Chris Pratt // Metaphors Be With You » blog

Joy to the World (Wide Web)

chrisdpratt — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:42:45 +0000

I just made a new posting to my company’s blog. I don’t mind contributing content, but when I barely have time to write on my own little blog, it does kind of bite to post something somewhere else. So, I’m going to have my cake and eat it to by at least linking to my post.

We�??ve ushered in a new year, and fittingly, there�??s a number of developments on the horizon that hold the promise of a better, easier to develop for, web…

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A Fresh Coat of Paint

chrisdpratt — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 05:54:13 +0000

Well, after… umm… months… of running this blog without a template, things are starting to look up. I wanted to be ever so uber unique and design my own custom template, but frankly I never could seem to find the time. More appropriately, the time I did have, I wanted to spend on things that we simply more important, such as say posting to this silly thing.

So, I finally broke down and decided to use a ready-made template, and I was thankfully able to find one that I really liked. I hope you will too. It’s simple and usable, but still has a touch of style. I’ve customized it a little already, and I’ll likely continue to do so.

The important thing is that my blog doesn’t look so God-forsakenly ugly anymore.

Excuse the Mess

chrisdpratt — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 03:56:24 +0000

Well, the grand day has come when I’m finally going to implement a real template for my blog here. However, for the moment, it’s a little incomplete, as you can see. I’ll polish it up soon, so bear with me. At least it’s not totally unstyled, right?

Problems and Distractions

chrisdpratt — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 05:00:39 +0000

So, I doubt I have many readers at this point, but in case anyone has tried to access my blog, they undoubtedly came across a happy 403 Forbidden error. I knew this was occurring, but simply didn’t have the time to try to figure out why. Obviously, I finally did get the time, tonight, and was able to bring my little blog here back online.

The problem? Somehow, the permissions on my document root went wonky and read-access was denied to the outside world. I remoted in, changed the permissions, and all is once more right with the world. That covers the problems, so what were the distractions?

My chief distraction, of late, has been Ruby on Rails, or more specifically, rSpec/BDD in Ruby on Rails. I started the process of learning Ruby and Rails last month and came across a mention of the rSpec plugin. Curiosity got the better of me, and I started down the rabbit hole of BDD, or Behavior Driven Development, which rSpec provides a framework of for Ruby in general and Ruby on Rails.

The learning process has been slow going, though, because I’ve found much of the information online pertaining to rSpec to be outdated. For some reason, very little documentation exists for the framework in the first place. Combine that with the rapid development cycle of rSpec and the sometimes drastic refinement of its interface and you end up with a very confusing landscape. So, in the interest of documenting my learning process and of providing some more current and extensive documentation on rSpec, I’ll likely begin posting quite a bit more on these matters.

The Making of a Blog

chrisdpratt — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 01:15:30 +0000

For one who is so into technology, I seem to be a slow adapter to new technology. Cell phones were well into the hands of teenagers and senior citizens before I finally got one; I bought a PS2 after the PS3 came out; and I only recently decided to step into the 21st century and create a blog.

Since I set up my little blog here about a week ago, I have been plagued with writer’s block. So, in order to combat my lack of post ideas, and to simultaneously work out my other problem of an undeveloped template, I’ve decided to embark on a series of posts chronicling the creation of this blog itself.

Not only should this give me something to write about, but hopefully, it will also serve as a guide for other slow-starters out there like me. More to come.