Category Archives: Blog
Solving Latin1 and UTF8 errors for good in Ruby
Update: I haven’t tested it fully, but @eevee has a shorter suggestion that seems to work: Tell the mysql driver that you’re getting BINARY back, then use .force_encoding(“UTF-8”)? In a Rails application you can do this by setting encoding: binary … Continue reading
Using Compass with Rails 3.1 final and no hacks
The web is full of complicated instructions about getting the Compass CSS framework to work with Rails 3.1 & the asset pipeline when actually you don’t need to do anything any more. All you need to do, is add Compass … Continue reading
Prospects.ac.uk send you your password in plaintext even if you don’t want it
Update: I have received a few emails back from Prospects. The first was an automated message providing me with a username and password to log in to their service desk, the irony of which wasn’t lost on me. I’ve then received … Continue reading
Re-enable Snow Leopard’s ‘Screen Zoom’ feature in Lion
Snow Leopard had a handy feature (I’m pretty certain it’s enabled by default, but maybe someone could clarify?) where if you held down ctrl and scrolled, the screen would zoom in and out. Lion seems to remove this feature but … Continue reading
Nintendo confirms 3DS Second Circle Pad attachment – my thoughts
Nintendo has confirmed that the 3DS extra Circle Pad attachment is very real. It has also been confirmed that Monster Hunter Tri G will utilise this extra circle pad which for me says a lot about where this peripheral has come … Continue reading
Apple products spoil me
During a normal day most of the electronic devices I use are Apple products. I sit in front of a MacBook Air or iMac, I relax with my iPad, and my iPhone is my trusty companion when I’m out and … Continue reading
An AeroPress review from a coffee noob
I’m not a coffee fanatic. While I was at university I drunk plenty of instant coffee but I started to get put off by the lingering taste in my mouth. I think the defining coffee was an awful one on … Continue reading
Google Chrome Canary adds proper full-screen support for Lion. Option to remove all window decoration
Google have now added full-screen support to the developer builds of Google Chrome Canary. When you click the full-screen button, Chrome becomes a proper full screen app, but your tabs, address bar, and bookmarks bar are all still visible. However … Continue reading
From Dust First Impressions
From Dust is an interesting take on the god-game genre that uses the latest and greatest technology to produce a fantastically interesting simulation and then bases an entire game around it. Continue reading
Ruby 1.8 and Ruby 1.9 with Phusion Passenger and Apache (and Thin)
Migrating to Ruby 1.9 gets harder the more 1.8 apps you have. But it’s a worthwhile migration. At work we’ve written a lot of little Ruby 1.8 apps and we deploy them on an Apache + Phusion Passenger stack. Some apps … Continue reading