Read my latest article: 8 things I look for in a Ruby on Rails app (posted Thu, 06 Jul 2017 16:59:00 GMT)

ALERT - Ruby fcgi 0.8.5 memory leak

Posted by Thu, 12 May 2005 20:18:12 GMT

Just a FYI. If you have installed fcgi from RubyGems, the version that is currently available as a gem (0.8.5) has a known memory leak... which has crippled one of our servers a few times this past week as it slowly sucks the life out of the machine.

I hope that we can get the fix in 0.8.6 which you can download here available as a gem in the near future. I think that a lot of people will unknowingly use the one in RubyGems and not be aware of this major problem (as I was until this morning when I finally tracked the root of the problem).

Thanks to the Typo people for alerting me of this issue… especially when I saw that this blog alone was using more than 100 MB of Ram after 2 hours of being up. I almost began to think that Java might be more efficient. ;-)

If you are not sure what version you are running, you can find out by doing this on a UNIX machine:

# gem list|grep cgi
fcgi (0.8.5)


Download and install fcgi 0.8.6, uninstall 0.8.5 from rubygems if necessary (I did just to be sure that apache/fcgi was using the new version) and restart your web server(s).

Parsing a RSS Feed

Posted by Wed, 11 May 2005 20:44:00 GMT

2 comments Latest by Neil Chandler Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:43:09 GMT

A friend was asking me how they could easily read a RSS feed and display the last x items in their rails project. This was my quick and dirty response.


require 'rss/2.0'
require 'open-uri'

class RssfeedController < ApplicationController

  def index
    feed_url = 'http://www.planetrubyonrails.org/xml/rss'
    output = "<h1>My RSS Reader</h1>" 
    open(feed_url) do |http|
      response = http.read
      result = RSS::Parser.parse(response, false)
      output += "Feed Title: #{result.channel.title}<br />" 
      result.items.each_with_index do |item, i|
        output += "#{i+1}. #{item.title}<br />" if i &lt; 10  
      end  
    end
    render_text output
  end

end

Is there an easier way to do this with another RSS library? I figured that the simplest method would be to just use the standard library that comes with Ruby.

Ruby on Rails in pure javascript?

Posted by Mon, 09 May 2005 20:27:00 GMT

TrimPath Junction is a clone of Ruby on Rails... in JAVASCRIPT!

Some people have too much time on their hands. ;-)

Take a look at the demo

"Above all, make it fun" - Dave Thomas

Posted by Sun, 08 May 2005 05:10:13 GMT

My copy of The Pragmatic Programmer showed up on the doorstep today. I started reading it and when I went to close it, I noticed that I completely missed on one of the first pages, the words written, “Above all, make it fun” – Dave Thomas, 2005

Thanks Dave for the nice personal touch!

Some tips that I have enjoyed so far…

Provide Options, Don’t Make Lame Excuses


The book goes on describing some ways of thinking about how you should discuss problems with your client, boss, etc… and gives you a few methods of figuring out all the possible responses that they could come up with. Giving someone productive options towards helping resolve an issue rather than just a reason for it… anyways, it’s a good start off to the book.

Invest Regularly in Your Knowledge Portfolio


Like most of you who came (or are going) to the Rails world, for me, diving into RubyOnRails was a decision that I made several months ago to branch out beyond my PHP, Perl, Python skill set. I was finding that the PHP work that I was doing was becoming stale. I was re-using libraries that I had built in the past, was trying to figure out ways to speed up my development work, was re-using code without duplication… but it seemed to have lost it’s novelty. I was growing old of building simple CRUD applications, was trying to build a generator for forms that worked from my postgresql databases. One day, I noticed the term ‘Rails’ in my RSS Reader. I looked, oh… Ruby, who uses that anyways? I didn’t give it much thought… a learning curve… that I didn’t feel like I had the time to invest.

Another few months ago, and I find myself reading the first ONLamp article… wow, it looks even more interesting all of a sudden. So, I give it a try…. four months later, I find myself writing a book about it.

This year, I am heavily investing into my programming career. I think that a lot of people are doing that (especially in the Rails community). What better time than now?

Take the first step:
gem install rails

Instiki hosting

Posted by Fri, 06 May 2005 20:11:55 GMT

Due to popular request, PLANET ARGON is now offering hosting for Instiki (and mediawiki) for as low as $3/month.

Check out our wiki hosting page for more information.

Lunch with Rael and Lucas

Posted by Fri, 06 May 2005 01:01:21 GMT

Today, I went and met Rael Dornfest of O’Reilly for lunch… and as he is a veggie like I am, he suggested the soup at this place about 30 blocks from here. (which was a delicious Vegan Tomato…yum…)

We discussed Typo (O’Reilly might use it…), some of his personal projects (which were pretty cool sounding), etc… and of course the book.

Lucas Carlson came about a hour later as they were going to meet up as well, so I got to meet him finally and talk to them both.

Contrary to what everyone else says about them, I found them to be very nice and friendly guys. ;-)

I hope to get to talk more with them in the future… on that note, I am heading out to another meeting and take the afternoon off to play some music.

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