http://ryanschenk.com Sun, 03 Jan 2010 02:50:22 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I had some of my mobile designs laser cut out of wool felt through Ponoko, a fantastic service that makes laser cutting almost laughably easy. The mobile pieces came out looking great, but there's two problems. When you laser cut felt, it smells very strongly like burning hair (go figure), and ... http://ryanschenk.com/2010/01/washing-laser-cut-felt/ I recently read an article on CNN about a little-known law that allows the US federal government to accept contributions to pay down the country's debt. The article contains several quotes from random passers-by in New York City, who were asked if they would consider donating. One person said the following: "I ... http://ryanschenk.com/2009/11/putting-a-dent-in-the-national-debt/ Several weeks ago I was approached to contribute an art installation to an upcoming show at the Woods Hole Historical Museum commemorating the Woods Hole drawbridge. Our drawbridge, originally installed in the late 1930's, was replaced with a new one this winter. The show is centered around two time lapse ... http://ryanschenk.com/2009/06/woods-hole-drawbridge-exhibit/ I have been working on version 2 of the LigerCat tool since October. Today, we flipped the switch and turned it on, at http://ligercat.ubio.org. LigerCat is the brainchild of Dr. Neil Sarkar, and was created by me. It's hard to explain its use to someone outside the scientific or medicine field, ... http://ryanschenk.com/2009/03/ligercat-released/ Pretty easy yum install mysql-devel gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/bin/mysql_config --with-mysql-lib=/usr/lib/mysql http://ryanschenk.com/2009/03/installing-the-mysql-ruby-gem-on-centos5/ http://ryanschenk.com/2009/01/its-official/ # # Denali's No-Knead Miracle Bread # require 'cast_iron_dutch_oven' # sudo gem install dutch_oven --version 3.5 Quart --source KitchenwaresStore require 'mixing_bowl' require 'spatula' desc "Step 1. To be performed at night" task(:at_night) do ingredients = { 'Warm Water' => '2 Cups', ... http://ryanschenk.com/2008/12/no-knead-bread-recipe/ I have just gone through hell attempting to install ImageMagick, RMagick2 on our CentOS5 server, and thought others might find this information useful. It should have been as easy as yum install ImageMagick gem install rmagick But unfortunately it wasn't. The reason is because yum will install ImageMagick 6.2.8.0, while RMagick2 requires ImageMagick 6.3.0 ... http://ryanschenk.com/2008/09/installing-rmagick2-on-centos5/ When displaying certain elements as inline, the whitespace between tags does matter in your layout. When trying to display some LI tags as inline, I really needed to spit out the tags with no whitespace in between. Unfortunately HAMLs handy-dandy tag indenting was wrecking me. It was so bad, that I ... http://ryanschenk.com/2008/07/controlling-whitespace-with-haml/ If you have an AR Model whose table name does not follow the convention, and you have needed to set it explicitly using set_table_name. class ChiliDog < ActiveRecord::Base set_table_name 'dogs_made_of_chili' end Then your test fixtures file must be named the same name as the table, not the model... dogs_made_of_chili.yml In your rspec, you must ... http://ryanschenk.com/2008/07/using-fixtures-with-funky-table-names/