Disqus - Latest Comments for rdyson

Re: Using PDFtk With Rails on Heroku

Rob Dyson — Fri, 06 Oct 2017 10:30:44 -0000

I also had to add an environment variable on heroku, in my case PDFTK_PATH = /app/vendor/pdftk/bin/pdftk

Re: http://365git.tumblr.com/post/514008296

Rob Dyson — Sat, 26 Aug 2017 11:49:12 -0000

Thanks for the writeup, just what I needed!

Re: Using PDFtk With Rails on Heroku

Rob Dyson — Sat, 26 Aug 2017 11:48:13 -0000

Thanks for the great writeup! Still accurate after almost 3 years.

In my case I am saving the PDF output to tmp/pdfs, so I had to make sure that directory was always present on Heroku. I already had /tmp in my .gitignore, so I added a .gitkeep to /tmp/pdfs, and added that to git. This way the folder is preserved (because of the .gitkeep file) but the contents (local temp pdfs) are not.

This post explains the use of .gitkeep (note the filename doesn't actual matter):
http://365git.tumblr.com/po...

Re: Capitalize string pipe for Angular 2 templates

Rob Dyson — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 02:09:20 -0000

Thanks for this!

Re: Vagrant SSH Command Shortcut

Rob Dyson — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 17:18:55 -0000

Thank you for this!

Re: Always On Top In Macos Yosemite

Rob Dyson — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 22:15:12 -0000

Thanks very much for this!

Re: Win a Complete Thrive Grooming Set

Rob Dyson — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 20:25:28 -0000

Very cool! I'd love to try these out, whether I win or not.

Re: The Evolution of Man: Carol Adams

Rob Dyson — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 22:17:06 -0000

Fantastic interview, thank you for this. I like the idea of shirking masculinity and femininity as obsolete.

Re: Running WordPress on Heroku + Amazon RDS | TJ Stein

Rob Dyson — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:43:25 -0000

Thanks for documenting this! Awesome writeup. I'm curious, how many RDS hours are you averaging per month with this setup?

Re: Open plan offices must die! - Rogish Reading Writing

Rob Dyson — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 23:25:25 -0000

Great article! I'd argue that open-plan offices can work, but only when all of your coworkers are on board with interruption policy – I personally have not experienced this yet. Regardless of the layout, I think there's huge benefit in being in the same physical location as your teammates, at least a couple of days a week, for impromptu discussion. Yep, it's an interruption, but often saves more time than is wasted as a result of discussing things that collaboration can help with.

Re: If you get eval(base64 hacked on wordpress/dreamhost

Rob Dyson — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 13:34:17 -0000

Thank you for this fantastic writeup. Saved me hours.

Re: How to build a Chrome extension, Part 2: Options and localStorage

Rob Dyson — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:28:21 -0000

Thanks for this! Very useful.

Re: RHOK ATL Dec 2011

Rob Dyson — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 13:41:57 -0000

Sounds like an awesome event! I'm particularly interested in Businga. I'd like to join you at one of the RHoK events some time.

Re: http://littlebigdetails.com/post/7386822227

Rob Dyson — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 10:53:31 -0000

I bought the Navigon app for a trip from NYC to Atlanta this past week and really liked the little details. One being this awesome tunnel graphic, another being the visualization of highway signs as you approach them.

Re: Alternatives to Piracy

Rob Dyson — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:05:45 -0000

Currently, yes, it is piracy. Rhapsody pays royalties based on plays...you burning a copy of someone else's CD but using the excuse that it's available on Rhapsody circumvents the royalty payment. Is this ridiculous? I think so. As we move towards streaming and "music as a service" the problem of you burning a cd will become less and less relevant because your next car will have Rhapsody or Lala or Apple On-The-Go built in and you want want to fuss with CDs.

Thanks for the feedback. Sorry for the delay, that tofurkey sure packs a mean tryptophan punch.

Re: Owl City is Awesome

Rob Dyson — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:59:49 -0000

Hey Chris, thanks for your feedback. I agree about the Relient K phrasing. I thought it WAS Matthew Thiessen of Relient K singing. For me the music is different enough that I like both bands, but I can see your point.

Re: Google Street View Gets a New Vehicle: The Trike

Rob Dyson — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:09:28 -0000

Street view Boy In Balloon!

Re: Creating a Backup Routine

Rob Dyson — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:19:32 -0000

Looks like you can back up to any network drive using iTimeMachine, though I haven't used it myself. Looks neat: http://lifehacker.com/34170....

Thanks again for your feedback!

Re: The Top 10 Albums of the ’90s

Rob Dyson — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:28:45 -0000

Great list - a couple of surprises, namely the Pixies album, and Don Caballero (because I've never heard it). My main qualm is with your description of RATM's "Evil Empire" being "a more solid album than the first", featuring a "more mature Zac de la Rocha". Their self-titled album, for me, is miles beyond Evil Empire. It's ten tracks of pure rage! What a way to rock an album, starting out with "Bombtrack" and ending with "Freedom". This is one of the few albums I listen to back-to-back without wanting to skip a single song, and that does not apply to any of the other albums on your Top 10, or mine for that matter. No filler, all anger. Sure they could have made it a more standard 12 song album, but they cut it off at 10. Who knows what the story is behind that, but it works. Even the photo on the front is perfect. This man is on fire. For the whole album. I skip tracks on Evil Empire, especially "Vietnow" with that crap about fear being your only god on the radio. Yum. Rage's self-titled album is their perfect album, in my oh-so-humble opinion.

Re: You have a physics degree?

Rob Dyson — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:11:31 -0000

you couldn't know me better.

carrots

Re: The End of the MP3?

Rob Dyson — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:47:20 -0000

Hey John!

I agree that bandwidth improvements will allow us to stream and download large files, but personally I don't want to have to manage my purchases AND the storage of them. I'm much happier having one step: making a purchase. After that, I don't want to have to manage my media. Let me listen to it wherever I want, whenever I want.

When it comes to areas where internet access isn't available, it'd be great to have all my music available automatically. So, some sort of sync that happens in the background. With massive amounts of storage locally and mega bandwidth, my library could be synced all the time, so when I don't have internet access I can still listen. But I don't want to even know about that local library - only that I can listen any time.

Hoping to make it out to the Olde Dog show, got a couple others to go to as well. Check your email!

Re: The End of the MP3?

Rob Dyson — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:30:58 -0000

I'm looking forward to your post on copyright law. I am personally comfortable not "owning" a physical copy of the master and simply having access to listen.

Your argument that the mp3 is simply 1s and 0s and not a physical product got me thinking about the differences and similarities between a physical CD, an mp3, and a music subscription service. In a sense, you can consider the ownership of a CD copy of a master and paying for access to the same material on a streaming music service to be similar - with a CD you stream 1s and 0s from a disc, with a streaming service you stream 1s and 0s from a server somewhere. It's all streaming. As you pointed out, it's much easier for the record companies to sell physical copies for a premium because a lot of people still consider the purchase of the physical record an essential part of their listening process. They may rip it straight to their iPods and never put the CD on, but they still have the physical media lying around somewhere.

Like Zach said, ubiquitous broadband connectivity is key in moving towards streaming.

Re: The End of the MP3?

Rob Dyson — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:22:23 -0000

I'm all for moving towards streaming music services. I personally use Lala exclusively for my music listening. I really like the idea that streaming providers like Lala and Spotify can tweak the bitrate they stream at depending on the user's connection. It's interesting to note that Spotify actually streams using the Ogg Vorbis q5 codec, not mp3. Standard Spotify users get 160kbps while Premium users can elect to stream at up to 320kbps. Lala streams at an average of 256kbps VBR. Very good quality.

Re: Should I Defrag my Mac?

Rob Dyson — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:09:49 -0000

After defragging for ages, I decided to swap out the system drive we've been using. Doesn't really help the defrag mystery, but I'm all for defragging now.

Re: Highly Effective Twitter Tools

Rob Dyson — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:16:51 -0000

Is..that a good thing? I hope the article helped.