travisj » Rails

More on the PHP Easter Eggs

Travis — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 21:34:19 +0000

Chris Shiflett has more info on the PHP Easter Eggs I wrote about earlier. I find it very humorous that he uses 37signals as his example site for the demo. 37signals has been receiving a lot of press recently for all the work with Ruby on Rails.

Blog Update

Travis — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 23:17:57 +0000

I realize the posts have gotten to be pretty infrequent lately, but I am going to fix that. I am moving my blog back over to Wordpress (typo is just to slow on my host and they can’t seem to fix it). Before any of that can happen, I am going to have to write the script to move all my posts, comments, and categories back to Wordpress. Typo seems to be too new for anyone to have done this, so I will be doing it on my own. Hopefully with the faster weblog, I will be more apt to post.

Oh, and my host doesn’t support PHP5 yet. What was I thinking when I picked them!

Rails on Mac OS X

Travis — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 23:56:54 +0000

For some reason installing Ruby on Rails on Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) is difficult. I have installed it on about 5 different systems and every time run into trouble. I had been putting off installing Rails on the laptop because it was working on the iMac and I could just use it there when I needed to, but tonight I sat down on got it installed easily.

For anyone really interested in easily installing Rails, here’s what you do: 1. first manually fix ruby 2. Install RubyGems 3. sudo gem install rails 4. Follow these instructions to get mysql 4.1 working…

That’s it. It takes all of 5 minutes to do when you know what to do!

del.icio.us

Travis — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 16:03:32 +0000

I was just showing Rachel how to use del.icio.us (her account and mine) and we saw that 17 people have already added Swap-bot to their bookmarks!

Speaking of swap-bot, I am doing some maintenance work on it today.

Rachel’s Store

Travis — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Rachel and I have been busy working on her new online store, ilovecutethings.com, for a little over a week and it finally launched tonight. Needless to say, my part in this project was creating the e-commerce site, not the inventory.

I briefly gave some thought to using a packaged e-commerce site, but didn’t like the feel of them. Rachel showed me a few sites that had the same features she wanted and I wasn’t too impressed with the software packages they used. While I still have a lot of work left to do on the site, it is fully operational. Go check out her new site. Enjoy!

Dad’s baseball bet

Travis — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 15:28:43 +0000

For a couple of years I have wanted to make a webpage that automatically tracked the score of the annual baseball bet my dad has with his friend Jerry. This morning I finally did the little project. I haven’t heard from my dad yet if the score is correct, but he did say that he was up by one point today. So check out the site.

My problem

Travis — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 20:28:49 +0000

I am a procrastinator. Well, not exactly a procrastinator, but I have more fun starting something new than finishing what I am currently on. It is why I am currently reading three books. It is why I made Track My Links when I should have finished Swap-bot (don’t worry – it is done now). I want to start something so bad and I don’t have enough time to finish what I should.

A few months ago I made a wordpress plugin for Rachel to display her The Things I Want list. Well, the creator of TTIW, Emiliano Martínez Luque (he lives in Argentina), contacted me and really wanted me to make the plugin public. I said I would, and believe it or not, I haven’t done it until right now. Of course, completing this plugin didn’t come without starting something else first. Today while at Home Depot, I realized that I could achieve the same sort of thing as the wordpress plugin using Javascript. So, rather than complete the plugin, I wrote some javascript for Emilliano that might work out pretty well. I am going to send it to him and let him get it all in order.

Actually, I should be finishing those things instead of posting…

First Week

Travis — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 20:20:42 +0000

My first week of work went really well, and since the request was made, I will share the details. My job as a web programmer started on Monday. I am working for Right Media out of the Eugene office. The company is headquartered in New York, with the majority of the company located there. I have a 5-7 minute commute depending on which direction I am going and the time of day. Since Rachel hasn’t started classes, I have been able to come home and have lunch with her a few times. As I write this, I realize that I don’t have too many details to share. I am getting integrated into the development system pretty quickly, I think. I am already writing code that will be used in production by the end of this month or maybe next month.

I am really having a fun time at work and enjoy the people I work with. Sorry for the lack of ‘highlights’, but I can’t think of anything too great. I think my biggest highlight of the week was actually getting Swap-bot working and tested. We already have 19 people signed up for the initial Postcard Swap.

Join the Swap and then the List

Travis — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 22:59:25 +0000

Swap-bot is up! What is Swap-bot? Well, check out the site for all the answers, but basically it facilitates swaps (have you read about them on Rachel’s site?). I created it and FINALLY got it up. The first swap we are doing, for testing purposes, will be a postcard swap. Essentially, all you have to do is sign up for the swap, wait until you are sent your swap partners list, and then mail each of them a postcard.

To sign up of the postcard swap (and be a part of history – Swap-bot’s first swap), go to the swap details page.

If you sign up of the swap, please join the mailing list for swap-bot discussions. The list won’t be active for too long, just while swap-bot remains in beta (which will be quite short if this swap goes well).

Last Free Moments

Travis — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 19:07:18 +0000

I start my new job on Monday and had a few projects I wanted to work on before then. The first thing I needed to do was complete my move to a new server for all the sites I host. My new host, Site5 was able to host Ruby on Rails sites and I had a Rails project that needed to be hosted. I got all the my sites moved over and started focusing on my semi-big Rails project, swap-bot (more info soon), but ran into some server troubles before everything was done. While waiting for Site5 to fix the problem I came up with an idea for a little site that tracks website clicks. I can now track which links on my home page my visitors click on.

I call the project Track My Links and have made it available to anyone who would like to try it out. The tracking features are pretty well flushed out, but I have some work left on the reporting features. I have decided to wait for feedback before putting too much more work into this project.

If you do try Track My Links, please sent me your feedback. Was it easy to install? If not, how could I make it easier? What do you want to see it do? Does it do everything you expected it to?