DDoS Attack on Ruby Hash algo in v 1.8.7-p352 and older

Denial of service attack on the hash algorithm in Ruby. Scary stuff! I've never used 1.8 as I started learning Ruby with 1.9.1 (and later) The folks over at Ruby recommend to do either of the following, A: Scramble the string hash function or B: Upgrade to Ruby ruby 1.8.7-p357 or higher (1.9 is awesome, though, imo.) Do you use any of the affected versions of Ru...

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JewelryBox, The Official RVM GUI

I came across the RVM GUI today (it's called JewelryBox.) I'm trying this out after having some difficulty installing RVM on my Mac. I got JewelryBox to install, but it's taking forever to get Ruby 1.9.3 downloaded, so I'm still in that phase (the 'net is slow tonight.)Does anyone have any experience using JewelryBox? If so, do you like it? Why...

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Ugh, New IP Address

I was just looking over my traffic stats for the past few days and I noticed that my IP address had changed. That's a bit of a pain because I exclude my own IP (and thus my own traffic views) across my own websites and blogs. Since I manage ~10 sites in Google Analytics and ~5 in StatCounter (CodeGurl stats are managed by both GA and SC), it'll take a good deal of configuration. Luckily, with StatCounter, I can update the IP to block across all sites in my account. Google Analytics is more work because not only to I have to update each domain,...

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Interview is Out!

My interview on HubPages came out! I totally cheated an took a peek at the newsletter before receiving it in my inbox by checking on HubPages' newsletter page. (Kind of like how my mom opened her Christmas gifts on December 1st.) Anyway, you can check out my interview he...

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Get the Daily Rubyist

When playing around with the twitter aggregator, Paper.li, I came up with an idea to collect tweets about the ruby programming language. With Paper.li, you can enter hash tags and twitter searches to put together a nice source of information for an online paper. The Daily Rubyist, which is the paper I created, uses the following hash tags: #ruby (filtering out mentions of jewelery) #rails (as long as it mentions the word ruby) #git (as long as it mentions the words ruby or rails) Given the current articles popping up on 'The Daily Rubyist',...

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PragProWriMo: The NaNoWriMo for Tech Writers

If you're familiar with NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month)  but not really into writing fiction, PragProWriMo might be right up your alley. Like NaNoWriMo, PragProWriMo is a month-long book writing event taking place each November (PragProWriMo 2011 marks the third year of this event.) However, instead of writing a novel, PragProWriMo participants are invited to write a book on a computing/tech topic. NaNoWriMo challenges participants to write an entire novel (of at least 50,000 words) cover-to-cover from scratch in a 30 day period....

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Ruby DocTest with Victor Goff of RubyLearning

I did a Google+ hangout/interview with +Victor Goff who taught me how to use Ruby DocTest. It reminded me of RSpec, but the key difference is that Ruby DocTest is used with IRB returns. Nifty, right? Of course, I had to install a new gem. You can install it by running: gem install rubydoctest Victor created a file, hello.rb which contains code in a comment block. By running the following command, we ran an IRB session in the code comments: rubydoctest hello.rb This is what we created: ...

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Blogger Trick: Resize Ads Using an 'If' in Markup

I wanted to put ads on CodeGurl, but was having a problem with it looking tasteful, while still being effective. A 200 x 200 pixel ad unit (embedded at the top right of each post) is more effective in terms of CTR than a 125 x 125 pixel unit. The 200 x 200 pixel ad unit looks great in an individual blog post. However, when on the homepage, if a post...

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I was interviewed by ExtraSmall.Me - Check it out!

So, I wrote this article on being thin, for which I won something called an accolade on HubPages. Shortly thereafter, I was contacted by a blogger/reporter who wanted to do an interview for her new blog. So, after a large amount of procrastination I agreed to an interview, so you can read "What it's REALLY like to be naturally thin: interview" which is the end product of said interview. One thing I would like to add is that I agree with what I said to the question: What would you tell young naturally thin girls struggling with their self esteem? However,...

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Plugging Along; Hashes Next

Well, I finally completed the homework for the chapter on subroutines. I got help from a programmer friend who was able to decode Perl for me based on his knowledge of other programming languages. The context thing was sort of strange to him, but he understood what was going on enough to be able to be a big help to me. I was able to complete the homework. Aside from the Internet constantly going out, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I made some mistakes in syntax, but the idea I had was in the right direction, so that wasn't so bad....

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No, I Don't (Context in Subroutines)

Okay, so I was introduced with subroutines which seemed all fine and dandy. I was actually excited to finally be exposed to subroutines. However, it seriously baffles my mind. The subroutines... cake. Context with subroutines? I want to pull my hair out. I read the chapter last night and it's the first time in the course where I didn't understand anything that was happening. I read on to see if I could piece it together, but alas I am at a wall. A brick one. Hopefully I'll get it after I muck through it again. In other news, I went through my...

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I Think I Got It (Context)

Well, I hit the books, so to speak, and completed that scary homework assignment on context in Perl. At first I made a bit of a mistake, but I mucked through it and I think I've got it. My program works according to what the assignment wanted, hopefully I wrote it in a way that works in the way the assignment intended. I have a few short essays in the chapter to complete, but then I get to move on to creating my first subroutines in Perl. Finally! Things will be winding down with Perl after the next few chapters and then the course with be over....

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Wrapping My Head Around Scalar & List Context

I've been working on learning the various nuances of scalar and list context in Perl. It seems straightforward, but I am worried I'm not getting things 100%. There is a lot of scary talk basically saying if I don't learn it, bad things will happen. This sort of leads me to believe that this might either be difficult stuff or easy to overlook. In fact, one example which was an array in scalar context output something I didn't expect. I expected the script to spit out the array in a string, but rather it gave me 6, which is the number of elements...

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Yarrrr! Drop Yer Perls

I don't know what the title of this is supposed to mean. Perhaps it's strange because it's 10 'til my bedtime! Anyway, I have thusly decided to move on with the cert in which I am enrolled, thus I will be learning Python next and not continuing with Perl. There are a few reasons for this. I would like to learn Python and the other languages in the cert I'm in. Okay so that's one reaso...

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Looping in Perl

I just got done with a chapter (and homework) on writing loops in Perl. Surprisingly, it was significantly easier than any other chapter I'd done yet. Perhaps this is due to the amount of time (a ton) learning loops when I first started learning programming (Ruby.) I also learned about postincrements and preincrements which were (and still kind of are) a difficult concept for me. Eh, I may suck at it now, but I'll get better as I shove along. I also learned about some flow control concepts like last, redo, and next. I only really covered...

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Move Ahead in Perl or Try Something New?

I'm just about halfway done with my Perl course and it feels really good. I'm not sure if I'm going to go on to a more difficult Perl course or to go on to another language. There two sides to this coin. If I go on to the cert for open source programming, this course is it for Perl. I would then move on to an intro course for Python, a course on...

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Perl index()

I was playing with index() in Perl today, which was a lot of fun. I started off with something similar to this code, which prints out the following: Here is a list of my programming books 1 The Well-Grounded Rubyist 2 Pragmatic Thinking & Learning 3 Programming Ruby 1.9 4 Learning Perl I learned how to use index() in the course I'm taking. In this example, I am using index() to print out ONLY Ruby books (and their ranking). I am aware that it's very redundant code (I'll change that later.) Index() determines the position of a character...

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Beginning Programming: Why Learn Ruby

If you're new to programming, Ruby is a great programming language to start off with. The Ruby community has composed many guides, videos, blogs, books, etc in order to teach this programming language to those who are new to computer science. Most of these guides teach the fundamentals of computer science while showing how to program in Ruby. Another great reason to choose Ruby is because the language's syntax is much easier to read and understand than other programming languag...

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Perl Heredoc & Conditionals

I just finished learning more about heredocs in Perl in my Perl programming course. After getting set up on Ubuntu, I decided to get comfortable programming in Linux again (it's a super pain in Windows.) Here I am playing around with a few new concepts and some things (like variables/scalars) which I'm definitely comfortable and used to using. This tiny program I wrote is extremely redundant (I could write this thing to be teeny-tiny in Ruby, but I'm not at that point in Perl.) However, writing this helped me think in a more Perl-y way. I'm...

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Perl Heredoc

I'm learning about something called a heredoc in Perl. It's an interesting concept that I've not come across so far in Ruby (although a friend tells me that this does exist in Ruby.) Essentially it's for multi-line strings -- and they make code a quad-billion times easier to read. Don't quote me on the quad-billion thing... I'm not sure how many ease-of-reading units there are in Perl code without a heredoc nor how many there are with a heredoc. It'll take a bit to get used to using a heredoc, especially the empty line thing -- what's that about?...

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Adding, Concatenation, Ruby, & Perl

I've noticed some similarities between Ruby and Perl, but have noticed some really strange differences. One of these is this: 0.1 + 0.1 0.1 + "0.1" "0.1" + "0.1" In Ruby, the answers would be as follows: 0.2 Error: String can't be coerced into Float (TypeError) 0.10.1 In Perl: 0.2 0.2 0.2 I'll have to do some digging to see why it happens like this in Perl, but it's really strange to me, perhaps because I learned it, well, the Ruby w...

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Perl (Learning a New Language)

Welp, I'm taking a Perl course. So no Ruby for a while -- okay, so that's a lie. I <3 Ruby so I'll definitely be programming in it for fun. I'm learning a new language, I'll be strapped for time  to play around in Ruby, but I'll make it happen I learned that Perl can be considered to be a procedural language, function, and object-oriented...

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Word Length Checker

This tool checks for word length, but instead of pasting text into a box, it's more complicated than that. Here's the problem I was having and why I created this tool: One of my niche sites has several hundred posts of varying length. Since Panda it hasn't been doing so well, and a huge part of this is the length of each post. The only posts that are doing well are the longer ones. So I wanted to find each of the offending "short" posts and expand on the topic of each. There are several hundred posts, so it's something that will take quite a...

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Ruby SERP Checker Repo

Recently, Google made a large number of changes to their SERPs, so I have decided to abandon my SERP checker project (RankyPanky) that I was writing in Ruby. As Google has been rolling out update after update (We're on Panda 2.6 now, right?,) it's getting increasingly difficult to parse Google SERPs. Constructocat by jsncostello I removed the...

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C Programming Exercises

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Keyword List Maker

I created ListMaker while I was doing some keyword research. I wanted to check the global monthly searches for something in each US State. Let's say the keyword was "travel destinations." I wanted to check for each: "Travel destinations in Alabama" "Alabama travel destinations" "Travel destinations in Alaska" "Alaska travel destinations" And so on and so forth for each US State. Unfortunately there are fifty states and that requires a lot of data entry, so I wrote code that asks: "What is your keyword?" "Would you like your keyword to go...

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MBTI Program - Getting Started

I am starting on the MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) quiz program that I decided to write. I chose to write this program because I wanted to learn how to write a quiz. One of the most interesting elements I want to include in this is the ability to hide which answer equals which type. This is to prevent against scraping. I first came across this...

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NoDoFollow

NoDoFollow is an amazing tool for Firefox users. Here's how it works: Red links are nofollow Blue links are dofollow (these are GREAT for SEO) All you you have to do to enable or disable NoDoFollow is to right click and select (or deselect NoDoFollow.) You don't even have to restart FireFox! If you would like to see the tool in action, check out the image below (taken from this very blog post! You can download the NoDoFollow Firefox Plug-in fr...

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Machine Up & Running + Received Ruby Books

My computer is up and running. I had a number of problems with it including the big one with the whole virus thing. I kept trying to format it, but the format failed each time. On a hunch, I opened it up and saw that both hard drives were set to master (they were put in by someone else shortly after my last format). Instead of setting one to slave, I just pulled it out and then I was able to format. I've got everything up and running now and the machine runs beautifully. I still need to install software and pull files from my latest backup (which...

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Haxxored

It'll be a while before I can post anything useful as I have to fix my computer. :( I suppose I deserve it, since I let someone touch my precious computer. +-++-++-++-++-++-+ |H||a||c||k||e||d| +-++-++-++-++-++-+ Yep, my favorite machine, (the one named LoL) got superAIDs. I'm pretty sure I got it during the format when Windows 2008 was put on it. From what I've read, what I've comes specially packaged with a lot of bootleg operating systems or fake OS validator thingies. Not that I've ever bootlegged anything before. Yarr! Despite the light...

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Google Bounce Rate on Wedding Blog Fixed

I fixed the page reloading problem I was having on my wedding website. I've been having the problem since February and now I'm finally seeing really traffic stats on the site instead of a bounce rate at around 0%. After the fix I'd proposed in an earlier post, I had to wait a few hours for Google to report my latest traffic and now that the numbers are in, I'm glad to say that the problem is go...

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Refreshing Problem on Website

One of my websites (not this one) has some sort of unidentified bug that is causing it to load and then reload part of the site before completing the load. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but it's causing some reporting errors with Google Analytics. In particular, it's showing a bounce rate of 0.68%. The bounce rate was about 80% before February 20, so the problem (probably) started then. And, of course, it's causing the site to load more slowly, as a whole, possibly costing the site its readership. I went through the template and made...

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Going Yahoo! American

After like ten or so years (wow, probably more than that), I have decided that it's time to get a Yahoo! account in the US. I have, for the longest time, had a email@yahoo.co.uk address and it's getting to where there are restrictions on things I can do on the site given that I want to use American services, yet are forced to use UK ones. It was a good run with my old email address on Yahoo! but it's barely usable as I cannot use the US version of the site and I've also been banned from using various services (I have no idea why, I emailed Yahoo...

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Formatted to Ubuntu

My sister has given my parents this old laptop and they don't use it. Since MY laptop is now impractical to use, I decided to go ahead and format the older laptop and go ahead and use it. Debian was my first choice as Ubuntu is using this whole Unity thing which I do not particularly care for. Since I didn't have a Debian disk and also that it was four in the morning, I decided to just go with Ubuntu for now (to just get rid of the pestilence that is Windows Vista.) I would also like to add that I have recently updated the goodies section to...

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Yay! I ordered some Ruby books!

I am so happy! I finally ordered some Ruby books! I got two books, both of which YOU can purchase in the CodeGirl Store. I got The Well-Grounded Rubyist and Programming Ruby (Pickaxe.) They both are 1.9 books. I am so excited for them to get here. That's all the programming news I have, but at least today you have TWO blog posts to read instead of just one. ...

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Teh Codefront

I heart programming, for real. For rill rill.. I haven't been able to program in a while as I have been busy with some article writing (boring) and an upcoming family reunion. To top it off, I  am working toward opening my own company (8-bit-ftw.) Makes me supah' bizzy'. If you're bored because I haven't yet released my super awesome SERP checking code or just generally bored, check out my latest article, "How to Install Ubuntu on VirtualBox" or see the huge update I made to "39 Places to Get Backlinks". ...

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VirtualBox and Ruby

I just published my 100th hub on HubPages, "How to Install VirtualBox." The hub just talks about how to install it. I have one in the works that shows how to install Ubuntu on Virtual Box. As for programming, I've been up to a lot of random stuff lately. I've been trying to put together a program that does the MBTI quiz. While I've already completed this piece of software months ago, it was given my skill set back then. I want to redo it using what I have at my disposal n...

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RSpec is really, really awesome

Tonight I found out that RSpec is coding zen. For real! It was the first time I'd written my specs BEFORE the code (like you're sposed' to) and it just made my job a LOT easier. Here's what happened: I wrote the specs: describe "#make_urls" do   it "should replace /s with a +" do     make_urls(["oranges apples"]).should == ["oranges+apples"]   end end While I was writing the code, I'd accidentally used a method for string on an array. Upon testing the code, I couldn't, for the life of me, figure it out. Back in the day...

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Breaking Ruby code up into methods

I wanted to try out RSpec so that I could more easily test my Ruby code, but had to break it up into methods. Going from this code to something nice and easy to test with RSpec was very difficult for me as I still have problems writing methods. After receiving help on StackOverflow on how to set up the methods, I was able to fill in the blank spots. While I'm not really "on my own" with writing methods, this was definitely a good exercise in getting me where I want to be with that. In the same night, I was able to figure out how to use RSpec...

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Trying out RSpec for SERP checker

In my latest project, I am rewriting a PHP script that checks the SERPs of a website in various search engines. In the original PHP script there were several lines of code that weren't needed. There also are problems with how the script "pulls" links from Google... it's not really a problem, per se, but a strange way to go about it. In adapting this code to Ruby, I decided to start out by just having it check Google SERPs, so the original PHP script has been edited in order to make my job of rewriting the script in Ruby a lot easier. I intend,...

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