New life to the Blunnies

It's unfortunate that so few things are made to last these days. And when I find something that is well made, I am loathe to part with it.

Fortunately I found a shop in Salem, Oregon that can resole my Blundstone 500 boots with Vibram soles. Most places won't try this because the original soles are injection molded to the leather upper.

Since Blundstone has moved it's factories from Australia to Asia and I don't know how they compare in terms of quality, and since it's taken me 7 years to get these fellas broken in just the way I like them, I'd rather not part with these old friends that have taken me to so many places.

If anyone has tried these folks for Blundstone repairs and has feedback, or can recommend someone else who has done a good job, please drop me a post.

The next question is, "What do I wear while my Blundstones are in the shop?!"

Google App Engine Finally Working under MacPorts

Well, it took some fidgeting but I finally got Google App Engine 1.0.2 SDK working under MacPorts by first uninstalling my previous version of Python 2.5 and then re-installing with the socket-ssl package.

>> sudo port uninstall python25

>> sudo port install python25

---> Activating python25 2.5.1_1+darwin_8
---> Cleaning python25

>> sudo port install py25-socket-ssl
---> Fetching py25-socket-ssl
---> Verifying checksum(s) for py25-socket-ssl
---> Extracting py25-socket-ssl
---> Configuring py25-socket-ssl
---> Building py25-socket-ssl with target build
---> Staging py25-socket-ssl into destroot
---> Installing py25-socket-ssl 2.5.1_0
---> Activating py25-socket-ssl 2.5.1_0
---> Cleaning py25-socket-ssl

Before I installed py25-socket-ssl, I would get the error:

File "/usr/local/google_appengine/google/appengine/tools/appcfg.py", line 334, in _GetOpener
opener.add_handler(urllib2.HTTPSHandler())
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'HTTPSHandler'

Hope this helps someone else out there.

Now to actually see if this has been worth all the hassle. ;-)

Happy Birthday, Mac!

I think one of the reasons we get along so well is that we're both Aquarians.

RESTful route changes in Rails 1.2.4+

Imagine my surprise when, after updating to Rails 1.2.5 on a new project, all my RESTful urls and paths changed from using the semi-colon (";") character to designate the controller actions and went back to using the forward-slash ("/") character as used for non-RESTful routes.

At first I thought it was a bug or something I did wrong, but I guess I need to read those change notices a little more closely. If you read the comments, you'll see a lively hullabaloo on why ";" might not have been the best idea to start with. Opinionated and perhaps more semantically clear, but not exactly in accordance with other libraries or the RFCs.

Still I was just getting used to ";" and still think "/" is a bit semantically overloaded.

Eureka! Picked Up For 3rd Season

Congratulations to my brother Andrew as the SciFi channel opts for another season of Eureka.

If you've missed any of the 2nd season, you can catch them online or via iTunes.

Learning R[e]Spec[t]

I was really impressed by RSpec when I first encountered it in its infancy. Dave Astels gave a presentation at Canada On Rails last year but the API was changing so much that I decided to wait til 1.0.

I’ve just finished up the first Peepcode screencast and am really jazzed to dig deeper and use it on my next Rails project.

24 miles a week

Been running 6 miles every other day. I’m slow as hell, 10-12 min miles, but given the flat feet, extra weight, and high school and college sports injuries to my hamstring and knees, I’m just happy that everything stays together (knock wood).