Tim Matheson Blog - Productive Tips and More

I recently revisited Red Interactive and found some new characters in the sourcecode of the flash file. I thought I would share them with you here.

“nay nay give me some hay” = “ed”

“dead men tell no tales” = “nub”

“jiminy cricket!” = “hopper”

“the last straw” = “cameljoe”

“surley you jest” = “jester”

“rumpelstiltskin is my name” = “unclesam”

“may i please have some blueberry pie?” = “gordon”

“i shot a man in reno” = “jailbird”

“i dreamt i was a butterfly” = “sun”

NEW CODES!

“happy halloween” = “skely”

“the funk of forty thousand years” = “skeletor”

“trick or treat” = “shakspeare”

“smell my feet” = “minuteman”

“baby got back” = “fatback”

“nay nay i never got any hay” = “dropdeaded”

I have been following this multi-touch sensor based computer technology pretty closely. I am fascinated by the thought of these types of devices to replace our current constraint prone desktop and laptop computers. The file transfer feature has got to be one of the coolest features of the coffee table computer shown in the video. I dream of a day when wads of cables become non-existent.

Setting up a mailer in Rails can seem like a daunting task, especially to new comers. I found this video and several other resources online to be very helpful in explaining the ins and outs of setting one up. This is a very in depth video explaining how mailers can make life easier for the Ruby programmer. See the screencast!

[via : http://media.railscasts.com/]

Microsoft has a great article on how to conserve your laptops battery supply using hibernate features available in “most” windows installations. I really think this is an overlooked feature available to Microsoft customers. Read the full article

1. Open Power Options in Control Panel. (Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Power Options.)
2. Click the Hibernate tab, select the Enable hibernate support check box, and then click Apply.
3. If the Hibernate tab is unavailable, your computer does not support this feature.

www.orb.com is a FREE piece of software that allows you to stream your desktop computers content to various web enabled devices such as cell phones, laptops, pdas and even other desktop computers remotely. I especially like the feature which allows you to stream video to your smartphone. While buffering can become excessive at times, the stream makes up for it in quality and the ability to encode virtually any media file you through at it avi, mpeg, mpeg4, mov, wmv etc. Orb is a must have for an on-the-go lifestyle. Get it FREE here

Hello everyone,

I recently had the joy of working with the Ruby Shipping gem which allows you to grab shipping rates from UPS and FEDEX. However many people (myself included) have had problems with this gem. The reason is simple the documentation contains misinformation and is causing many developers to bang there heads. I found a solution and would like to share, so here it is.

OK first off make your life easier and create a file
/config/shipping.yml and add your ups account information as shown
below.

#in your config/shipping.yml file
ups_license_number: ups_xml_access_key
ups_user: ups_username
ups_password: ups_password

One important thing to notice is that I am using ups_license_number: as
opposed to ups_account: as shown in the Shipping gem docs :( . This is
what is causing all the trouble. Also note that I am using the xml
access key and not the account number.

Next you need a method to get your quote. Here is a quick one to get you
started.

#in your controller
def ups_quote(to_zip, sender_zip, weight)
  #define the parameters for the quote
  params ={
  :zip => to_zip,
  :sender_zip => sender_zip,
  :weight => weight,
  :prefs => "#{RAILS_ROOT}/config/shipping.yml"
  }
  #build the shipping gem object
  @shipping = Shipping::UPS.new params
end

#in your view



Shipping Quote:
<%= number_to_currency @shipping.price %>