Using Chef to provision a Rails and Postgres server

This is a brief overview of how to use chef to automate the provisioning of a server for a Ruby on Rails application. Sample code is provided as a starting point at https://github.com/TalkingQuickly/rails-server-template

2021 Update: a revised version of this tutorial is available here

Using the pebble watch to display stock quotes

I’ve always been intrigued by books like “Reminiscences of a stock operator” where trading is based on continually watching a market and developing a “feel” for it. Having spent a lot of time experimenting with them, i’m generally skeptical of automatic rule based trading systems but remain intrigued about entirely discretionary, immersion based systems.

Indexes with Mongoid are not created automatically

When coming from Mongoid from an Activerecord background, there are some subtle differences around uniqueness and indexes which can cause hard to debug problems.

It probably isn't a big deal

There are a multitude of burning things I really need to do now. ShopOfMe is launching a huge new feature in five weeks, inbox zero has become “inbox less than three pages” and having just spoken to the doctors surgery I’ve been going to since I was a child, they’ve advised me I can't have an appointment because I don't exist.

2012 in Review

At the start of 2012, my goal was fairly simple, remain solvent for a full year relying only on consulting income while leaving enough time to bootstrap ShopOfMe and InGuide. No-one has yet repossessed the computer I’m writing this on so it’s fair to say I got at least half way there.