I am tired of recreating the login system for Rails for each new project so using the RESTful Rails Authentication Tutorial I created a template project that I can use to create new projects. While adding in the OpenID Authentication component I started getting this error: /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:376:in `new_constants_in’: You have a nil object when you…
Month: March 2008
Recreational Cyclists Should Not Ride Like the Pros
Well sort of. The pros have great techniques. They are fun to watch. You want legs like then and their bikes are awesome. You can learn about how to climb hills and how to sprint from the pros. However, you shouldn’t ride like them because you can’t. Any pro team has a hierarchy that most…
How Mortgages and Housing Hurt the Economy
I had always assumed that the potential for default on risky mortgages was a problem, but I didn’t realize how far reaching it could become. Here is an article in the New York Times that explains how bad mortgages can have a dire effect on the global economy. In case you want more bad news…
Utah Flat Tax
So the follow on to the Tax date is the fact that we paid taxes this evening. This year Utah citizens have the option of either a flat tax rate of 5.35% or the standard 7% rate with deductions. The population of Utah is made up of a large number of members of the LDS…
Our Tax Date
Tonight was the first time since September that I and Callie have been alone, together, outside of the house. We were able to spend 15 minutes eating a Quiznos sub in a gas station in Tremonton, UT. After that we visited our accountant (The best accountant in the world – Michael Bruce in Tremonton) and…
Trek Project One Update
I just got a notification about the status of Trek’s Project One. Even if there are a few kinks left to work out and even though the pricing isn’t on the site just yet I am thrilled that Trek decided to let us have a look at what they are planning. Praise to Trek for…
Big Companies Using Ruby on Rails
I am frequently asked how reliable/scalable is Ruby on Rails? I usually tell people about Twitteror more recently point them to this article about the Friend’s For Sale Facebook application. The answer is, yes Rails scales just fine. The trick is getting your database to scale. Anyway, Obie Fernandez, a major name in the Rails…
Project One Goes Live With the New Madones
Just in time for riding season Trek has decided to turn on Project One. I am not sure if that means that they are planning on fulfilling those orders before the end of summer or not but it gives me something to drool over. I didn’t see prices, but I am betting that the bike…
Automatically Geotag Photos
I know that adding GPS to cameras will add cost to the unit but it seems like the perfect marriage. With the GPS data embedded inside the exif data you won’t have to tag your vacation with ‘Yellowstone National Park’. Instead, your photos can show up on a Google map or be set for auto…
The Internet Currency
A long time ago people figured out that if you used coins for trading instead of chickens you could build up a complex economy. The coins usually consisted of something precious themselves. Not to long ago society moved towards a more abstract notion of currency and found it was easier to produce dollars out of…