Nervetree

Ive been using Vagrant and Chef for automated server management and deployment lately.

When I ran Vagrant to spin up a development VM, I kept getting this irritating error.

Error in API call to save_settings: 2147500037 (VirtualBox::Exceptions::COMException)

It’s an easy fix

Just delete the non running VM’s in your

cd to "~/VirtualBox\ VMs/" and delete the non working vm’s.

When using bundler to include gems, it requires the file, on some systems CASE MATTERS, osx isn’t one though.

This is an issue when deploying to RHEL where case matters.

At the top of your file you could:

require "RMagick"

The better solution is to change your gemfile

from:

gem ‘rmagick’

to:

gem ‘rmagick’, :require => "RMagick"
 

Don't even go there.

Wait, I have to.

Ok, Yum wont work, the version of ImageMagick and graphics magick that it installs is ancient, and wont work with ruby later than 1.8.5

You need to compile from source.

heres how

sudo yum install libjpeg-devel libpng-devel glib2-devel fontconfig-devel zlib-devel libwmf-devel freetype-devel libtiff-devel
wget ftp://ftp.imagemagick.org/pub/ImageMagick/legacy/ImageMagick-6.5.0-10.tar.gz
tar -xzf ImageMagick-6.5.0-10.tar.gz 
cd ImageMagick-6.5.0-10
./configure --disable-static --with-modules --without-perl      --without-magick-plus-plus --with-quantum-depth=8 
make
sudo make install
cd /usr/bin
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/Magick-config 
sudo gem install rmagick

I just got my youngest some cool shoes, they are ruby red sparkly, and have rubber toy squeakers in the heels. Every step she takes, they squeak. She is 2 and absolutely loves them, Ever seen a 2 year old jump for 2 blocks straight? they are from wee squeak.

I copied this from:   http://dirty-code.blogspot.com/2010/11/adding-support-for-new-instance-types.html

Recently Amazon announce new instance types, but don’t add support for these types in the ElasticFox. At least these changes not
Maybe you are interested too in adding support for t1.micro and
clustered version of instance types (cc1.4xlarge, cg1.4xlarge) to your
ElasticFox.

Here the steps you could do to enjoy working with ElasticFox and new Aamzon features:
Close FF. Check that firefox.exe is gone from process list
Kill if it will stay too long after closing FF.
Go to C:\Documents and Settings\Application
Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
Go inside XXXXX.default folder. This actually your FF profile.
Than go deeper in the
extensions\{2204c510-88f3-11db-b606-0800200c9a66}\chrome

on a mac:

/Users/YOU/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/SOMENUMBERS.default/extensions/{2204c510-88f3-11db-b606-0800200c9a66}/chrome

This folder should have file ec2ui.jar to ec2ui.jar.bak
Make backup of the file
Change extension to ZIP. Unpack ZIP archive to ec2ui_patched folder.
Go to ec2ui_patched\content\ec2ui
Open newinstancesdialog.js in your favorite JS editor. This is a
file that represent New Instance dialog in ElasticFox.
In the init function found block
// Add the instance sizes based on AMI architecture
if (this.image.arch == "x86_64") {
    typeMenu.appendItem("m1.large", "m1.large");
    typeMenu.appendItem("m1.xlarge", "m1.xlarge");
    typeMenu.appendItem("c1.xlarge", "c1.xlarge");
    typeMenu.appendItem("m2.xlarge", "m2.xlarge");
    typeMenu.appendItem("m2.2xlarge", "m2.2xlarge");
    typeMenu.appendItem("m2.4xlarge", "m2.4xlarge");
} else {
    typeMenu.appendItem("m1.small", "m1.small");
    typeMenu.appendItem("c1.medium", "c1.medium");
}
Replace with following
// Add the instance sizes based on AMI architecture
if (this.image.arch == "x86_64") {
    typeMenu.appendItem("m1.large", "m1.large");
    typeMenu.appendItem("m1.xlarge", "m1.xlarge");
    typeMenu.appendItem("c1.xlarge", "c1.xlarge");
    typeMenu.appendItem("m2.xlarge", "m2.xlarge");
    typeMenu.appendItem("m2.2xlarge", "m2.2xlarge");
    typeMenu.appendItem("m2.4xlarge", "m2.4xlarge");
    typeMenu.appendItem("t1.micro", "t1.micro");
    typeMenu.appendItem("cc1.4xlarge", "cc1.4xlarge");
    typeMenu.appendItem("cg1.4xlarge", "cg1.4xlarge");
} else {
typeMenu.appendItem("m1.small", "m1.small");
    typeMenu.appendItem("c1.medium", "c1.medium");
    typeMenu.appendItem("t1.micro", "t1.micro");
}
Package content of ec2ui_patched folder as ZIP archive.
Rename ZIP archive with patched version to ec2ui.jar and place it inside C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\extensions\{2204c510-88f3-11db-b606-0800200c9a66}\chrome
Launch FF and enjoy support for new instance types in ElasticFox.

Ruby, and Rails let you extend classes. This is called monkeypatching. Rails is built using that ability, It’s pretty important. I’ve used it on and off for years. You have to be careful when you use it, very powerful.

I just got done debugging some bad Monkeypatching, In my opionion you should NEVER mess with activerecord unless you really really know what you are doing. In this case the developer replaced the save method, which I didn’t think was good. What if the boolean class True was set to return nil?. Bugs in this type of code are impossible to find.

    class Boolean
        def True
            nil
        end
    end

I signed up for it when working on my house. It was useful then, I was pretty paranoid about who to use, however all the people I found on it were at least 2X more expensive than the ones I ended up using, with the exception of one contractor.

My problem with Angieslist is as follows. You sign up, you MUST autorenew the account, there is no way to only sign up for a year. At your anniversary they do not inform you that your are about to renew the membership. When I logged in to cancel my account, there is no way to cancel directly from the site. You must write a letter to customer service to cancel / not renew the membership.

No other service I have used does this. I can only guess that they do this to add a barrier to disabling your account when it’s no longer needed.

I didn’t use the service for the last year, yet accidently paid for it.

I'm back

I haven't been writing much the last year. We bought a really nice forclosure and had a lot of work to do. It's brand new in the historic part of St Paul. The developer didn't construct it in the way the Historic Preservation committee wanted, Eventually through a comedy of errors his license to build was revoked, and the property went up for foreclosure.

We rented; because of this we had time to deal with the city and their requirements. The house was purchased and fell through 2 times before our bid was considered.

I will write more about this later.

I develop on my Mac, When I start working, I have to open a number of programs to get ready. I use Spaces to organize my work areas, my screen doesn't get cluttered that way. I set up 4 screens for work, references (pdfs), IDE, Support stuff (mail, gitx, adium), iTunes.

Starting and organizing my work area when I start used to take a few minutes, and seemed like busywork.

I set up osx to start the programs in their proper space when I issue the command 'gotowork' from the terminal.

Here's how:

1. open /Applications/Spaces
2. open your /Application folder in finder
3. drag your programs you use to the appropriate space in the spaces pref pane.
4. Add an alias to your /etc/bashrc file.

I added this alias to the /etc/bashrc file:

alias gotowork='cd /Applications; open "Mail.app"; open "GitX.app";open "Firefox.app"; open "Adium.app"; open "iTunes.app";open "/Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans 6.9.app"; sudo /opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin/mysqld_safe &'

It starts:

• Mail
• GitX (version control, I set it to open the last repo worked with)
• Firefox
• Adium
• iTunes
• NetBeans
• MySQL

I also found a way to launch alot of apps using automator http://mysteriousflame.com/automator-qs/

I was had some issues with starting netbeans this way, JAVA_HOME needed to be commented out of my bashrc file, I know this will mess up other stuff, like my amazon ec2 connections, but I'm not using those right now.

I recently bought a cool multi- pen for my Dad. I saw it at an art supply store and thought he would like it. I got him this one. Yasutomo Quad-Point Platinum

I found these as well, they look really interesting, and are alot less expensive.

zebra pens They both are multi-color pens with a included pencil.