So I’ve finally decided to make the switch to a distributed source control system.  The benefits are well-documented, and I’ve grown weary of Subversion.  After some research, I decided Mercurial would be best for me.  Since I have OCD, and I wanted to push via HTTP to my remote repository, I did some homework and figured out how to get everything running on my VPS.  If you’d like to see how I did it, read on. Step 1:  Prerequisites Since my VPS runs Ubuntu Linux 9.10, there are a few packages to install before we get started.  Run the following command to...

A few weeks back I posted about getting the ruby-debug-ide gem installed in Windows under Ruby 1.8.6.  In that post I outlined how hacking a header file and using the Visual C++ 2008 compiler could be leveraged to get the gem built and installed properly.  Well, after a helpful comment from a reader and watching a few screencasts over on TekPub, I actually found a way to do this with Ruby 1.9.1 from RubyInstaller.org. As you know, I swapped my Windows development environment for Mac OSX, and so far learning Rails has been a great pleasure thanks to Agile Web Development with Rails (Third...

I’ve been stuck for a while now.  There are so many amazing technologies and frameworks out there, and I’ve finally decided to devote some serious time to one of the best (in my opinion) which is Rails.  I know I’ve talked about this in the past, and, frankly, I’ve been either too busy or too lazy to seriously devote time to it.  But this year I’ve decided to make a resolution to seriously learn Rails by rebuilding this blog with it.  I know there are a million blog platforms out there, especially when you consider the fact that every geek seems to write their own. ...

Lately I’ve been trying to find a good development environment for Rails on windows.  I’ve tried several different environments, but so far, I haven’t found that sweet spot, yet.  My latest trial environment is utilizing the new NetBeans version 6.8.  I’ve used NetBeans in the past for PHP projects and I was very happy with it, so I figured if the Rails support was at least as good as the PHP support, it would be a slam dunk.  After installing NetBeans I noticed that it installs it’s own version of ruby (JRuby), which is fine for most people, I’m sure, but I prefer...

A while back I wrote about my experiences installing SQL (and additionally .NET 3.5 SP1) on a Windows Server 2008 VPS.  For various reasons I decided not to keep the VPS server at the time (mostly because of the cost, and the fact that I didn’t really have a strong need for it).  Recently, however, I’ve really begun to ramp up my ASP.NET MVC development work, and it’s blatantly apparent that I need a Windows server full time.  After shopping around for a while, I decided to go back to KickAssVPS.com and see what their packages looked like.  Having ordered my shiny new...

Over the past couple days I’ve been reading what’s shaping up to be an excellent book about Ruby on Rails called “Agile Web Development with Rails (Third Edition).”  This book takes a practical approach to teaching Rails by building a demonstration shopping cart application called “Depot.”  I must say that, so far, learning Rails has been a complete pleasure.  I really enjoy the MVC methodology and the idea of “convention over configuration.”  The basic idea behind Rails is that we (as web developers) generally know what we’re doing, and we can follow some...

As I was surfing through StackOverflow today, I noticed a question that got me thinking.  This developer had been working with a classic ASP application that used MySQL for it’s backend database.  The project on his plate was to convert this application to ASP.NET with MS-SQL as the database.  The only problem he encountered was the fact that passwords were stored in the database using a MySQL-specific hashing algorithm called via the PASSWORD() function.  He needed a way to convert these passwords to .NET. Given that I have a MySQL database laying around, I decided to poke...

Recently I’ve been debating moving my site over to a Windows VPS.  If I make this move, I’m hoping to take advantage of the new features available in Windows Server 2008 as well as .NET 3.5 SP1 and IIS 7.  After some preliminary research, I decided to give KickAssVPS.com a try.  Within a few hours of my order, they had my VPS up and running, and so far I’ve been fairly pleased with the performance. When I logged into my VPS, one of the things I wanted to install right away was SQL Server 2008.  In order for SQL Server 2008 to install, you must first have installed the...