Category Archives: rails

Site Launch — Tales of the Unexpected

Posted on April 26, 2010 by David

Last week saw the launch of TOTU: Tales of the Unexpected, a Summer Madness and Exodus project. The site was developed by me with visual identity design by Connie & Craig, the super-talented folks over at

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Ruby on Rails: Get some random records

Posted on November 30, 2009 by David

EDIT AGAIN: Much better.. To get a ‘num_reqd’ array of random objects, you can use something like this. named_scope :large, :conditions => ['image_file_name IS NOT ?', nil] named_scope :small, :conditions => ['small_image_file_name IS NOT ?', nil] def self.get(num_reqd,features_arr=[],size=”large”) if size==”small” … Continue reading →

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Simple Thinking Sphinx on Dreamhost

Posted on October 28, 2009 by David

*** Please note – this will probably not work (at all) (for more than a day of light use) without Cron use. And isn’t at all authorised by Dreamhost!! *** For a recent client project I’ve used a Dreamhost unlimited … Continue reading →

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Rails / LAMP / WordPress Setup Guide

Posted on May 7, 2009 by David

I’ve had huge amounts of pain getting WordPress set up locally over the last few weeks on my old machine and when it struck again with my new development environment it definitely time to write down the required steps to … Continue reading →

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It’s been quiet around here

Posted on May 7, 2009 by David

I have six draft posts in the wings waiting to be pushed out, works in progress related to technologies I’ve been working with lately for Contrast.ie Working on a still-hush-hush project with the lads best known for their rock star … Continue reading →

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Git Pro Tips!

Posted on February 22, 2009 by David

Stumbled across this fella on Twitter today, noticed he worked at Slide (who make successful/annoying Facebook Apps). None the less (I joke) he writes a blog at http://www.unethicalblogger.com/ and has recently been writing a series of ‘ProTips’ on using Git … Continue reading →

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Ruby Uninitialized Constant Error (Mental Note)

Posted on April 14, 2008 by David

The reason I always get initialized constant errors occurring in Ruby is accidentally naming models the plural form of the database table name and not letting Rails automatically create the pluralisations. script/generate scaffold contact_skill contact_id:integer skill_id:integer description:string not script/generate scaffold … Continue reading →

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