Tech

Oh My Zsh!

1 year ago
by Rachel in

A few months ago I found the oh-my-zsh repository on GitHub and decided to play around with/use it and made a quick lightening talk about it for the people at work. I also forked the project and made my own theme eponiously named “rachel.”

rachel theme for oh-my-zsh

rachel theme for oh-my-zsh

This morning I got a note saying it was accepted into the main branch and is publicly available when you pull it down. If you’re using oh-my-zsh or interested in trying it out, check out my theme! ;-)

Gawker Hacker

1 year ago
by Rachel in

Yet another reason to use a password manager.

Unbelievable, coming from a network of nerds and geeks who have posted articles in the past about password management. And here the CEO uses short, easily guessable and repeated passwords for everything from the company’s Google Apps account to his personal Twitter account.

Ironically, any of the commenters that login via Facebook Connect were not affected!

Just one more reminder to change your passwords every few months and make them as secure as possible!

Lightning Talks Posted to SlideShare

1 year ago
by Rachel in ,

I took some time today and posted two of the lightning talks I did for the online team here at work. They probably don’t mean much to you unless you were actually at the presentation though.

Breadboard.yml is to ActiveResource as Database.yml is to ActiveRecord

1 year ago
by Rachel in ,

One of the problems we were having with ActiveResource at work was that we have multiple versions of services. We needed development services, “preview” services for the editorial team to test new articles and of course the production services. Developers only really want to see the development services but our designers need to see the preview content to make sure the stylesheets and javascript will work prior to going live. This gets sticky whenever there are multiple people editing the self.site variable in a model and can cause a headache when merging if values are getting overwritten all over the place.

I can’t quite understand why this isn’t a default feature of ActiveResource, but wouldn’t one think that developers would need to have at least two different environment services like development and production?

My co-worker, Matt Parker (@moonmaster9000,) imagined a better way to handle services and ta-da, Breadboard was born!

When I was implementing Breadboard on our front-end code, I quickly found that there were a few bugs that needed to be weeded out before it could be widely used by the team. For one thing, whenever you were inheriting site settings from parent classes, that would automatically be set for you, but with Breadboard it wasn’t checking if the parent class was assigned a proper site service and would automatically fall back to the default service value. I made a patch that performed the necessary checks on parent classes before the fallback to the default service.

Another interesting bug that we found was that sometimes the services were not getting set. It ended up being that when an ActiveResource model set self.site, it also set @connection equal to nil which was a key component missing the Breadboard gem that was causing some inconsistencies. A quick method write solved the problem and we were able to get Breadboard out into the workflow of the Online team.

Things to Always Keep in Your Car

1 year ago
by Rachel in

I recently found this article off of one of my favorite websites, LifeHacker, which called readers to list some of the things that they always keep in their car. It was based off of this article from Budgets Are Sexy.com which discusses the 5 things that the writer always carries around with them in their car.

That got me thinking about myself and what I carry around. Until the end of last year or the beginning of this year I had the bad habit of not carrying a emergency roadside kit with me, especially considering the amount of trans-state traveling I do throughout the year, this was a disaster waiting to happen. I now carrying a roadside kit, albeit a very cheap one, which contains a set of jumper cables, a bunch of tools and wrench pieces, and flares. My car is small and the battery isn’t huge so I think the small jumper cables will be enough but I found earlier this year when a friend’s battery died that they were no match for her gigantic SUV (oh, the joys and benefits of having a super-compact car…! :-) Have I mentioned enough about how much I love my car?)

I realized that I have been doing some things right. I always carry a sleeping bag with me in the off chance I will have to do some dirty work underneath the car or, heaven forbid, if I need to sleep in the car for some reason. My car seats are reasonably comfortable (for me, some relatives and friends hate them) and if I’ve had to nap in the car I’ve done so successfully. Then again, I take after my father who is capable of nearly sleeping anywhere save for sleeping standing up.

The article did bring up something I haven’t thought about. I should probably keep an extra set of clothes and maybe even shoes, just in case I find my travels taking me someplace that I can’t get home to change or I messy them with bad weather or car trouble. I also don’t have a first aid kit which seems horribly overlooked considering how accident-prone I am.I’ve also been meaning to get a travel sized flashlight but have yet to stumble upon one. It also seems like it would be a good idea to keep some sort of energy or granola bar in the car since I’m hypoglycemic and I’m intolerable in that state.

Here’s a broken down list of things I usually keep in my car:

  1. Sleeping bag
  2. Roadside kit & Tire fixing tools
  3. Portable dog crate
  4. Reusable grocery bags
  5. Napkins
  6. Umbrella
  7. iPod/iPhone charger/axillary connector kit.
  8. Backseat cover for dog and dog harness
  9. Things to donate/return
  10. GPS

Here’s some things I should think about keeping in the car:

  1. Extra set of clothes/shoes
  2. Sweater
  3. First Aid Kit
  4. Energy or granola bars
  5. Flashlight
  6. Coupons
Go to Top