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...

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 begun using the popular bookmarking service Delicious.  One of my favorite features of this service is that I can install the associated Firefox add-on, and this enables a handy bookmarks toolbar that stays synchronized between my home and work computers.  Recently, however, I’ve noticed a strange incompatibility with the theme I use in Firefox.  For some reason, while using the myFireFox theme, the icons placed in the favorites bar are sometimes improperly sized which makes for a relatively ugly experience: Notice the huge icon next to my link for my Doctor’s Office in...