http://blog.layer2.org A technical blog Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:43:43 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en If you like to save your passwords, you probably know that its a pain to save Basic Authentication passwords in Firefox. Basic Authentication comes up in a new window saying "Enter username and password for ..." and looks like this: There is no 'save this password' button. If you access this ... http://blog.layer2.org/2008/02/09/remember-basic-authentication-passwords-in-firefox-without-roboform/ How many times have you created web applications that use addresses? Since I felt like I wasted the entire 10 minutes it took me to type out this state list, I figured I'd share it with everyone so that their time wasn't equally wasted. Enjoy. Run this command: ruby script/generate model State And ... http://blog.layer2.org/2008/01/12/rails-migration-with-a-list-of-all-united-states/ I found at least one other person trying to find a way to extract a JPG snapshot out of a flash video using ffmpeg. The above article suggests using ffmpeg to extract a PNG, and then convert that to a JPG (since the JPG will be much smaller). Instead, just use ... http://blog.layer2.org/2007/12/03/use-ffmpeg-to-extract-first-image-out-of-flv/ I was having a bit of trouble with attachment_fu that took a while to figure out, so I thought I'd post my solution for the next person. I have a Photo model that I'm using to store pictures. Since attachment_fu will automatically resize, create thumbnails, and store pictures on the file ... http://blog.layer2.org/2007/11/19/rails-attachment_fu-thumbnail_class-and-you/ Recently, I decided I wanted to share home directories via HTTP to everyone on my home network. This is an easy way to share files with Windows machines where you don't have any type of sshfs-like support. The problem was that this file/web server also faces the Internet. Obviously I ... http://blog.layer2.org/2007/11/04/serve-home-directories-to-internal-ips-only-with-lighttpd/ If you haven't heard already, Google with be and is offering IMAP for their Gmail service! You might not have it available on your account immediately, but it should be within a few days or a week. I'm one of the lucky ones that already has IMAP set up. I tried ... http://blog.layer2.org/2007/10/24/google-imap-will-be-a-yahoo-mail-killer/ LDS General Conference audio and video is available via podcast! After watching conference the LDS General Conference at the beginning of October, I really wanted to download all the talks via an RSS feed. I didn't see one available right away, so I considered making my own. Fortunately, I found that ... http://blog.layer2.org/2007/10/20/lds-general-conference-podcast-rss-feed/ Despite the well known fact that Verizon Can't Do Math, I have to say that I am surprised to find that their FIOS service is pretty good. I've had it for over a month, and haven't noticed it go down or have any speed problems. More interestingly, I've actually found that ... http://blog.layer2.org/2007/10/19/verizon-fios-and-running-a-linux-operating-system/ I'm a big fan of the Rails way, but sometimes the simple things get you. I like to set up "lookup tables" in Rails, ie. tables in the database that hold commonly used, (often) fixed values. For example, if I have a Car model, I might want to define a ... http://blog.layer2.org/2007/10/18/how-to-create-a-lookup-table-in-ruby-on-rails/ If you didn't know already, there is a new version of Rails out there. And I'm not referring to the Rails 2.0 preview. This is Rails 1.2.5, which contains fixes for a JSON XSS (cross-site scripting) vulnerability. I'm not horribly familiar with the details, but the site does say that you ... http://blog.layer2.org/2007/10/18/new-version-of-rails-available/