The configuration of a new Ruby on Rails (RoR) environment has always been a bit of a struggle thanks to mongrel, mod_ruby,… but thanks to Phusion Passenger the configuration and deployment of RoR applications has become an easy job.
I will describe how to configure Ruby on Rails with Phusion Passenger on a Debian (Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.4 (lenny)) server.
Hide alt-tab previews in Windows 7
I recently changed from Windows XP to Windows 7 on my office computer and I like the smooth interface of Windows 7 but there was one thing that bothered me. The usage of alt-tab has changed from the default icons in Windows xp to a window preview in Windows 7. Fortunately for me there is a way to use the classic alt-tab function.
Just follow these steps to configure the classic alt-tab in Windows 7:
- Open the command line (windows-button + r OR start > run)
- Type in the command regedit
- navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
- Now add a new DWORD value in Explorer with the name AltTabSettings and set the value to 1
- Now close regedit
You will now be able to use the classic alt-tab.
Firefox tab tricks
If you’re used to the tab-behavior that firefox had a few versions ago then you would need to change your habits with the newer versions of this browser. The recent versions of firefox (I use 3.6.6) open tabs just next to the tab you are working on instead of the far end of your tab bar.
Fortunately it isn’t a big issue to modify the tab behavior yourself. Just type about:config in your address bar and press enter. you’ll get a warning from firefox to be careful on the next page.
You have now entered in the configuration panel of firefox which lets you modify more than the default options.
Here are some modification options to optimize the tab behavior to your likings, each op the parameters can be modified by double-clicking on it. Modified settings can be recognised as they are in a bold font.
- browser.allTabs.previews: if true your browser will show a preview of each tab if you click on the allTabs button on the far right end of your tab bar. If false a list of open tabs will be shown.
- browser.allTabs.previews: if true your browser will show a preview of the pages as you use ctrl+tab to navigate between your tabs. If false you can just cycle through your open tabs.
- browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent: if true firefox will open every new tab next to the current working tab on your tab bar. If false firefox will open every new tab at the far end of your tab bar.
These are just some options I modified to optimize my personal behavior but you can use this about:config page to modify more settings but be aware of what settings you modify.
My trip to Lanzarote
In the first week of december I made a trip of to Lanzarote together with my travel partner from Thomas Cook/Neckermann. The idea of this trip was to see the entire Island and its beautiful volcanic nature. With approximately 60 kilometers from north to south it hasn’t been a problem to discover about every aspect this island has to offer.
As we had a rental car we were not bound to excursions organised by our tour operator so we had the freedom to explore the island on our own rate and combine different excursions. The first trip we made was to the Jardin de Cactus, created by the island’s main architect César Manrique. This is a garden which has over more than 1000 types op cactuses from over the entire planet. It’s a beautiful thing to see all these kinds of cactuses which you couldn’t imagine they existed.
Over the years Apache has become somewhat of a standard web-server on unix servers but since the end of 2007 a worthy alternative to apache was born, called Lighttpd. Lighttpd has been proven to handle webrequests more efficiently than apache, resulting in a smaller memory footprint and a lower cpu load. For the moment a lot of large websites (more than 10 millions requests per day) are running on a lighttpd webserver, a few examples of these sites are:
This already is a fine curriculum so I thought it was time to configure a lighttpd server (with MySQL5 and PHP5 support) myself although I don’t come across any customers (I work at a hosting provider) who are using this at the moment.
We start of knowing that I usually work on debian-servers so some commands will not work on fedora, red-hat, and others.
Mac OSX slow, caused by aslmanager
For a while I had been experiencing random slowness on my iMac. This slowness could only been solved by a reboot of my iMac but this was just a temporary solution. I didn’t look for a specific cause until it began bothering me for a while and I had the time to look into the issue. I opened my activity monitor (be sure to select “All processes” from the dropdown) and I noticed that a certain process called “aslmanager” was using all of my resources.
The “aslmanager” process is Apple’s System Logfile manager which will be used as a replacement for syslogd in future versions of Mac OSX. But this is a rather new service which contains a few bugs that cause the application to use more than 2GB of virtual memory.
Conclusion and Photos
So, I am back from my trip to Mexico since friday morning and I had some time to recover and arrange my photos.
The last days in Mexico were the days of relaxing and snorkeling at the beach. We still made one excursion to Isla Mujeres which is a small Island from about 8 km in length and 1 km in width. We explored this island by golfcart which is the best and coolest way to travel there.
I won’t bother you with a rather long post but I will just point you to the large amount of photos that were taken during this trip. These photos can be viewed by going to my gallery.
Have fun.
El mundo Maya
It has been a few days since my last post and a lot has happened in between.
I have met the Mexican culture in it’s different aspects.
The first one is the Mayan culture which is still alive among the Mexican people. I have noticed this while visiting some of the ancient beauty that was left by the Mayan people. I visited Chichen Itza, which is one of the seven wonders of the world, and I must say that it is truly amazing to see how the Mayans were able to build such a fantastic city.
Later that day we visited the city Valladolid which is an authentic Mexican city without tourist-based buildings and restaurants so we were able to eat some real Mexican food.
Tequila por favor?
I have to say, Mexico really is the land of tequila and it’s not that hard to prove it.
I had tequila when …
… visiting some local shops in Cancun.
… going out in the corona bar in Cancun.
… being a judge in a bikini contest on our hotel’s beach (Q: do you have pictures; A: yes I have).
… standing in a line at our hotel’s Mexican buffet.
They even showed “A shot at love with Tila Tequila” on MTV.
The city where we are staying “Playa del Carmen” even has a special tequila store with over 100 different kinds and brands of tequila.
