Preston Lee's Blog

  • Programming Erlang Now Shipping, v1.1 PDF Released

    The Pragmattic Programmers are now shipping print copies of Programming Erlang: an outstanding introduction to the interesting new Erlang language for concurrent programming. Peeps who bought the PDF can download v1.1 here.

  • Lala.com Review: Legal Web 2.0 Music Trading

    Lala.com is an online service for trading physical discs. After entering information on your current CD collection, what CDs you want, and receiving a free shipping kit of envelops and plastic disc carriers via postal mail, you simply start sending discs out as they are requested. Other users do the same, and the system handles…

  • Software Engineering Curse Words

    Here lie terms frequently used in software development which I don’t particularly care for. Programmer Commercial software is as much about programming as building bridges is about installing steel I-beams. Writing actual code is only part of the engineering effort. When I see a job posting entitled “Java Programmer” I usually suspect that this is…

  • 20 Steps To Xen: A Quick Xen Tutorial For Ubuntu 7.04 x64 Server

    This is an abbreviated and simplified version of a more official document. Run these either as root or with the “sudo” command.. apt-get install ubuntu-xen-desktop-amd64 to install a new Xen kernel and various other tools. Apparently we’re supposed to use the “server” version instead, but it didn’t show up in the repository. Oh well. apt-get…

  • The $1,000 (USD), 2TB OpenSolaris File Server

    Here’s how to score a sweet OpenSolaris-compatible 2TB file server for $1000 (USD). I’m running Solaris Express Developer Edition on it with a ZFS RAIDZ1 file system. Motherboard: Asus M2NPV-VM. A great, inexpensive mATX board w/4 SATA ports, 2 IDE, PCI-X, GigE, built-in nVidia graphics w/DVI and VGA outs, FireWire, and tons of USB love.…

  • RailsConf 2007 Session Content Download

    Here are all the working RailsConf 2007 presentation slides and additional session materials I could find this morning, packaged in a single .zip file for your convenience. The content is an aggregate of things posted to the wiki, web2expo and a few other places on the web.

  • RailsConf 2007 Photocast

    Me and a couple thousand other Rails users are chillin’ in Portland right now enjoying the wifi. Here’s my photocast of things related to RailsConf and Portland, which I’ll update each night.

  • OS X Ruby Troubleshooting: "command not found: dot"

    If you’re trying to run rdoc but are getting errors like.. Generating HTML… Diagrams: ./opt/local/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27: command not found: dot -Tismap dot/f_0.dot ./opt/local/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27: command not found: dot -Tismap dot/f_1.dot ..the package you need to install is called graphviz. You can install it using Darwin Ports on OS X like so.. sudo port install graphviz

  • Parallels Desktop Coherence Mode Rocks: OS X/Windows XP Screenshot

    I tried Parallels Desktop‘s Coherence mode today, and was so blown away I had to blog about it immediately. The above image has not been doctored. It’s my normal OS X desktop with Windows XP running in coherence mode. When activated, the window around the XP virtualization session vanishes, the XP taskbar integrates into your…

  • SRP Time-of-Use Plan Hourly Price Change Reminder

    To those on SRP’s time-of-use plan, reprogram your thermostats! On May 1st we’ll be entering into the expensive months. 1pm – 8pm weekdays are “on-peak”: 17.83¢/kWh. All other hours and holidays are “off-peak”: 4.88¢/kWh. From here. If you live in a hot area and do not have a programmable thermostat, you absolutely must get one.…

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