ActiveRecord comes with a method touch which sets the updated_at timestamp to the current time. Unfortunately it also runs callbacks (and hence validations) on the receiving record, so it is unsuitable if you call it very often.

Use the attached initializer to get a touch_gently method which updates updated_at, but does not run callbacks:

User.find(5).touch_gently

The initializer will also give you a method touch_all_gently whi...

blueprint is DevStructure’s workhorse tool that looks inside popular package managers, finds changes you made to configuration files, and archives software you built from source to generate Puppet, Chef, or shell code.  Everything blueprint sees is stored in Git to be diffed and pushed.  It runs on Ubuntu Linux 10.04 and newer.

List of global variables available to a Ruby script.

Specify these gem versions in your Gemfile:

gem 'cucumber', '~> 1.3.0'
gem 'cucumber-rails', '= 0.3.2' # max version for Rails 2
gem 'capybara', '< 2' # capybara 2+ requires Rails 3
gem 'mime-types', '< 2' # dependeny of capybara
gem 'nokogiri', '< 1.6' # dependency of capybara
gem 'rubyzip', '< 1' # dependency of selenium-webdriver, rubyzip 1+ requires Ruby 1.9
gem 'cucumber_factory'
gem 'database_cleaner', '< 1'
gem 'cucumber_spinner', '~> 0.2.5'
gem 'launchy', '~> 2.1.2'

With these versions set, `...

I don't like those buttons inside the header area of a message that Thunderbird 3 put there. Though the CompactHeader addon is often claimed to be a solution it does way too much for me -- I like the headers the way they are, just not the buttons.

This is a bit of a hack but works very well for me (keeps the date and "other actions" menu on the right, see the screenshot below):

1. Open up your profile directory (~/.thunderbird/<profile_name>/)
2. Create a chrome directory inside it.
3. Put the attached userChrome.css file into the ...

Sometimes you need to dynamically load an image and do something as soon as its loaded (when for example its size is already available).

With jQuery, this seems to work across browsers:

$('<img>')
  .attr('src', '')
  .load(function() {
    alert('fully loaded!');
  })
  .attr('src', '/the/real/image/url');

Cucumber scenarios that are tagged with @javascript so they run with Selenium are very slow. You might not want to run them every time.

In order to skip all Selenium scenarios, call Cucumber like this:

cucumber --tags ~@javascript

Note that you should still run all the scenarios, including the Selenium ones, before you push a change.

If you plan to insert an existing PDF into a new LaTeX document that you will compile to PDF, you can use \includegraphics for this. Although, be prepared to get tons of errors complaining about overfill hboxes and the like.
You can use this package that takes care:

\usepackage[final]{pdfpages}

In order to insert a PDF, use:

\includepdf{$filename}

See the external link for more options.

Merging .po-files with Git is painful.

There have been attempts of making Git more clever when trying to merge .po-files. I believe however that this is not enough as it can still produce invalid .pos (usually due to double definitions), which can seriously confuse gettext afterwards.

Lacking any more secure solution, I think you should avoid editing po files in different branches at the same time. In order to not accidentally produce invalid merges I additionally ...

The shell variable PS1 holds your bash prompt. You might want to change it to serve your needs best. Here is how to:

General

• non-printing escape sequences in your prompt have to be inclosed in \[\e[ and \] so your shell can correctly count its prompt's length
• we recommend to highlight your prompt on production machines
• you can also [show different root prompts for each user](https://makandracards.com/makandra/9569-get-the-username-w...

Now allows to list transition paths from and to arbitrary states.

With SNI, you can have many virtual hosts with HTTPS sharing the same IP address and port, and each one can have its own unique certificate. SNI is supported by all major browsers except Internet Explorer on XP, Safari on XP, wget, Android and Java.

Type looking a little flabby? Overweight? Want to give it a kick in the pants? Take a look at some of these tricks to really give your web type a workout.

If in your application your users pass along params that result in filenames, like invoices/generated?number=123. This could be your (very careless) controller method:

def generated
  send_file File.join(Rails.root, 'shared', 'invoices', params[:number])
end

This allows your users not only to access those files but also any files your application can read, like this:

invoices/generated?number=../../../../../etc/passwd
# => send_file '/etc/passwd'

You do not want this. In most cases you should prefer a show met...

Pie sometimes does not properly redraw elements upon changes. This often happens when the change comes from somewhere further up the DOM.

Consider something like:

<ul>
  <li class="active"><div class="content">Active element</div></li>
  <li class="inactive"><div class="content">Inactive element</div></li>
</ul>

with CSS
li .content {
-webkit-box-shadow: #666 0px 2px 3px;
-moz-box-shadow: #666 0px 2px 3px;
box-shadow: #666 0px 2px 3px;
behavior: url(/PIE.htc);

  back...

JavaScript Garden is a growing collection of documentation about the most quirky parts of the JavaScript programming language. It gives advice to avoid common mistakes, subtle bugs, as well as performance issues and bad practices that non-expert JavaScript programmers may encounter on their endeavours into the depths of the language.

JavaScript Garden does not aim to teach you JavaScript. Former knowledge of the language is strongly recommended in order to understand the topics covered in this guide

The attached RSpec matcher exist_in_database checks if a given record still exists in the database and has not been destroyed:

describe Ticket do
  describe '.purge_expired' do
    fresh_ticket = Ticket.create(:expiry => Date.tomorrow)
    expired_ticket = Ticket.create(:expiry => Date.yesterday)
    Ticket.purge_expired
    fresh_ticket.should exist_in_database
    expired_ticket.should_not exist_in_database
  end
end

Note that there is also [ActiveRecord::Base#destroyed?](http://apidock.com/rails/ActiveRecord/Base/destroyed...

Install OpenSSH Server:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

To check if the server is running you should get no error when you restart it:

sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

Now your ssh server is ready to use.

To add additional security edit your sshd_config (gksudo gedit /etc/ssh/sshd_config):

# Deny root login:
PermitRootLogin no

# To whitelist users:
AllowUsers USERNAME1 USERNAME2

# To disable interactive authentication (without SSH key)
PasswordAuthentication no

Don't forget to restart after editin...

An overview of common vim commands, including:

• windows
• buffers
• undo/redo
• navigation
• bookmarks
• selection/whitespace
• clipboard shortcuts
• search/replace
• programming
• external filters

Also see this German command list.

Useful

• toggle syntax highlighting: :syntax on|off

We are maintaining some vintage projects with tests written in Test::Unit instead of RSpec. Mocks and stubs are not features of Test::Unit, but you can use the Mocha gem to add those facilities.

The following is a quick crash course to using mocks and stubs in Mocha, written for RSpec users:

|---------------------------------------------------------|
| RSpec | Mocha |
|---------------------------------------------------------|
| obj = double() | obj = mock() |
| obj.stub(:method => 'value') | `obj.stubs...

You can find ActiveRecord models by using a Range as its conditions:

User.scoped(:conditions => { :id => 3..5 })

This will generate the following query:

SELECT * FROM `users` WHERE (`users`.`id` BETWEEN 3 AND 5)

This also means that all your scopes that take an array of allowed values and use condition hashes, automagically work for Ranges, too.

If you have the following deprecation warning after upgrading to rails >= 2.3.10

DEPRECATION WARNING: The :overwrite_params option is deprecated. Specify all the necessary parameters instead.

that is for example caused by

url_for( :overwrite_params => { :order => 'name', :dir => 'asc' } )

you can fix this by using params.merge {:my_param_to_overwrite => 'foo' }.
To fix the example above the code could look like:

url_for( params.merge { :order => 'name...

In order to

• track down warnings and to see failing specs immediately
• or to get an overview of the core functionalities,

you can use RSpec's "nested" format. It looks like this:

Tool
  validations
    should require model to be set
    should require place_id to be set
  #identifier
    should include the model and tag if the tool has a tag
    should return the model if the tool has no tag
  .search
    should find tools by model and maker
    should find tools by serial number

Call RSpec like...