Biodegradable Geek

Gentoo Sucks, Ubuntu Doesn’t.

I used Gentoo for a few years, and at first I loved it. Mainly because of portage, but the only distro I had experience with before Gentoo was Slackware, and I used to install packages and dependencies manually, so you can see why Gentoo would was so appealing to me. When I first began my [...]

Quick BASH Script to Dump & Compress a MySQL Database

A quick script I whipped up to dump my MySQL database. Usage: sh backthatsqlup.sh (be warned that it dumps ALL databases. This can get huge uncompressed) download BackThatSqlUp.sh

Refactoring Tip: Eliminating Model.find(params[:id]) Duplication

In a controller, you’ll commonly have a method that requires you have an instance variable containing the object you’re working with. An example would be the show, edit, update, and destroy methods (REST). To eliminate having find(params[:id]) in multiple methods, you can use before_filter, like this: class Admin::PostsController < Admin::ApplicationController before_filter :find_post, :only => [:show, [...]

Using Javascript to Populate Forms During Development

During development, working with forms quickly gets annoying because you have to constantly fill in each field, sometimes with unique info. One way around this is to write a little Javascript code that just populates the fields. I use something like this on the bottom of the form. I had jQuery no-conflict mode on in [...]