chuyeow.wtf

May 15, 2007
'Mac vs PC commercials'.gsub(/Mac/, 'Rails').gsub!(/PC/, 'Java')

The Rails Envy guys have come up with a spoof of the Mac versus PC commercials. Yes, it's Rails vs Java. Go watch it or catch it straight on YouTube.
May 11, 2007
Lucky Star: Konata-ism

I've never much blogged about anime before so it's probably a little known fact around here that I'm a huge anime fan. One of the anime series I'm watching now is Lucky Star, an anime adaptation of a 4-panel comic strip by from Kyoto Animation. This being the same studio that produced the excellent The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, I knew I had to watch it.

Despite first reading about the numerous negative comments on blogs about the first few episodes of Lucky Star, when I watched it I actually found it pretty funny (there are some good reviews, though rare, such as this one). Four moe school girls, one of them an otaku? KyoAni's really pandering to the "niche" crowd here ("niche" meaning just about every single anime gamer).

It was not until later (about 3 episodes in) that I realized the main character, Konata Izumi, was voiced by Hirano Aya (who played Haruhi in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya). Once afflicted by Ayaism, this fact enhanced the appeal of Konata.

Although, by the time I watched episode 5, I was hooked on Konata-ism. I'll let the screen captures speak for themselves:

So she plays an MMORPG and plays a tank? Back when I was a World of Warcraft junkie, I had a level 60 warrior (yeah, pre-Burning Crusade n00b, I am) and had too much fun with it (to use a cliche, it's like crack).

Hahaha... Fair enough. I had a mage in World of Warcraft before switching to a warrior and sometimes I do think that way about my ex-fellow mages ;) Though I've had the honor of playing with some of the best mages in my old guild.

"I'll pull one." "lolololo." Classic.

Konata's teacher (who plays with her often) logs on.

Konata gets a rare drop. Woo... Good times.

"LOL gratz", "roflcopterskates" and "bbq" - I'm not sure if the fansubbers took some liberty here with the translation of the MMORPG-speak.

Ahh, and did I mention Konata watches a lot of anime as well? Konata is the new Haruhi.

Now go watch some anime!

Screencaps taken from a.f.k.'s excellent fansubs.
May 7, 2007
Sexy migrations on Edge Rails
So it seems DHH was inspired by the Sexy Migrations plugin (which in turn was inspired by Hobo) and committed changeset 6667.

Now, you can do this:
```
create_table :products do |t| 
  t.integer :shop_id, :creator_id 
  t.string  :name, :value, :default => "Untitled"
  t.timestamps
end
```
Succinct!
May 5, 2007
Growl integration in Firefox 3

Some of the latest Firefox 3 aka Minefield trunk builds include Growl integration! This is probably a non-event for anyone other than Mac users, but hey Growl notifications without needing to install an extension? Pretty nice.

Get a nightly here: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/

To test Firefox 3 nightlies without possibly messing up your existing profile (preferences, extensions, what have you), use the Profile Manager to create a new profile just for testing. Way less stupid then trying to load up 48 tabs from your current profile in Firefox 3 and then seeing most of the extensions fail to work (which was what I tried to do, once).

Source: Bug 362685 â€“ Growl Integration for Mac OS X (nsIAlertsService)
May 5, 2007
Firefox Recommendation #1: Clearing download history automatically

It's been ages (well, almost 2 years, but that's a lifetime in Internet time) since Firefox Secrets was published and I figured I should probably live up to being the "Firefox book" guy (in Singapore). I'm gonna start posting Firefox tips and pointers at least twice a week (hopefully I don't run out of material!) And instead of using the word "tip", I'll call em "recommendations" instead, seeing as Robert Accettura already has an excellent Firefox Tips thing going on his blog.

Today's recommendation: get Firefox to clear the list of downloaded items in the download manager to keep your Firefox speedy. You've probably read about how cleaning up your download history can help speed up Firefox (on Of Zen and Computing or on Mac OS X Hints), but do you really want to remember to clear up your download history manually?

Unsatisfied with a manual solution, I went looking for an about:config preference (not familiar with about:config? Enter 'about:config' into your Firefox address bar and hit Enter - read more). Sure enough, there is a browser.download.manager.retention preference when I used 'download.manager' as a filter:

But what value should I set it to? The default value is 2 but there's no clue what another value would do. There's only one place to find out: the about:config entries page in the MozillaZine Knowledge Base. Search for retention and there you go:

When to remove downloaded files' entries from the Download Manager
0: Upon successful download
1: When the browser exits
2 (default): Manually

Set it to 0 or 1, whichever behavior you prefer. I like 0 since I use the Download Statusbar extension and never get to see the Download Manager.

That's it for today's tip (and a pretty low-key tip at that)!