Posted by Ben Reubenstein Sat, 25 Oct 2008 06:44:00 GMT
The Android G1 phone is in my hands. Although it definitely lacks the polish of the iPhone, it certainly has huge growth potential, especially for developers. Xcellent Creations has finished up the web based Internet speed test, iNetwork Test for Android web edition. The native version is in the works and we hope to have it pushed to Market Place soon.Posted by Ben Reubenstein Sat, 18 Oct 2008 02:13:00 GMT
I have tweeted twice in regards to Rally Software's agile project management system. |
The actions menu is out of tune with its context. If you are on the Tasks page for a User Story the most likely thing to do is add new tasks. HOWEVER that menu includes all the actions for a story, INCLUDING making a new story. The "New Task" item is at the bottom of the list. I cannot tell you how many times I have created several "tasks" only to realize I hit the wrong option and now have added several unnecessary stories. Another small issue I have with this screen is that navigation items on the left do not emphasize the current page as you move around. |
| You can set the status at both the Story level and the Task level. The two do not seem to interact well and will sometimes result in stories that are marked complete that actually have tasks still in progress. A story should not be marked as complete until all tasks within the story are marked complete. |
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Posted by Ben Reubenstein Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:42:00 GMT
A friend of mine had horrible reception at the far end of his house for his wireless network. He purchased matching WNR834B Netgear routers and needed to bridge them. Let me start by saying, the below setup CAN BE DONE, but it is not straight forward, well documented, or easy to do. This is the setup I finally got working
Internet Modem -wired- WNR834B (master router) -wireless- WNR834B (wireless repeater)
Here are some tips to get it going:
Posted by Ben Reubenstein Sat, 23 Aug 2008 03:59:00 GMT
I have been using the magic of Rails for a lot lately but some of those apps are starting to take off and get slow. It isn't Rails however it is MySQL queries to big tables. You don't have to be a MySQL rocket scientist to really make a huge difference. Want to improve queries to your big tables? Add indexes for the columns you use most in your where clause.
log_slow_queries = /var/log/mysql/mysql-slow.log
mysql> EXPLAIN select * from network_tests where user_id = 1; +----+-------------+---------------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+--------+-------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+---------------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+--------+-------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | network_tests | ALL | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL | 264559 | Using where | +----+-------------+---------------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+--------+-------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> ALTER TABLE network_tests ADD INDEX(user_id,test_key); Query OK, 285075 rows affected (1 min 7.14 sec) Records: 285075 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
mysql> EXPLAIN select * from network_tests where user_id = 1; +----+-------------+---------------+------+---------------+---------+---------+-------+------+-------------+ | id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra | +----+-------------+---------------+------+---------------+---------+---------+-------+------+-------------+ | 1 | SIMPLE | network_tests | ref | user_id | user_id | 5 | const | 118 | Using where | +----+-------------+---------------+------+---------------+---------+---------+-------+------+-------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec)
Posted by Ben Reubenstein Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:39:00 GMT
After my initial surfing on my iPhone for Olympic medal totals, I found no immediate results for an optimized mobile experience. I wrote up a quick site after which I immediately found NBC's mobile site. Mine is super simple, and can be found at iPhone Olympic Medal Counts. CHEERS.
Posted by Ben Reubenstein Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:47:00 GMT
After almost a year of collecting data and half a million results recorded, Xcellent Creations, Inc. has released the next version of the iNetwork Test web application. The iNetwork Test web application for iPhone has been moved to http://www.inetworktest.com/iphone_content. The main iNetworkTest.com is now a portal to Mobile Network Testing Results.Posted by Ben Reubenstein Fri, 02 May 2008 00:24:00 GMT
If you are reading this you are hitting the new server. I separated my sites out into two servers, one running a LAMP stack and the other running a LNMR (Linux Nginx MySQL Rails) stack.
Posted by Ben Reubenstein Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:06:00 GMT
After getting passenger up and running I realized that I didn't have PHP cranking with the freshly compiled Apache. Here are the steps I took to get PHP going:
Compile PHP from source, be sure to check out ./configure --help for more compile options. Also as always adjust to your systems paths as necessary.
wget http://www.php.net/get/php-5.2.5.tar.gz/from/this/mirror
tar -zxvf php-5.2.5.tar.gz
cd php-5.2.5
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/php --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs --with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql --with-curl
make
sudo make install
I am not sure why but the php bin file ends up being called php.dSYM. There might be a compile option I missed to fix this or it could be the Mac OS X compiler. I fixed the issue by creating a symlink.
sudo ln -s /usr/local/php/bin/php.dSYM /usr/local/php/bin/php
Add /usr/local/php/bin to your path in .bash_login and reload your terminal so that it is in your path. You can confirm that you are getting the right php by issuing:
which php
#The command should return:
/usr/local/php/bin/php
Add directives to the httpd.conf for Apache to find the PHP module and handle .php files
LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so
AddHandler php5-script php
Restart Apache
/usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl restart
Put a file in the root of your server or in virtual host directory called info.php with the phpinfo command. Visit the file via your web browser to confirm your install.
<?php phpinfo() ?>
Be sure to leave comments with any issues you have, or updates I can make to this document.
Posted by Ben Reubenstein Sat, 12 Apr 2008 22:32:00 GMT
UPDATE:
In the latest version of Phusion Passenger (mod_rails) 1.0.3 the default Mac OS X Apache installation is now supported! If you're still into rolling you're own these directions still apply. To upgrade to the latest version if you already have it working:
passenger-install-apache2-module
sudo passenger-install-apache2-module
sudo /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl restart
Today I was very excited to see that Passenger (mod_rails for Apache) had been released. Here is how I got things rolling on my Mac OS X Leopard installation. Be sure to refer to the official docs for more information.
Compile Apache2 from source. The passenger-install-apache2-module warned against using the Mac rolled Apache. I used a pretty broad ./configure, feel free to customize.
curl -O http://www.alliedquotes.com/mirrors/apache/httpd/httpd-2.2.8.tar.gz
tar -zxvf httpd-2.2.8.tar.gz
cd httpd-2.2.8
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache2 --enable-access --enable-actions \
--enable-alias --enable-asis --enable-auth --enable-auth_dbm \
--enable-auth_digest --enable-autoindex --enable-cache --enable-cgi \
--enable-dav --enable-dav_fs --enable-deflate --enable-dir --enable-disk_cache \
--enable-dumpio --enable-env --enable-expires --enable-fastcgi --enable-file_cache \
--enable-headers --enable-imap --enable-include --enable-info --enable-log_config \
--enable-log_forensic --enable-logio --enable-mem_cache --enable-mime \
--enable-mime_magic --enable-negotiation --enable-perl --enable-rewrite --enable-setenvif \
--enable-speling --enable-ssl --enable-status --enable-suexec --enable-unique_id \
--enable-userdir --enable-usertrack --enable-version --enable-vhost_alias --enable-so \
--enable-module=all --enable-shared=max
make
sudo make install
Install the gem
sudo gem install passenger
Add /usr/local/apache2/bin to your path in ~/.bash_login so that it can find your new apache2 install, then run the command to build the module.
sudo passenger-install-apache2-module
Follow the prescribed instructions from mod_rails adding the following to /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf. BE SURE TO USE THE SETTINGS DUMPED OUT WHEN YOU RUN passenger-install-apache2-module as the paths on your system may differ.
LoadModule passenger_module /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-1.0.1/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
RailsSpawnServer /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-1.0.1/bin/passenger-spawn-server
RailsRuby /usr/local/bin/ruby
Setup a folder to hold vhosts
sudo mkdir /usr/local/apache2/conf/vhosts
Add an Include to httpd.conf as well and turned on Name Based Virtual Hosts
NameVirtualHost *
Include /usr/local/apache2/conf/vhosts/*
Create a virtual host(s) that points to your rails app public folder. You can create one for each app you would like to run with Apache
# Example App
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName app.test
DocumentRoot /Users/benr/Rails/app/public
RailsEnv development
</VirtualHost>
# Example App 2
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName app2.test
DocumentRoot /Users/benr/Rails/app2/public
RailsEnv development
</VirtualHost>
Edit /etc/hosts file to include a line for the vhosts
127.0.0.1 app.test app2.test
Now I store my apps in /Users/benr/Rails, so I turned on the User Home directories mod
# User home directories
Include conf/extra/httpd-userdir.conf
I then configured the httpd-userdir.conf so that it used that folder, much like in the default Mac Apache it allows you to put a site in ~/Sites
UserDir Rails
<Directory "/Users/*/Rails">
AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit Indexes
Options MultiViews Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch IncludesNoExec
<Limit GET POST OPTIONS>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Limit>
<LimitExcept GET POST OPTIONS>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</LimitExcept>
</Directory>
Start Apache
sudo /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start
To restart your app, create a file called RAILS_ROOT/tmp/restart.txt and reload your page. < HOT!
Voila! It worked when I visted app.test and app2.test. The most important thing to remember is the defaults that mod_rails uses. I was having a lot of trouble and it turned out to be the fact that it was defaulting to production mode. The best place to track down the errors is in your RAILS_ROOT/log/YOURENV.log
If you would like to have your newly compiled Apache start on boot, Jose Hales-Garcia posted this comment:
Create a new file in /Library/LaunchDaemons
sudo pico /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist
Paste in the following lines and save the file (UPDATED thx: ecchi):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>org.apache.httpd</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd</string>
<string>-k</string>
<string>start</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>
Load the daemon into the launchd system using the following command:
sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist
That's it. The local httpd daemon will load on start-up after that. While it's running you can control the Apache daemon with the /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl command. To unload the daemon (if Apple ever fixes Apache) do: sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist
UPDATE! Also remember to trash the .htaccess that comes with Rails. This was jacking up a couple of my applications.
UPDATE 2 Don't forget to turn off the Mac OS X Apache if it is running. System Preferences > Sharing
HOPE THIS HELPS! Pease leave comments with suggestions or issues you run into!
