crunchlife

Lagoa Multiphysics 1.0

Ryan Baxter — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:17:00 -0700

Lagoa Multiphysics 1.0 - Teaser from Thiago Costa on Vimeo.

Robert Martin's "Twenty-Five Zeros" Keynote at RailsConf 2010

Ryan Baxter — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:04:00 -0700

Ruby Fractal Library 1.2.2

Ryan Baxter — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:34:00 -0800

The Ruby Fractal Library now uses ChunkyPNG. Thanks to Willem van Bergen for creating a 100% pure Ruby PNG solution! ChunkyPNG provides full read/write capabilities of PNG files without the dependency hassle of bigger image libraries. Install fractals and enjoy the chunky goodness.

sudo gem install fractals

Oh, and check out this post at Implements Developer for another great way to create the Mandelbrot Set in Ruby.

Hello MongoDB

Ryan Baxter — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:11:00 -0800

In an effort to jump-start my creativity, I thought I’d hop on the NoSQL train and work up a little “Hello World” app using MongoDB with Sinatra and MongoMapper. In a later project I’ll be throwing Haml into the mix and working completely outside of my comfort zone. Dependencies be damned!

require 'rubygems'
require 'mongo_mapper'
require 'sinatra'

MongoMapper.connection = Mongo::Connection.new('localhost')
MongoMapper.database = 'messages'

class Message
  include MongoMapper::Document
  key :message, String
  key :ip_address, String
  timestamps!
end

get '/' do
  Message.all.map { |m|
    time = m.created_at.localtime
    "On #{ time.strftime('%m/%d/%Y') } at " \
    "#{ time.strftime('%I:%M %p')} <strong>#{ m.ip_address }</strong> said, " \
    "<strong>\"#{ m.message }\"</strong>"
  }.join "<br />"
end

get '/:message' do
  Message.create(:message => params[:message], :ip_address => @env['REMOTE_ADDR']).save
  redirect '/'
end

On 02/17/2010 at 10:13 PM 127.0.0.1 said, “Hello World!”

Data Visualization in the AlloSphere

Ryan Baxter — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:42:00 -0700

Ruby Fractal Library 1.2.0

Ryan Baxter — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:36:00 -0700

I’ve finally released version 1.2.0 of the Ruby Fractal Library. It’s still just as small and easy to use, but with a few new twists. I’ve removed most of the duplicate code, added Procs where appropriate, and made the syntax more consistent. The result is much more readable and should be easier to maintain.

The source code has been split into multiple files. One for each module.
Each of the fractals has been distilled to a single block passed to the Fractal base class’ constructor. This makes it easy to construct new orbits fractals by either inheriting from Fractal or instantiating it directly.
Classes have been added for the Burning Ship and Newton fractals.
A ‘Winter’ theme has been added.
Users can now choose which dependancy nightmare they’d prefer. PNG, RMagick and JRuby each have their own renderer. PNGRenderer is the default, but is easy to override with the renderer= method.
bailout and max_iterations are no longer constructor parameters. This is the biggest breaking change.
Unit tests have been added for each fractal.
Several rake tasks have been added to make installation and gem creation easier.
RDoc documentation is now available.

A project for this library has been created at RubyForge, but the source code can still be found at the same old place. I’m considering a move to github, but I’ll make an announcement if that happens. If you decide to download the Ruby Fractal Library, be sure to check out examples.rb in the project’s source. You should also take a look at the README file and documentation before getting started. Make some fractals and enjoy! Bugs can be filed at the RubyForge tracker.

Subversion: Merging a Branch into Trunk

Ryan Baxter — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:21:00 -0700

I can never remember how to merge a Subversion branch into trunk. So for future reference, here is how it’s done.

First, get a working copy of the head revision of trunk.

svn checkout svn://svnserver/project/trunk project

Next, merge the branch with your working copy.

svn merge svn://svnserver/project/trunk svn://svnserver/project/branches/branch project

Finally, commit the results of the merge.

cd project
svn commit -m "Merging branch X.X.X into trunk."

You can also specify a revision number in your merge.

svn merge svn://svnserver/project/trunk@223 svn://svnserver/project/branches/branch@223 project

That’s it.

Installing RMagick on Ubuntu*

Ryan Baxter — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:00:00 -0700

Because I always forget how…

sudo apt-get install libmagickwand-dev
sudo gem install rmagick

and you reference it in code like so:

# Don't forget the capital "RM"!
require 'RMagick'
include RMagick

*I’ve only done this using Ubuntu 9.04. Your mileage may vary.

Where is _why?

Ryan Baxter — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:20:00 -0700

Why the lucky stiff speaking at the Carnegie Mellon Art and Code Symposium. If the rumors are true, you’ll be missed.

ART && CODE Symposium: Hackety Hack, why the lucky stiff from STUDIO for Creative Inquiry on Vimeo.

I'm Only Working

Ryan Baxter — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:13:00 -0700

When I’m not working, I read a lot of blogs. While eating lunch today, I read a quote from writer J. Robert Lennon on Wil Wheaton’s blog that instantly put a smile on my face. I can attest that the quote applies equally to programmers. In fact, I catch myself doing this several times a day.

The truth, of course, is that writers programmers are always working. When you ask a writer programmer a direct question, and he smiles and nods and then says “Well!” and turns and walks away without saying goodbye, he is actually working.

If a writer programmer is giving you a ride to the bus station and pulls up in front of the supermarket and turns to you and says, “Enjoy your trip!,” she is actually working.

So if you’re talking to me and something similar to the above happens, I apologize. I’m only working.

Multiple Subversion Services on Windows

Ryan Baxter — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:13:00 -0700

It’s possible, but not often necessary, to run multiple instances of the Subversion service on Microsoft Windows. At work, the source code of IT staff and Engineers is kept on two different servers with a third hosting Subversion. Since one of our Engineering departments recently decided to test Subversion as their SCM system, I had to install an additional service to manage their repositories.

I have a horrible time remembering the syntax for creating a Subversion service. That said, I’ve posted my worst case scenario for future reference. The arguments include UNC paths, ports, and lots of slashes. Next time, with the help of Google, I’ll remember. Oh, and if you’re receiving a 1053 error, it may be that you need to run the service under an account with sufficient rights to the UNC path used as the root (-r) Subversion repository.

sc create svnserve_it binpath= "\"C:\Program Files\CollabNet Subversion Server\svnserve.exe\" --service -r \"\\ITFILESERVER\Repositories\" --listen-port 3690" displayname= "Subversion Server (IT)" depend= tcpip start= auto

sc create svnserve_engineering binpath= "\"C:\Program Files\CollabNet Subversion Server\svnserve.exe\" --service -r \"\\ENGFILESERVER\Repositories\" --listen-port 3691" displayname= "Subversion Server (Engineering)" depend= tcpip start= auto

Thank You, Mozilla!

Ryan Baxter — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:54:00 -0700

I’ve been a devout Firefox user since Phoenix. That is until this past week. Tiring of its horrible CPU spikes and insatiable hunger for memory, I contemplated switching to Opera. The only thing that kept me from making the transition was Opera’s lack of an Xmarks plug-in. Not being able to use my favorite Bookmarks manager killed any hope of an alternate browser on my computers.

sudo rm -rf ~/lawn/kids*

99% CPU spikes and 350+ MB memory usage are unacceptable, but when using Firefox 3.0 they’re an every day experience. With all hope lost, I installed the latest Firefox beta. Since then, Firefox has yet to exceed 75% CPU utilization or consume more than 225 MB of memory. All this, even while watching the latest high-def SWTOR cinematic trailer (which is awesome btw). JavaScript heavy websites still consume resources, but with much less cost.

Years ago, I wouldn’t have thought twice about installing a beta, but time has eroded my brazen disregard for a stable computer. Firefox Beta 4 may not restore your youth, but it will reallocate your memory. Thank you, Mozilla!

Linksys NAS200 Disk Failure - Part 2

Ryan Baxter — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:27:00 -0700

A few weeks ago I began having problems with my Linksys NAS200. At the time, I couldn’t discern whether it was a hard drive failure or a problem with the NAS200’s disk controller. The status message within the NAS200’s administrative panel suggested that the drive had been “removed”. I received no alert message and proceeded to diagnose the problem to the best of my abilities.

After some thought, I devised a plan to back up the remaining good disk, power down the NAS200, and replace Disk 1 with a new hard drive. I purchased an Eagle Consus M-Series external drive enclosure and a spare Western Digital 500 GB hard drive for a total of $102.95. I placed the order last Saturday and UPS delivered the package to my door on the following Tuesday.

Last night I backed up the files on my Linksys NAS200 using the Eagle drive enclosure and a spare 250 GB SATA drive that I had laying around. Transferring the files from my NAS200 to the external drive was painful. At speeds between 900 KB/sec and 1.9 MB/sec, I decided to make a sacrifice and chose not to include my music and movie collection.

Even without my media files the backup still took about nine hours to complete. It’s almost inevitable that my wife is awake at 3 AM. Before bed, I asked her to wake me up so that I could check on the progress of the backup. I didn’t want to risk having the USB drive enclosure overheat and foil my plans. My wife is more cheerful than I am at 3 o’clock in the morning. She woke me up as planned and I stumbled from the bedroom to sit on the floor in front of the NAS200. The backup was complete.

Do not attempt to insert a hard drive into your NAS200 in the dark. Remember the puzzling “ribbon” that I found in each of the drive bays? Well, half of the ribbon is encased in plastic. I didn’t even think about it last night and ended up turning Disk 1’s ribbon into an accordion. In the dark, at 3 AM, I thought the drive was properly seated. I turned on the device and waited. The Disk 2 LED lit up brightly. I waited some more. Disk 1 remained dark. My wife turned on our living room lights and found me squatting on the floor holding the NAS200 inches from my face. Within the glow of the incandescents I could tell what I had just done.

I had to shake the NAS200 (gently) to remove the disk that I had just securely wedged into the first drive bay. Once the drive was removed I decided to try again in the morning. With proper lighting and a few more hours of sleep, I carefully inserted the new drive and pressed the power button. The NAS200 whirred and its lights began blinking. Disk 2… Disk 1… Disk 1! According to what I had previously read, The NAS200’s disk LEDs alternate when mirroring. My NAS200’s lights were doing just that.

After work I noticed that both disk lights were solid indicating that both drives were active. I checked the NAS200’s administrative panel and both drives were listed as “Used by RAID 1”. Satisfied, I mounted the shares and proceeded to browse through my files. Everything was there!

My original NAS200 review has over ninety comments and both the Linksys community forums and linksysinfo.org are filled with posts left by people inquiring about the device. I’ve read a lot of bad reviews and received quite a few disparaging comments regarding the reliability of the NAS200. I bought it knowing it was new on the market. Trusting the Linksys brand name, I figured it’d be a sturdy device and for eighteen months it has been.

It’s just as foolish to rely on a single device as it is a single hard drive for safe file storage. Hardware will always fail. That said, I’ve begun to work on an off-site storage strategy for my home backups. I’ll be posting more on this when I’ve worked out the details.

Linksys NAS200 Disk Failure

Ryan Baxter — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:58:00 -0800

After 18 months of abuse, my NAS200 finally lost a hard drive. I heard a muffled beep this evening while working on a new design for this website. Thinking it was one of my daughter’s many noisy toys, I dismissed the alarm and continued working. About an hour ago I attempted to save my work to a share on the NAS200, but was greeted with this rather ambiguous error message.

I could ping the device, but browsing to its administrative website resulted in a 404 error.

The NAS200’s power and Disk 2 lights were blinking in alternation. The Disk 1 indicator was not lit at all. My heart sank at this point. So I next did what all IT professionals do when disaster strikes. I hit the power button and said a small prayer. Unfortunately, my NAS200 would not shut down. I yanked its power cord from the wall, let it cool down, and plugged it back in. As the NAS200 powered up, its fan whirred and lights began blinking.

After reboot, the NAS200’s lights blinked in the same pattern as before, but this time I decided to wait a few minutes rather than have a panic attack. During this time the ACT light flickered rapidly for about 10 minutes. When it finally went out, the power and Disk 2 lights stayed lit, but Disk 1 remained dark. At this point I was able to browse to the administrative website and view Disk 1’s status. The drive appeared to be “removed”. Huh?

I’m perplexed as to what this means. I did not receive a hardware failure e-mail and the “removed” status makes me think that the controller has failed rather than the disk itself. Hmmm… Disk 2 is still accessible so my plan is to back it up as quickly as possible and then proceed as if I’m dealing with a disk failure. Wish me luck.

*Update: The second part of this article can be found here.