Free as in Time

At this moment I’m highly caffeinated and trying to understand what’s going on here:

Gems On Rails → ‘gemsonrails’ aka ‘vendor everything’

I think it’s the answer to about 70% of my LDAP connection woes. Or it will be. When I can see straight.

Tags:   gems · plugins · Rails · RubyNo Comments · Respond

I’m excited about building some new sites using Drupal 6, and decided to collect a few links on creating themes for Drupal 6:

• Theme Template Files for Drupal 6 – That’s lesson 41 from Drupal Dojo
• Theme guide (Drupal 6) – Under Construction as of this posting, but getting there, and certainly worth starting now.
• Some training materials from Mastering Drupal

And here are a few extras I didn’t want to lose track of:

• Drupal Sites that Don’t Look Like Drupal Sites
• Drupal Theme Garden
• Black and Blue Drupal Theme, which is very simple and could serve as a good starting point for other work.

Tags:   Drupal · themes · web designNo Comments · Respond

This recipe also comes to me by way of Shauna’s mom:

• 1 1/2 lbs ground beef
• 1 beaten egg
• 3/4 cup milk
• 3/4 cup rolled oats
• 1 tbsp. instant onion flakes (or mince fresh onion)
• 1 tsp. parsley flakes
• 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
• 1 1/2 tsp. salt (I usually don’t add)
• 1/4 tsp. pepper
• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
• 4 tbsp. ketchup (or tomato relish/chili sauce)

[Read more →]

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This is Grandma Clazie’s recipe for Baked Cheese and Macaroni, which came to me by way of Shauna’s mom. Comments are hers:

(I usually double this recipe.)

Cook 1 cup macaroni in boiling water with 1/2 tsp. salt

Mix the following:

• 1 cup grated cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup of bread broken in small pieces
• 1 cup of milk
• 1/2 tsp. of salt and pepper (I usually omit the salt)

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In a recent post, DHH (David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals, creator of Rails) voiced his opinion on asking for years of experience in job postings for programmers:

Requiring X years of experience on platform Y in your job posting is, well, ignorant. As long as applicants have 6 months to a year of experience, consider it a moot point for comparison. Focus on other things instead that’ll make much more of a difference. Platform experience is merely a baseline, not a differentiator of real importance.

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Tags:   DHH · Rails · rantsNo Comments · Respond

I’d either never picked up on this or totally forgotten it, but I ran across it while reading Ajax on Rails:

If you create a layout file under app/views/layouts/ called application.rhtml, Rails will pick that up as a default layout for your entire application, assuming you haven’t created other layouts already.

By default Rails looks first for a layout template with the same name as the current controller with the extension .rhtml. If it can’t find this layout, it goes looking for application.rhtml layout.

Somehow, I’d gotten in the habit of creating a layout called default.rhtml, and specifying that my controllers use it. Oops. Don’t I feel rather daft now.

This isn’t the first time I’ve come across a little tip like this in Ajax on Rails. I’ll try to remember to blog the others. In the meantime, pick up a copy for yourself.

Tags:   books · Rails · tipsNo Comments · Respond

I’m mostly posting this so that I don’t lose track of the recipe for this very simple cheese sauce:

• 3 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1 cup grated cheese

Melt butter in sauce pan. Stir in flour, salt, and pepper. Stir in milk gradually. I think at this point you bring it to a boil so that it thickens, although I really can’t remember. It needs to get nice and hot, anyway, if you’re going to melt the cheese in. So, we’ll say once it’s good and hot, stir in your cheese. You can sub some other ingredient, if you need another sort of sauce. I’ve used this for creamed salmon with great success, for example. Just stir in a can of salmon you’ve flaked up in a bowl. (Good on thick toast.)

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