller now behaves on Windows.  Patch by Daniel Berger.
* Silence PATH warning.

Deprecation Notices:

* Gem::manage_gems will be removed on or after March 2009.

For a full list of changes to RubyGems and the contributor for each change, see
the ChangeLog file.

Special thanks to Chad Wooley for backwards compatibility testing and Luis
Lavena for continuing windows support.

== How can I get RubyGems?

NOTE:  If you have installed RubyGems using a package system you may want to
install a new RubyGems through the same packaging system.

If you have a recent version of RubyGems (0.8.5 or later), then all
you need to do is:

  $ gem update --system   (you might need to be admin/root)

NOTE:  RubyGems 1.1 and 1.2 have problems upgrading when there is no
rubygems-update installed.  You will need to follow the second set of update
instructions if you see "Nothing to update".

NOTE: You may have to run the command twice if you have any previosly
installed rubygems-update gems.

If you have an older version of RubyGems installed, then you can still
do it in two steps:

  $ gem install rubygems-update  (again, might need to be admin/root)
  $ update_rubygems              (... here too)

If you don't have any gems install, there is still the pre-gem
approach to getting software ... doing it manually:

1. DOWNLOAD FROM: http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=126
2. UNPACK INTO A DIRECTORY AND CD THERE
3. INSTALL WITH:  ruby setup.rb  (you may need admin/root privilege)

== To File Bugs

The RubyGems bug tracker can be found on RubyForge at:
http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?func=add&group_id=126&atid=575

When filing a bug, `gem env` output will be helpful in diagnosing the issue.

If you find a bug where RubyGems crashes, please provide debug output. You can
do that with `gem --debug the_command`.

== Thanks

Keep those gems coming!

-- Jim & Chad & Eric (for the RubyGems team)


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RubyGems installed the following executables:
	/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/gem

If `gem` was installed by a previous RubyGems installation, you may need
to remove it by hand.

undefined local variable or method `remote_gemspecs’

Pair Programming > Code Reviews

With the rise in popularity of agile software methodologies, the practice of formal code reviews has been often put against pair programming. There are proponents for both and some even recommend practicing both.

As time goes on, I’ve been able to do a little bit of both and I’ve developed a strong preference for pair programming over code reviews.

With code reviews, you get one or more other persons to review the code you just wrote and feel ready is to be checked in, deployed, or whatever the next step is. These reviews can be very formal or just as simple as a line-by-line walk through the code. The goal is to find any bugs or fixes before the code gets to the next step. This is very analogous to the writer/editor/publisher workflow (kind of like this blog entry). Writer writes the article, editor proofreads, and the article gets published. Programmer writes the code, other developers review the code, and the code gets deployed. It almost seems like the idea of code reviews came out of software methodologies like the Waterfall model. Everything is very sequential and done in distinct stages.

In pair programming, the focus is on developing “good” code the first time around. We do this by having more than one pair of eyes on the working code as it is being written. One person is the “driver” who is writing the code and the other is the guide or observer who is verifying the code being written and thinking of potential improvements. The developers switch roles whenever it makes sense which in many cases causes one developer to immediate use or have to work with the code that was written by their partner. It places emphasis on the idea that two heads are better than one.

Two things come to my mind when I think about pair programming and code reviews. First, code reviews seem to be a just-in-the-nick-of-time fix for finding bugs in code before it goes out the door. The initial development effort as already been completed and now we are evaluating the work. And realistic, this is code we’re looking at. Everyone has their opinion as how things should be structured, design philosophies, coding styles, etc. Many times code review sessions end up focusing on higher level concepts like those previously listed and not on the code itself. These kind of debates are related to decisions that should have been made prior to writing this code. Why are we asking ourselves why we did this this way now after we’ve already spent time and effort to write code for it? And the people part of the code review are not neccessarily the people that will be working with that piece of code.

That brings me to my second thought which is this is all reminiscent of Scrum pigs and chickens.


In code reviews, people sit down to review someone’s code. Everyone has an opinion but not everyone is going to be working with the code on a daily basis. At the time, everyone seems to be involved in the process but there is no vested interest. They are just looking at some code and asking themselves “does this code look good and is it correct?”. It’s a very passive standpoint. On the other hand, pair programmers are completely invested (committed?) in the task at hand. They immediately are using the code they are writing together and collobarating their thoughts on design, code layout, etc. Both programmers are taking on an active role and are emotionally invested in the task at hand because they are attacking the same problem together.

Most of the cons of pair programming can be attributed to developer social/ego issues. And they are not specific to pair programming. Going down the list of drawbacks listed on Wikipedia:

  • Developer egos: Experienced developers may find it tedious to tutor a less experienced developer in a paired environment.
  • Developer intimidation: A less experienced developer may feel intimidated pairing with a more experienced developer which may result in less participation.
  • Developer work preference: Some engineers prefer to work alone, and may find the paired environment cumbersome.
  • Tutoring cost: Experienced developers working alone may be capable of producing code that is clean and accurate at the outset, and the additional theoretical gain from pairing might not be worth the cost of an additional developer. This is especially true when producing more trivial parts of the system.
  • Potential conflict: Differences in coding style may result in conflict, and personality conflicts can result in one or both developers feeling awkward or uncomfortable.
  • Chat sessions: Sometimes employees might talk together too much, straying excessively into off-topic subjects, such as major news events, personal problems, etc.
  • Annoying personal habits: Sometimes people can find each other much more annoying when working up close than at separate workstations.

Developer egos, intimidation, work preference, and tutoring costs are things that should be checked at the door. As an experience developer, you should look for opportunities to help your fellow developers to learn and improve their skills. As a more junior developer, the opportunity to take chances and try to prove yourself is one of the best ways to learn and develop better skills. I don’t know about other people but collaborative work environments seem to be a plus. Being able to discuss your ideas openly is one of the best ways to make what you’re building better than it is. As for potential conflicts, chat sessions, and annoying personal habits, these have more to do with personalities and mannerism in the work place. All of this can happen in code reviews as well but the point is being self-aware and respectful of your coworkers is just as important as writing awesome code.

While I’m not against code reviews, I feel that pair programming is better suited to improve both code and team quality.

Pair Programming > Code Reviews

Eclipse Ganymede + Subclipse = Unable to load default SVN client???

I like Shiny New Things. So when I heard Eclipse Ganymede SR1 was available, I proceeded to replace the Stream Stable Build I was currently running.

This, of course, ended up causing me problems. After installing Subclipse and attempting to pull up any SVN history, I get an error dialog box that states:
“Unable to load default SVN client”

Confused, I RTFM and saw that “Subclipse 1.4.x requires Subversion 1.5.0 version of JavaHL/SVNKit”

Seeing the SVN I was running was in fact not 1.5,

  theo@notedpath~ $ svn --version
svn, version 1.4.4 (r25188)
   compiled Nov 25 2007, 08:20:33

I went here, downloaded and installed Subversion 1.5, restarted Eclipse and things are looking good now.

Stupid shiny new things.

Eclipse Ganymede + Subclipse = Unable to load default SVN client???