JustinBKay.org - initio

Scores on BroncoDashboard.com

2008-09-25T19:36:00Z

I've added a new page to broncodashboard.com. I'm grabbing scores for the WAC games and other teams that I find interesting so that I can check them in one place. It is kind of a personal scoreboard, but I thought I'd put it out there for the general consumption.

MyDaddyPuzzles and Extreme Makeover Home Edition

2008-09-17T16:23:00Z

MyDaddyPuzzles are being used in the upcoming Season Premier of Extreme Makeover Home Edition. You can read about it here.

rails, nginx, and SSL

2008-09-16T15:10:00Z

This week I decided to buy an ssl certificate to start using with one of my websites. The site is running Rails 2.1.1, behind nginx as a reverse proxy. It was a learning experience to be sure and I'll try to document some of the steps that I had to take to get it working.

The first trick was getting the ca-bundle.crt file to be served by nginx. This is the intermediate ca file that allows browsers to recognize your certificate authority. The trick is to concatonate your certificate file and the ca-bundle.crt file and then place them on the webserver. I found that tidbit here. With Apache, you have a server directive for the ca-bundle file so this step is not necessary.

The next trick was to get nginx to let the rails app know what protocol was being used when requests came in using ssl. The magic is this line in the nginx.conf file

 proxy_set_header X-FORWARDED_PROTO https;

which I found here.

You also need to install the ssl_requirement plugin: ruby script/plugin install ssl_requirement. Which you can read about here.

Last, but not least, you need to tell nginx to turn on ssl and let it know where your certificates are, which is documented here.

That should about get you going with nginx, rails, and 3rd party ssl certificates.

ical is back

2008-09-10T16:25:00Z

I found a free host for the iCal calendar of the broncodashboard.com iCal. So, it has been added back onto broncodashboard.com. I also added a scoreboard page that auto-updates with some WAC scores as well as some other teams that I like to follow. I used Hpricot, the Ruby library to gather the scores from espn.

rails printer icon helper

2008-08-29T20:30:00Z

I had occasion to need to add a printer icon to some web pages in one of my Rails apps this week. I found a nice free icon at famfamfam.com for the printer. I added the link and javascript and it worked. I decided that it would be a nice idea to make a helper for this so I could easily duplicate it on other pages. Here it is:


# in application_helper.rb
def printer_icon(top=50, left=550)
    "<a href=\"#\" id=\"printer_icon\" style=\"position: absolute; top: #{top}px; left: #{left}px;\" onClick=\"window.print();return false;\">#{image_tag 'printer.png'} </a>"
end

#usage 
<%= printer_icon %>

Works great.

Mini Server -- looks like bad hd

2008-08-20T02:58:00Z

My 1.25 gz mini is failing. Not sure, but I think the HD is toast. Too bad, I'm losing a log of data... I knew I should have backed that thing up.

House For Sale

2008-06-25T14:51:00Z

So, I had a meeting last evening and didn't get home until about 9pm. When I rolled up to the house, I couldn't help but notice that there was a for sale by owner sign in my front yard. That was a surprise.

The market is pretty bad right now, so I don't really expect that much will come of this, but it is kind of exciting. Potentially homeless.

Rails 2.1

2008-06-20T20:50:00Z

Biggest issue for me with the upgrading to Rails 2.1 from 2.0.2 seems to be the eager loading. Where I have used :include => :some_association in my find code and haven't put the full tablename.column syntax in my :conditions SQL, the table doesn't get loaded and errors occur, so I've been busy adding included table names to my conditions strings.

Rails 2.1 also seems to have different behavior when it comes to how dates are handled. If a partial date is input, I end up with some weird dates instead of seeing the multi-param error that I used to see. Not sure I'm liking that very much.

Apple TV

2008-06-13T15:20:00Z

I have my first media center now. It comes in the form of an Apple TV. I have hacked it to allow uploading of movies that are not synced with my iTunes. This was necessary because my mac mini hard disk is full. So far I'm really liking it. I do wish that it had a larger hard drive. It is the 40gb model. It will be great to have all of the kids movies on there so they can watch them without destroying any more dvd discs. We really need to get an iMac with a good sized drive.

redirecting uploads to merb

2008-05-21T16:55:00Z

I have a rails app for which I am using merb to handle the file uploading duties. I am using nginx as the webserver to proxy to the rails app. So here is the little bit of config from the nginx.conf that grabs the url that matches and sends it off to merb. This bit of code is in the location block.


if ($uri = /upload/acceptor) {
        proxy_pass http://applicationserver:4010;
        break;
   }

New style web content

2008-05-19T14:49:00Z

I really like what these guys are doing with the web. They can put links into small windows that pop open and give you extra information about things on the page, but you stay on the page and you get nice control over the linked content. Very nice way to have supplementary info linked on a page.

third ride

2008-05-13T02:49:00Z

rode from military reserve up around shane's loop and back down. On the way down I had a pretty good spill. I can't sit very well.

Second Ride

2008-05-13T02:48:00Z

started at military reserve dirt lot and rode up to shane's loop.

First Ride

2008-05-09T02:47:00Z

First Ride of the year was a green belt trip up around barber park from park center

Ruby Business Days in the Future

2008-05-07T15:38:00Z

Going the other way now


    1 def business_days_future(num,start_date=nil)
    2   # takes the number of days in the past you are looking for
    3   # like 10 business days ago
    4   start_date ||= Date.today
    5   start_day_of_week = start_date.cwday #Date.today.cwday
    6   ans = 0
    7   # find the number of weeks
    8   weeks = num / 5.0
    9   #puts "yields #{weeks} weeks"
   10     
   11   temp_num = num > 5 ? 5 : num
   12   #puts "first temp num #{temp_num}"
   13   
   14   begin
   15     
   16     ans += days_to_adjust_f(start_day_of_week,temp_num)
   17     #puts "ans in loop #{ans}"
   18     
   19     weeks -= 1.0
   20     #puts "weeks in loop #{weeks}"
   21     
   22     temp_num = (weeks >= 1) ? 5 : num % 5
   23     #puts "temp_num after loop #{temp_num}"
   24   end while weeks > 0
   25   
   26   #puts "#{start_date} - #{num} - #{ans}"
   27   days_ago = start_date + num + ans
   28   
   29 end
   30 
   31 
   32 
   33 def days_to_adjust_f(start_day_of_week,num)
   34   ansr = 0
   35   case start_day_of_week
   36   when 1
   37     if 5 == num then ansr += 2 end
   38   when 2
   39     if (4..5).include?(num) then ansr += 2 end
   40   when 3
   41     if (3..5).include?(num) then ansr += 2 end
   42   when 4
   43     if (2..5).include?(num) then ansr += 2 end
   44   when 5
   45     if (1..5).include?(num) then ansr += 2 end
   46   when 6
   47     if (1..5).include?(num) then ansr += 1 end
   48   when 7
   49     #do nothing 
   50   end
   51   return ansr
   52 end