There Is NO Box

Using Subversion With Your New Ruby On Rails Project

David M. Doolin, PhD — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 01:45:19 +0000

Ruby on Rails provides an elegant and speedy framework for developing web applications. But having a framework isn’t the only requirement for building a successful software product. More infrastructure is required. Like sensible revision control for distributed development. If you suspected that it isn’t necessary to archive all that boilerplate associated with a Rails project… [...]

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Using Subversion With Your New Ruby On Rails Project

Object Oriented C: Single inheritance Part II

David M. Doolin, PhD — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 23:15:00 +0000

Here’s another installment on Object Oriented C programming. This time, we’re going to take a look at how inheritance allows you to simulate a generic function courtesy of the C preprocessor. If you have ever wondered how those spiffy objects in other programming languages always get “printed,” here’s one way to do it. First, let’s [...]

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Object Oriented C: Single inheritance Part II

Single Inheritance In C Programming Language I: Nesting structures

David M. Doolin, PhD — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 16:11:12 +0000

The C programming language lends itself well to single inheritance object-oriented schemes, provided a little care is taken in the class structure. Consider the following definition: 1 2 3 typedef struct _object { int foo; } Object; 1 2 3 4 typedef struct _thing { Object o; double bar; } Thing; Right here, I know [...]

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Single Inheritance In C Programming Language I: Nesting structures

PHP on Snow Leopard: 5 ways to win

David M. Doolin, PhD — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 06:51:41 +0000

There’s at least five ways to install PHP on Macosx 10.6 Snow Leopard. Probably more. This becomes important when you as a developer want to add some code or a module to your application. You need to know: Where to install said module. How to configure the appropriate runtime to find and execute said module. [...]

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PHP on Snow Leopard: 5 ways to win

Turning down business: painful but sometimes necessary

David M. Doolin, PhD — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 20:58:17 +0000

Turning down business can be painful, but sometimes it’s the only way forward. I’ve recently had to turn down some business myself. I took on a project which didn’t quite feel right, and the deeper I got into it, the more I realized it just wasn’t the right project for me. Which really sucked because [...]

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Turning down business: painful but sometimes necessary

Log your work: Using Trac to untangle unclear tasks

David M. Doolin, PhD — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:40:57 +0000

There’s an interesting hole in the task management and productivity literature. The situation is when you know more or less what needs to be done, but not exactly how to do it, and from where you’re starting, it’s not clear in what order and how long each particular task will be. And the whole thing [...]

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Log your work: Using Trac to untangle unclear tasks

Simple Object Oriented Unit Testing For C Programming

David M. Doolin, PhD — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:46:58 +0000

Remember that giant blast of wind a few months ago? The wind that launched all my cool plants down the stairs? Well, here’s a picture of the re-potted collection. That’s about half of them, the other half are still languishing. Crassulae are tough as nails. I may re-pot the remaining… but these need to be [...]

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Simple Object Oriented Unit Testing For C Programming

Rails 3 and Cucumber: getting started with outside-in testing

David M. Doolin, PhD — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 23:30:14 +0000

[Update July 16, 2001: This article is ranking very high on Google for "WordPress cucumber," a phrase I was searching for to see if anyone has developed Cucumber features and a test harness for WordPress. Turns out there is a Gem for it. If you are looking to test WordPress with Cucumber, please email me [...]

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Rails 3 and Cucumber: getting started with outside-in testing

Practical Git Tip #1: Handling differing repository and local names

David M. Doolin, PhD — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 20:35:14 +0000

Having repositories named uniquely and checked out into different locations under the same name helps with WordPress themes. Git is an excellent tool, but it was designed for a particular type of development practice, where every developer is working with the entire tree which is checked out into a dedicated local repository. In some cases, [...]

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Practical Git Tip #1: Handling differing repository and local names

Tracking Smith Barney investment accounts in Quickbooks

David M. Doolin, PhD — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 19:43:31 +0000

Short answer: Smith Barney’s statements are confusing. Longer answer… here’s what’s in progress: Created the following structure: 7410 Investment income (Other Income account) 7411 Long term gain 7412 Short term gain This solves part of the problem. I may need to create accounts for holding stock purchase, money funds, CDs, etc. I think each of [...]

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Tracking Smith Barney investment accounts in Quickbooks

Quickbooks Epiphany: A wannabe operating system, not an application

David M. Doolin, PhD — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 20:00:25 +0000

Really, Quickbooks wants to be an operating system. You open up Quickbooks, it’s assumption is that your time now belongs to Quickbooks, and you should not be interacting with other programs. Thus: Relentless full screen dominance. I’ve been using the Premier trial version to upgrade to the latest file format for QB Pro for MacOSX. [...]

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Quickbooks Epiphany: A wannabe operating system, not an application

3 Priceless Customer Service Facts You Can’t Buy (they might tell for free)

David M. Doolin, PhD — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 09:00:46 +0000

Sending out customer service emails is largely a waste of time. No matter how polite you are, no matter how ludicrously awful your experience was, 90% of the time “customer service” finds a way to make you feel really small or stupid. If they even reply at all. Which is why I don’t send such [...]

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3 Priceless Customer Service Facts You Can’t Buy (they might tell for free)