In this new monthly section, I want to share links that I found interesting. This is a good way, to clean my bookmark list and maybe there are some interesting bits here and there for you as well.
This month was more intense on the Ruby/Rails side and less server stuff. I developed a new website for finding recommended Podcats, podfilter.de, which is very alpha now.
Ruby & Ruby on Rails
dickeyxxx : Make bundler crazy fast
Update your bundler, set the environment and speed up your bundle install a lot! Because bundler now will use more than one CPU core.
Rubyists, It's Time to PRY Yourself Off IRB! - SitePoint
For everyone, still not using Pry as an IRB/Rails console replacement, read, learn, apply!
Richard Huang - Upgrade to capistrano3
Capistrano 3 is definitely an improvement IMO. Rails integration with RVM and bundler was very easy.
Errbit: MongoDB is dead. Long live Postgresql
Errbit is an OpenSource error tracking software with Airbrake interface. The main app requires MongoDB, but know somebody made a fork using PostgreSQL instead. Can’t wait to replace our running instance.
vlado/rails_db_info
Rails-Engine for development which provides a Database structure overview under localhost:3000/rails/info/db where you can browse the table structure and data.
Making uploads work across form redisplays
Found out, carrierwave supports finished uploads on form validation errors! Good to know for the future, no custom Paperclip-sessionID handling required.
Scheduled Jobs · mperham/sidekiq Wiki
I tried out Sidekiq for the background jobs on Podfilter.de and love it. Scheduled Jobs is a feature, I want to further explore, like sending E-Mails not instantly, but e.g. on the next workday at daytime and not Sunday in the middle of the night.
kickstarter/rack-attack
Kickstarter is also using Rails for their website. They contributed this Rack middleware for handling various attack scenarios and to rate limit unwanted visitors.
Effortless Two-Factor Authentication
Using Two-factor authentication in your own Rails-app.
RSpec 2.99 and 3.0 betas have been released
Guide to upgrade to Rspec 3. Not sure about the advantages of the new expect syntax.
Coding / General Web development
PostgreSQL: Dont Use CHAR or VARCHAR
This article recommends to just use TEXT as string data type in PostgreSQL, because Chart and Varchar are taking the same space (or more).
understanding_explain.pdf
Understanding EXPLAIN (ANALYZE) arguments and output of PostgreSQL.
List-Unsubscribe
A Mail header, List-Unsubscribe, which should point to a webform for unsubscribing this newsletter. Use it in your (marketing?) e-Mails. Google, AOL, Hotmail will provide a button for the user to unsubscribe when they mark it as spam.
Xpath is actually pretty useful once it stops being confusing
Good overview over Xpath. I generally prefer Css-selector syntax, because the syntax is ubiquitous. But sometimes, like matching content and siblings, Xpath is the only solution.
Devil's Dictionary of Programming
Nice “translation” of various programmer/project manager vocabulary. :)
High Frequency Dating : Mostly Harmless
Hilarious satire about SF startup culture and the urge to automate everything.
The Pastry Box Project
Comprehensive introduction into encodings and how to avoid garbled characters.
lines_of_code
Comparison of various large code projects in (estimated) Lines of Code. Impressive!
15 Free APIs You Didn’t Hear About
Various free APIs:
- Generating Fake User
- Countries, Timezones, GeoIP
- file conversion, image information (EXIF)
- DNS information
- Weather
- …
Learning & Personal development
Independent Analysis on Supplements & Nutrition | Examine.com
Website, that give some overview over scientific results of nutritions, like soy, Gluten, eggs and supplements. With TL;DR part!
Theyre Watching You at Work
Very dystopian description of big companies using big data to control and “optimize” employers. Scary.
Course-Buffet
Find and compare free online courses (MOOC) from Coursera, Udacity, edX and more.
Machine learning
Machine learning is way easier than it looks
Very easy introduction on how to approach machine learning techniques on a Blog for displaying similar articles.
Data mining, forecasting and bioinformatics competitions on Kaggle
Never heard of Kaggle before. Looks interesting, when learning and trying machine learning techniques.
Talk: People who liked this talk also liked ... Building Recommendation...
How to start making recommendations in Ruby. I used some of the ideas for my initial recommendation system on Podfilter.de.
Machine learning algorithm cheat sheet
Overview over popular classification algorithm and when to use what.
(Android) Apps
Moves App
Promising “Quantified Self” data collection App. Unfortunately, no export function, so a little useless for me.
Orbot: Proxy with Tor
A little late to the party, I just discovered this TOR anonymization App for Android. Using it system wide requires rooting, but can also be used with several Apps out of the box.
Disa Instant Messenger
Disa is an ambitious App that wants to unify the various chat clients. Until it it only can replace WhatsApp and text messages. Curious, to watch that project develop and support Facebook, Gplus, Jabber, WeChat, …:)
Server
Vagrantbox.es
Various Vagrant boxes with a lot of different (Linux) distributions and configurations.
Rails meets docker
Getting started with Docker containers and Ruby on Rails.
Beyond Configuration Management
Ansible Blog gives an overview over the vocabulary of Deveops: Configuration Management, Deployment, Provisioning and Orchestration. And how Ansible answer this parts.
Vim
a2d3gE: Vim normal mode grammar
Linguistic approach to Vim’s vocabulary: transitive and intransitive verbs :)
nelstrom/dotfiles
Vimrc and dotfiles from Drew Neil - adding various text-objects that I love to use more in the future, like lines.
Deutsch
Sollte ich kostenlos arbeiten?
Einfaches Entscheidungsdiagramm, ob man etwas kostenlos machen sollte.
XING: Ihr Netzwerk in Zahlen
XING’s inviduelle animierte Infografik über das eigene Profil.
Stuff
How I Ate No Food for 30 Days
VICE magazine reporter tried out the Soylent diet for 30 days.
Deleting Google+ Profile
You can delete your Google+ Profile independently of your “normal” Google profile that you use for log in and Gmail.
What did I miss?
New, unifying document website for Ruby stdlib, Rails and many Gems.