Ramblings

Maybe it’s me.  Maybe it’s a feature of ubuntu, but on two separate systems, when I went to upgrade rubygems to the latest via
gem update –system
it didn’t work for me.  So, I had to go the more extreme route of:
gem install rubygems-updateupdatee_rubygems
This is mostly for my own reference, it’s not the first time [...]

This is a how-to for using jmx and rrd4j, a java implementation of rrdtool, to report on app server statistics.
Thanks to Jeff Mesnil(author of jmx4r), Werner Schuster (JMX the Ruby way with jmx4r), sishen (JRobin sucks), and the rrd4j team.
You’ll need the following:

JVM 1.5 or higher — JRE is not enough, you also need the [...]

I had an issue reported by a developer where their jboss connection pool wasn’t working properly. It looked good to me, so I decided to verify that everything worked in so far as connectivity from the box. So, I used the following jruby script to help:

require ‘rubygems’
require ‘jdbc’
require ‘java’
Java::oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver
url = "jdbc:oracle:thin:@SERVER:1521:DB"
user = "user"
pass [...]

More about methods, it’s inspired/spurred by a comment on methods, public_methods, and private_methods by Pit Captain. It also corrects some misconceptions I had (and may have (wrongly) given others).
I’ve added a new category, “eating crow” for this and any other postings where I step back and re-evaluate my posts. This is [...]

Ruby’s Object has a method, methods. You can use it to see the methods which an object has. Sort of. In this post I’m examining methods, public_methods, and private_methods as well as some of their implications.

I have a neglectful relationship with inject. That is, I neglect to remember that it exists, having worked for so long with other languages which are “unfamiliar with the concept”. Amos King’s blog entry on Inject & Me - BFFs got me to thinking that ucat (see cat on steroids (or cat on [...]

I got to thinking about SuperIO and how it could be used as a swiss army chainsaw to open files, whereever they might be on the net.  From there, my fevered mind got to thinking about cat and how the two could be used together.  That said, I present ucat — a universal cat, if [...]

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.

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 [...]

Yesterday, I posted an article entitled Break my code, please, wherein I posted a very fragile piece of code, with the challenge to find ways in which to break it.
What follows is a discussion of the code and why it is bad/fragile/easily broken…..