In Rails 2.0, when you generate a new app, Rails defaults to SQLite3 as the default database adapter in database.yml. If you’d rather it generate database.yml for MySQL, you can use the following command to generate your app: rails -d mysql myapp Courtesy: Rails 2.0.2: Some new defaults and a few fixes

I got into a discussion today at work over whether or not having an .html file extension has any SEO benefits over an extensionless directory-style url. I did a little research online and found just about equal arguments for either side. On the .html file extension side, the argument is that having a file extension makes [...]

For those who are unfamiliar with IPython: it’s a Python shell replacement that adds many features for developers. It’s beyond the scope of this post to go into greater detail, but if you want to learn more you can visit the IPython website. IPython has been an enormous aid to me in developing with Django, but [...]

Django doesn’t have anything remotely close to migrations in Rails. It does have the syncdb management command, but that’s only good for initial table creation. If you need to add or remove a model attribute at a later point, you’re pretty much stuck with manual alter table commands to your database. I’ve found that I have [...]

I’ve just spent the last few hours learning how to use signals in Django. After many, many searches on Google and much trial and error, I think I finally have a grasp on these silly things, and since I’m an all around nice guy, I’m going to spare those lucky few that happen upon this [...]

I just made a new posting to my company’s blog. I don’t mind contributing content, but when I barely have time to write on my own little blog, it does kind of bite to post something somewhere else. So, I’m going to have my cake and eat it to by at least linking to my [...]

Just noticed Zed Shaw’s soon to be infamous rant on Rails and the Rails community. As a little background, Zed Shaw is of course the creator of Mongrel, the web server that has become the staple deployment apparatus for Rails. Zed’s rant is long and boisterous; typically, I view such ranting with a healthy dose of [...]

Little late on posting an update about this, but I was inspired by one of Kelsey’s photos from the event. AIR Houston went off without a hitch, mostly at least. Brad finished the design Friday, but we noticed some contrast issues, so a little more tweaking was required before we were good to go. Saturday, I had [...]

Well, I’ll finally have time to write on my blog again. As of Friday, I’ve left development on TipDish. There were many reasons for my decision to leave the group, which I won’t go into in depth here. Very simply, the project was going in a direction that I simply did not agree with, so I [...]

Okay, so if you read my last post, you know I lied, but I forgot about AIR. Yesterday, we had the kickoff party for this year’s AIR Houston. AIR is a competition, started in Austin, that pairs teams from the area against each other in a quest to develop a 100% accessible site for non-profits. Before [...]