Soap4R’s Online Docs not Up-To-Date

Wondering why I couldn’t find SOAP::Mapping::LiteralRegistry and SOAP::Mapping::EncodedRegistry in the online Soap4R docs, I finally fired up the gem rdoc server. Sure enough, there they are. So, if you need to look at Soap4R’s rdocs, don’t view them online.

CouchDB Replication

Because CouchDB provides an easy way to do offline replication, people can mirror your hosted application for personal use, and sync back later when they’ve made changes. –books.couchdb.org/relax/hosted-applications

This has wonderful work-flow implications compared to apps using relational databases for storage.

Cucumber

The more I use Cucumber on the Blacklight project, the more I like it. Sometimes, when I’m feeling lazy, it seems that it’s just taking up my time. But every time I use it I’m glad I did. Cucumber holds my hand as I write my features and scenarios. Write scenarios, watch them fail, copy-paste the output to a step, write the application code, pass, move on. When I’m done, I’ve got running code that specifies a feature and its scenarios. This really paid off the other day when I was refactoring the code behind Blacklight’s search history feature.

Successful Lisp

I’ve been using this as my introduction to Lisp: Successful Lisp. So far I’m finding it to be a wonderful resource.

chris blogs: Ruby Symbols are not Lisp symbols

I’ve started learning Lisp. I already know Ruby quite well, having used it for years now. Lisp symbols as are different than Ruby symbols: chris blogs: Ruby Symbols are not Lisp symbols.

QuickBooks Mac Pain

Preparing a file for conversion from QuickBooks for Macintosh to QuickBooks for Windows just shouldn’t be this difficult. You’d think a large company that makes so much money from QuickBooks could make a common file format for the Mac and Windows versions.

Cocoa Is My Girlfriend » Don’t treat your customers like thieves

I found this to be a though-provoking essay on customer-relations: Cocoa Is My Girlfriend » Don’t treat your customers like thieves. I tend to agree with Marcus that draconian policies work against the developer.

Unobtrusive Zebra Striping

Today I needed yet another zebra-striped table on a page. Having just converted this app to use jQuery, I thought, “there must be a simple way to decorate a table unobtrusively.” It was absolutley simple.

$(document).ready(function() {
  // adds classes for zebra striping table rows
  $('table.zebra tr:even').addClass('zebra_stripe');
}

Now, any table with the zebra class has its even rows decorated with the zebra_stripe class and those rows are styled like so:

tr.zebra_stripe {
  background-color: #F1F5FA;
}

Obama inaugurates YouTube-side chats

We’ve clearly entered a new era of communication. This is very cool: Obama inaugurates YouTube-side chats • The Register

Report Sees New Pollution Threat – NYTimes.com

Ponder your own carbon footprint while reading this: Report Sees New Pollution Threat – NYTimes.com