Rails: Cookies, Frozen Gems, and TextDrive

Jon Steinhorst once told me a movies are rewritten from script to shoot, and again from shoot to editing. I spent a good chunk of this week re-writing a Ruby on Rails app to go from development to production.

Works fine in development. Not at all in production.

The issue was a combination of frozen gems and cookies.

First off, while TextDrive recommends depending on your vendor directory for any Ruby gems unique to your project, I found success with Geoffrey Grosenbach‘s Freeze Other Gems Rake task that sends them to /lib

Secondly, I wasn’t able to reliably set and retrieve cookies. Turns out I needed to access the cookie with a string, not a symbol.

All the resources I found say this should work in the controller
cookies[:the_timezone]

But it doesn’t, this does:
cookies['the_timezone']

Then in the view (specifically a select menu) I need to use this:
time_zone_options_for_select(cookies['the_timezone'].value,TZInfo::Timezone.us_zones,TZInfo::Timezone)

Gas Line Break: Old Highway 8 & New Brighton Blvd

From the St. Anthony Police Dept, 8:47am:

“Our department is currently on the scene of a significant gas line break in the area of Old Highway 8 and County Road 88. At this time, officers are evacuating the residents of the Arbor’s Townhomes located in the immediate area of the break.”

Update 9:20am:

“The damage to the gas line involves a steel pipe that can not simply be pinched off. They are currently awaiting a part to repair/replace the damaged line and it is expected to take over an hour to complete the repair.”

Made some interface changes to the websi…

Made some interface changes to the website. Brought back monthly and category archives, postings from the First Crack podcast and added my twitterings. All the sections in the ever-expanding bottom section are all expand-o-collapse in the effort to make some of the stuff at the bottom easier to reach. I’m wondering about the search-engine implications of these changes. If you have any thoughts on the changes and their implications, shoot me a comment. Thanks.

I’m Not Here to Make the News

“One thing I’ve noticed about talking to certain types of press, particularly mainstream, is that they have a pattern in mind before they write about something, and the better you conform to the pattern the more coverage you get.” – Matt Mullenweg, Automattic.com

I did a little writing for my college paper. At the time I was there, the editors had a handful of stories they thought should be covered. The local movie theater using high-fat buttery oil on popcorn, for example. I didn’t. That’s not interesting, it’s annoying. Matt’s comments make it sound like quite a few people haven’t grown out of it.

Often when I too get calls from the press, it feels less like they’re reporting and more like they’re covering their ass on some fiction they just wrote.

Or just plain missing the interesting story.

When I turn the mic on someone for this podcast, I don’t know where the conversation will lead. I trust the conversation will be good, that they’ll share something interesting. Whether or not they do is up to your ears.

Suspicious Van in the Village

This just in from the St. Anthony Police Department “Suspicious Activity” mailing list:

On the morning of May 11th, two young boys were playing basketball in front of a home in the 3500 block of Belden. A black full-size van with tinted windows pulled up next to the driveway and the driver asked the boys to let him see them make some baskets. As an adult inside the home came to the door, the driver was heard telling the boys he would see them tomorrow. The van then left the area. The driver was described as a white male approximately 40-50 years old. The van and the driver were not known to the juveniles or the adult.

The driver did not make any attempt to entice the boys to come closer or to get into the vehicle.

Opportunitize, Not Monetize

30,000 feet up, on my way to a 3-day client meeting I took a tip from Doc Searls and stared at the landscape.

That altitude provides a pretty good view of the roadway branding our country like a waffle iron. While I speculate most of these stretches of pavement are unused most of the time, without them, our economy would evaporate.

From regular Joes carpooling to the office, armies of FedEx and UPS trucks making their rounds, high school kids driving to their first job interview, garage bands loading up their gear for a show. My car? It’s sitting in a parking spot awaiting my return.

All while Eric Rice‘s Future of Podcasting plays in my headphones. He snarks, “People always ask ‘How do you make money at [podcasting/second life/etc]?'”

Opportunity.

Without a car, there are simply fewer opportunities. Opportunities to connect with other people. Opportunities to make money. While I don’t put direct pressure on my car to pay for itself, the inverse is true. Replace ‘car’ with ‘podcast’, ‘blog’, ‘laptop’, ‘telephone’, or ‘mouth’. The statement is still true.

Remember the bit from Dave Slusher’s Amateur Means You Do It For Love talk about how podcasting makes conversations and other opportunities happen? Opportunities that wouldn’t happen otherwise?

And remember when Doc rhetorically asked, “What’s the business model of my telephone?”

Yeah. Me too.

Opportunitize: to turn anything into an opportunity.
“No, my car doesn’t make any money, but I’ve opportunitized it to get a job.”

What an awful, corpspeak word, I just submitted to the pseudodictionary.