Posted by Kyle Heon
Thu, 20 Oct 2005 15:29:09 GMT
Arrgh! I just spent a way too much time trying to figure out why all of a sudden a development copy of a .NET site started throwing a “Server Application Unavailable” error.
Turns out that the ASPNET user didn’t have access to the web.config. This makes sense as I was in the process of reconfiguring how Subversion was managing this file and I had copied it out of the folder and then copied it back in. Somewhere in this processes permissions were changed.
I can’t take credit for the solution, that goes to my boss.
Posted in Development | no comments
Posted by Kyle Heon
Sun, 09 Oct 2005 11:46:00 GMT
Well after many nights of struggling I have finally managed to get my site setup on Textdrive using lighttpd and FastCGI.
This new site looks much like it did last time only now it’s powered by Typo which is the premiere Rails blog engine.
Everything from my old Textpattern site should have been copied over, including the comments.
I have high hopes to really start in on some Rails development now that I have a host that supports it. My number one focus is going to actually build out my photography section. I don’t consider myself an expert photographer but I do feel I’m somewhere between novice and expert.
Posted in Development, Photography, Miscellaneous | Tags rails, ruby, textdrive, typo | no comments
Posted by kheon
Mon, 18 Jul 2005 18:18:00 GMT
This past weekend I was able to really spend some quality time exploring Rails, something I’ve been having a tough time finding the time to do. Not the case this weekend.
In order to learn Ruby and Rails I’ve been taking some of the applications we offer at work (ASP) and porting them to the Rails framework. I have been working much slower then I probably could simply because I want to understand what and why things are the way they are. Even still, I’ve managed to port two of the tools over in relatively short order (except the file upload functionality, which I will tackle last).
I didn’t realize how much fun and how quick Rails developing was till I got back into some ASP.NET development that I’m doing at work. It’s been tiring mostly because we are porting some really sloppy third-party CFMX code over. The biggest annoyance I had to deal with all day though was in coding, compiling (wait), and refresh (wait for IIS to rebuild the application) process.
The good news is I’m home now and I can get back into some more Rails fun. Hoping someday we’ll be able to offer Rails applications where I work but for the time being we are primarily an MS shop with some PHP mixed in (but not hosted, we don’t have any Linux servers available for site hosting, only development).
Posted in Development | Tags asp, net, rails, ruby | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by kheon
Wed, 22 Jun 2005 21:10:00 GMT
Well, it’s been awhile since I last updated so I figured I’d update everyone (those few that actually visit this site) on what I have been up to lately.
Finally, after about two months of setup, my Linux system is finally at a point where I can start playing around with Ruby on Rails. For about the past week I have been doing just that. At first it was playing but then I decided to take all of the ASP (yeah, Active Server Pages) apps that we have where I work and port them to Rails.
This process has been pretty fun. Instead of just ripping through and getting it down I’ve decided to take a slow, methodical approach and actually learn the “Rails” way of doing things. Thankfully this has still be a pretty fast moving process. I’ve had a few hiccups along the way but nothing all that major, the Rails framework really is all about getting things done quickly and effeciently.
I have been eagerly following all the Ruby/Rails blogs I know of and after having some dissatisfying experiences with a commercial content management system (CMS) that we are implementing at work I’ve been really thinking about writing one myself, however I know there is no way I could take on something like that by myself so I have joined the RailFrog project. Right now I’m just kind of sitting on the sidelines, listening as I am just learning how to do things in the world of Ruby and Rails plus it’s still very early in the project planning.
In other news, my daughter graduated preschool a few weeks back and can’t wait to start kindergarten in the fall. My son just finished up 1st grade. Also, in regards to my son, he is just a month shy of testing for his Black Belt in Taekwondo and he has improved considerably in the last month or so.
Today is my wife’s 30th. We threw her a surprise birthday party two weekends ago which was a lot of fun. My daughters birthday was yesterday which we celebrated last Saturday.
We have watched a ton of movies, I’ve just been too lazy to write up a review for any of them. Speaking of movies, damn there is just too many good movies in the theater. The wife and I want to get out and see Star Wars: Episode III, Batman Begins, War of the Worlds, and Fantastic Four but that will be tough, too many movies too close together. We need a sitter every weekend for a month which just isn’t realistic.
Posted in Development, Miscellaneous | Tags rails, ruby | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by kheon
Thu, 26 May 2005 19:39:00 GMT
The good folks over at The Pragmatic Programmer have released a beta book for the forthcoming Agile Web Development with Rails which is a web framework for my current favorite language, Ruby.
Essentially what they have done is released a pre-release book in PDF format. You pay for it in full now in exchange for getting to download a beta PDF months before the printed book is ready. Once the print book is ready they ship it to you.
This is an awesome concept, especially for the Rails community because while there is quite a bit of documentation on the web, it’s spread out all over the place making it tough to really come up to speed.
I purchased my copy a few hours ago and have my beta PDF downloaded. They are working on a way for those that have purchased this to get updated beta versions as the book matures.
If you are interested in grabbing a copy, swing by here for the necessary details and links.
Posted in Development | Tags rails, ruby | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by kheon
Wed, 25 May 2005 09:07:00 GMT
I just wrapped up changes to a client application that required me to get image dimensions out of an image dynamically in ASP.
Not wanting to have to use a component (ie: ASPImage) to do this I was able to find some code snippets online that would do what I wanted.
In an effort to save me the time later and hopefully to help someone else, here is the function:
Function GetImageSize ( ByVal psImage )
Dim asImage(1)
Dim oFso
Set oFso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
If ( oFso.FileExists(psImage) ) Then
Set oImage = LoadPicture(psImage)
asImage(0) = Round(oImage.Width / 26.4883)
asImage(1) = Round(oImage.Height / 26.4883)
Set oImage = Nothing
End If
Set oFso = Nothing
GetImageSize = asImage
End Function
Posted in Development | Tags asp | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by kheon
Tue, 17 May 2005 19:09:00 GMT
I’m starting to get my feet wet with some Linux stuff so I decided to setup a small Linux server. It’s running Fedora Core 3 and I have finally (after about 2-3 weeks of screwing around) managed to get everything installed that I set out to have running on this box.
This includes:
Now my goal was to get Apache and Subversion running so that I could move my Subversion repository off from my main development workstation (XP Pro) so that I could rebuild this system without losing any data and at the same time offload some unnecessary services that are slowing things down. Having a dedicated Linux box allows me to have Subversion, Apache and any other *nix based languages.
The secondary goal was to be able to play around with Ruby and Rails a lot more as I’ve had a bitch of a time getting it running properly on my Windows box. It runs but I have to use the build in WEBrick server and I didn’t really want to.
For some reason getting Rails installed and configured to use FastCGI on Apache was a considerable effort but I believe now it is working. The first time you request the Rails application it seems pretty slow (on par with a .NET sites JIT on first request) but after that it seems to scream. I’m happy about that.
Now that I have all of this working I’m going to continue to play around for a few more weeks but at some point I’ll blow everything away and start over, this time hopefully to keep it up for good.
Last, but certainly not least is my ultimate goal with Subversion, Ruby, and Rails. I want to build a Subversion powered CMS using Ruby and Rails. This is an ambitious project for sure, especially as I’m just starting to learn Ruby but I figure if I can find a project that has meaning to me then it’ll make it that much more real. It should be fun.
Posted in Development | Tags linux, rails, ruby, subversion | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by kheon
Thu, 17 Mar 2005 08:52:00 GMT
Found this while browsing my usual collection of blogs.
Posted in Development | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by kheon
Sat, 12 Mar 2005 10:37:02 GMT
I’ve wanted to get my MCAD (Microsoft Certified Application Developer) certification for a long time now but just haven’t had the drive to study and prepare. With two kids it’s a bit tough to find the time.
Well the other day I found out about this cool promotion that Microsoft is offering from now till the end of May. If you fail your first test you get a second chance. While I don’t want to fail at all, coughing up the registration fee once with a little satisfaction that you have two chances makes it a little easier on the budget.
Posted in Development | 1 comment | no trackbacks
Posted by kheon
Thu, 27 Jan 2005 20:03:41 GMT
Here’s a quick tutorial on how to setup Subversion (an open source source control system that is destined to replace CVS) on Win32. It is very cool.
Found this here so don’t think I’m taking credit for this.
While we are on the topic of Subversion, you definetly need to know about Version Control with Subversion, it is my bible when it comes to SVN.
Posted in Development | no comments | no trackbacks