Author: matte

Categories
programming tips work

Restarting mongrel_cluster with capistrano

Update April 2, 2009: This post is REALLY old. Do yourself a favor and install Passenger. I have and it’s a life saver for my Rails sites. No more crashing mongrels, or mongrels that don’t want to restart. Just sites that know they need to spin up if they’re down.

Update April 17, 2007: Bradley, the author of mongrel_cluster, was already aware of this issue and is getting ready to release a new version with some fixes for this issue. Best practice for now is to update your config files to place the pid files in /var/run/mongrel_cluster. He mentioned it way back on February 23rd. I shoulda read closer.

If you’ve been experiencing problems with restarting your mongrel cluster through Capistrano then I have two solutions that have worked for me and I’m pretty sure will for you as well.

Continue reading “Restarting mongrel_cluster with capistrano”
Categories
funny me me me technology wtf?

HEY!!! That’s not nice.

While filling out an online form today, I was presented with what we in the web biz call a CAPTCHA image. It’s one of those graphics that has text you need to confirm. The text is either distorted, covered with lines, shapes, or colors, or even both. It is presented in such a way as to obscure the text enough so that a computer can’t automatically guess what it says. They’ve become quite popular and for good reason. They work. But what happens when they start fighting back, or at least letting you know how they feel about you.

I kid you not, this is what it asked me to confirm…

Continue reading “HEY!!! That’s not nice.”
Categories
car earth me me me tips

Save the world… Save the cheerleader

Cathy and I watched “An Inconvenient Truth” last weekend and it was really inspiring. Sure, it’s a glorified PowerPoint presentation but, with all apologies to Marshall McLuhan, in this instance the medium is not the message. So, I’ve tried to step up my looking for ways to help reduce my impact on our environment. My small steps may not make a HUGE difference but they’ll help and I can also help spread the word on my tiny little blog here. One thing that helps not just the environment but your pocketbook as well?

Stop idling the car!!

Studies have shown that idling the car for longer than 10 seconds is very wasteful. 10 SECONDS PEOPLE! That’s many stoplights out where I live, if I hit it right… wrong… umm, just as it changes to red. So, I’ve started to turn my car off when I think I can get away with it. The following link has more information and there’s a quaint, though low-budget (I love the squirrel), video that makes a good point as well.

(inspiration for this post) Homemade Hybrids – with the 10-Second Rule

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7IyOlcfoMc]

Using this 10 second rule can even save you gas. The person quoted in the story I linked to above said he got an extra 30 miles in one month. That’s an extra gallon in my car. $3.45 saved. Per tank. I go through a coupla tanks a month. That’s big bucks.

What else am I doing?

  • I’m starting to take lightrail more often into work
  • I don’t run the water in my shower waiting for it to get hot as long as I used to. I used to shave while waiting but it gets hot enough, fast enough, that I start the shower after shaving.
  • We’ve replaced standard lightbulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs in many places, though I think I know some places where we haven’t.

Little things, but things that help. You can too. So, if you find yourself idling your car, anywhere you’re going to be longer than 10 seconds?… A long stoplight… Waiting for the kids to come out of school… Tailgating… etc… Turn it off.

PS – What’s the deal with the title? If we save our world? We’ll be saving the lives of countless cheerleaders too. I, for one, am all for that! 🙂

Categories
me me me technology work

and 15 cents in change

WOOT!! Just really excited about my first IPO ever!!!!! we priced at $11 a share and ended the day at $14.15 per share!

It’s been a long time in coming. I moved out here in ’98 and have lived through the lean times of the post-2000 bail-out of all things Internets. It’s nice to be on the upside of good times.

Thanx to all those that deserve but don’t get naming (sorry, for strict reasons of privacy). If you think you deserve thanx, then I give you those thanx and more. You know who you are. I’ve worked with the best and it shows. Many amazing people have stood alongside me and I have worked for many amazing talents during the downturn in the .com economy and we’ve come out of it all and stood tall. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I can’t begin to express my thanx.

[holding a glass of Veuve Clicquot in the air] here’s to the future everyone. Keep your feet on the ground and keep looking to the stars… or what ever Kasey Casem used to say. 🙂

Categories
pets wtf?

Update to dog cruelty story

CNN is reporting that the man believed to have committed the heinous act of severing a dogs head and giving it back to the young girl who owned it, IN A BOX WRAPPED AS A PRESENT, has been arrested!!!! JOY!!!!

I wrote about this despicable act a little over a week ago, when it was first reported. I haven’t changed my position…

Death Penalty!!!! fucker.

However, there is something that bothers me about this recent event. It’s how he’s being charged. He’s “being held on suspicion of terrorist threats. Police said he may be charged with animal cruelty.”[1] Terrorist threats? Okay, I suppose I can see this. The word “Terrorist” has grown in ominous-ness… ominousity… [shrug] to include much larger targets (see: Bush, War, Osama, etc.) but it still relates to the little guy too. An act commited to terrorize. This, clearly, is such an act.

The part that flummoxes me is that he MAY be charged with animal cruelty. What is the rationale that says that this ISN’T animal cruelty. MAY? MAY??? If this guy isn’t charged with animal cruelty, I weep for our justice system.

Is there a silver lining to this whole story? Yes. This story has touched so many hearts around the world that the reward for information leading to an arrest has grown to over $20,000!! The LARGEST reward amount ever collected by the Humane Society, for any case in their history. One person even offered the girl and her grandmother a vacation! Just to get away for a while.

So, hug your pets today. Tell them you love them. And help out the ones you don’t know. Donate to the Humane Society. The dog/cat/ferret/wombat/pelican 🙂 you help just might be the one that comes home with someone you know tomorrow.

[1] CNN.com

Categories
me me me

My name in lights


I got my name in lights with notcelebrity.co.uk

Categories
music wtf?

finetune… kinda fine, not tuned.

finetune screengrab

While perusing the Internets today I came upon a website called “finetune“. It’s another “Social Music” website in the growing online-music-space, dedicated to listening to your favorite artist’s music and discover new music that you can buy like the good little consumer that you are. There are many others but I won’t discuss them here. The list is just TOO long. You can see a “small” list in this comment at another website.

On finetune I did some searches for my favorite artists.  However, due to the broad range of my musical interests, the website doesn’t have my top picks. Peter Mulvey, Willy Porter, Eddie From Ohio… nada, zilch, bupkus.

Continue reading “finetune… kinda fine, not tuned.”
Categories
video

Thank YOU Ze

It’s been an amazing year. Wishing you the best in your future endeavors.

Watch his last show.

Watch his first show.

Categories
cool me me me pets photography

WOOT!!! Famous Kitteh


So there’s this website called Consumerist.com. If you don’t know about it, you owe it to yourself to go read it and learn about how to be a smarter consumer and find out about evil evil companies… So like I was saying, there’s this website called Consumerist.com and they have started to use flickr images for pictures above each of their posts. Guess who’s been chosen for one of those pictures…

JASPER!!!!

WOOT!!!!

See the Consumerist post here and while you’re at it, check out the picture they chose on it’s original flickr page.

Categories
funny me me me video

Blast from the past

My buddy Dave just posted this video to YouTube. I had completely forgotten about it! Totally takes me back… Here’s the story, as Dave puts it…

This is an old PSA (1993) for the Church of Latter Day Saints. Not that I’m big into that cause, but the story behind this PSA for me…

Back when I worked at WEEK, sometimes our newscasts would run short. When they did, we would add a station promo or PSA to fill time. When we discovered this gem, it became a favorite of the crew and we would run it whenever we could. The 60 version is a lot better than the 30… it features extra rejections.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHWxoQi_lks]