Vidar tweeted this a little bit ago: http://github.com/ileitch/hijack/tree/master

Hijack: Provides an irb session to an existing ruby process.

Intro

Hijack allows you to connect to any ruby process and execute code as if it were a normal Irb session. Hijack does not require your target process to require any hijack code, Hijack is able to connect to any ruby process. It achieves this by using gdb to inject a payload into the process which starts up a DRb server, Hijack then detaches gdb and reconnects via DRb. Please note that gdb will halt your target process while it is attached, though the injection process is very quick and your process should only be halted for a few milliseconds.

Hijack uses DRb over a unix socket file, so you need to be on the same machine as the process you want to hijack. This is by design for security reasons. You also need to run the hijack client as the same user as the remote process.

Design Patterns for Social Experiences

A good article in ASIS&T's Bulletin about the information architecture of social experiences/interfaces.

http://asis.org/Bulletin/Aug-09/AugSep09_Crumlish.html

The associated wiki seems pretty good, too. It's a set of design patterns for these things:

http://designingsocialinterfaces.com/patterns.wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

"The Flawed Theory Behind Unit Testing"

A nice, quick piece pointing out the real value in testing: they make you think harder about what you're doing. He omits it, but it seems like refactoring gets its benefits from much the same reasons.

My point is that we can't look at testing mechanistically. Unit testing does not improve quality just by catching errors at the unit level. And, integration testing does not improve quality just by catching errors at the integration level. The truth is more subtle than that. Quality is a function of thought and reflection - precise thought and reflection. That’s the magic. Techniques which reinforce that discipline invariably increase quality.

http://michaelfeathers.typepad.com/michael_feathers_blog/2008/06/the-flawed-theo.html

HTTP PubSub: Webhooks & PubSubHubbub

http://www.igvita.com/2009/06/29/http-pubsub-webhooks-pubsubhubbub/

zero-downtime rolling restarts behind a proxy balancer

This very good example configuration is with HAProxy, but it will work with any proxy service that has health checking.

http://www.igvita.com/2008/12/02/zero-downtime-restarts-with-haproxy/

website speed and effects on users

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/06/bing-and-google-agree-slow-pag.html

Another Enterprise Ruby

(Another) Enterprise Ruby

DESCRIPTION:

Wish you could write your Ruby in XML? Has the fact that Ruby is not "enterprise" got you down? Do you feel like your Ruby code could be made to be more "scalable"? Well look no further my friend. You’ve found the enterprise gem. Once you install this gem, you too can make Rails scale, Ruby faster, your code more attractive, and have more XML in your life.

I’m sure you’re asking yourself, "how can the enterprise gem promise so much?". Well the answer is easy, through the magic of XML! The enterprise gem allows you to write your Ruby code in XML, therefore making your Ruby and Rails code scale. Benefits of writing your code in XML include:

* It’s easy to read!
* It scales!
* Cross platform
* TRANSFORM! your code using XSLT!
* Search your AST with XPath or CSS!

The enterprise gem even comes with a handy "enterprise" binary to help you start converting your existing legacy Ruby code in to scaleable, easy to read XML files. Let’s start getting rid of that nasty Ruby code and replacing it with XML today!