Google Chrome Frame

Ok, this just looks fun:
http://blog.chromium.org/2009/09/introducing-google-chrome-frame.html

Allow your IE users to experience HTML 5 and faster Javascript rendering, by running your IE users inside Webkit via a Google Chrome Frame.

Prompt your IE users to install Google Code Frame plugin, then add a single meta tag to your pages, and... hello Chrome inside IE.

I don't know how "real world useful" it will be, because the people running IE 6 are probably not people that can or will install something like Google Chrome Frame.

But the idea is freaking cool. A little devilish, but very, very cool.

I'll have to check this one out a bit further.

TCBTB show in Albany

The Cast Before The Break will be playing at the Red Square in Albany this Sunday night (8/30), and I can't wait!!!

If you haven't seen these guys live, you are missing a real treat. The last time they played here the show, audience and venue were fantastic!

Their latest release, Still has received very favorable reviews at both:

StrangeGlue and AbsolutePunk

Man, this is going to be fun.

Not quite an empty nest

Hard to believe, but this will be the first year in the past 17 that I don't have a child in the k-12 school system. We moved our middle child out to college yesterday, and we bring my baby out to school on Friday. My mom always told me that I'd be surprised how fast it goes by, but until you are at a point that you can look back on it yourself you really have no idea.

However, its not all empty nest parties yet. My oldest finished college last year and is now back home as he tries his hand at the starving artist thing. But its hard to believe that my days of shouting "Anybody need help with homework tonight" are behind me.

As I got thinking about how different things are for me this year, it got me thinking about how crazy some of the times have been over the past 17. Between homework, morning shower coordination, and careers we have had our hands full. Maybe it only feels like those years went by so quick because we were always so busy!

Anyway, as I go thinking about the things we have done over the years to keep everyone on the same page in my house, and efforts to have "family discussions", I got thinking about what a great tool iZoca can be for families. While we promote iZoca for professionals, groups and organizations, it doesn't mean that it isn't also a great way for families to stay organized and connected and do it all with a little more privacy then they probably associate usually with social networking.

I wrote about these thoughts over on the iZoca blog.

mongrel_cluster, Rails 2.3.x, bad post, routing recognition

There is currently a problem running mongrel_cluster against a Rails 2.3.x application. The odd thing is that the problem only occurs when the first request to a newly started mongrel is a HTTP Post and not a HTTP GET. If the first request is a GET then it is handled fine, and all subsequent POST and GET are fine. But if the first hit to the Mongrel is a POST then bad things happen.

What kind of bad things? How about no form parameters or session parameters set by the time the request makes it to the controller bad. 

However, because the problem only happens if the first thing that hits a freshly started mongrel withing a mongrel_cluster is a POST, it can be a bit of a tough one to track down.

We first started seeing this as an occasional "routing recognition problem" that we had a devil of a time with. We all know about the _method hidden field added to Rails forms so that the controller can think that a HTTP PUT or HTTP DELETE was made, when really its POST with a hidden field. Unfortunately (or fortunately I suppose because it was the impetus to track this down), the URL recognition gets messed up when the action field is missing.

For example, if you are POSTing to /some_url/resource/1 with an _method of Delete, Rails wires that up to look like an HTTP DELETE, and wires it up accordingly in your controller. But, if the _method field is missing, then we have a POST to a resource, which is really expected to only ever be a GET....and bam the dreaded
"A ActionController::MethodNotAllowed occurred in application#index:
Only get, put, and delete requests are allowed."

When Rails is started via ./scrip/server and Mongrel is installed, Rails will use the new Mongrel handler which is designed for 2.3+ applications. However, when the Mongrels are started via mognrel_cluster the old cgi type of mongrel_handler is used, which I learned from finding this post:
http://www.timocracy.com/2009/04/15/problems-with-mongrel_cluster-and-rails-2-3-dispatcher-reloading-your-metal-every-request

Then, it looks like there is a problem with the "first" HTTP Request being a POST when going through the older cgi Mongrel handler. Which looks like it is already covered in this ticket:

http://rails.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8994/tickets/2844-bad-content-type-error-in-rack-10-with-first-cgi-mongrel-request#ticket-2844-7

We are currently investigating the benefits and options of moving our Rails 2.3 version of iZoca to either a Passenger based solution, or configuring some Rackup Mongrel instances. One of my concerns going forward will be that we don't make it more difficult down the road to introduce some Rack based middleware or even some Metal where appropriate. I don't think either of these solutions will make that task more or less difficult. We'll be doing some testing and benchmarking on both options.

upgrading to Rails 2.3.2

I'll leave off all the general details that have been posted about preparing and upgrading to Rails 2.3.2, and cut to the chase on some issues we had getting iZoca up and running on 2.3.2.

As part of upgrading to 2.3.2 I was also considering taking a "lighter" but explicit approach towards dependencies. For the past few years, I've been all about freezing Rails versions, and even some core Gems that we use. Way, way back Rails didn't have as good a strategy as it does now (and has for some time now), at managing version dependencies. So for years the community has gotten behind the idea of freezing the versions that you are building against. I've been doing it for a while. But, in my never ending question to constantly challenge why I'm doing what I'm doing, I thought maybe it was time to challenge those thoughts again.

So, I set out on the path of a) upgrading to Rails 2.3.2 , and b) investigating the idea of no longer freezing Rails within my application. Instead I would specify the version of Rails and Gems in my config, and keep the application size smaller and at the same time convince myself if freezing was still necessary.

Freezing is still necessary.

So, I installed the official 2.3.2 Gem, specified it in my config, and did the same for all the Gems we had frozen. Updated the app, and worked through any normal upgrade issues. Even took the time to work through all the new warnings now introduced by 2.3.2. Was feeling pretty good.

Released things to a dev collaboration server, and things weren't so good. We have caching turned on there, and immediately we started getting some errors with:

uninitialized constant ActionController::Caching::Sweeper

A quick look in Lighthouse, and I found this  post: https://rails.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8994/tickets/1977-actioncontrollercachingsweeper-autoloading-is-broken

Sure enough it described our problem, and it appeared that there was already a patch for it. But, the patch was added to master sometime in May, and could be found in 2.3-stable, not in the official 2.3.2 release. 

So, we froze Rails to RELEASE=2.3.2.1 (freezing directly to 2.3.2 wasn't a good idea: http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2009/3/20/this-week-in-edge-rails). Once we froze to RELEASE=2.3.2.1, I went github hunting for where the patch was applied, and to see if there were any other follow-ups in regards to this patch since then. I found 2:
http://github.com/rails/rails/commit/f7cb7fce4cb25e608f0c2d94a4970c0c7cb7d3da

http://github.com/rails/rails/commit/5ac05f15c6d8f496c4e152dbbecd8ccb12041770

I was able to cleanly apply these patches to my frozen Rails version, and successfully run Rails tests. 

Along the way, I took a sidestep to see how things looked running with the edge 2.3-stable version. I immediately had problems with my version of the Haml gem, and had to get their edge, and build a local gem. We also use the ar-extension gem for some bulk inserts, and it has some problems on Rails edge. It looks like the sanitize_sql method signatures, which ar-extensions overrides have changed in Rails and this was causing problems whenever that gem got loaded. There were also a number of our iZoca tests that were now failing to do changes in edge. So, we decided to go with the more stable approach of freezing to RELEASE tag 2.3.2.1 and applying the few patches we needed.

So, we are now up and running in development mode on 2.3.2 (ah, 2.3.2.1 to be exact), with a few additional patches.

...and, ah, I'm still digging and loving freezing Rails and Gems.

support good music

Wow, hard to believe it was almost a year ago that I posted a congrats to The Cast Before The Break for making it to the Bamboozle fest. Well, here we are a year later, and they are working their tails off to get back again. Do you want to support a fantastic band? If you don't take my word for it on how fantastic they are then check them out for yourselves: www.myspace.com/thecastbeforethebreak

Do you like what you hear? I thought so.
You can help get them to Bamboozle again this year by giving them a 'pop' over at http://showpopr.com

I've seen a few of their recent shows, and I'm very excited about the new material they are working on, but I have to admit, I'm still listening to and blown away by their fantastic ep release from last year; As Your Shoulder Turns On You

Go vote.