Life is grand

I got an invite to AllPeers but have nobody to share with. So if you are on AllPeers then add PaulMWatson as a contact please.

rev = `svn info`.match('Revision: (\d+)')[1]

That bit of Ruby code will return the Subversion revision number of the working copy it is run in.

`svn info` returns

Path: .
URL: http://svn.yourdomain.com/trunk/

Repository UUID: 4e38b711-8f0e-1410-9e15-e3a330ac0d60
Revision: 894
Node Kind: directory
Schedule: normal
Last Changed Author: pwatson
Last Changed Rev: 894
Last Changed Date: 2006-07-28 14:48:28 +0100 (Fri, 28 Jul 2006)
Properties Last Updated: 2006-07-28 14:50:11 +0100 (Fri, 28 Jul 2006)

The regex bit (.match(’Revision: (\d+)’)[1]) then returns the 894 number from that string.

(Thanks to Dela for the regex.)

Slash7 has posted the slides from their brilliant Javascript Boot Camp Tutorial talk at OSCON. 108 pages of pure JavaScript love. One thing I just learnt, on page 36, is that you can pass a function as an arguement into another function. That function can then call the arguement function. Sounds weird but that is pretty amazing if you ask me.

I am not a great fan of wikis but Jot Spot with it’s semi-structured style works well. It has the usual free-style wiki pages that let you enter text, links, formatting and so on but throws in the ability to create structured pages such as calendars, photo galleries, file “cabinets” and spreadsheets.

The spreadsheets are especially interesting. Create a spreadsheet with address details and you can view a map that plots the address and related data on a Google Maps like world map. Put dates into your spreadsheet and you can view a calendar which automatically displays events in the calendar pulled from the spreadsheet. This is something that other spreadsheet developers could emulate.

Jot Spot wikis also have a dash of style to them, something most wiki systems lack. Jot Spot has a clean look without the usual wiki clutter and lends itself towards non-techies.

Pricing is a bit much in my opinion but all in all, a really good, hosted wiki solution.

BREAKING NEWS.

Kottke’s website no longer gives him pleasure.

Stop.

Wife recommends stopping.

Stop.

Just a quick one before a longer “Rails Continuous Integration” post but if you are trying to get Cerberus to work on Windows then after the gem install you have to set an environment variable yourself. Create one called CERBERUS_HOME with a value of C:\ruby\lib\ruby\gems\1.8\gems\cerberus-0.1.1

Tom Corcoran contacted me yesterday and mentioned that he’d be happy to offer the TSSG or WIT facilities as a venue for BarCamp Ireland.

I work at the TSSG building and it is a lovely location with a great boardroom and other meeting rooms. WIT is also a good venue.

I have updated the BarCamp page but thought I’d mention it here too so that it is noticed.

Just a quick one to say that tagging systems need to accept as varied a set of characters as they can. BlinkList for instance doesn’t allow “C#” as a tag as the # is not allowed. This makes tagging any C# links difficult as I have to use “csharp” instead. Same goes for Yahoo! which becomes Yahoo.

About the only character I can think of that should be withheld is the comma to make multiple tags easy to enter. I have never run across needing to add in a tag with a comma.

Tagging systems need to be flexible for other languages too. Can yours handle Chinese characters?

Video at YouTube

Spent a fantastic Sunday with Fi at the infamous Croke Park in Dublin. We watched Waterford take on and beat Tipperary in the Hurling Championship quarter-final.

Paul Browne asks who is going to BarCamp Ireland. I am and so is EirePreneur.

Actually I am down as doing a talk on “Backends in the Cloud, Amazon S3 and Amazon SQS with Rails” which sounds awfully buzzy to me.