Use PuTTY's plink.exe and Pageant to make Git work over SSH on Windows, with keys loaded from the tray agent and GIT_SSH set for command-line use.

Lazy let evaluation keeps RSpec examples shorter when a setup call has many required arguments, and lets stubs change the result before the value is used.

Restricted networks can block mail protocols while still allowing SSH. Tunneling the mail connection through a trusted server lets an e-mail client reach the server from localhost.

Moving a GNOME panel to another monitor in Ubuntu 11.04 requires disabling Expand, dragging the grip handles, then enabling Expand again.

Open RubyMine projects directly from the terminal with the mine launcher, attaching to a running instance or starting the IDE if needed.

We recently added custom fields to Highrise which allow you to keep track of extra details beyond standard contact information like phone, email, address, etc. After the launch, we had a “looking back” conversation to see what lessons could be learned from the process.

Programming language popularity rises and falls with productivity trade-offs, tooling, and developer experience rather than technical elegance alone.

An ancient essay on software design that, after 20 years, should still guide you for every line of code you write.

Google Analytics may reject older @googlemail.com accounts as invalid Google accounts; using the equivalent @gmail.com address can resolve the sign-in problem.

Installing ruby-debug can trigger a MissingSourceFile error from require_relative; pinning linecache to version 0.43 resolves the load failure.

Formatting numeric and currency values for display, with configurable decimal separators, minimum precision, and a dash for missing amounts.

Most web applications contain several examples of state machines, including accounts and subscriptions, invoices, orders, blog posts, and many more. The problem is that you might not necessarily think of them as state machines while designing your application. Therefore, it is good to have some indicators to recognize them early on. The easiest way is to look at your data model.

Yesterday, there was a blog post entitled “What the Hell is Happening to Rails” that stayed at the number one spot on Hacker News for quite a while. The post and many (but not most) the comments on the post reflect deep-seated concern about the recent direction of Rails. Others have addressed the core question about change in the framework, but I’d like to address questions about specific changes that came up in the post and comments.

tar archives compressed with gzip can be unpacked in the current directory with -xzf; the same command style also applies to other tar formats.

RSpec file loading order affects test stability only when examples depend on global state; version defaults differ between alphabetical, disk, and random execution.

RSpec 1.x can leave stubbed class methods in place between examples, causing order-dependent failures when spec file evaluation changes.

Cucumber Factory now links records by any string attribute, reducing the need to assign explicit names when reusing previously created objects in feature scenarios.

Choosing the right product to develop is crucial. Great execution is also very important. But if you develop a product that no-one wants or no-one is prepared to pay for, then you are going to fail, no matter how well you execute it. You can often tweak a product or its marketing to make it more successful based on market feedback (‘pivot’) . But the less pivoting you have to do, the better. Below I list some of the criteria I think are important for evaluating the potential of new commercial software products.

A reusable ~/.ssh/config template can simplify SSH access with host aliases and keepalive settings, then be adapted to personal needs.

Join records can be left behind when parent records are deleted, causing orphaned data and inconsistent associations. :dependent => :destroy removes them automatically.

Avoid repeated remote database dumps during Capistrano deployments by skipping the db:dump hook with a deploy flag or environment variable.

Inline markup in Balsamiq Mockups adds bold, italic, and hyperlink styling to editable text; bold often looks unchanged because many widgets already use bold fonts.