Thaumato

When you upload a file in ruby, from IE, you get the full path when you do temp_file.original_filename or filename. You are supposed to be able to use File.basename(filename) from ruby to strip that out - but it doesn’t really work b/c if you are running in linux and someone from windows uploads a file in I.e. (a highly likely scenario) - the path delimiters for linux don’t jive with the path delimiters for windows, and so - it doesn’t work.

I ended up using Rick Olson’s attachement_fu code instead.

The relevant bit here:
def sanitize_filename(filename)
returning filename.strip do |name|
# NOTE: File.basename doesn't work right with Windows paths on Unix
# get only the filename, not the whole path
name.gsub! /^.*(\\|\/)/, ''

# Finally, replace all non alphanumeric, underscore or periods with underscore
name.gsub! /[^\w\.\-]/, '_'
end
end

Upgraded Rails recently and my sessions stopped working. I had the old Stefan Kaes roll your own mysql session store but it wasn’t playing nice. So - I decided to try and use memcached sessions instead - but I got this odd error:
ArgumentError (key too long “rack:session:900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1900980980980sd98f0saddklqjhsdkjh123e09u2f90u1o2dhqwj,dhqkwhd9182ye102ue1pojdlkasjd0291u8409120r8h120ie120e102dh1029eu1sdfwerffqwd23t34t23qwe”):

So I tried to switch back to ActiveRecord sessions - the old kind - but sessions weren’t working. Everytime I set a value and then redirected the values I set weren’t there. I found someone noting similar behavior here and reading the thread saw that there was supposed to be an initializers folder. I didn’t have one - my app is old and I’ve been upgrading over time - this is a jump from 2.0X to 2.3.2.

So - I generated a new rails app - copied over the config/initializers folder, and it started to work. Looking in this file - session_store.rb, there is a line that initializes the session key. Aha! Without that key in there rails tried to use some other value - not sure where it got the value above from (I changed it from the one that is local, but its the same size) - but that one is too big.

Oh well - 2 hours I’ll never get back - wait, I guess I am giving back 2 hours of productivity boosts that Rails gave me for free. I think I’m still ahead.

Still not sure why ActiveRecord sessions isn’t working - but it probably has something to do with how intrusive Kaes’s solution was - maybe I need to just pull that one out by the roots and see if it works.

Make sure you right click the .exe and on the configuration tab select run as administrator. Otherwise I kept getting ‘failed to start service’

In the unlikely event that someone else has this problem - just putting it out there.

I’ve been using Java Service Wrapper - its great - to wrap a java loop that is polling SQS. It was working on my local Linux distro - Ubuntu (8.10)- in dev. But it was time to get it out to the Prod server - which is also Ubuntu - though the version is different - its the one that EC2 on Rails is built on (8.04 I believe)- I kept getting Segmentation Faults.

After beating my head against the wall for a couple of hours I decided to use another version. So I uploaded 3.2.3 instead of 3.3.3 and it worked.

Anyway, go figure, it seems to be working now.

Picking up Flow again - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book about optimal experience - and reading through it tonight, I happened on this passage which made me think of the postmodern condition

Anomie - literally, “lack of rules” - is the name the French sociologist Emile Durkheim gave to a condition in society in which the norms of behavior had become muddled. When it is no longer clear what is permitted and what is not, when it is uncertain what public opinion values, behavior becomes erratic and meaningless. People who depend on the rules of society to give order to their consciousness become anxious.

Thinking about this in the context of games. Games are not fun without rules.

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Started using activemessaging to put a message on an sqs queue and typica to process the message today and I noticed that the messages were coming through all garbled. I set the encoding on the typica MessageQueue instance to false and things started working again.

So after
queue.setEncoding(false);

Started getting the simple messages…mmm…

The other problem I’m having today is that I can’t write to S3 from local server env it appears to timeout, though I can add values from S3 Firefox Organizer so I’m hardcoding a few values and not deleting them for today.

Two unrelated items, but wanted to document these for posterity.

SF IV is amazing. Really into the game, having a great time. Yesterday I log in and my save file is missing. I could either create a new one or call tech support - so I just created a new one knowing I’d have to re-unlock all the hidden characters, etc, lose my online states, etc. I don’t know if it was just me, but it kind of sucked.

Also - tried a Butterfinger BUZZ for the first time today. Wow. In case you don’t know what a Butterfinger BUZZ is, its a Butterfinger bar “WITH AS MUCH CAFFEINE AS THE LEADING ENERGY DRINK”. Works out to about 80 mg of caffeine for the whole package, a 2 piece set. The back of the candy bar actually has a warning - Not recommended for pregnant women or children! Anyway - I had it a few hours ago and I’m still kind of BUZZing.

Seriously, what a great idea. Its like one of those things that just seem wrong, so no one would ever think to actually do it. Why do I have to drink my caffeine though? Someone at Nestle must have been saying the same thing, late at night. “I’m hungry, but I’m also tired. I wish this candy bar had caffeine in it instead of just sugar. Wait a minute…..”

mysql -u whatever -p database_name < database_dump.sql

I know I’ve looked this up like a 100 times - so… for my own reference - here it is

Reading Allan Bloom again, his Closing of the American mind, really a great book even if you don’t agree with his politics. One thing he gets to is an explication of how Nietzsche’s wide ranging cultural criticism of religion and science was based on a principled stand. According to Bloom, Nietzsche’s fire and fury are generated from an unflinching intellectual honesty - he knows that god is dead, and doesn’t proclaim it triumphantly but rather gloomily, sadly, because he knows that the religious impulse, the non-rational, is required if the soul of man is to ever elevate past the empty planes and dead conclusions of science and rationality. Sure, there is much to admire in the Enlightenment, but with it also much was lost in the West. Nietzsche’s anger and vitriol were manifestations of this realization, the unwillingness to accept as the ultimate fate of humanity the characterization of the Last Man in Zarathustra - content with a base animal existence, happily oblivious to his lost inheritance. The flip side to this coin of course is that this anger and passion have no authentic target. The artistic impulse, while strong, has no absolute base upon which to build. The foundations have all been weakened and are still crumbling, a hundred and fifty years later. Relativism is like water, like the elements of nature, injecting itself into every crevice, downgrading every faith.

And so, what hope do we have? What hope did Nietzsche have? According to Bloom, Nietzsche’s hope was that the creative impulse, the artistic drive of man will lay the new foundation itself, will create the new religions, the new prophets, based upon where we are now, based upon all that man has been through, something to redeem our fractured doubting present, something to restore and reinvent salvation itself. Yet, who is up to the task? Are we all just awaiting this new messiah? I was thinking about this this morning. Perhaps the Native Americans, with their connection to the land, to the present and not some far away future state where all our problems are solved, had the right idea. Perhaps the modern green movement is the correct way forward, in so far as it engenders a respect and awareness of our current existence, a reverence for the here and now, for the mysterious and ultimately unexplained ground of being. Perhaps in the notion of mother earth, the pagan synch with nature, is the path for our return to sublime harmonies and higher purposes. Perhaps the Native American philosophy of life can tell us the way home.