xip.io: wildcard DNS for everyone
Wildcard DNS maps hostnames to any IP address, making local development sites reachable from phones, tablets, and other devices on the network.
Loading half a billion rows into MySQL
Bulk loading huge datasets into InnoDB can take hours or days and strain disk, logs, and indexes; careful tuning keeps imports from dragging on indefinitely.
Update: Shell script to deploy changes to production and not shoot yourself in the foot
deploy-to-production now runs Capistrano via bundle exec, avoiding version mismatches when Capistrano is bundled in projects.
Use ActiveSupport autoloading outside of Rails
Enable Rails-style autoloading in a plain Ruby setup by adding load paths to ActiveSupport::Dependencies.autoload_paths.
How to search for large messages in Thunderbird
Find oversized emails in a folder or across an account to clear space quickly and shrink mailbox storage.
Browser Standards progress: CSS filter property
Browser support for CSS image effects is emerging, with prefixed implementations in modern engines and SVG filter links for DOM elements.
jQuery Tag Cloud
Tag clouds can be rendered and animated on an HTML5 canvas with TagCanvas, enabling interactive visualizations instead of plain text lists.
Linux: How to add a task bar to VNC displays
VNC sessions often lack window switching and a visible task list, making Selenium debugging awkward. A lightweight panel such as lxpanel restores task switching on the remote desktop.
IE-friendly mobile-first CSS with Sass 3.2
Internet Explorer 8 and earlier ignore media queries, leaving mobile-first layouts stuck on small-screen styles. Sass 3.2 can generate a separate desktop stylesheet for older browsers.
Visualized introduction how git works
Git internals form a directed acyclic graph, and command effects become easier to grasp through simple diagrams and visual structure changes.
Match a string with wildcards
Convert wildcard-like input into a regular expression for exact matching, escaping metacharacters and treating each character as a flexible placeholder.
How could it be that my database.yml disappears?
database.yml may vanish after a pulled commit deletes it from the repository, leaving local configuration missing.
When the iPad won't play an MP4 video
iPad playback can fail on valid MP4 files even when H.264 settings are correct; some HTTP servers omit headers iOS expects for streaming.
Random numbers in Ruby
Generate random numbers in Ruby under different conditions, including Gaussian and triangular distributions, when simple uniform randomness is not enough.
Plotting graphs in Ruby with Gruff
Ruby charting library for Rails that generates PNG graphs with themes, multiple series, and automatic sizing for large datasets.
Mysterious "margin" below an image
Inline images can leave a small gap below them because they align to the text baseline, reserving space for descenders. vertical-align: middle or display: block removes the gap.
Gimp: Why removing pixels sometimes leaves transparency, sometimes the background color
Deleting pixels in GIMP can either reveal transparency or fill with the background color, depending on whether the layer has an alpha channel.
Use different CSS depending on whether elements render on the same line or multiple lines
Responsive layouts can switch styles when content wraps onto multiple lines or stays on one line, enabling different treatment for narrow screens.
RubyMine: Set specific Ruby version per project
Wrong Ruby interpreter settings in RubyMine cause misleading inspections when a project uses a different Ruby version than the default.
Compress bitmap images within PDF files
PDFs with embedded bitmap images can become large when raster data stays uncompressed; ghostscript or printer compression settings reduce file size when high image quality is unnecessary.
Updated: Saving without callbacks in Rails 3
Rails 3 can now save records without running callbacks, reducing side effects when callbacks should be bypassed.
Sync confidential files between unixes using cloud storage and encfs
Encrypted file sync across Unix machines keeps confidential documents in cloud storage while encfs protects the contents from the provider.
Fix capistrano errors: "no such file to load -- net/ssh/authentication/agent/socket" or "uninitialized constant Net::SSH::KnownHosts::SUPPORTED_TYPE"
Capistrano can fail with net/ssh load errors or an Net::SSH::KnownHosts::SUPPORTED_TYPE constant error when paired with net-ssh 2.5.1. Upgrading to 2.5.2 restores compatibility.