Why Do Newspaper Web Sites Look Like Newspapers?
I’m curious. Because newspaper is a medium. The reason newspapers have layouts that look like crammed, painful columns on the page is because it costs money to print them and they usually have more content than space available. Necessarily, the layout is based on the need to fit as much content as possible in a small space.
But web sites don’t have this constraint. Yet, newspaper web sites still look like their printed relatives.
Wouldn’t it be better to layout the web site around the content instead the content around the web site?
No More Twitter Updates Here
You can follow me on Twitter if you like but I’m not posting Twitter updates here anymore. Also, no more Delicious updates.
I’m slowly redesigning is why.
A Self-Discovery of the Process of Discovery
Note: I wrote this on a whim, not having researched and not having proof. This is a hypothesis of sorts. If you know relevant sources, please advise. After writing this I have discovered this is a plea for the creation of a system of recording and playing back conceptual discoveries.
On Discoveries
Discoveries have a predetermined path of several steps which must be followed in a particular sequence. A person rarely makes a leap over a step. Usually, what seems like a leap is actually a larger step. Sometimes adjacent steps may be taken near-simultaneously, thus appearing that a step was skipped or, perhaps, that the adjacent step was somehow foreknown or assumed. Of course, this is possible. But certainly, without knowing that we have jumped a step (how awesome are we?), we should assume that each point of discovery we make is adjacent to the previous step, regardless of the amount of work necessary to make the step.
I do not say these things to give an individual less credit than is deserved but only to point out that we should not give ourselves more credit than is deserved. Discovery is best made in humility, lest we be humiliated.
The moment of discovery, the a-ha, the oh-I-see-now, is what convinces an individual to change opinions and beliefs and is preceded by a number of smaller pre-discoveries. These discoveries must be made by the individual and cannot be forced upon an individual any more than love or hope or any type of real or abstract knowledge can be forced.
On that last point, I mean to say if we are trying to convince another to join us at our current position along the path of discovery we will be unable to do more than describe our position. And certainly we should if there is interest, even though we know most of that description will fly over the head of the other. We can explain the steps we took to arrive at our position and let the individual decide to take them or not. But it is of no use trying to help another cheat their way to our position (or worse, to force another to our position). Sooner or later, without the foundation of previous steps to rely on, the individual will wander back to the safety and familiarity of known things.
It is only after discovery, of an individual’s arrival at a new position on their own, that the choice is made not to return to previously held positions, thus establishing a new foundation from which to explore.
On the point of making a discovery all by oneself, I do not wish to ignore the collaboration that takes place between physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual connections both in and outside the body. That is to say, I cannot will into being the internal connections that form a discovery in my body, mind, soul, and spirit. Just as there are larger macro steps that are taken from one discovery to the next, there are many micro steps which occur internally to aid my movement along the path and while I am a part of them, I do not make them voluntarily. A physical example would be synapses in the brain. Synapses are a part of my physical being and are the junctions of brain activity—where, according to available discoveries, we still assume the connections of thought take place—but I cannot take credit for their existence, function, or performance any more than I can take credit for my parents.
At this point, then, we know that we are making discoveries and we know that at some point in the future we may wish to describe our position and the necessary steps to others. To do so we will need either a perfect memory or some system for recording our discoveries. We can hardly rely on the former. I am not convinced I have seen a good implementation of the latter.
Thus, a system for recording and playing back discoveries and their steps should be made. Moreover, the system should allow individuals to connect their discoveries and steps to those made by others such that old ground is not retread unnecessarily.
Twitter Updates for 2008-07-15
- Picked up book:Mathematics for Algorithm and System Analysis and book:Game Theory, A Very Short Introduction from B&N today. Happy. #
Unavailable Domain Names and Their Alternatives
Domain names are in short supply. All the best ones are taken. But there are some alternatives.
Twitter Updates for 2008-07-03
- Note to my design self: life is too short for small, unreadable text; use less words and write bigger. #
That Itchy, Itchy Design Feeling
I’m feeling it. Time to explore and move forward, to go beyond what I’m currently capable of. To put clichés behind, as if they could be. To ask not what I can do for my country. Escape country.
Twitter Updates for 2008-06-14
- Master Gardener tip: if you *must* water your lawn, do it before sunrise and after sunset, 20 minutes max each, every other day. #
Google Sitemaps with Ruby on Rails, Capistrano, and Cron
This is a slight modification of code originally written by Alastair Brunton. I recently implemented this for Jetrecord and since Alastair was so generous, I decided to share the love as well. I have changed Alastair’s code to generate a sitemap index file plus sitemap files for each model, all of them gzipped to save on bandwidth.
I have also added Capistrano code to copy sitemap files from the previous release to the current release so we don’t lose our sitemap files when we deploy a new release.
Remember, Google sitemaps are for publicly available URLs. They’re for pages that you want Google to find and index. If you don’t want Google to find your CIA Operatives records, don’t tell Google about it!
Let’s just go straight to the code. I am going from the top down in my application’s root directory.
app/models/your_model.rb
You must add this code to each model that you want to generate a sitemap for. Here is an example for Airports on Jetrecord.
# put this inside app/models/airport.rb def self.get_paths path_ar = [] self.find(:all).each do |model| path_ar << {:url => "/airports/#{model.to_param}", :last_mod => model.updated_at.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')} end path_ar end
config/sitemap/sitemap_tasks.rb
This is for Capistrano. You probably don’t have a config/sitemap directory. I created one and put my Capistrano sitemap task in it. This tells Capistrano, “After deploying my new release, copy the sitemap files from the previous release and store them in the same location in the current release.”
Capistrano::Configuration.instance(:must_exist).load do namespace :sitemap do desc "Copy the sitemap files after deploy" task :copy_sitemap, :roles => :app do puts "copying Rails sitemap files" sudo "cp #{previous_release}/public/sitemaps/* #{current_release}/public/sitemaps/" end after :deploy, 'sitemap:copy_sitemap' end end
config/deploy.rb
This file usually contains your typical Capistrano recipes. All you have to do is require the sitemap_tasks file we created above.
# At the top of the file, after any other required files require 'config/sitemap/sitemap_tasks'
lib/google_sitemap.rb
This is the meat of the whole thing. Kudos to Alastair for setting this up. The reason I modified it into using a sitemap index with sitemaps for each model is because Google allows a total of 50,000 links per sitemap. I have 48,000 navigation fixes, 20,000 airports, and 3,000 navaids in Jetrecord. By necessity I have to split my sitemap into many sitemaps.
I’m also gzipping the sitemap files because Google can read them and it saves bandwidth. Oh, and the URL to ping Google has changed, as has the XML namespace for their sitemap tags.
require 'net/http' require 'uri' # A class specific to the application which generates a google sitemap from the contents of the database. # Author: Alastair Brunton # Modified: Harry Love 2008-06-09 class GoogleSitemapGenerator def initialize(base_url, sources) @base_url = base_url @sources = sources end # 1. Iterate through each model's #get_paths method # 2. Create sitemap file for each model # 3. Create sitemap index file # 4. Ping Google def generate path_ar = [] sitemaps = [] @sources.each do |source| # initialize the class and call the get_paths method on it. path_ar = eval("#{source}.get_paths") xml = generate_sitemap(path_ar) save_file(source, xml) end index = generate_sitemap_index(@sources) save_file('index', index) update_google end # Create a sitemap document for a model def generate_sitemap(path_ar) xml_str = "" xml = Builder::XmlMarkup.new(:target => xml_str) xml.instruct! xml.urlset(:xmlns => 'http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9') { path_ar.each do |path| xml.url { xml.loc(@base_url + path[:url]) xml.lastmod(path[:last_mod]) xml.changefreq('weekly') } end } xml_str end # Create a sitemap index document def generate_sitemap_index(sitemaps) xml_str = "" xml = Builder::XmlMarkup.new(:target => xml_str) xml.instruct! xml.sitemapindex(:xmlns => 'http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9') { sitemaps.each do |site| xml.sitemap { xml.loc(@base_url + "/sitemaps/sitemap_#{site}.xml.gz") xml.lastmod(Time.now.strftime('%Y-%m-%d')) } end } xml_str end # Save the xml file (gzipped) to disk def save_file(source, xml) File.open(RAILS_ROOT + "/public/sitemaps/sitemap_#{source}.xml.gz", 'w+') do |f| gz = Zlib::GzipWriter.new(f) gz.write xml gz.close end end # Notify Google of the new sitemap index file def update_google sitemap_uri = @base_url + '/sitemaps/sitemap_index.xml.gz' escaped_sitemap_uri = URI.escape(sitemap_uri) Net::HTTP.get('www.google.com', '/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=' + escaped_sitemap_uri) end end
lib/tasks/sitemap.rake
This is the rake task that we’ll call periodically from Cron to generate new sitemap files.
require 'google_sitemap' namespace :google_sitemap do desc "Generate a Google sitemap from the models" task(:generate => :environment) do # Generate sitemaps for each of the models listed in the array sources = %w( Airport Navaid Fix AnotherModel AnotherModel AndAnotherModel EtCetera ) sitemap = GoogleSitemapGenerator.new('http://yourdomain.com', sources) sitemap.generate end end
public/sitemaps
Assuming this directory doesn’t exist already, create it.
Also, depending on what stack you’re using to deploy your Rails app, you may also need to tell your server to skip proxying HTTP requests to this directory. For example, I’m proxying requests to Mongrel via Apache. So, in the Apache virtual host conf file for my app, I had to add a ProxyPass directive so Apache would serve the sitemap files instead of Mongrel.
# Right after the ProxyPass directives for images, stylesheets, and javascripts ProxyPass /sitemaps !
Don’t forget to restart Apache after you save the new conf file!
Add a Cron Job
Lastly, you need to add a cron job to call the rake task so we can generate new sitemap files from time to time. The frequency is up to you and the requirements of your app.
Unfortunately, I’m not up to date on raw Cron commands. I use a GUI provided by my web host. But here’s the command I’m using on Solaris to call the rake task. You’ll have to edit this to suit the specifics of your application and server environment.
cd /var/www/apps/myapp/current && /opt/local/bin/rake RAILS_ENV=production google_sitemap:generate
Don’t forget to tell Rake to use the production environment. Another potential gotcha: you usually have to give cron the full path to rake. You can find out where it is on your server by logging in as the user you plan to use for the cron job (usually root) and doing “which rake”. If that doesn’t bring it up it means rake isn’t in your PATH. That’s okay. You’ll just have to do a little more digging to find out where rake is installed on your system.
If I’ve left out anything let me know. By the way, this would make a great plugin or gem, if only I knew how to make them.
Twitter Updates for 2008-06-04
- @jrec a nx, r klmo bjc bdu kden klmo, 1:37, pic 1:37, “this is only a test” #
- Discovered a bug in my code right before bed. Like preparing to leave on a road trip and discovering your car doesn’t have seat belts. #
- Thankfully there was a quick solution. I imagine seat belts are a little harder to come by at the last minute. #
- After the Tech Meetup I got a few more ideas for a small web app that I dreamt up last year. A lot less complicated than Jetrecord. #
Twitter Updates for 2008-06-03
- Doctor’s office. Pain on the right side of my throat. #
Twitter Updates for 2008-05-25
- Did the Boulder Creek Festival today. When I moved here (the first time) 11 years ago the festival was the first thing I did. #
Twitter Updates for 2008-05-24
- The word is it’s wise if it makes you wonder, The word is it’s wise if it feeds your hunger, The word is it’s wise if it’s like no other. #
Rails 2.1 config.gem and Twitter4R
Using the new config.gem method in Rails 2.1? Using the Twitter4R gem to interact with Twitter in your Rails application? Make sure you add the :lib attribute, otherwise ruby-gems won’t know which gem you’re talking about.
In your environment.rb file:
config.gem 'twitter4r', :lib => 'twitter'
