Matt Williams

Author's details

Name: Matt Williams
Date registered: August 9, 2008
URL: http://matt@matthewkwilliams.com

Biography

Matt Williams lives in Columbus, OH, in a house filled with computers, cats, books and fiber. Pursuing the goal of being a modern Renaissance person, he plays with his daughter, cooks, roasts coffee, reads, weaves, studies, and hacks, including crazy ideas like a Cloud in a Box. Docker has been an especial passion since June of 2013.

Latest posts

Weaving with Light Pt. 1 — August 31, 2016
Abusing HAProxy: Stupid Simple Easy Dashboards — June 24, 2016
Rules for Operations — April 25, 2016
DevOps Creed (Work in Progress) — April 24, 2016
I am not a Mindreader: a mini-saga — April 11, 2016

Author's posts listings

Sep 08

Random Quotes

Categories:

ruby

by Matt Williams

Quotes can provide inspiration or food for thought. In this entry, I’m examining the use of open-uri and feed-normalizer to get a random quote which could be used as either a thought for the day or a “fortune” replacement.

Tags: feed-normalizer, open-uri, quotations, rss, ruby

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Sep 05

A “grue”some look at Statemachine and Treetop

Categories:

games, gotchas, ruby

by Matt Williams

In this blog entry, dear reader, we examine the statemachine and treetop gems via an old standby, a Zork imitation. And, despite the title, you won’t find a grue.

$ ruby adventure.rb
This is the beginning. Like all tales, there's a beginning, a middle and an
end....

Paths lead n.

What do you want to do?
n

This is a path in the forest, it looks fairly well travelled.  You see a
clearing to the east

Paths lead w, n, e, s.

What do you want to do?
e

This is a clearing.  You can actually see the sky here.  Compared to the deep
dark forest, it seems a relief. A path can be seen to the west.

Paths lead w, n, e, s.

You see the following: letter.

What do you want to do?
get letter

Ok, you pick up the letter.

What do you want to do?
w

This is a path in the forest, it looks fairly well travelled.  You see a
clearing to the east

Paths lead w, n, e, s.

What do you want to do?
w

You're lost in the depths of the forest.  You're not sure where you are, nor how
to get out of there.

Paths lead w, n, e, s.

What do you want to do?
quit

$ ruby adventure.rb

This is the beginning. Like all tales, there's a beginning, a middle and an

end....

Paths lead n.

What do you want to do?

This is a path in the forest, it looks fairly well travelled. You see a

clearing to the east

Paths lead w, n, e, s.

What do you want to do?

This is a clearing. You can actually see the sky here. Compared to the deep

dark forest, it seems a relief. A path can be seen to the west.

Paths lead w, n, e, s.

You see the following: letter.

What do you want to do?

get letter

Ok, you pick up the letter.

What do you want to do?

This is a path in the forest, it looks fairly well travelled. You see a

clearing to the east

Paths lead w, n, e, s.

What do you want to do?

You're lost in the depths of the forest. You're not sure where you are, nor how

to get out of there.

Paths lead w, n, e, s.

What do you want to do?

quit

Tags: ruby, statemachine, treetop, yaml

4 comments

Sep 05

Converting a rails app from 1.2.6 to 2.1

Categories:

rails

by Matt Williams

This is the first in a series(???) of posts detailing things that I’ve found in the process of updating rails (and other plugins/gems) for an application. Due to politics, it’s using JRuby, running inside a JBoss container, with a Derby backend. Things which are getting updated include: Rails ActiveRecord-JDBC ActiveScaffold ActiveScaffoldExport Goldspike is being replaced …

Tags: 1.2.6, 2.1, rails

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Sep 02

A language a year

Categories:

philosophy, programming

by Matt Williams

The Pragmatic Programmers have proposed that developers learn a language a year. I agree that it’s very important to keep abreast of changes in IT and that by learning new languages we can keep our minds sharp and bring new ways of doing things into old languages. However, I have to wonder if this learning …

Tags: philosophy, programming

3 comments

Aug 29

$0.23 Skiddoo

Categories:

administrivia

by Matt Williams

Just for grins and giggles, I went to see how much I’ve earned from scribefire thus far — $0.23 cents — they’ve determined that 218 impressions have been viewed. That said, I’m currently at about 1520 views for the last three weeks. I did the scribefire on the 25th, I’ve had ~400 views (according to …

This post has no tag

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Aug 29

CSS tooltips using CSS Sprites

Categories:

css, gotchas, Uncategorized, web design

by Matt Williams

For a project I’m currently working on I wanted to make some “bubble” tooltips. In order to cut down on the size/number of images, I’m using css sprites. A quick google reveals that nobody else has (at least on the first page) put together tooltips using sprites. The technique will work with any sort of …

Tags: css, gotchas, sprites, web design

2 comments

Aug 29

Blogs I’m excited about…

Categories:

Uncategorized

by Matt Williams

Earlier I was going through rss feeds when I noticed that a blog had been updated. I thought to myself “Oh, cool! they’ve updated.” It struck me that there are certain individual (as in written by an individual) blogs which I follow and am excited when I see posts. Here’s a partial list — bear …

Tags: feeds, reading

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Aug 28

CSS “width” gotcha

Categories:

css, gotchas, web, web design

by Matt Williams

I found out something interesting today. Per the W3C, the total “width” that a block element uses is: If ‘left’ or ‘right’ are given as ‘auto’, their computed value is 0. The following constraints must hold between the other properties: ‘margin-left’ + ‘border-left-width’ + ‘padding-left’ + ‘width’ + ‘padding-right’ + ‘border-right-width’ + ‘margin-right’ = width …

Tags: css, gotchas

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Aug 27

Programming philosophy in the oddest of places

Categories:

philosophy, programming

by Matt Williams

Assume Nothing! Trust no one! Paranoia is good! (in moderation)

Today’s thought for the day from A Word A Day is: Not being able to govern events, I govern myself. -Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592) This struck me as being very much the idea behind defensive programming. Because we don’t know what sort of events life will throw at a programme, we need for it …

Tags: philosophy, programming

2 comments

Aug 26

Mini Sagas

Categories:

Just Enough Programming, mini sagas

by Matt Williams

One of the manifestos from ChangeThis this month is about Mini Sagas. The author, Rajesh Setty presents the idea that writing mini sagas, which contain exactly 50 words, expands your creativity — following on the idea that Creativity Loves Constraints. Typically the mini saga expresses some sort of message or value — I think in …

Tags: just enough programming, mini sagas, philosophy

4 comments

Ramblings

Musings of Matt Williams

Matt Williams

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Random Quotes

A “grue”some look at Statemachine and Treetop

Converting a rails app from 1.2.6 to 2.1

A language a year

$0.23 Skiddoo

CSS tooltips using CSS Sprites

Blogs I’m excited about…

CSS “width” gotcha

Programming philosophy in the oddest of places

Mini Sagas

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