Levi McCallum

Very nice set by Débruit.

Thu, 24 May 2012 17:13:16 -0400

Very nice set by Débruit.

Chloe is the coolest dog. (Taken with instagram)

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:47:37 -0400

Chloe is the coolest dog. (Taken with instagram)

$400 Water bottles. (Taken with Instagram at The Box Jelly)

Thu, 03 May 2012 23:49:04 -0400

$400 Water bottles. (Taken with Instagram at The Box Jelly)

This guy inspires me to never give up! (Taken with instagram)

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:11:05 -0400

This guy inspires me to never give up! (Taken with instagram)

Using CanCan in a Rails Engine

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 22:58:00 -0400

I’m in the process of converting an existing Rails app into an Engine. It’s turned out to be a trying task. One thing that stumped me today was properly implementing CanCan in the engine’s newly namespaced environment. My controllers that implement CanCan’s load_and_authorize_resource method were namespaced in an Admin module.

Initially, I continued to receive this pretty useless error:

Apparently, CanCan builds its reference to the resource model object by singularizing the controller’s namespace and referencing it as a constant. Instead of a reference to my MyEngine::User model, CanCan references by default MyEngine::Admin::User. To fix this, CanCan provides a :class option to predefine the resource class name (more about this here). I simply modified my method call to this:

Unfortunately, this was only half the problem. Although CanCan now knew about the correct resource model, it did not know where to find the correct Ability class:

CanCan has a method called current_ability that “creates and returns the current users’s ability and caches it.” The problem is, the Ability that the method instantiates is not correctly referencing the namespaced Ability class. My Ability class lives in app/models/my_engine/ability.rb and I needed to notify CanCan that it exists there. I did this by re-defining the current_ability method in my Admin::ApplicationController:

That was a journey of dependency hell I hope no one else has to go through. I hope this helps some other thirsty traveler.

Big in Japan. (Taken with instagram)

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:56:07 -0400

Big in Japan. (Taken with instagram)

Reverse engineering Draw Something. (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 03:27:47 -0400

Reverse engineering Draw Something. (Taken with instagram)

Really digging @jeremysnell’s Stairway to Heaven cover ...

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 02:16:32 -0500

Really digging @jeremysnell’s Stairway to Heaven cover shot on innov8. (Taken with Instagram at Fresh Cafe)

Ka’a @simplesessions playing with Kai’s Power Tools...

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 22:11:15 -0500

Ka’a @simplesessions playing with Kai’s Power Tools 2012 (Taken with Instagram at Wall-to-Wall Studios)

Coolest ice cream cake ever. (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 02:53:49 -0500

Coolest ice cream cake ever. (Taken with instagram)

Prima (Taken with Instagram at Prima Kailua)

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 02:46:28 -0500

Prima (Taken with Instagram at Prima Kailua)

JJ Dolan’s, let’s do this. (Taken with Instagram at...

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 00:25:36 -0500

JJ Dolan’s, let’s do this. (Taken with Instagram at Wall-to-Wall Studios)

Little Village, let’s do this. (Taken with Instagram at...

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 23:38:51 -0500

Little Village, let’s do this. (Taken with Instagram at Wall-to-Wall Studios)

The other 15% of animals interviewed expressed disapproval at...

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 15:19:39 -0500

The other 15% of animals interviewed expressed disapproval at the sale of this coffee. (Taken with Instagram at Wall-to-Wall Studios)

When you’re out of coffee, there’s always...

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 19:38:28 -0500

When you’re out of coffee, there’s always @TheManifest. (Taken with Instagram at Wall-to-Wall Studios)

Now THIS is how you make Milo. (Taken with instagram)

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:28:02 -0500

Now THIS is how you make Milo. (Taken with instagram)

"The students who were initially praised for their effort worked hard at figuring out the puzzles...."

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:20:39 -0500

“The students who were initially praised for their effort worked hard at figuring out the puzzles. Kids praised for their smarts, on the other hand, were easily discouraged.”

- Why Do Some People Learn Faster?

"So the consultants, now having lost their primary customer, were at a bar one day, and one of them..."

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:58:33 -0500

“So the consultants, now having lost their primary customer, were at a bar one day, and one of them (named L. Ron Hubbard) said: “This nickel-a-line-of-code gig is lame. You know where the real money is at? You start your own religion.” And that’s how both Extreme Programming and Scientology were born.”

- Stevey’s Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile

Boris Smus compares and breaks down Backbone and Ember Javascript frameworks

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:17:40 -0500

Boris Smus compares and breaks down Backbone and Ember Javascript frameworks:

In practice, it’s very difficult to remain productive if you’re writing both an app and a framework at the same time. Unfortunately this was my tendency when using Backbone. I hate reinventing the wheel. Especially if it’s kind of lopsided.

I spent the majority of 2010 working with SproutCore. On reflection of the experience, the problem Boris describes was evident. The project presented itself as an application development platform, but with constant shifts in architecture and virtually no useful documentation, I found myself focusing on the tools rather than the product I was building. As an application developer, there is a constant battle over my time when it comes to developing frameworks and actually shipping consumer applications. While I would like to mature my tools to ensure development productivity, I can’t help but see the ultimate value in shipping. I completely agree with Boris—unless you’re John Carmack, tools that hone focus onto what is important is key.

Photo

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:16:01 -0500