Getting started with MongoDB
I’ve been playing with a few new database technologies lately, and the NoSQL movement seems to have come into vogue. Getting up and running with MongoDB is quick and painless, and it offers a lot of the benefits of key-value stores along with the query power of you’re used to from a RDBMS.
Managing email lists with Mailchimp and MonkeyWrench
Delivering emails is much harder than it sounds in practice. There are all sorts of hassles with being trusted by recipient servers and not being flagged as spam, thankfully Mailchimp help make it easy.
Read more about managing lists in Mailchimp with MonkeyWrench
Filtering the Twitter Streaming API
If you’ve been using the Twitter Streaming API you’ve probably noticed you get a lot of data. There’s an easy way to limit it to things you care about.
Read more about Filtering the Twitter Stream
Bash script to check timestamp on cron logfile
We’ve got a cron job that runs nightly, that broke. So time to put something in place that will check the error code and that the job has run.
Read more about checking timestamps with bash
Building ruby-debug on Ruby 1.9.x
I’ve just recently upgraded to ruby 1.9.2-preview3 using RVM and everything is going well, except installing ruby-debug19 (which I’m now dependent on to do any productive development)
Read more about building ruby-debug on Ruby 1.9.x
Consuming the Twitter Stream
In the wake of the recent Twitter developer conference, @Chirp, I thought it was about time I write up my notes on using the Streaming API.
Read more about Consuming the Twitter Stream
Upgrading Engine Plugins to work with Rails 3
Upgrading to Rails 3 is pretty quick and easy, but there are a few gotchas if you want to take your Rails 2.3 Engines with you.
Read more about Upgrading an engine to work with Rails 3
JRuby, and why bouncers are assholes
I’m normally not one to use this site as a soap box or an outlet for opinion pieces. But I figured it’s easier than being continually baited into replying on all the various blogs/forums/groups out there. There’s a whole heap of talk in the ruby community at the moment on JRuby and it’s place in the ecosystem. Most of it has been kicked off in response to Charles Nutter’s post on JRuby’s importance to Ruby. I was fortunate enough to see Charles’ presentation at Rails…