Noriko Sakai’s Blue Rabbit
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After spending nearly a day trying to get capistrano 2 to work with mongrel, I gave up and give Thin server a try. The expererience turns out to be a much more pleasant ride. I was able to get the server up and running in production environment within minutes.
I did run cap:deploy:cold and ignore the error that my spinner script is not executing correctly. Then I ssh to the server and run thin -e production -p 16000 -d . It works. I can't complain.
There are certainly rooms for improvements though. Here is what I will look into next
- Run thin as a cluster (after all that is what is destined to do)
- Use Apache mod_proxy as the front end for thin. I have a CentOS box that has Apache2 already installed with some other applications. Running anything else just seems like a bad idea.
- Write/Acquire some capistrano recipes for controlling thin servers.
- ...
- Profit
For now, I am going to enjoy this moment for several more minutes before doing my homework 
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A persistent car problem
My car has been broken down for months now and I have yet to got it fixed. The mechanic could not find a reason why my car battery would lose its charge after several short trips. I had it tested at Advance Autoparts and they say that the battery and the alternator are fine. I am pretty puzzled on what to do now.
All this troubles with my car leads me to think about how to find a trustworthy mechanic. They are as hard to find as trustworthy computer repair shop. You can walk into any repair shop (be it computer or car) and expect to get rip off one way or another. It is hard to find one that will genuinely try to help you out while minimize your cost. I guess being a poor (nearly)grad student has its toll on my pocket as well since I cannot afford a decent car to begin with.
I am willing to fix computer for any mechanic that will fix my car in return.
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Got sick on the plane
I got back from my trip to Intel with Dr. K and some other lab members. On the trip backward I didn't feel too well since I got a cold. Luckily enough my gf took care of me through the weekend and I am now well enough to write this blog post. The trip to Intel open quite a few thoughts on what the roadmap of Intel processors is. We were introduced to some of the possibilities that Intel Duo Quad (8-core) can do. Some applications that we were showed scaled nearly linearly. We were also recommended to use some of Intel software and applications in order to optimize our code. Of course, having a chance to be in the same building as the creator of OpenMP, OpenCV and many others is already a honor.
Overall I enjoyed the trip. I also learned for the first time what an intense business trip is like. Fly in, do the presentation, fly out pretty much summarizes it all. I will post some of my pictures when I get my hands on them.
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Language comparison flaw
Time and time again, you will hear the same old argument: in protecting language B over A, someone will say “What can A do that B cannot? Nothing ...”. After which, this person will rant on about how he can implement the same feature in B in insert_time_duration_here. What he/she forgets is that most languages are Turing complete. What this means is given enough resource (time/effort) any feature of a Turing complete language can be written in another Turing complete language. So don’t tell me that you can everything in C and PHP what I can do in Ruby. I know that, he knows that, she knows that, a ninja knows that too. Instead, give me a reason why PHP is better Ruby? Its syntax? Its speed? Its availability on web hosts?. You know some intelligent insight.
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Zed Shaw on Rails is Ghetto
If you have not had a chance to read Zed Shaw’s long post on why he thinks Rails is Ghetto. Don’t bother. Unless you are really into the dramatic essay spilling over with vulgar languages, you will find your time better spent on learning something new, reading some book/paper or actually getting some work done.
My opinion that Ruby is a beautiful language does not change after reading his article. Rails is a beautiful framework. It changes the way we think of web development and make many other frameworks shocked and awed. Stick to whichever language/framework that makes you most comfortable, in the end, it is about what you care about. Be it money, productivity, recognition or any other life enjoyment.
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