Technocrank

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It Done Broke.

Rails Installation

The current state of setting up a Ruby on Rails application reminds me of the early days of Linux.  There was a time when there were no admin GUIs and you had to compile your distribution from source and it was a race between Slackware and Debian.  Red Hat made serious inroads by giving you an option.

This is me, today, updating gems to try to resolve an error while executing the “rails new” command…ugh…and it still doesn’t work.

Rails gem update

 

Firefox Developer Tools – Colours in RGB

The recent addition of the “inspect element” feature in Firefox and the developer tools is generally welcome (by myself, anyway), but it seems to think that I want to know what colours an element are styled in using RGB values. I can’t find a way out.

An example

I thought I must be missing something, like a config option hidden somewhere. But the closest thing I’ve found to a confirmation or denial is this Mozilla spec page that explicitly states this feature as an option (“(optional) Computed styles automatically converts all of the colors to rgb(). The user may have specified the colors using some other system. In order to help them make sense of the color, display a color swatch next to the color label, in both the initial and expanded views. (F12)”).

Yeah… I could try posting to a forum somewhere or writing my own patch. But then I’d have to face the fact that I’d wasted my time and it will never get merged or even noticed.

This might be a personal failing, but I’ve never styled using rgb()…ever. I’m curious: does anyone?

Just What My Phone Needs: More Facebook

HTC

Skype

Porsche Blackberry PPK

I’ve never been a huge fan of RIM’s industrial design, but I love the disdainful hipster comments on this Engadget article about the new Porsche-designed Blackberry P9981.

Blackberry O9981

Thing is, hipsters, this Blackberry wasn’t designed for you. The $2000 device was made for someone who carries one of these:

Walther PPK

Laugh if you will – just don’t do it with the owner in range.

Web Users At Risk Of Social Networking Addiction

This is kind of like saying conversationalists at risk of talking to other human beings.  The term addiction is thrown around way too easily these days.  Okay,

Eleven percent of those under the age of 25 would interrupt sex for a message, and 24 percent under 25 would answer a message in the bathroom.

…is a bit silly.  But really, it seems to me almost like it’s a restructuring of social norms.  Is it a problem, or is it just an evolving expectation that we have with the immediacy in communication and relationships?

Although, if you’re interrupting sex for a message you’re just not doing it right.

Twitter: crankietech

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