This Blog

This blog has been pretty much ignored for ages. I do almost all of my posting now on my regular blog www.productionscale.com. So, please find me there if you find me here.

Regards,

Kent Langley
www.productionscale.com

Addresses, Google Maps - Needs an Update

As sharp as Google search can be sometimes there are other times when it's equally dull.  Here is an example.  Today, I wanted to look up an address on Google maps.  So, I decided just to see what would happen if I type a physical address into the Google tool bar.  So, I typed:



"459 Entrada Drive, Novato, CA"



I got absolutely no matches and a suggestion to try Google web search.  Which, by the way, is exactly what I did in the first place.  Cute.



Addresses are fairly easy to spot.  I really would have expected Google's search algorithm to be able to spot on and suggest at least a link to the spot on maps.google.com.  Just seems like a very easy thing for them to do.

Joyent Slingshot - Take your Rails Apps Off-line

Well now, the folks at joyent sure have a lot of tricks up their sleeves these days.  This one is really exicting.  Take your web based Ruby on Rails applications off-line!  From their update...



Joyent Slingshot allows developers to deploy Rails applications that
work the same online and offline (with synchronization) and with drag
into and out of the application just like a standard desktop
application.



So, I recommend you go check out their blog for the release info and dd this one to your list of things to keep an eye on and see how it goes.



http://joyeur.com/2007/03/22/joyent-slingshot

Two great Web Cast Sites for Rails

Railscasts and Peepcode



Both are nice new additions to the rails training sites list.  Peepcode isn't free but I purchased the Capistrano Concepts screencast with not a single regret.  It was excellent.



Enjoy!

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ScribeFire - Formerly Perfromancing

A great tool continues to improve.  ScribeFire is a must have for frequent firefox using blog posters.  You can just add it in like any other add-on and in just a couple of minutes you'll be up and running.



http://preview.addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1730

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Amazon S3 Firefox Plugin

I was looking for an easy tool today to use to access my Amazon S3 buckets without a lot of hassel or cost. I ran accross this nifty little firefox plug in called S3Fox Organizer for Amazon.



Really, this is very handy. I'll be using it over the next few days and trying it out. Unless I post something else with a raving rant you can assume it was, and it was good.



Update:



Okay, so I like it. But, there are two things so far that are a bit odd. One, it does cause firefox to take a good bit longer to startup. Two, if you have it sync a lot of files at once it can bring browser performance to a crawl. But, overall still, it's very easy and handy. Especially the folder syncing feature.

EC2 UI - A Very Brief Review

I've mentioned this before I think but I want to bring it up again because it's just so easy to use.

EC2 UI is a Firefox extension for working with Amazon EC2 AMI's. It allows you to view the public and private AMI's. It allows you to fire off and terminate AMI instances very easily. You can manage your security settings via the UI and several other useful items.

So, if you are working with Amazon EC2 and want an easy way to play then EC2 UI is a great little tool.

Amazon EC2 Firefox Extension