Line wrap text from a Ubuntu Linux terminal
Wrap long terminal text at a fixed width with fold, echoing pasted input or writing wrapped output to a file.
Open a Nautilus window in your terminal's working directory
Open the file manager directly in the current terminal folder with nautilus . instead of navigating there manually.
Dragging a file into your terminal pastes the file path
Dragging files from Nautilus into a terminal inserts their full paths, including multiple files, without typing them manually.
Auto-generate state_machine graphs as PNG images
Generate visual state diagrams for models using state_machine with a rake task and Graphviz, producing PNG output for quick inspection.
"Address already in use" with autossh
autossh can fail with “Address already in use” when the tunnel port or monitoring ports are occupied by another process.
Defining custom errors in Ruby
Custom exception classes in Ruby can be defined with Class.new(StandardError) and referenced as namespaced constants.
How to install a frozen version of Firefox for your Selenium tests
Firefox updates can break Selenium and Cucumber tests; a separate unchanging browser copy avoids auto-updates, profile clashes, and window reuse.
Capistrano: Different usernames for each server
Capistrano deployments to multiple servers can fail when each host needs a different login; putting the username in the server definition avoids a global set :user setting.
Compose a regular expression from other RegExp objects
Build a Regexp from existing Regexp objects with interpolation, but backreferences like \1 can point to the wrong capture group after concatenation.
Turn off SSL for scenarios with Selenium
Selenium on WEBrick fails on HTTPS pages because the server does not speak SSL. Disabling SSL only for those scenarios avoids Cucumber browser test failures.
Machinist's #make breaks on has_many associations when defining method `empty?`
Custom empty? on a has_many model can break Machinist collection building, creating records with the wrong foreign key. Use explicit association assignment instead.
Select an unknown option with Capybara
Selecting a dropdown value without knowing the available options helps in tests where only a valid choice is needed. Capybara can read an option from the list and select it by text.
dbconsole in Rails 3 requires the environment as the first argument
Rails 3 dbconsole misreads -p test and opens the development database unless the environment is passed first.
Backup your Mac to an encrypted local hard drive
Time Machine local backups can be encrypted by using an encrypted external volume instead of a disk image. Sparsebundle images are not recognized for local drives.
xdissent/ievms - GitHub
Run multiple Internet Explorer versions in separate VirtualBox VMs on Linux or OS X for website testing without Microsoft VirtualPC.
When Balsamiq Mockups won't let you load an image file
Image import can fail in Balsamiq Mockups when a file with the same name already exists in the project folder, blocking the load.
How to accept or deny JavaScript confirmation dialogs in Capybara/Selenium
JavaScript confirmation dialogs in Capybara/Selenium can block tests or auto-dismiss unexpectedly. Direct alert handling restores accept, dismiss, and text access.
ActiveRecord 3+ auto-converts times to UTC by default. Hilarity ensues.
Rails 3 auto-converts ActiveRecord times to UTC by default, which can break code using Time.now or Time.parse; local time and non-aware attributes restore the older behavior.
Rendering a custom 404 page in Rails 2
Custom handling for missing records in Rails 2 can render a branded 404 page instead of a generic exception when ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound occurs.
mojombo/grit - GitHub
Ruby library for object-oriented read and write access to Git repositories.
Let a Rails 3 application make a request to itself
Rails 3 can issue internal HTTP requests through the Rack interface, useful for Cucumber features and testing app responses without a browser.
When Rails no longer renders changes in view templates or Sass stylesheets
Cached pages in development can prevent Rails from rendering updated view templates or Sass stylesheets, especially when stale files remain in public/.
Rails 3.1.0 has been released!
Rails 3.1 adds jQuery by default, streaming responses, role-based attr_accessible, prepared statements, and simpler migrations.
Web Upd8: Ubuntu / Linux blog
Daily Ubuntu, Linux and GNOME news with practical HOWTOs for users who want updates and troubleshooting help.