Tiny URLs

A quick foray into the world of TinyURLs.

• The eponymous TinyURL website
• lilURL – open source clone of TinyURL
• RubyURL - open source Rub-based TinyURL  clone

Postgres and full text search

Some modules that add full text search to the core engine

Postgres 8.3 has native full text search. See documentation. Looks like it might be limited / slow for large volumes.

TSearch2 doesn’t look like it’s been touched in four or five years

pgestraier provides Hyper Estraier access for Postgres. Looks like it may be a little stale.

OpenFTS – open-source full text search based on Postgres native full text search – last activity in 2005, most well before that.

Sphinx is an open-source SQL -based full text engine under active development.

Ruby on Rails – Multiple DB Connections

Seems Magic Multi-Connections does what it says and provides simple support for multiple databases in a single Rails model.

Web framework comparisons

A simple and clear performance comparison for various versions of PHP and a little Rails at the end from PHP framework comparison benchmarks.

Interesting comments about Ruby on Rails scaling at Twitter, one of most heavily used Rails apps out there, from 5 Question Interview with Twitter Developer Alex Payne.

Online Task Managers

Online Task managers are a light-weight solution for small groups to manage sets of tasks. They are definitely light-weight compared to online projects managers.

• HiTask is a TaDa lists on steroids a shared list manager with a little more. $125/yr – unlimited users
• BizFlow OfficeEngine – excutive BPM product. Demo, no pricing. Looks big
• Tasks/TasksPro – tasks that can be grouped in hierarchies. Cluttered interface – Demo. $100-$500
• ActionTasks – different approach, glitz but little glam – email interaction  – No demo. $12/month/user?
• TaskBin – Beta – Shared TadaLists – Free?
• TaskAnyone – Tasks in lists/folders – email assignment – shareable – Videos but no demo. $10/user/month

Locally hosted

• OneOrZero -
• TaskFreak – Lightweight, crude, but could be exploited for a dashboard. MySQL/PHP

Javascript Debugging

Advanced JavaScript Debugging Techniques provides a set of useful suggestions on Javascript debugging techniques.

An interesting note in one comment about a Javascript debugging environment for Windows – “If you are on MS Windows and need to debug javascript in Internet Explorer you should give a try to VWD (Visual Web Developer Express Edition).”

The JavaScript Source: Debugging Guide provides a list of common errors.

Firebug – Debugging Javascript

Firebug JavaScript Debugger and Profiler does a nice job of explaining basic debugging techniques for Javascript in Firebug. Remember to switch to the ‘Script’ tab.

ruby irb history

If you want to enable command history in ruby’s command-line tools (all are really based on irb) do the following:

Create the file ~/.irbrc. Add the configuration information below.

require "irb/completion"
ARGV.concat [ "--readline", "--prompt-mode", "simple" ]
IRB.conf[:EVAL_HISTORY] = 1000
IRB.conf[:SAVE_HISTORY] = 100
IRB.conf[:AUTO_INDENT] = true

If this doesn’t help, you may be entering the readline quagmire. (OS X) Have a look at ruby and readline – when bad things happen.

readline and ruby – When bad things happen

With great thanks to Gravitas for saving hours of fruitless labors.

Symptom:

All ruby command-line tools – irb, console – fail to respond to terminal keys  – e.g. cursor keys

Solution:

readline

make clean
./configure CPPFLAGS=-DNEED_EXTERN_PC SHOBJ_LDFLAGS=-dynamiclib
make CPPFLAGS=-DNEED_EXTERN_PC SHOBJ_LDFLAGS=-dynamiclib
sudo make install

ruby

make clean
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --disable-pthread --with-readline-dir=/usr/local --enable-shared
make
sudo make install

See also OS X Leopard – readline compile errors

Textmate Commands

A very well done Textmate command cheat sheet. (Local copy)