December 2011
2 posts
A great decade...
I don’t talk about my age to often, mostly because I feel very fortunate to have had so many opportunities at a relatively young age, but milestones are a convenient time to reflect on such things and today is one of those. Today is the last day of my 20s.
Looking back, I’m amazed by the number of experiences I’ve had in such a short amount of time. While those experiences are...
September 2011
1 post
ruby_chopped
A few weeks ago I released a fun little project as part of whyday called ruby_chopped.
The idea is modeled after the Food Network show where expert chefs are given a basket of random items and told to make a dish from the contents. In the same way, ruby_chopped creates a project for you with a random set of gems, and asks you to do something great with them.
It was a fun project for several...
August 2011
1 post
SeedMe - Creating a data seed file from your Rails...
I ran into a situation last night where I was trying to get a skeleton site up on heroku, but I wanted to include the data I had created in my dev db. There wasn’t a ton of data, but I still didn’t want to create it again manually. (That heroku run console can end up cost you money…like whole penneis…)
After a quick Google search didn’t find me anything that fit the...
July 2011
2 posts
“Very excited that Charity Chirpa is the “Wildcard” category winner...”
– Twitter
June 2011
1 post
“Submitted my entry for the Hacking Education contest. If you like helping...”
– Twitter
May 2011
1 post
“Results are in for the O’Reilly/Fluidinfo API competition…pretty...”
– Twitter
April 2011
1 post
March 2011
3 posts
“I trust my ability to write code far more than my ability to predict the future.”
– Me
Although I seriously doubt I’m the first person to say this, I think it succinctly describes how I feel about developing features and architecture before they are needed.
Alternate working version: I trust my ability to use code to solve a problem in the future far more than my ability to...
At the DPS for a way overdue license renewal. Imagine, I used to have to talk to the people around me to pass the time.
February 2011
1 post
“Specs are fine, but they take two seconds, and opinions, if they’re based on...”
– Grant Petersen owner of Rivendell, a speciality bike shop. Featured on the Signal vs. Noise blog.
January 2011
3 posts
October 2007
3 posts
RSpec Views: Looking for tags with certain onclick...
Thanks to agile on #dallas.rb for helping me get to this. A great resource for all things tag and attribute related in regards to rails http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/HTML/Selector.html
describe "/questions/show that logged in user is not monitoring" do
it_should_behave_like "/questions/show"
it "should have a link to start monitoring" do
response.should...
RSpec Logged In Helper
This is what I’m using to help out with actions and views that require a logged in user
spec_helper.rb
module LoggedInHelper
def mock_globals
@current_user = mock_model(User, :id => 1)
end
end
describe "Logged In Action", :shared => true do
include LoggedInHelper
before(:each) do
mock_globals
controller.stub!(:current_user).and_return(@current_user)
...
Using flash for javascript messages
Using flash[:notice] doesn’t work so well with AJAX calls. Adding a “js_notice” key to flash has helped me in several places.
respond_to do |format|
if @question_monitor.save
format.js {
flash[:js_notice] = "You will now be alerted to any new activity on this question."
}
else
format.js {
flash[:js_notice] =...
July 2007
3 posts
BarCampBankSeattle Day 2 Recap
Day 2…wow…what a day. Started with a great session on “banker to banker collaboration”:http://barcampbankseattle.pbwiki.com/Day2Session1D and ended with a monumental whiteboard of promise and hope. Sound a little dramatic…maybe…but then again maybe not. The amount of space it is taking up in my mind can only be explained by something that truly is...
4 tags
BarCampBankSeattle Day 1 Recap
Day 1 of “BCBS”:http://barcamp.org/BarCampBankSeattle was a whirlwind and honestly wore me out. (Hence I’m recapping in the morning and not last night.) It was my first BarCamp event in general and I have to say, I’m sold!
But even beyond the BarCamp experience, being trapped in a room all day with people that eat, sleep, drink, and breathe the financial industry is truly...
BarCampBankSeattle here I come...
It’s official, Brad and I are on a collision course with the first “BarCampBank”:http://barcamp.org/BarCampBank in the US, “BarCampBankSeattle”:http://barcamp.org/BarCampBankSeattle!
I’ve got so much to do to get ready for this thing that it’s stupid, so the post ends here.
June 2007
1 post
4 tags
Element.Methods.visible may not return what you...
I was knee deep in an old php form this week, trying to clean it up a bit, hiding and showing certain questions based on the responses of earlier questions. In addition this form had over 400 lines of JS validation that I had to turn on and off based on a questions visibility. Did I mention most of the fields and labels were stuck in a table?
(Ok…I can’t complain too much, it was...
May 2007
1 post
1 tag
RiskKey Launched!
There are not enough exclamation marks in the world to follow that title. I’m so happy to finally have this app up and running and waiting for the world to embrace it.
Ok…so it’s really not targeted at the whole world…just the world of Financial Institutions and their Risk Assessments. (But that’s still a good sized world!)
Check out the full announcement at:...
April 2007
1 post
1 tag
Update
It’s been a while…almost a month…so I thought I do a quick update (in chronological order):
My wife and I bought our plane tickets for our two week excursion to Europe this summer!
My wife started a “personal blog”:http://markandshevawn.blogspot.com for us! This is great because 1) it gives me a appropriate space to post my “personal” stuff (like the...
March 2007
3 posts
1 tag
Back From SxSW
Just wanted to post a quick note letting everyone know (all my 2 subscribers) that I’m back from the whirlwind that is SxSW. I had great time and heard a lot of great panelists…all leaving me inspired and fired up about what I do!
Over the next few days I hope to recap some of my thoughts from the conference…but right now I’m still letting it all soak in.
Special...
1 tag
Surprise!
Just confirmed today that I’ll be at SXSW in Austin! I’ll have more to say about the whole thing later…but I’m pretty stoked about going!
Maybe I’ll see you there….
1 tag
I'm a Dallas.rb Skipper :(
Public Apology: I would like to tell Adam Keys that I am sorry for skipping Dallas.rb for the second month in which I planned on attending. The mailing list confirms that it was, as always, a stellar meeting and I am a lesser person having missed it. We’ll see if April can remedy my skipping streak.
February 2007
4 posts
1 tag
Demo Camp Dallas
I spent my Thursday evening in the company of about 30 other like-minded fellows (and one like-minded lady) at “DemoCamp Dallas”:http://barcamp.org/DemoCampDallas1 that was hosted by “Sabre”:http://www.sabre.com/ out in South Lake. Not gonna lie…little skeptical going in…but I had a great time and highly recommend you come with me to the next one!
There were...
Searching for Something...
A Rails job to be exact. That’s right, after 18 months of freelancing and entrepreneurship I have decided to explore the options of full-time employment. I have very much enjoyed this past year and a half, but I also look forward to the new challenges that now lie before me.
I am currently looking for a Ruby on Rails job in the Dallas metroplex, so if you know anyone, feel free to pass my...
Fresh Air
After spending the last few weeks buried in code, it felt great today to get out and connect face to face with the people that make small business….mom and pop business…keep on churning.
I’m setting up a “Shopify”:http://www.shopify.com account for a small business out in Garland that is looking to expand a piece of their printing business online. I feel like they...
The "Big Game"
Leading up to the game yesterday, I saw several restaurants offering “Big Game” specials. And the more I looked, the more I saw nobody using the words “Super Bowl” anywhere save on CBS.
I’m sure this is due to some trademark, but is this the first year things have been like this…or am I just emerging from a young consumer naivety?
Regardless of what you are...
January 2007
1 post
Tagging
A new “PEW”:http://www.pewinternet.org report out today takes give us some numbers on taggings. In December 2006, PEW found that 28% of internet users have used tagging and that 7% say tagging is part of their “typical day”.
The 28% is a little higher than I would have expected and there are some other interesting numbers in the “full...
October 2006
1 post
Life on Hold: Verizon FiOS
I realize that just about anytime I call a company, I end up on hold. I thought I’d use this time to write (hopefully) short posts chronicling my experiences.
So I’m trying to order the Verizon FiOS that they have just finished running to our apartment. An “account rep” came by a few weeks back, going door to door helping people sign up. Well for starters, this is a very...
September 2006
7 posts
Avast, It's Talk Like A Pirate Day!
In case you didn’t know, today is “International Talk Like a Pirate Day”:http://www.talklikeapirate.com. My college roommate “Paul”:http://www.paulmritter.com and I stumbled upon this holiday sometime during our university years and it is one of our favorites to passively celebrate. We don’t get dressed up or throw a party or anything…we just talk like...
The Most Important Stuff on My Computer
What is the most important application on my machine? What are the most important files? Apparently, Microsoft thinks that Microsoft Office is the most important application that could ever be on my machine and that word, excel, and powerpoint files must be kept securely locked down. How do I know this?
Up to a week ago, I had been exclusively using...
Morale-O-Meter
While researching an upcoming post over for the “McSpadden Technology”:http://www.mcspaddentechnology.com blog, I somehow stumbled upon “Erik Benson’s blog”:http://erikbenson.com/. (Looking back…I really have no clue how I got there…but I’m glad I did.)
Erik (I hope I can call him Erik…maybe Mr. Bension…nah…) has created what I...
Thanks Cappy
Warning: If you aren’t a web nerd like me…you should just skip this one.
After putting it off for over 6 months, I finally took the plunge and started using Capistrano (which I have affectionately nicknamed ‘cappy’) to deploy my web applications. If you aren’t familiar with Capistrano, its basically a scripting system that you can easily setup for deploying Ruby on...
Labor Day
Today is Labor Day…and that means no labor! (At least not from 9 to 5 for me!)
A quick Labor Day history summary: (info from wikipedia)
* Celebrated on the first Monday of September since the 1880s
* Apparently the rest of the world celebrates something similar on May 1.
* The US doesn’t do May 1 for a few reasons:
** Initially there were some big riots in early May in 1886. We were...
The Not So Long Weekend
Long weekend? I don’t even remember getting a short one…but it was worth it. After a longer than expected development cycle, I finally launched the new version of the “McSpadden Technology website”:http://www.mcspaddentechnology.com!
This is actually version 3 of the MTech site and I consider it a vast improvement in design and simplicity. (I created v2 in the backseat of...
Finally!
After a very long break, markmcspadden.net is back as my not-so-personal blog! I have been meaning to get on this for some time and after a long week of what seemed like a thousand different projects, it felt like the right time to do a little something nice for me! (Yeah…I’m a nerd…something nice is making a blog!)
(Thanks to typo and the green bean theme for the quick jump...