Thong Kuah's blog

(Cross-posted from http://blog.projectxtech.com/2009/08/06/rails-3-updates/) Rails 3 is a rewrite / merger with Merb, and includes Yehuda Katz, Merb lead developer working on it full-time. Here are some posts which were published recently: http://yehudakatz.com/2008/12/23/rails-and-merb-merge/ http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2009/7/30/community-highlights-yehuda-katz http://yehudakatz.com/2009/03/06/alias_method_chain-in-models/ http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2009/6-steps-to-refactoring-rails-for-mere-mortals/ There are lots of lessons and techniques in ruby, rails and general programming to be learnt from these posts. Enjoy!

It’s been a long, two-stepped journey to get to Jaunty from Hardy, all so that I can experience notify-osd with Twitter updates. The upgrade has been long and slow (NZ internet!) but I found the end result strangely unsatisfying. Yes, notifications work, and there’s a new “Computer Janitor”, but that’s it. A bit let down. Then I found out about Gwibber, the new twitter client on Ubuntu. It is by far superior to other clients on Linux. Previously, pidgin-twitter had to suffice, but no longer. However, Gwibber does not seem to do notifications on my Jaunty laptop. In my Intrepid desktop, notification bubbles do pop up, though in non-NotifyOSD style at the bottom. In other news, I’ve hit a bug / issue with my Intrepid desktop where I can’t open any folder in the File Manager. :( Gnome or Nautilus experts that can help would be much appreciated

Just wanted to rant about how news websites have the annoying feature of splitting up articles into ‘pages’ - of just two or so paragraphs. There’ll be three or four of these ‘pages’. But once you click on the ‘view as single page’, you realise how ridiculously short the article is, to even split to any page. I wish there’s a magic unpage! bookmarklet out there.

Just found out that Pidgin now has Google Talk. That means my GAFYD GTalk now works. Awesome!

One thing I found out that about rails is that the select_tag is a pain. Why? Because this would not work: <%= select_tag ‘industry’, options_from_collection_for_select(@industry_list, “id”, “name”, @industry) %> But this would work: <%= select_tag ‘industry’, options_from_collection_for_select(@industry_list, “id”, “name”, @industry.to_i) %> Well, that’s for forgetting that HTTP query parameters are strings!

My previous post about the enter key and the bug report that resulted from it has yielded a cause. Turns out that Delicious bookmarks (version 2.0.72) add-on seems to be causing the issue. There are already a number of Yahoo! group posts about the problem, but no one managed to crack that so far… till now. :)

Just upgraded to Ubuntu Hardy Heron. Again it broke my graphics driver. Envy (now EnvyNG) to the rescue again. As it was a Dell Vostro 200, there was some problem with IDE modes and such like, causing Ubuntu to fail booting! A change in the boot settings helped. See this bug report (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/153702) So, I have been through Edgy, Feisty, Gutsy, and now Heron. Just a thought, what happens after Ubuntu Zesty Zebra ? ;)

Why doesn't the enter key work?That would be one of the occasional pain points that I have experienced in Firefox. I could never figure out why, only that restarting Firefox is the only way to cure it. Annoying. Besides the memory issue, this would be the next biggest problem with Firefox. Hence, imagine my delight when I stumbled onto a reproducible way to trigger the issue. Just open two new Firefox windows in quick succession, then close one. The remaining one will have the enter key disabled. I still don't know why (there's no errors in the error console). Therefore I have opened a bug about this enter key bug in bugzilla. Hopefully, the powers that be in mozilla, et all can help fix this!

Attended an UP and Wellies event - A Tale of Four Cities, on Tuesday. It was a good venue, Syn Bar where people can unwind, compared with the old place. The free tab certainly helped. :) So the event was a panel discussion about how Wellington is and can be a ‘hub’ for innovation, IT and IT professionals. Among the topics that were discussed were how Wellington is a good place to live in, broadband, (venture) capital, immigration, and education. Among some good gems of the evening: Broadband should be a utility, like power. (from this link - “Sweden has chosen an infrastructure road to the broadband society – another choice could have been to stimulate demand for broadband services. In a country where half of the surface area is covered by forests, where very few people live, a demand stimulation policy can be a lengthy route to take. An infrastructure build-up was regarded as a quicker way.”)“Well, [broadband] compared to Fiji or Tonga, we’ve got it good."Immigration and visas - employers need to realize work visas can be obtained easily once a job offer is made, for IT professionals.Education - I raised the point of falling enrolments in IT departments, and that Massey Wellington has moved their Software deparment to Palmerson North, hence reducing the number of students / creative / innovation in Wellington.There was a lot of ideas and exchanging of views after the panel discussion while we mingled. This was my first UP event for a while, and it was a good one.

Dr Mahathir Mohamad: A Weak Government is not good for Multi-racial Malaysia Here is my comment on the above: welcome to the blogosphere. I have admired your consistent statements and vision. In the process of a maturing democracy, a strong government is needed, agreed. However, I must question how is the Opposition able to perform its duties of check and balance, if the government has two-thirds majority? Yes, the opposition can be considered a political enemy. To what extent? Governments around the world will eventually have to cooperate with other parties in passing legislation. Why burn bridges? I must disagree that the current government is weak because it does not have two-thirds majority. It is weak because of it’s leaders, and hence it has lost the two-thirds majority. Not having two-thirds for most competent governments would not be a sign of weakness and not engender defections, usually, hence the equation of weakness with two-thirds is not correct. This government is weak because it is weak, and has lost the support of the people. A competent government could even govern on a 1 seat majority, or even as a minority government. For Malaysia, a country with 50 years of democracy and 12 elections, 63.5% is ample.