July 2010
9 posts
3 tags
Upgrading to Rails 3.0.0.rc
The release candidate of Rails 3 released yesterday contains quite a few surprises for the careless updater from earlier Rails 3 betas (me totally included). As usual, a proper test suite will save your bacon.
Here is the list of pitfalls I encountered, with an advised solution/workaround where available.
Rails 3.0.0.rc requires Bundler 1.0.0.rc
Before you start getting weird errors, do...
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Joe McNally Workshop, London
I attended Joe McNally’s lighting workshop at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London on July 23rd. While it wasn’t a hands-on workshop, due to the sheer fact that more than 500 people attended it, but Joe is such an outstanding photographer and trainer that it was still totally worth the journey from Germany.
All in all, it was a whirlwind tour for on-location and studio...
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jQuery Visualize: Accessible Charts with HTML5 →
The Visualize plugin parses key content elements in a well-structured HTML table, and leverages that native HTML5 canvas drawing ability to transform them into a chart or graph visualization. For example, table row data values serve as chart bars, lines or pie wedges; table headers become value and legend labels; and the title and caption values provide title labels within the image.
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MoviePeg for iPad →
Hot on the heels of MoviePeg for iPhone comes MoviePeg for iPad, now available for pre-order.
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Sitting straight 'bad for backs' →
BBC News:
In this study, the patients assumed three different sitting positions: a slouching position, in which the body is hunched forward as if they were leaning over a desk or a video game console, an upright 90-degree sitting position; and a “relaxed” position where they leaned back at 135 degrees while their feet remained on the floor.
I’ve been suffering from worn...
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Phusion Passenger Lite →
Hongli Lai:
Phusion Passenger Lite consists of an Nginx core. Nginx is known to be extremely scalable, high-performance and lightweight. You do not need to have Nginx already installed; this is automatically taken care of. You also do not need to have any Nginx experience: Nginx is hidden from the user but its power is automatically utilized.
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June 2010
15 posts
With previous iPhones, it was like dropping a piece of buttered toast — there...
– Daring Fireball: 4
Press the Magic Button →
Derek Powazek:
I propose that blocking people on sites like Twitter or Flickr should not be interpreted as an insult. I propose that it’s simply taking yourself out of someone else’s attention stream.
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Dropbox enables sharing of any file or folder →
This (beta) feature is currently available in the Dropbox clients 0.8 or higher, which are only distributed via the forums linked here. Those clients will also give you the ability to only sync a portion of your Dropbox to a given client. (A MacBook with SSD not having enough room for your entire music collection, for example.)
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The Economist reviews a few apps which are meant to help you focus. I’ve tried...
– Shawn Blanc
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Type-To-Navigate →
This is another great Safari extension and the one feature from Saft I missed when I stopped using it. It allows you to just type part of any text in a hyperlink on the current page and hit enter to navigate to that link. You can even bounce between multiple matches on a single page via ⌘G.
(Once again via Safari Extensions.)
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Instapaper Greystyled Safari Extensions →
ElasticThreads’ user-scripts that restyle the indispensable Instapaper for both form and function have now been converted into an Extension for the brand new Safari 5.
(Via Safari Extensions.)
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Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 →
The final version of Lightroom 3 was just released. It’s a $99 upgrade for owners of previous versions.
While most of the new features were available in the beta cycle over the past months (improved noise reduction, tethered shooting, Flickr integration, and image watermarking for example), the final version ships with a brand new “Lens Corrections” panel in the develop module,...
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Photography Tips from Jim Richardson of National... →
A plethora of free photography tips and articles from long time National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson. A true must-read.
(Via Rob Galbraith.)
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Camera RAW 6.1 →
This final release of Camera RAW ships with the new lens correction functionality everyone is raving about.
May 2010
9 posts
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Portraiture support for CS5 on the Mac →
Imagenomic released a 64-bit version of its excellent Portraiture 2 plug-in for Photoshop CS5 on the Mac.
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Rails 2.3.6 →
Includes more prep-work for Rails 3, conventions for the use of flash (the store), XSS prevention, and more.
I do have a problem running my RSpec 1.3.0 suite in my app at the moment and haven’t really found out what’s causing it. Expectations on ActiveRecord classes cause the specs to blow up. Hopefully this is cleared shortly.
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Soulver 2.0 →
Impressive update to Acqualia’s spreadsheet/calculator cross-over application. They also have iPad and iPhone versions of it available. Brilliant.
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D-Town TV Season #3 →
Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski kick off Season 3 of the weekly show for DSLR Shooters.
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ThinkTankPhoto Retrospective →
Wired’s Gadget Lab reviews the new Retrospective series from ThinkTankPhoto. Myself, I pre-ordered the Retrospective 20 in Pinestone, shipping in Europe in July. Because, well, you can never have too many camera bags.
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April 2010
33 posts
3 tags
Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future,...
– Steve Jobs
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Special Technologies
Jordan Rohan, an “Internet analyst” with Thomas Weisel Partners, in a WSJ article about iAd:
Apple isn’t making that any easier, with requirements that advertisers use special technologies for its system
You mean, like, HTML5 and CSS3, right?
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Transmit 4 →
Must have upgrade to Panic’s sleek file transfer utility. Like I said on Twitter, it makes me wish I had more files to transfer just to be able to use it more.
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iStat Menus 3.0 →
After almost abandoning iStat Menus at version 2.0, Bjango resurrected this essential Mac utility as a for-pay app. It’s been redesigned as a stand-alone application (it was a preference pane), now supports battery status display on portable Macs, and, most importantly, moon phases in the clock extra. The full version history is available here.
It can be had for $10 and is well worth that...
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Drum Solo →
Nikon World article describing how Mike Corrado approached a concert stage shoot with rock band Nickelback’s drummer Daniel Adair using two remote cameras mounted to the drum kit and triggered with PocketWizards.
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Spyder3Elite 4.0 →
Apart from a weird combination of numbers in the product name and the version number, this looks like an impressive update to an already impressive software package. I’ve been using the Spyder3Elite package for a while with my Apple Cinema displays and have been very happy with the results, especially when compared to those delivered by the EyeOne puck and software that came with my HP Z3100...
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Lightroom 2.7 and Camera Raw 5.7 →
Besides the usual slew of updated cameras, the .7 releases include an updated demosaic algorithm to provide compatibility with Lightroom 3 Beta 2.
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There is one theme to all of my my deepest and most personal fantasies. One that...
– Patrick Rhone in Shhh
Boy, I don’t know if it’s related to me sharing first names with him (and being introvert), but I know this urge very well, to just tune out to… nothing.
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Snazzy Hover Effects Using CSS →
A detailed tutorial on how to build mouse-over captions when hovering over images. Uses the progressive enhancement technique to go from pure CSS2.1 properties to CSS3 properties for maximum compatibility.
(Via @flocke.)
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PeepOpen →
Geoff Grosenbach:
PeepOpen is a file navigation application that works with TextMate, MacVim, and Carbon Emacs[…]. Search on both paths and filenames, and easily open the file in your text editor with a single keypress. Useful metadata helps you quickly choose the file you’re looking for.
He herewith fulfills his eager goal of developing a solution for the problems discussed in this...
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Opera Mini: like VNC-ing from your iPhone to a Motorola Razr with a really fast...
– Neven Mrgan
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The Importance of Doodling →
Paddy Donnelly:
There’s letting your mind float away and then there’s, what could maybe be described as ‘active doodling’, where you make a proper effort to indulge in a quirky little project of your own. Something not Internet related in the slightest, which will take you away from the monotony of reaching Inbox Zero.
My active doodling for last weekend included...
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CSSDesk →
Ever wanted to toy with HTML/CSS ideas right there in-browser, complete with real-time previews, syntax highlighting, and line numbers? Then CSSDesk from @pixelmatrix should rock your world.