Jorge Creixell jcreixell

Make Ubuntu packages 90% faster by rebuilding them

TL;DR

You can take the same source code package that Ubuntu uses to build jq, compile it again, and realize 90% better performance.

Setting

I use jq for processing GeoJSON files and other open data offered in JSON format. Today I am working with a 500MB GeoJSON file that contains the Alameda County Assessor's parcel map. I want to run a query that prints the city for every parcel worth more than a threshold amount. The program is

Prelude

This is a modern guide for making modern Lightgun devices work on Linux. Mainly focusing on DIY Arduino-based gun devices, specifically the closed-source GUN4IR and open-source SAMCO projects. For Aimtrak devices, refer to the MAME Documentation, of which this guide derives some information from.

58 bytes of CSS to look great nearly everywhere

When making this website, i wanted a simple, reasonable way to make it look good on most displays. Not counting any minimization techniques, the following 58 bytes worked well for me:

main {
  max-width: 38rem;
  padding: 2rem;
  margin: auto;
}

Moved to Shopify/graphql-design-tutorial

Each of these commands will run an ad hoc http static server in your current (or specified) directory, available at http://localhost:8000. Use this power wisely.

Discussion on reddit.

Python 2.x

$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000

Testing front-end for a Sinatra app with RSpec and Capybara

I've used Cucumber quite a bit on my last job. It's an excellent tool, and I believe readable tests are the way to the future. But I could never get around to write effective scenarios, or maintain the boatload of text that the suite becomes once you get to a point where you have decent coverage. On top of that, it didn't seem to take much for the suite to become really slow as tests were added.

A while ago I've seen a gist by Lachie Cox where he shows how to use RSpec and Capybara to do front-end tests. That sounded perfect for me. I love RSpec, I can write my own matchers when I need them with little code, and it reads damn nicely.

So for my Rails Rumble 2010 project, as usual, I rolled a Sinatra app and figured I should give the idea a shot. Below are my findings.

	Copyright (C) 2011 by Colin MacKenzie IV

	Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
	of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
	in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
	to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
	copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
	furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

	The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in

	!!! 5
	-# paulirish.com/2008/conditional-stylesheets-vs-css-hacks-answer-neither/
	/[if lt IE 7] <html lang="en" class="no-js ie6">
	/[if IE 7 ] <html lang="en" class="no-js ie7">
	/[if IE 8 ] <html lang="en" class="no-js ie8">
	/[if IE 9 ] <html lang="en" class="no-js ie9">
	<!--[if (gt IE 9)\|!(IE)]><!--> <html lang="en" class="no-js"> <!--<![endif]-->

	Deploying a Rails 3 App with EC2 + S3 + Ubuntu + Capistrano + Passenger
	=======================================================================

	EC2 Setup
	---------
	1 Launch New ec2 instance - ami-1634de7f
	2 Create elastic IP [ELASTIC_IP] and associate it with instance
	3 go to domain registrar DNS settings, @ and www to ELASTIC_IP
	4 set the `:host` in `config/deploy.rb` to ELASTIC_IP