My primary blog is here now.
Tad Thorley ※ Developer My primary blog is here now.
Tad Thorley
Webby Goodness
Latest posts
My Favorite Interview
Several years ago I interviewed for a job with Endpoint . I ultimately went with a different company, but I was so impressed by how they did their interviews I thought I should share and get the idea out there. The interviews The first interview is pretty standard. Someone (typically a developer) calls the candidate and asks them general questions to see if he or she will be a good fit for the…
Installing Minecraft Forge From the Command Line on OS X
(I am putting this here so I don’t have to search for it each time minecraft releases an update) First, download the latest universal from http://files.minecraftforge.net/ . cd ~ mkdir mctemp cd mctemp jar xf ~/Library/Application\ Support/minecraft/bin/minecraft.jar rm META-INF/MOJANG_C.* unzip ~/Downloads/minecraftforge-universal-*.zip jar uf ~/Library/Application\…
A Look at Zurb Foundation 4 - Semantic Naming and Sass Mixins
Version 4 of Zurb’s foundation was released recently. It sports an emphasis on mobile and better/faster javascript. The last feature, which they don’t give much detail about, is “semantic naming” and sass mixins. It turns out that this last feature is really cool. Here’s an example. Suppose that your HTML looks like this: Then you can use the foundation grid like…
My Favorite Minecraft Seed
My 5-year-old son tried out a lot of different seeds before he found this one. If you repost this seed, please give credit to William Thorley . He would be thrilled. The seed works with minecraft 1.2.5 and 1.3.1. The seed is: happytime Now a few screenshots to show why it is so fun. It starts you out next to a village: with a cave below it that has plenty of coal and iron, and also gold, lapis…
Family History
My mom started a blog about our family history .
To create a .rvmrc file and gemset for your ruby or rails project
rvm --rvmrc --create ruby_version@gemset_name
Rails Generator Options
I wanted to add/handle options passed to a Ruby on Rails generator I was writing. I looked at the guide , but couldn’t find anything there. I looked at the docs and couldn’t find it there. I looked at the Thor wiki which suggests a “method_options” method, but when I tried to use it I got a NoMethodError. It turned out that I needed to use the “class_option”…
I oppose SOPA/PIPA
More about it here: What is SOPA?
For SpineJS With Rails Use spine-rails
I’ve been learning how to use spinejs with rails. When I’m learning I like to forgo code generators as much as possible and write the necessary code myself. I’ve done that with the past few projects I’ve posted here. However, for most of my future projects I’m going to use the spine-rails gem . The gem is written by Alex MacCaw , the author of spinejs which is much nicer than the situation of…
Rails With SpineJS and Google Maps
I wanted to create a simple project that used ruby on rails, spinejs, and google maps together. I came up with the following features: Dragging a marker icon from outside of a map onto a map creates a marker on the map and in the database Dragging a marker from one position to another updates the marker on the map and updates its position in the database Right-clicking on a map marker removes it…
Backbonejs with Coffeescript Book
A friend of mine, Chris Smith , is writing a book about using coffeescript with backbone. He’s given me a sneak peek and I have to tell you: it’s going to be awesome. You can sign up here to get early access to sample chapters and more.
Formatting Coffeescript For Tumblr
I’ve been trying to figure out a good way to format my code examples. There are plenty of options for Ruby, but nothing good for Coffeescript, especially if you’re using a hosted blog system like tumblr. I’ve settled on using github’s gist embedding: It isn’t as convenient as having the code inline, but it works well.
SpineJS With Rails Screencast Transcribed
I transcribed the “Spine and Rails” screencast by Alex MacCaw and put it together with the source code on github .
When Textmate Can't Find Coffeescript
When you try to use the textmate coffeescript bundle you may get the error: coffee: command not found . As the coffeescript bundle’s README points out, textmate doesn’t inherit your regular PATH. You need to go into textmate’s preferences (Preferences > Advanced tab > PATH variable) and add the path to coffeescript. You need to figure out where coffeescript is with the…
Simple SpineJS and Ruby on Rails Integration
I’ve recently been learning an MVC javascript framework called Spine . It is similar to backbone (hence the name), but I’ve found it to be a bit more rails friendly and closer to what I’m familiar with. The source is also written in coffeescript, which I think has a better syntax. What’s the first step when learning something new? “Hello World!” of course!…
Spacechem - Sernimir IV - Double Bonds I bought Spacechem as...
Spacechem - Sernimir IV - Double Bonds I bought Spacechem as part of the humble indie bundle and it has been a great puzzle game. This isn’t the optimal solution, but on this level I realized that you could bond-drop-grab to only grab the bonded molecule. It is a principle that turned out to be helpful later one.
Apple's Three Laws of Developers
yourhead : A developer may not injure Apple or, through inaction, allow Apple to come to harm. A developer must obey any orders given to it by Apple, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A developer must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. — I. Developer
RT @blowmage: Having a hard time thinking of something more coupled than rails’ database rake...
RT @blowmage: Having a hard time thinking of something more coupled than rails’ database rake tasks. http://bit.ly/hP6Sb6
Filling up the tub for my son to take a bath and ask him to check the water level for me. He...
Filling up the tub for my son to take a bath and ask him to check the water level for me. He returns: “it’s still loading” #geekparenting