Biography
Books
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Blog
Rob's blog posts are hosted at:
http://blog.tupleshop.com/
Rob also has an O'Reilly blog.
http://blog.tupleshop.com/
Rob also has an O'Reilly blog.
December 19 2007
This is possibly the funniest screenshots I’ve ever had the pleasure of sharing. After letting my last post brew for a day, I go to check comments in the Mephisto admin tool. First one is from a good friend and fellow humor enthusiast, Surj Patel. And then there’s the rest.… read moreRuby on Rails Contractor: Available! (Rails Cookbook Author)
December 18 2007
I just posted this ad on Craigslist… then realized I should give my blog readers first dibs on my services! Anyway, here’s how it reads: My name is Rob Orsini and I’m a web developer living just north of San Francisco. I specialize in Ruby on Rails contracts and work on… read moreNovember 21 2007
Went looking for this script again just now. I’m putting here as an entry for faster reference. Nothing ground-breaking here, just a stupid-silly back-up script: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 cardero:~/bin pmcweb$ cat backup-pmc-site.sh #!/bin/sh BACKUP_BASE=/users/home/pmcweb/backups BACKUP_DIR=$BACKUP_BASE/pmcweb_`date +%m-%d-%Y` if [ ! -e $BACKUP_DIR ]; then echo "making back-up directory:" echo "$BACKUP_DIR" /bin/mkdir $BACKUP_DIR echo "copying… read moreNovember 15 2007
<object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ym89aH8edrE"></param><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ym89aH8edrE" height="350" width="425"></embed></object> read moreNovember 15 2007
I don’t know why this took so long for me to find out about crontab “nicknames” but I figure if it’s news to me, then it may be to many others too. You need a service to restart with your server. You’ve done this enough that you’re eyes roll when… read moreOctober 30 2007
A great way to store vim plugins, for example, is to have a project called project called plugin and check it out into your~/.vim directory. You could make .vim a project, but I like the flexibility and control of having smaller pieces when I get set up on a new… read moreFEMA, busted again! Democracy is officially over.
October 29 2007
For an agency to be this clumsy they must not be meeting much resistance. FEMA was busted red-handed in the act of creating fake news about themselves. Here’s the story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsxE_2sTGJs Fake news is generated all the time. Companies pay to have news stories fabricated. This is significant because: When… read moreThinking for Yourself (not American, for example)
October 12 2007
Warning: This could be a bit of a ramble. Something flew by in #caboose today that brought up the question again of why you blog. Of course the reason is because we’re all obsessed with ourselves. If we value each other based on how little we think about ourselves—wait, then… read moreOctober 10 2007
This just in from a good friend of mine, Trish Gray, about someone very close to me: Jackson Alexander Orsini was born at 4:18am PDT Wed, October 10th. He weighed in at 7 pounds, 11 ounces. Mom, baby and siblings are all doing fine. Rob, on the other hand, is… read moreTupleShop ergo hacking: part II
September 28 2007
For completeness, one more post on my new office setup. “The Grid.” A fair amount of real estate. I feel I have plenty of room and more importantly, I love to look at these things which makes me want to sit down and work! The star of this post is… read moreSeptember 27 2007
Since I opted out of my full-time O’Reilly gig, I’ve really been able to focus on just a handful of projects. Actually, twice as many as I had at O’Reilly, so the key word must be focus. Focus is used for what I call “going deep.” You have to go… read moreSeptember 27 2007
I just fired up this new office (spending 8-10 hours in it at a time) and had to get my ergo issues hashed out quickly and on the cheap. I dismantled an old oak desk that O'Reilly gave away and just used the wood. The keyboard slider was about $170… read moreUC Berkeley RAD Lab webcast: "Ruby on Rails Intensive 1-day Overview"
September 14 2007
Armando Fox, of the UC Berkeley RAD lab, has put together about six hours of instructive Rails material that have been made available as a series of public webcasts (6 parts). Check it out: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=20854 I remember the RAD lab as my Dad's old stomping grounds. My cousin and I… read moreSeptember 14 2007
A Chinese translation of my book is currently in the works. A few weeks ago I received a note from Liao Zhigang asking if I would say a few words to Chinese Rails developers. Here's what I came up with: "The most I could ask of my Chinese translation would… read moreRob's O'Reilly Blog
North Bay Ruby Users group: first meeting
February 12 2007
I’m pleased to announce a new Ruby Users Group for folks north of San Francisco (or who like to go to Sebastopol, CA): the North Bay Ruby Users Group. Our first meeting is this week; February 15th, 2007 at 7:00pm. O’Reilly has graciously offered us a place to meet, so… read moreOn the O'Reilly book production process
January 26 2007
a comment and response from my blog entry announcing the release of the Rails Cookbook: by Leonard Richardson on 27 Jan 01:22 Rob, congratulations! Everyone else: from my experience O’Reilly is still getting used to the PDF thing. @Leonard: Thanks very much. Yeah, you’re right but as they say, real change comes from within.… read moreJanuary 25 2007
The Rails Cookbook is finally available! I wasn’t sure how the timing of the book’s production schedule and that of the release of Rails 1.2 would work out, but it looks like I nailed it. I had a blast working on it and with all the people in the community… read moreRails Cookbook: Call for reviewers
September 19 2006
I’m finishing up O’Reilly’s Rails Cookbook and wanted to get another round of technical reviewers involved. Please contact me if you’re interested. Ideally your Rails skill level would be intermediate to advanced. read moreTools of the Trade: iTerm--Faster, with Safari-like tabs
September 13 2006
The other day, my PowerBook’s drive croaked and I was given a loaner machine (one of Tim’s old ones; keys worn down, no battery, etc.). Normally I use Panther at work but this loaner came with Tiger. The first thing I noticed was how slow iTerm (version 0.8.2) runs under Tiger.… read moreJuly 27 2006
You may have used the Active Record “acts_as” extensions that ship with Rails, such as acts_as_list, or those added by third-party plugins, such as acts_as_attachment. In this post I’m going to cover how to use a new plugin for Rails by Andrew Bruno, called acts_as_treemap. What is a Treemap? A Treemap is… read moreDeploying Rails with Pound in Front of Mongrel, Lighttpd, and Apache
July 10 2006
Related link: http://blog.tupleshop.com/articles/2006/07/08/deploying-rails-with-pound-in-fron … It seems that the Rails deployment dilemma is finally getting the care that it desperately needed to make the whole situation less of a pain in the neck. For a while there, everyone was hanging on the edge or their seats, hoping that Apache developers would fix Apache’s… read more
