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Not only is Paris foolish enough to leave the house drunk to get a burger (can’t she pay people to do that?), but she’s foolish enough to break the law two subsequent times.

I am delighted to see that the judge has sent her straight back to jail.   I hope that he now moves on to slapping the sheriff on the wrist for being so stupid in the first place.

If LA county jail is two harsh for this frail bitch, then put her up somewhere that is not a MULTI MILLION DOLLAR MANSION.  I want to know how I can be put on house arrest in her fucking house.

They should totally put her bony ass on a chain gang.

If our impact on this earth is measured by the difference of our contributions and drawls from society, Paris on on her third mortgage and she’s not even a quarter of the way there.

I wonder if she had a breakdown because someone made her their bitch…

Shiiiiiiiiit….

I’m currently setting up a framework for a PHP project I’m doing and sat in to evaluate both of these.  The requirements for this project are unique and shitty, so I wasn’t sure how far I’d get with these two frameworks.

First of all, my requirements are:
- PHP 4 or 5
- IIS
- MSSQL

Yuck, right?

So my solution looks something like:
- Windows XP Pro
- IIS 5.1
- SQL Server 2005 Express
- PHP 5.2.3

Now, let’s talk about CakePHP…

I installed CakePHP and immediately had a web page responding.  I was seeing directory names such as “model” that I’m familiar with in Rails.  However, when I began to search for all  the sweet scripts that simplify Rails development and everything is strangely absent.  I was able to find a script that allows you to add models views or controllers, but it’s overdone and underpowered, giving you few options and running from a menu driven interface.

It took me awhile to figure out that the mssql driver bundled with php just wouldn’t work.  I wound up settling for the adobb-mssql driver, which is easily integrated with CakePHP.

Once I was able to get the DB up, my CakePHP installation was complete.  Not super featured, but easy to get up.

As for Symfony….

I downloaded the Symfony Sandbox, as it seemed it would suit my needs.  The moment I unzipped Symfony, I was excited.  Everything just looked more organized.  Then when  it was actually unzipped, I started to notice that the file structure is actually quite confusing.

Much to my delight, Symfony comes bundled with a shock of command line tools that help you manage the parts of your project.

The more I worked to setup Symfony the more excited I got.  All  of the config files are in YML which is true to Rails…  Heavy use of prototype.js, like Rails…

However, I ran into a problem once the whole picture started to form in my mind.  Symfony was really really complete… However it was also really really complex.  One thing Rails is not, is complex.  It would seem a lot of thought  has gone into things like the Rails file hierarchy.   I just don’t think the Symfony guys have put this much thought into it.

The Straight Dope:

CakePHP

Pros:
- Easy to setup
- Easy integration with 3rd party plugins
- Simplicity of file hierarchy is true to Rails vision of MVC
- Application seems very portable
Cons:
- Lacking supporting cast of command line scripts
- Doesn’t seem to make much use of YML for configs
- Everything you need is there, but doesn’t feel complete

Symfony

Pros:
- Feels very complete
- Makes use of YML, leaving it feeling very Rails-like
- Powerful command line tools to help you develop
Cons:
- Application seems tied down and reliant on other software
- Confusing file hierarchy
- A lot to learn
My Solution…
In the end, I decided on CakePHP because it felt like they were truly Rails inspired and I want to see where they are going.   With CakePHP, I am really left with the feeling that my application is portable.  I know this is hardly a measure of quality for frameworks, but this is really only a review of the installation and first impressions.

Now I need to figure out rewrite in IIS

My example of scaling issues is a real life situation I’m working on with my employer. Rails makes it incredibly easy to have isolated environments for every stage of your application design, but it doesn’t offer many built in solutions for having isolated databases within a single project and single environment. No elegant solutions anyways.

In our situation, we wanted to access a local readonly mirror of our co-location hosted database in situations where no write access was needed. Not only would this reduce the bandwidth used by accessing a database on our LAN, but it would relieve stress on our master database server.

ActiveRecord provides a few methods for managing your connection pool, but how do you use these easily? I propose the following solution that appears to be fairly elegant. Only time will tell how efficient it is.

The first thing we needed to do is provide a profile for our readonly database in the database configuration of our rails project.

config/database.yml:

readonly:

username: readonly

password: readonly

host: readonly

database: readonly

You will want to substitute the values above for the correct values for your given situation.

The next step is to create a library that will assist you in swapping out your connections. I called my library ro_database.rb

lib/ro_database.rb:

# This library hijaacks the DB connection forcing it to the read only
# local mirror. Us this __ONLY__ when you do 0 writes, or you will
# derail the train!

module ReadOnlyDatabase
def ro_database
if RAILS_ENV == “production”
ActiveRecord::Base.connection = :readonly
end
end

def rw_database
ActiveRecord::Base.connection = RAILS_ENV.to_sym
end
end

From here, the final steps are surprisingly simple. You will need to take precautions to isolate your code that writes to the db from the code that doesn’t, however how far you take that is at your own discretion. In our situation, this was already done for the most part. So, all I had to do to make a specific controller hit the readonly database was:

app/controllers/sample_controller.rb:

class SampleController < ApplicationController
# This bit sets us to the read only mirror and back when we're done
require 'ro_database'
include ReadOnlyDatabase
before_filter :ro_database
after_filter :rw_database
# End funky DB bits

You could even move the require and include statements into the application_controller so you only need the before filter and after filter.

This code possibly makes a few unfair assumptions, but I’m not sure what they are yet. I’m also looking for more elegant ways of switching back so we only switch back when we need to, but I wanted something that wasn’t too intrusive across the board.

In the event that Rails doesn’t hold the primary connection open while it hits readonly, I will look into storing the primary connection somewhere while the switch is in effect. There’s no point in opening and closing connections repeatedly here.

So there you have it. It’s easy and it’s pretty damned clean. I’d love to hear suggestions on making it more efficient, however my goal here is to remain as streamlined as possible.

For what it is, Ruby on Rails is, simply put, Amazing. Who knew how much additional fun you can have on a project when all of the monotony is replaced by a comprehensive, easy to use framework backed by a language that you can try to spread as far and as thin as you want and still get that same great taste with no aftertaste?

Everything great has a pitfalls though, right? Right. A very large pitfall in Rails is knowing where the magic stops. As a Perl coder, I can recount stories in which I poured hours into trying to develop libraries that make insanely monotonous tasks incredibly simple. As a Ruby on Rails coder, I pour hours into searching for that magic that Rails must have in order to do something incredibly simple, and wind up turning the event into something entirely monotonous.

In this pitfall, the real beauty of Rails makes itself glaringly apparent. Refactoring Rails is easy, and borderline fun. Furthermore, if you partake in test-driven development, you can rest soundly knowing that your refactoring doesn’t harm anything else.

Next time you’re stuck looking for the magic, just create a solution. It doesn’t have to be elegant. When you find the right magic later, you’ll find that updating your code is easy as pie.

It’s there… Take advantage of it.

When I got to thinking more about the White Russians, I decided I was going to try something my mother referenced awhile back. Making your own Kahlua.

So here I am working on Jereme’s Kahlua recipe 1.0. Actually I’m just trying someone else’s. Using Dana’s homemade Kahlua recipe I’m working up my first batch.

To call lefties “terrorist loving” is proposterous. Nobody loves the terrorists. Everyone is in favor of finding better ways to combat terrorism, but not in favor of curbing a great many of the liberties that make this country so fantastic.

Bush screwed up bad. His approval rating is in the 20% range. The economy is finally on a rebound, but it will take awhile before people actually feel the relief.

Not to mention, Bush is the laughing stock of the world… and it’s not funny at all. My grandma sends me Bush jokes and e-mails often, and she has always voted and will still vote Republican.

He hasn’t caught Bin Laden. The administrations plans for Iraq were essentially a photocopy of Desert Storm. A different war needs different plans. If we’re to assume that in a decade, things wouldn’t be different in Iraq, then why have we even bothered to change our strategy over the last century? We should be fighting on horses!

This administration has cast a dark cloud over American society and our image to the rest of the world. It doesn’t matter if the next president is Dem or Repub, it’s going to be a hard job either way.

As for the tactic of calling people names like “terrorist lover”… It really helps drive my point home when the only response you can muster to the straight facts is something akin to “I know you are, but what am I?”

Really, I want the candidates to be great no matter what party they are from, because one of them is going to win. It’s not the party that bothers me, it’s the people.

“Chicago - Malachi Ritscher envisioned his death as one full of purpose. He carefully planned the details, mailed a copy of his apartment key to a friend, created to-do lists for his family. On his Web site, the 52-year-old experimental musician who’d fought with depression even penned his obituary.

    At 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 3 - four days before an election caused a seismic shift in Washington politics - Ritscher, a frequent anti-war protester, stood by an off-ramp in downtown Chicago near a statue of a giant flame, set up a video camera, doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire.”

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