Posts Archive

I found a bug in my HTML code today running Firefox 3. <script> tags must supposedly be closed by a </script> and not by the less verbose but obviously wrong <script/>, as explained in this dismissed bug report.

If you insist on using <script/> FF3 will punish you with a blank page caused by the body tag being self closed, <body/>. Sort of: “You close your script tags like that - I’ll close your damn body tag like that. Now, how do you like that???”

Yesterday I twittered that I was trying to find a version of Ruby that both cc.rb and Rails likes. Last night, Wordpress plugin Twittertools posted yesterdays twitters to this blog. And this morning, I have an answer from Alexey Verkhovsky what the good versions are. Gotta love the lazyweb.

I use a Microsoft Natural Keyboard with my MacBook Pro - make that two, one at home and one at work. The function keys stopped working last week on the one at work which is a pretty big deal if you use Exposé as much as I do. I did the whole routine and could not find the problem. As the keyboard at home worked just fine, I started to believe that there was something wrong with the actual keyboard.

I have never programmed anything using Microsoft products, but if I did, heroes happen here and source fource would make me feel embarrassed. Who are they targeting?

I managed to send an invite to TripIt to everyone in my GMail addressbook this morning. This was unintentional, I guess either I am stupid or the TripIt interface is unclear.

Anyway, as I have 500+ email addresses in GMail, and some are people I have mailed once, this might turn out to be quite awkward. So sorry about that if you got the mail and wonder why the hell I sent it.

I am creating a small site using Merb, DataMapper and RSpec, all in all a very enjoyable experience. I did however have problem getting the test database to be automigrated when running the specs, as I am used to in Rails.

As Google did not help, I turned to #merb on IRC, and got immediate help.

Two alternatives:

1. Run rake MERB_ENV=test dm:db:automigrate before running rake specs
2. Insert DataMapper::Base.auto_migrate! into your spec/spec_helper.rb

Big thanks to topfunky, afrench and jdempsey for the help.

For all the good reasons, yak shaving is the thing to do these days.

I just found out that the talk I gave at Smidig 2007 is available online. If you think there is something wrong with the sound, it is in swedish.

I’ve been using distributed version control for over a year now, and if it is up to me, I will never use a centralized VCS again.

When I evaluated the alternatives last year, I choose Mercurial as the DVCS we are using at WeMind. The reasons were:

1. Usability - git was quite obscure back then
2. Speed - bazaar and monotone was quite slow
3. Large enough uptake - OpenSolaris and Mozilla started using Mercurial at the same time.
4. Runs on all platforms, if we ever employed someone who wants to use Windows
5. Built in Python which could be a good think if I ever wanted to extend it

A year later we are happy with Mercurial, but the landscape has changed. In particular I am seeing a huge growth of people using git, especially within the Ruby community. Which in itself is something I am happy about.

Tim Bray on the JVM being the good part of Java:

“But the Java language just doesn’t seem like the interesting thing about Java, these days.”

I wish more Java programmers would agree to this. One of my observations at JFokus the other day was that a lot of people really like Java the language, and are going through hoops to implement their ideas in it.

Stephan Janssen has created a kick ass new version of parleys.com in Flex/Air, but he wants to redo it all in JavaFX script, just so that it is Java. Rickard Öbergs new framework for composite oriented programming could be useful, but in my opinion it introduces enough new concepts to qualify for a whole new language. Lipsticking on top of Java makes it feel verbose and clumsy. After a year of Ruby I have very little patience for Java interfaces.