The Kanye Memes Continue
via www.i-am-bored.com/media/18881_taylorkanyegoogle.jpg">cdn-i-am-bored.com
MIT's Great Dome Rick Rolled
via tech.mit.edu
Early Wednesday morning, hackers installed seven notes on the great dome’s temporary scaffolding, commenting on its close resemblance to a musical score. The notes were the first seven of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
Running multiple versions of Ruby on Ubuntu Karmic
UPDATED: For dev, you could also use Ruby Version Manager http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/
Recently I discovered that Karmic ships with Ruby 1.8.7 - not a problem in itself, but if you're using ActionMailer with Google Mail, there's some big changes between how SMTP/TLS is handled on 1.8.6 vs 1.8.7 that cause things to break.
I run Ruby Enterprise Edition on my web server - which is currently 1.8.6 - and so the code I had written and tested locally wouldn't run correctly on the server. I can easily install REE locally, but I'd like to hang on to the default ubuntu Ruby too. Thankfully, there's an easy solution
update-alternatives
Let's create an alternative path for REE
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/local/bin/ruby ruby /opt/ruby-enterprise/bin/ruby 50 --slave /usr/local/bin/erb erb /opt/ruby-enterprise/bin/erb --slave /usr/local/bin/gem gem /opt/ruby-enterprise/bin/gem --slave /usr/local/bin/irb irb /opt/ruby-enterprise/bin/irb --slave /usr/local/bin/rdoc rdoc /opt/ruby-enterprise/bin/rdoc --slave /usr/local/bin/ri ri /opt/ruby-enterprise/bin/ri --slave /usr/local/bin/testrb testrb /opt/ruby-enterprise/bin/testrb --slave /usr/local/bin/rake rake /opt/ruby-enterprise/bin/rake --slave /usr/local/bin/rails rails /opt/ruby-enterprise/bin/rails
...and for MRI
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/local/bin/ruby ruby /usr/bin/ruby 100 --slave /usr/local/bin/erb erb /usr/bin/erb --slave /usr/local/bin/gem gem /usr/bin/gem --slave /usr/local/bin/irb irb /usr/bin/irb --slave /usr/local/bin/rdoc rdoc /usr/bin/rdoc --slave /usr/local/bin/ri ri /usr/bin/ri --slave /usr/local/bin/testrb testrb /usr/bin/testrb --slave /usr/local/bin/rake rake /usr/bin/rake --slave /usr/local/bin/rails rails /usr/bin/rails
Oddly, my Karmic install already had an alternative by gems, so I had to remove that first using
sudo update-alternatives --remove-all gem
I can now easily switch betwen them using
sudo update-alternatives --config ruby
Too easy!
Hows My Code?
How's My Code is a Git-based lightweight code review app. You don't get much of an idea from the front page, but sign up and log in and you'll see this is a well designed and useful tool. If you work in a remote team environment and use Git at all, check it out. Basically you can comment on any commits made on git repositories of your choice. via Rails Insider.
MIT students go nuts in a shopping trolley.
via gizmodo “When you were in college, you spent your free time drinking tallboys of Bud Ice and playing Mario Kart 64 until 5am. These MIT students, on the other hand, built a shopping cart go-kart cart and dubbed it the LOLriokart.
The LOLrioKart consists of a big stack of NiCd aircraft batteries and a 15hp brushless motor rigged up to an old shopping cart with upgraded wheels. As you can see by the video, it travels at a pretty good clip, up to 72kph. And you’ve got to assume that in Cambridge, seeing a motorised shopping cart with a nerd inside tooling around on the street isn’t all that shocking.”
from Evil Mad Scientists “Fun video of a toy train that floats about the track using a liquid nitrogen-cooled superconductor.”
Rob Sharp
Haggis, neeps and tatties are just a few of my favourite things.
