Latest Articles : Andy Jeffries

25 Tips for Intermediate Git Users

Andy Jeffries — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:24:47 +0000

I’ve been using git for about 18 months now and thought I knew it pretty well. Then we had Scott Chacon from GitHub over to do some training at LVS, a supplier/developer of betting/gaming software (where I’m currently contracting) and I learnt a ton in the first day.

As someone who’s always felt fairly comfortable in Git, I thought sharing some of the nuggets I learnt with the community might help someone to find an answer without needing to do lots of research.

Debug-level Logging for a Single Rails Production Request

Andy Jeffries — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:42:26 +0000

We have a large Rails site live which runs with production level logging. Occasionally there is a problem where debug-level logs would help us track down a problem quickly, but we can’t restart one of the Rails servers to have logs put in debug mode for a single request (and don’t want to run in debug mode for long as the servers are heavily used).

For our purposes it would be nice to have just the log output for the single request we want to look at. Rails’ console and the app object to the rescue!

DTrace and Ruby on Rails with Leopard/Snow Leopard

Andy Jeffries — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:46:10 +0000

Having just launched a major Ruby on Rails site, there has been a period during which we’ve had to improve performance dramatically. While most of the benefits have been had by using a custom Rails middleware class there have been a number of actions that aren’t cacheable so I’ve needed to profile the request and then optimise some internals.

Fortunately starting with Leopard, Apple has included a patched version of Ruby that has DTrace probes support.

Interview with Grandmaster Pan Sim Woon 8th Dan Taekwondo

Andy Jeffries — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:32:39 +0000

I recently had the time to ask Grandmaster Pan Sim Woon, 8th Dan in Taekwondo, some questions about his views in Taekwondo, poomsae and his upcoming web site.

Real World Uses of Rails Metal and Middleware

Andy Jeffries — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:33:17 +0000

There are times when Rails feels very heavy! Jason Seifer has joked for ages about how Rails can’t scale, and we all know that’s a fallacy, but there are times when you know a bit of code is simple and could be really lightweight but having it as part of a controller, having gone through the Rails routing process and all the filters would just slow it down.

At the end of 2008 Rail Metal was introduced and it came like a breath of fresh air. It simply works as a lightweight class dropped in to /app/metal/ that is given the opportunity to handle a request before the main Rails stack.

When I first started reading about Rails Metal/Middleware it seemed like a great idea, but it didn’t really offer anything with a real tangible benefit. Can it be used in real life, or is it a nice bit of icing – something fancy to show off to non-Rails/Rack developers?

Review of the jQuery UI 1.6 Book

Andy Jeffries — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 13:11:23 +0000

jQuery is a modern Javascript framework. It helps you, the web developer, to write client-side interactive code without worrying about cross-browser issues and a lot of the boring elements of DOM manipulation and animation. The jQuery UI library is a collection of small UI elements and widgets for building richer interactive interfaces. This book aims to help you learn the latter – but does it hit the mark…?

Review of the Learning jQuery 1.3 Book

Andy Jeffries — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 12:58:41 +0000

jQuery is a modern Javascript framework and this book promises to be an introduction to the framework, it’s concepts and how to use it. It covers the latest version of jQuery (at the time I write this), but does it deliver on it’s promise and is it worth buying…?

Review of the Ruby on Rails Web Mashup Projects Book

Andy Jeffries — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 06:01:19 +0000

You may be familiar with Sau Sheong Chang's blog at blog.saush.com and if not I'd recommend checking it out (after reading this blog post of course). Sau Sheong is an expert at describing how to create common web systems with very minimal Ruby code - see his blog posts on Clone TinyURL in 40 lines of Ruby code and Write an Internet search engine with 200 lines of Ruby code for more examples of what I'm talking about.

I actually found his book Ruby on Rails Web Mashup Projects on Amazon after reading his blog and snapped it up immediately, hoping it was just as good as his blog.

X.509 Encrypted/Authenticated Sockets From a Ruby Client

Andy Jeffries — Sat, 09 May 2009 11:40:52 +0000

Do you need to know how to create an X.509/SSL encrypted client socket in Ruby? I did for a client and there wasn't anything complete on the net (that Google would find), so I found out and here's how I did it.

Read more of 'X.509 Encrypted/Authenticated Sockets From a Ruby Client' at AndyJeffries.co.uk

Is there anything GitHub doesn't do?

Andy Jeffries — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:58:42 +0000

Many projects developed for a LAMP stack use the mainstay of subversion for version control. It's been a while since I've heard of anyone still using CVS and most LAMP projects haven't yet moved to git. As I'm a dual PHP/Ruby on Rails developer I've jumped the fence and now use git for hosting all projects (except for the ones at my current contract where subversion is still the department standard). There are many reasons why git is better than other version control systems, but in this article I'm just going to talk about one particular git host - GitHub.com and what makes it so great.

Read more of 'Is there anything GitHub doesn't do?' at AndyJeffries.co.uk

Agile - What's in it for me?

Andy Jeffries — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:29:03 +0000

Often the term Agile means so many things to so many different people. Business people can think it means that the developers want to "wing it" without any formal planning. Developers can think that it means the business wants them to be constantly at their beckon call, dropping work to create their "latest urgent job" and doing more work with less people.

The truth of the matter is that this is slightly true to a certain point. It may sound to all the agile experts out there that I've been drinking or I don't really understand agile development or project management - trust me, I really grok agile and love living the agile way. My thoughts will become clear.

Read more of 'Agile - What's in it for me?' at AndyJeffries.co.uk

4 Reasons Why Ruby Syntax Is Better Than PHP's

Andy Jeffries — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 22:18:07 +0000

Having been a Rails developer for a little over a year now and after completing a few Rails projects successfully, I thought I'd post a set of reasons why I think Ruby has a cleaner syntax than PHP.

The worst part of this for me is that PHP can fix a lot of these things and have a much nicer syntax but in the interests of backwards-compatibility are fairly tied to the current syntax.

Read more of '4 Reasons Why Ruby Syntax Is Better Than PHP's ' at AndyJeffries.co.uk

Design Patterns vs Agile Development

Andy Jeffries — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:15:34 +0000

I don't think there can be a professional developer out there that isn't aware of the term 'Design Patterns'. Put simply these are standard solutions to common program architecture problems that have stood the test of time and have been abstracted to the point of being applicable to a number of different domains without needing simplification first. They are often overused at the start of a project, building in flexibility for potential future requirements. One of the corner "Patterns" of Agile Development is YAGNI - You Ain't Gonna Need It. With Agile Development being "The One True Way" of developing Web Applications, are the two mutually exclusive?

Read more of 'Design Patterns vs Agile Development' at AndyJeffries.co.uk

Developing components considered bad form in Rails

Andy Jeffries — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:01:27 +0000

On a typical modern website, most pages are dynamically generated from various database tables. There is normally the main content area which contains content such as the latest news stories. Then there are usually various boxes in a side bar such as the latest pictures from the galleries which contains the latest content in various other tables. How those boxes are developed differs in best practices between Rails and Symfony...

Read more of 'Developing components considered bad form in Rails' at AndyJeffries.co.uk

Rebuilding a site from Symfony to Rails

Andy Jeffries — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 06:15:01 +0000

After building my personal site from scratch in Symfony/PHP5 - I decided as I am leaning towards Rails now it was time to rewrite it in Rails. I had some good experiences during the process and overall I'm pleased with it. This may serve as a useful push if you're currently a PHP developer tempted by Rails.

Read more of 'Rebuilding a site from Symfony to Rails' at AndyJeffries.co.uk

A Video Every Teenage Girl Should Be Made To Watch

Andy Jeffries — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:59:24 +0000

In 2006, a young girl named Dallas Jessup made a movie called Just Yell Fire with the support of her local community and her Philipino Street Fighting coach Chad Von Dette. This movie has been released free of charge on the internet and can either be downloaded as a normal PC/Mac playable movie or as a DVD image for burning to a DVD and showing on TVs in school.

Read more of 'A Video Every Teenage Girl Should Be Made To Watch' at AndyJeffries.co.uk

Why I think Ruby on Rails is an ideal web development environment

Andy Jeffries — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:12:50 +0000

As a contractor it is always wise to stay on top of upcoming technologies, today's niche market may be tomorrow's big earner. This year I decided to learn Ruby on Rails, so I thought I'd write a post on why I think Rails is such as excellent development system.

Read more of 'Why I think Ruby on Rails is an ideal web development environment' at AndyJeffries.co.uk

Be careful choosing a domain name for your site

Andy Jeffries — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:47:04 +0000

Be very careful how you choose your domain name. A friend at work forwarded this content and it shows some of the pitfalls of innocent sounding names.

Read more of 'Be careful choosing a domain name for your site' at AndyJeffries.co.uk

Sharing music, pictures and videos between a Mac and an Xbox 360/Playstation 3

Andy Jeffries — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 09:35:12 +0000

After getting our new 20" iMac, we've completely dropped using Windows at home. With an upcoming party this weekend the question pops up "How will we access our music from the computer?". Nullriver to the rescue!

Read more of 'Sharing music, pictures and videos between a Mac and an Xbox 360/Playstation 3' at AndyJeffries.co.uk

Visiting our New Puppy

Andy Jeffries — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 20:27:26 +0000

We went to visit our puppy today and the kids had a great time playing with eight 6-week old labrador puppies.

Read more of 'Visiting our New Puppy' at AndyJeffries.co.uk