http://theneum.com/categories/coder/ Recent content in Coder on Theneum Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us by your integrity Mon, 01 May 2017 09:11:22 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/2017/vscode-background-color/ Mon, 01 May 2017 09:11:22 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/2017/vscode-background-color/ I’ve switched to the excellent Visual Studio Code as my default editor after configuring and trying a bunch of different editors. But more on that in another post. In trying to get everything set up the way I wanted I noticed that in certain cases my external monitor on my MacBook or iMac gave me two different colors on the background. (Note that it didn’t occur when using the retina display at all) One darker set of colored squares where text or code was and a slightly lighter shade on the rest of the background. http://theneum.com/blog/2017/reaction-commerce-mac/ Tue, 18 Apr 2017 06:58:03 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/2017/reaction-commerce-mac/ In case I haven’t talked about it before, I’m really into e-commerce. I love everything about it and I run multiple stores and I’m always watching for new e-commerce solutions that are coming out. I’ve tried Reaction Commerce before, but with it’s recent 1.0 release I figured it was time to get serious and build a store out with it to really explore it’s capabilites. Their install docs are really simple so I charged ahead. http://theneum.com/blog/going-hugo/ Tue, 28 Mar 2017 09:06:35 -0600 http://theneum.com/blog/going-hugo/ I’ve finally updated this blog. In the past I built most of the websites I worked on using the excellent Django web framework built in Python. In switching jobs a little over a year ago, I moved to an team that didn’t run any Python and instead used PHP and the Laravel framework. This greatly reduced my opportunity to work in Django on a daily basis and I instead spent most of my time working on front end code. http://theneum.com/blog/virtualenv-on-mac/ Wed, 17 Feb 2016 21:54:16 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/virtualenv-on-mac/ In switching to a new Mac recently I needed to set up my Python and other development environments anew. Here is the quickest way I found to get a Django development environment up and running quickly on El Capitan. First, we’ll use Homebrew to get a workable Python environment. Just go to the homebrew website and follow the instructions for installation. Then install python: brew install python Note that if you want to also run python3 alongside python2 you can run “brew install python3”. http://theneum.com/blog/mac-too-bright/ Thu, 14 Jan 2016 23:06:48 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/mac-too-bright/ Update Jan. 2017 I now use Flux to slowly dim the lights as it gets later at night. If you’re working late and find your screen is just too dang bright this little Shades utility is a beautiful thing. #UsingIt http://theneum.com/blog/sublime-package-confusion/ Thu, 14 Jan 2016 21:58:03 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/sublime-package-confusion/ After switching to a new Mac recently I installed my favorite text editor Sublime Text 3. While most things picked right up because I sync my preferences through my private cloud, the Django template language snippets and highlighting provided by Djaniero were not working. I couldn’t install it again either. If you’re package for Sublime that you are trying to install is not available it’s most likely because it’s already installed (but not working). http://theneum.com/blog/connect-to-vagrant-postgres-database-via-pgadmin3-on-mac/ Tue, 13 Oct 2015 17:41:56 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/connect-to-vagrant-postgres-database-via-pgadmin3-on-mac/ For the past year or so I’ve been developing locally at work using Vagrant. After making some updates to models I found I needed to be able to easily inspect my postgres database in the Vagrant virtual machine. Ideally I could use pgAdmin3 to connect to that database and luckily it wasn’t too hard. There may be a step or two in these instructions that aren’t needed but I’m including everything I did because I know that it works. http://theneum.com/blog/upgrading-to-yosemite/ Mon, 17 Nov 2014 18:15:25 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/upgrading-to-yosemite/ So today I took the plunge and upgraded to Yosemite. With all of the Django and Homebrew setup on my mac it’s always interesting to see what breaks when upgrading. First thing that was off was Postgres was not started, which is what I use for local dev so I can use a production dataset when testing. When I tried to run “brew doctor” I got an error: Error: No such file or directory - /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/clang From experience from past upgrades I know this is because command line tools are not installed correctly. http://theneum.com/blog/spam-control-with-jquery/ Tue, 11 Nov 2014 23:45:47 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/spam-control-with-jquery/ Recently at work I was faced with a problem. We use an outsourced CRM solution so I send lead forms directly to them. Things work but the only solution they have for spam control is using a captcha. A solution I’m not particularly fond of. Especially since one of those forms is in the footer of our site and it would just be flat out ugly. I was already using the wonderful jQuery validation to validate form input so I wanted to find a way to tie it all together. http://theneum.com/blog/upgrading-ghost-on-webfaction/ Wed, 29 Oct 2014 17:39:36 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/upgrading-ghost-on-webfaction/ A while back I started a blog using Ghost to try it out. Webfaction made it easy by having a 1 click installer for it almost immediately after it was available. The site has been up and running for a while and I noticed that there have been several upgrades since I installed it so I wanted to upgrade to the latest version. Here is how I did that. Note that these instructions will only work if you installed Ghost using the Webfaction installer. http://theneum.com/blog/mezzanine-sorlthumbnail/ Wed, 24 Sep 2014 15:34:25 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/mezzanine-sorlthumbnail/ I really like Mezzanine and use it all the time in projects. It powers this site you’re on now. There are a couple of things that often “bug” me about it though. One is that I don’t understand why Stephen chose to bake his own thumbnail plugin and didn’t just use sorl.thumbnail. Sorl is much more flexible and powerful. For instance I can add margin and center an image when resizing it to give uniform whitespace around images while preserving the aspect ratio, something the built in thumbnail tag can’t do. http://theneum.com/blog/mavericks-django/ Sun, 09 Feb 2014 02:32:36 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/mavericks-django/ As I’m changed work a few times the past few years I’ve had to get a Django install up and going on each new machine I’ve used. Here’s a quick run through to get a local development environment for Django up and running in Mavericks in no time. First off, we need install pip so we can get the other packages we need. sudo easy_install pip We’ll want to use virtualenv so we can have multiple Django versions and python environments. http://theneum.com/blog/chrome-30-breaks-fkceditor/ Tue, 26 Nov 2013 22:21:05 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/chrome-30-breaks-fkceditor/ Recently at work I had a perplexing issue. One of the knowledge workers’ browser suddenly stopped loading the FCKeditor in Magento. It was weird because myself and everyone else who used the administration side of Magento was able to edit pages and products just fine and have the editor load up no problem. At first I though it might be a javascript issue or something but that was working fine everywhere else. http://theneum.com/blog/spree-on-webfaction/ Sat, 02 Nov 2013 03:48:43 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/spree-on-webfaction/ A few months back on went on a search for the next best e-commerce framework. Of course only open source will do and while I really like the Cartridge plugin for Mezzanine to say Cartridge is in it’s infancy is an understatement. But other than Satchmo (who’s ship seems to have sailed) there aren’t really any good options from the django side. You’re pretty much left rolling your own. I wanted something pretty complete out of the box. http://theneum.com/blog/deploy-with-fabric-to-webfaction/ Fri, 12 Jul 2013 16:27:22 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/deploy-with-fabric-to-webfaction/ For the past few years I’ve been deploying my Django projects to Webfaction with Fabric. Fabric is an amazing tool very similar to Capistrano for Rails that allows you to run a series of shell commands in sequence. While this is going to be a simple example of Fabric usage, it shows how it can save time. Let’s look at a typical Django project that you’ve been developing and its now live in production and you make some changes to your stylesheet. http://theneum.com/blog/setup-rails-spree-on-mac/ Fri, 12 Jul 2013 14:57:33 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/setup-rails-spree-on-mac/ I wanted to setup Spree locally on my Macbook but the directions on their site didn’t work. At all. Here is how I got it installed and working. Install RVM + Rails (poor mans rails installer) \curl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable --rails I found the documentation at https://github.com/spree/spree to be more specific. When I tried to install using the tutorial documentation it failed due to it installing Rails 4 which the Spree it installed was not compatible with. http://theneum.com/blog/rsync/ Tue, 14 May 2013 16:43:29 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/rsync/ Today I needed to move a ton of static media files over to a new server (we’re switching hosts at work.) In this case we previously had some of the large media files on a CDN that we’re moving away from and these files I now need to host on the same server as the rest of the stuff. Only problem is there is over 3,000 files and many of them large videos and images. http://theneum.com/blog/homebrew/ Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:44:00 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/homebrew/ I started building sites with Django in 2008 and it’s a little crazy to look back and see the improvements and growth that Python and Django has experienced in that time. Remember trying to install everything with Macports? Environments were a beast to deal with. Then a few years ago Homebrew came along and its now pretty much the first thing I install on a new Mac to start setting up a local dev environment. http://theneum.com/blog/mamp-vhosts/ Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:10:32 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/mamp-vhosts/ Today I had the joy of installing an old Magento version on my local MAMP setup. Most everything went well. I first tried to install the old sample data with it but the download that was available was obviously not correct, resulting in tons of SQL errors. So I decided to just install it clean with no sample data. Everything went fine until I tried to log into the admin and PHP can’t store the session into a TLD like localhost, so it was time to fire up some virtualhosts with period in them so that Magento can work, cause… http://theneum.com/blog/magento/ Tue, 26 Mar 2013 19:26:09 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/magento/ Anyone who knows me pretty much knows I don’t hold much love for Magento. I respect the system and even more so the business the founders made by creating Magento, but every time I’ve worked with it, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that this should be simpler. A LOT simpler. I remember first hearing about Magento in 2007 when I worked at iFrogz and at the time it was the first full featured cart that actually looked decent. http://theneum.com/blog/django-sort-dropdown/ Mon, 29 Oct 2012 21:03:35 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/django-sort-dropdown/ Recently while working on PrinceJets I found I really needed to filter a drop down on a ForeignKey relationship. I found a way to do it in the Django documentation but it said not to use it for queries that returned over 100 results but my model was regions which were linked to countries and then continents. In short I had thousands of records to sort through. Uggh, it should be simple, but it wasn’t. http://theneum.com/blog/sublimetext-2-rocks/ Fri, 21 Sep 2012 19:55:07 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/sublimetext-2-rocks/ Sublime Text 2 replaced Textmate as my default editor (sorry TM, you were awesome while it lasted) over six months ago and I haven’t looked back. The first thing to know about Sublime Text 2 is that its package control system is awesome and it really makes the editor what it is. After downloading and installing Sublime you need to install the package control system. To do that open the built in command line interface by hitting Ctrl + ` (Thats a back tick and its the key just below the esc key on most keyboards. http://theneum.com/blog/webfaction-virtualenv-how-to/ Mon, 17 Sep 2012 21:46:19 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/webfaction-virtualenv-how-to/ Note that while this post is oldish the process below still works well as of today: 3/26/2014 This post is going to quickly go over how I set up Django based sites quickly and easily on Webfaction using Virtualenv’s. First things first, log into your Webfaction server via SSH shell (Terminal or Putty.) Note that I use commands to use Python 2.7. Change the -2.7 to whatever version you need or prefer as necessary. http://theneum.com/blog/chrome-dev-tools/ Tue, 11 Sep 2012 20:52:55 +0000 http://theneum.com/blog/chrome-dev-tools/ I switched to Chrome as my main browser a while back after Firefox started updating every 10 minutes and never seemed to be as stable for me on OSX as it once was. With that switch the only thing I really missed was my beloved Firebug plugin. I slowly adjusted to Chrome Dev Tools but its taken some time to get used to the different interations. Today I stumbled on this post by Josh sharing a great presentation that I wished I had seen earlier.