Index

Native PostgreSQL authentication in Rails with rails-psql-auth

A while ago, I wrote a PostgreSQL auth plugin for Rails. The plugin basically defers all authentication and authorization worries to the database layer where they are supposed to be taken care of anyway. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 1 decade ago, on July 16, 2007, at 14:07 | Comments closed

Efficient scanning and storing of documents

I don't like having an administration in dead-tree format, but there are those who insist on sending you all kinds of things in this format. To make this data easier to access and back up, I scan it to a digital format. I used to do this manually, with the GIMP, but I decided it was time for some automation. Therefore I wrote a script, which scans whatever you put under the lid of the scanner in lineart mode, and stores it very efficiently in a DjVu DjVuBitonal document. And here it is: Read More »
By halfgaar, 1 decade ago, on June 13, 2007, at 21:06 | Comments closed

Microsoft batch file meets bash shellscript

Luca City, who already shared a nice readline keyboard shortcut with me, wrote me again on May 14 to share another unrelated, but very interesting trick: Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 1 decade ago, on June 11, 2007, at 20:06 | 2 comments

Allowing dots in WordPress post slugs

I was once again annoyed by the fact that WordPress doesn't allow dots in post slugs. Luckily, this time I hadn't published the post with a botched URL yet. (I don't like changing permalinks because they're meant to be permanent; cool URLs don't change.) A quick googling pointed me to a post in the WordPress support forum with a reference to the Periods in Titles WordPress plugin. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 1 decade ago, on May 30, 2007, at 00:05 | 1 comment

Jeroen Dekker (photography) on-line

Jeroen Dekker, a friend and photographer, has recently, on May the 5th, put his website on concert photography on-line. (Go check it out! He has some great pictures there.) Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 1 decade ago, on May 30, 2007, at 00:05 | 5 comments

Drag and drop file upload extension for Firefox

I'm not very fond of file picking dialogs. They're much too squeezy to my taste. I much prefer a full-blown file system browser to pick my files. I feel no need to suffer cute, miniature wannabe file choosers. That's why I was very pleased to come across the dragdropupload extension for Firefox today. I upload files very often, and this extension makes uploading using web forms a little less awkward!

Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 1 decade ago, on May 20, 2007, at 21:05 | Comments closed

Another contributed Readline keyboard shortcut

Last Wednesday, I was given a very nice response with a great tip to my table of Readline keyboard shortcuts by Luca City. Yesterday, Lance Levine gave me another extremely nice response and another great tip: Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 2 decades ago, on May 13, 2007, at 23:05 | 1 comment

Bypassing smart completion in Bash

Luca Citi, a nice Italian Ubuntu user, just gave me an excellent tip in response to my list of Readline keyboard shortcuts. Modern Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Gentoo can easily be configured for Bash to use smart completion. With smart completion enabled, instead of just looking among all the available files and directories without discrimination, TAB will be able to more accurately adjust its list of available completions depending on the program for which arguments are being sought. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 2 decades ago, on May 09, 2007, at 13:05 | 3 comments

Web scraping in Ruby: why I had to use scrAPI instead of WWW::Mechanize and Hpricot

Thursday evening: so, I had written myself a nice little script using Aaron Patterson's WWW::Mechanize and why's Hpricot to extract some data from a popular web-based airport directory. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 2 decades ago, on May 02, 2007, at 13:05 | 7 comments

A domain for the Omega Research Foundation

Popko, my dad, has founded the Omega Research Foundation in 1984 (when I was two years old). The Foundation was to serve as a a vehicle for his research into cyclical changes within ecological and social systems. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 2 decades ago, on March 22, 2007, at 21:03 | 1 comment