Rails for Zombies

Sep 6, 2011

I recently completed the Ruby on Rails tutorial “Rails for Zombies.” I really like it’s “edutainment” zombie filled format, and on top of that it’s a very well written and easy to follow tutorial.

The tutorial consists of five “chapters.” Each chapter is broken up into an approximately 10 minute video and then a lab portion where you get to do exercises related to the video. It’s really great to try out the code right after hearing about it, and I like that it doesn’t get drearily technical at the get go with needing to get Rails up and running. A lot of RoR tutorials start with installing and runing your own local server, which a least for me is the least pleasant part.

A nice take away is the free PDF download it offers, which has all the slides from the video and is a nice reference back to everything you learned from the tutorial. You also get a coupon for some paid rails tutorials after you finish. They have “Rails for Zombies 2” in the works so I’m thinking of saving it for that :3

At their Code School website they also offer a “Rails best practices” class which sounds a little advanced for diving into right after Rails for Zombies, but if it’s anywhere as well put together as Rails for Zombies I’d like to come back to it later.

http://railsforzombies.org/

Images Cut Off in the WordPress Image Editor

Aug 31, 2011

So, I’ve just spent the last half hour tracking down this annoying bug in WordPress 😛

I’m really glad I use an outdated theme (or at least one without custom header support) so I could track this puppy down.

I have been working on building a theme that is a child theme of good ‘ol 2010 (2011 wasn’t out when I started building :()

I uploaded a portrait image and noticed it got cut off in the image editor like so:

The editor’s will really need to be able to adjust that thumbnail image, so I went digging around and found that a theme called “Modfolio” had this exact same problem. So, I figure, it’s gotta be something with the theme. Especially since I didn’t get a whole lot of results…if it was a core issue and everyone was seeing this then I would assume there would be a lot more complaints.

I switched around from my child theme, to 2010, and even 2011, but the same error kept popping up :/ Then I figured I’d check it out in my blog here. I’m currently using a slightly modified version of Uchilla theme – which hasn’t been updated in ages. And lo-and-behold the image is coming up fine and dandy in the editor. I could be wrong on this, but I believe the only file in a theme that can mess with the admin side of things is the functions.php file. So I just kept hacking away at it until I found the bit of code that was causing me grief.

It’s lines 117 & 188 in the functions file for 2010:

define( 'HEADER_IMAGE_WIDTH', apply_filters( 'twentyten_header_image_width', 940 ) );
define( 'HEADER_IMAGE_HEIGHT', apply_filters( 'twentyten_header_image_height', 198 ) );

That was somehow adding a constraint to the editor preview and for me simply commenting out those two lines did the trick 🙂 I did have to re-upload all the affected images though…

I don’t know what effect that might have on the custom headers…I’m not using them myself so it wasn’t an issue for me.

Layer Tennis

Aug 26, 2011

Layer Tennis is an interesting “sport.” What happens is that one designer starts off a Photoshop file, and then gives it over to another designer who makes a change or ads some elements. This continues for 10 rounds, with some amusing commentary thrown in. It sounds like a nice way to spend a Friday afternoon 🙂

http://layertennis.com/

Try Ruby

Aug 23, 2011

I’m trying to come to grips with Ruby on Rails, and the website Try Ruby was suggested to me.

It was a really impressive online tutorial set-up as a user prompt. I really appreciate that it’s one Ruby tutorial that doesn’t require me to be download and installing packages willy-nilly to get started 😛 It’s extremely newbie-friendly and is well written and utilizes some light humor to help you get through it 🙂 I think the last chapter was a bit clumsy…but may have just had one too many typos along the way.

Regardless, I’d say the “15 minute” bit is no lie and well worth the time if you’re trying to get better acquainted with Ruby or RoR such as myself.

http://tryruby.org/

Free seamless patterns

Aug 17, 2011

Subtle Patterns is a lovely site featured some really great seamless patterns. Best of all they’re commercial free so no worries about plugging these into your designs 🙂

The patterns are all fairly muted. Nothing really crazy. They’re very well made and look professional. I was really happy to find this site, and I’m planning on using some of their textures in future designs. Light textures like these are a great way to add a little more interest and depth to a piece of design without going overboard.

Plus patterns are “in” right now, and it’s always fun to be trendy 😉

http://subtlepatterns.com/