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Skipping gem docs on production server

Just thought about this now: skipping gem documentation on the production server. Makes much more sense.

Generating an Ajax loading image

Remember how you used to Google Image Search to rip a decent loader image? Yes you! Don’t do that any more. Use Ajaxload to generate your own purty loader. I just used it today and so can you.

Elfproef validation in Rails

Oops, did it again… I moved my second plugin to Github just now. This one checks a bank account number in a Rails application to see if it’s valid. Dutch bank account numbers conform to the “Elfproef” checksum, so that’s a handy little tool. Read more

Check for DNSBL inside Rails app

Quite a few years ago I wrote a plugin for Ruby on Rails. It checks incoming client connections against DNS Blackhole Lists. It has worked quite well over the years. In the mean time I moved all my code from Subversion to Git, but somehow never moved the plugin. Until now!

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Kom maar op

2009_1222_eerst_beelden_kom_maar_op_editorialFollows the inevitable post for our Dutch audience: “my” channel Z@PP has recently shot a video based on their pay off KOM MAAR OP. It’s with all the presenters and performed by Monique Smit. The lyrics are a bit thin but the fun doing it more than makes up for it. The clip will be broadcast on Z@PP from 27 December, but you can watch the making of here.

Simulating JSON PUT in Rails

I am currently working on a JSON API for a game that is to be launched in February. The game developer and I have decided on it to communicatie between flash and the database for a simple reason: built in in both Rails in Flash. There is one interesting thing though. Flex has no idea what a PUT request is and Rails, in recent versions, won’t let you override with a _method parameter.
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Installing ImageMagick on Snow Leopard

Getting ImageMagick onto your computer would be so incredibly difficult I would often just forgo the entire thing and pray that image manipulation would sort of work on the server. Well, no more. Claudio Poli has written a great bash script to install the whole thing with one command. Clone this repo and execute it. Works perfectly!
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Presenters in Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails is all about Model View Controller (MVC). This is a web development technique to separate database, html and code. This is a smart idea since these three fields require very different things. Usually this separation works well. Sometimes though I need a fourth distinction. And I use a Presenter.

Update: .autospec file added
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ActiveResource Twitter client

Every tech blog should have a post about a Twitter client. Here’s mine. To be fair, my client has only eight seven lines of code, so it rocks.
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Unrelated: food

With a newborn in the house, it starts to become quite clear that many of the food we eat is in fact not very healthy. Case in point: breakfast cereals.
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