Peteon Rails

A number of VoteFu users have asked me for help integrating VoteFu into their codebase. I recognize that this means I’ve probably left the documentation lacking in a couple of places, but in order to immediately help those folks who want a reference implementation of VoteFu, I am releasing the full source code of MyQuotable.com. [...]

I saw this posted on Jacqui Maher’s blog today and was so amused I had to reblog it.

if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == "undefined")) {
document.write("YUP.");
} else {
document.write("NOPE.");
}

From http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/.
Aside from the very obvious “you don’t need to negate that test condition, just reverse your simple if and else clauses” issue, it’s [...]

A couple of contributors forked VoteFu and submitted some patches. I’ve updated the master branch to integrate the changes. Notably:

VoteFu now works as a standard gem in a Ruby application. (i.e. not as a Rails plugin)
VoteFu now works as a Rails Gem Plugin.
VoteFu now works with Rails 2.2.2.
Other assorted small bugfixes.

To install VoteFu as a [...]

I absolutely LOVE the cover of this book. And the book itself looks pretty decent, though how the author fills 300 pages with tricks and tips on Ubuntu it beyond me.
I’m not sure when it happened, but the technical world starting using amusing pictures of animals on the covers of their books some time in [...]

I don’t like to write about politics. However, I am glad to see that I am not the only one who thinks of Bob the Builder every time I hear Barak Obama say, “Yes we can!”.

I really like the app on AngelSoft’s new homepage.
A long time ago I created an app that would post messages to the homepage in a ticker when site visitors would do stuff. It was for a liberal political action NGO. From the homepage of this NGO’s site the ticker would flash messages like “A member [...]

Microsoft has been issued a patent on Page-Up/Page-Down functionality (see below). I was annoyed when Amazon patented One-Click-Checkout, but this patent is even more troubling. I have written about Patent craziness before, mostly as it related to “Submarine Patents” (i.e. patents for products that will never see the light of day, to the benefit of [...]

I have just introduced the “has_karma” mixin to VoteFu. It aims to assign a karma score to the owners of voteable objects. This is designed to allow you to see which users are submitting the most highly voted content. Currently, karma is only “positive”. That is, +1 votes add to karma, but -1 votes do [...]

A lot of people are in the business of cataloging “Scrum Smells”,  those warning flags that indicate you may have some problems in your agile development process.
These are the ones that I think are important, and common. If these things are happening on your team, UR DOIN IT WRONG.

Your Burndown Chart does not have [...]

My day job has been keeping me busy-busy-busy, but I had some time this weekend to add some more to MyQuotable.com. Here is what is new:

You can now edit your user profile. (Name, etc)
The color scheme is slightly different.
You now collect positive karma every time someone votes for one of your quotes.
Pagination!
I refactored the statusbar. [...]