Author Archives: Brian

Antworks – my $4 thrift store find

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antworks-box.gif

While browsing the local thrift store I came across a brand new, in-the-box Antworks illuminated kit. They sell for $30 at ThinkGeek! it was missing the AC adapter only. I grabbed it for the measly $4 selling price and my universal AC adapter I had at home worked just fine with it (after just a little dremeling). I order the ants for it online for another $4 and they should be here anytime. My daughter is so excited to have an antfarm. Should be fun. I’ll be posting pics of it once the ants arrive. Maybe even do a daily or semi-daily picture of it or maybe make a time-lapse movie of it. Fun, fun!

I love thrift stores.
[tags]geek, ant, ants, antworks, antfarm, thrift, thrift store, thrift stores[/tags]

Hilarious offer for web design services

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I posted recently on Candy Addict looking for someone to redesign the site completely (via a WordPress theme) and one of the responses I got via my contact form was so funny I just had to share. This is the actual email I received – I can’t make this stuff up. I only changed the “NICKNAME” of the guy.

Is this the latest internet scam? I kept waiting for the line where he says he is the son of the webdesigner for the king of Nigeria. Or maybe he is a spy and “webdesigner” is his secret identity? I feel all James Bond-ish. Maybe it’s just that he’s French, but since when are the French so secretive and covert?

Hi Brian,

This is my proposal to you, valid till Jan-10:
____________________________________
PROPOSAL:
I will design a new candyaddict.com prototype portal (about 2/3 of the definitive one) before the end of January.

If you like my new candyaddict.com prototype portal, we will negotiate then the fee/payment (50/50 should be ok), and then we will work for the definitive design.

No compromise from you, nor from me, but I will appreciate that if you contract another web-designer you notice it to me asap to stop any further job.

No pre-fees.

This definitive job could be ready to publish & promote at the end of February.

I understand that your main income from candyaddict.com comes from referrals, this implies a special strategy in design and marketing tools/implementations to promote the portal, and this is included in my design offer.

I will not send you for now a portfolio, nor an identifiable identity, but my nickname “NICKNAME”.

I will not invoice you, you will pay me in any e-currency as e-gold.com or similar. If you really need an invoice, I will be forced to charge you an extra fee of about 500 US$, and my invoice will come from a “STATE webdesign inc.”

Please note that my native language is french, so I might need from your team some text-syntax final check, or I can order it myself for an extra fee.

No personal meetings, no phone contact, only e-mail.

Final fee should be around 1000 US$.
____________________________________

Let me know your comments about this proposal.

NICKNAME
Webdesigner

[tags]geek, designer, designers, WordPress, scam, funny, ridiculous, weird, spy, hilarious[/tags]

How to get Rails to talk to Oracle

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How to get Rails working on Windows with a pre-existing oracle DB…..

I wanted to try and hookup Rails to our existing oracle DB at work. I had a rough time figuring this out, so here it is in case anyone else wants/needs it. In my case, I did not (nor did I want to) have a full Oracle client installed on my Windows box. trying to get this to work was not easy. I found 5 or 6 different pages that told different ways to get it to work, but none worked for me.

Most of this info was compiled from Oracle’s Rails FAQ and a few other pages on the net. These instructions assume you don’t have the Oracle client installed already. If you do, some of these steps may not be necessary(1, 3, 4)

  1. if you don’t have the Oracle client installed already, install the Oracle Instant Client (I installed the Basic, Lite version) – this zip contains some DLLs and jars. Extract them somewhere and note the location. Let’s call it [ORACLE_CLIENT_DIR]
  2. install the Oracle driver for Rails (I’m assuming you already have Rails installed). Details here.
  3. create a tnsnames.ora file in [ORACLE_CLIENT_DIR]/network/admin/. Put the text below in the file. Replace host, port, SID, and name (first line – MYORACLEDB in the example below) as necessary. If the DB uses a service_name instead of SID, replace SID in the file with SERVICE_NAME.

    MYORACLEDB =
    (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS_LIST =
    (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = some.server.com)(PORT = 1521))
    )
    (CONNECT_DATA =
    (SID = mysidinfo)
    )
    )
  4. create Windows environment variables like so:
    ORACLE_HOME = [ORACLE_CLIENT_DIR]
    TNS_ADMIN = [ORACLE_CLIENT_DIR]/network/admin
    you can create these globally in Windows or just set them up before running the server each time
  5. setup the database connection in your app as shown here, but replace
    host: ORCL
    with the name you used in your tnsnames.ora file (MYORACLEDB was used in the example above)

  6. if you are connecting to an existing DB that did not follow the standard pluralization conventions Rails likes (i.e. your table names are not pluralized), you need to tell Rails not to do pluralization (which it does by default). Open [yourapp]\config\environment.rb and put this at the bottom of the file:
    ActiveRecord::Base.pluralize_table_names = false

That’s it! Now, you can generate models, controllers, etc. and they should hookup to your Oracle DB as you would expect. Hopefully I didn’t miss any steps. I wrote this after I had it working, not while I was trying to get it working. If you are in a similar situation and these steps don’t work, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll see if I can help.

1,000 links to Candy Addict

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Another milestone. According to Technorati (and naturally their site is hosed as I’m posting this), there are now over 1,000 links from other bloggers to Candy Addict. Crazy! Thanks to all the linkers out there!

Also, Candy Addict hit 75K at Alexa!

UPDATE: if you search for blogs that link to anywhere on Candy Addict (instead of just /blog) we have almost 1300 links!

[tags]geek, candy, technorati, alexa[/tags]

Pros and Cons of Telecommuting

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I telecommuted for about a year until recently and thought I’d make a list of some pros and cons of telecommuting that I’ve discovered:

Pros

  • There’s nothing like getting paid to work in your pajamas.
  • On cold days or rainy days, you don’t have to go outside at all and deal with the weather.
  • You can shave or not shave – nobody cares.
  • Save on your water bill by not bathing as often.
  • Huge savings on gas for your car. Less mileage put on your car too.
  • No annoying co-workers to come by and incessantly talk about things like trimming the hedges or little Timmy’s peewee football game.
  • More time with family, especially children.
  • Tax write-offs for internet access, home office, etc.
  • Can play any music you want as loud as you want.
  • Snacks and drinks are as close as the refrigerator.

Cons

  • You know immediately when the cat has used the litterbox.
  • No going to lunch with your coworkers and no socializing with them.
  • You can go stir crazy if you don’t get out. Groceries, fast food, even (gasp) The Mall – must get out!
  • More time with family, especially children.
  • Snacks and drinks are as close as the refrigerator.
  • Distractions at home. Mail, internet, pets, etc.

[tags]geek, work, job, jobs, telecommute, telecommuting[/tags]