Blogfolio
Jan 10 ’08
Filed in adobe cs3
GRRRRR!
Sometimes stupid software bugs just burn my bu**.
For one of my clients, I designed a 8.5x11" flyer that's going to a real printer. It's a full-bleed piece, so the printer requested that I give them an eighth-inch bleed, with trim marks. I thought, "Oh. No worries. I'm using my brand-spanking-new-hot-off-the-presses copy of CS3, which will surely be able to handle this sort of thing. Well, you can see where this is going — it doesn't. If you make an 8.5x11" documentin Illustrator CS3, and then save it as a PDF with the appropriate bleed size and trim marks, you don't get what you wanted. Illustrator crops the document at the artboard limits, which are 8.5x11".
Some quick googling turned up a discussion of the problem, but not the solution I wanted.
But there is a work-around. I'll give you a hint: it doesn't involve CS3's new crop area tool.Read the rest …
Nov 19 ’07
Filed in ruby on rails
NOTE: This tutorial has been superseded by a newer version that takes advantage of the newly-released Intel Mac version of the Oracle InstantClient. The new version is much, much simpler, and causes far fewer headaches.
Updated (12/11/07): The ruby-oci8 library just went to full 1.0.0 release. I've updated that section to reflect the new file names.
Updated (5/5/08): The oracle adapter installation has been on-again-off-again with successive Rails releases, but there's an easy fix for it. I've updated the relevant section.
At my new job, I'm using Ruby on Rails to connect to multiple databases — multiple Oracle (10g) instances, as well as MySQL and FileMaker. There's a lot of challenges to doing this, so I'm going to post some of the less obvious solutions as they come up.
The first challenge I had was to get RoR to talk to Oracle. There isn't a lot of information about this online, because the people who tend to use Oracle are not the people who tend to use open source software like Rails.
Read the rest …
Nov 13 ’07
Filed in operating systems, ruby on rails
This one's real easy. Leopard ships with a default Rails installation (/usr/bin/rails), but overriding it is quite simple, since it's just a gem.
Read the rest …
Aug 29 ’07
Filed in ephemeral, plants
Really, twice. First was
at the end of June: I completely forgot to note it here. I took a photo of Erythronium montanum at the top of Larch Mountain outside of Portland. It was a rainy day, which usually doesn't make for good hiking, but we were under a thick understory for most of the hike so it worked. There were vast numbers of these very delicate avalanche lilies waiting for us near the top of the mountain, all covered with droplets. They are quite charismatic.
Read the rest …
Apr 18 ’07
Filed in ruby on rails
Every time I get frustrated with an aspect of Rails, it turns out that it's just my idiocy and not actually something to do with Rails.
Most recently, I wanted to code this algorithm:
If on the current page
show <a href="blah1">link 1</a>
else
show <a href="blah2>link 2
Read the rest …
Mar 05 ’07
Filed in plants
Once again it seems I owe my thanks to
Daniel Mosquin from the
UBC Botanical Garden for choosing my photo of Acer japonicum, the japanese maple, for
yesterday's photo of the day. That's two in two months; we'll see if I can make a third. If you read his comments I think that he's completely right — there is something very appealing about the Japanese maples in the winter time, because of their architectural shapes. I took this photo shortly after a big rain, and the way the sunlight was catching the drops was so appealing that I couldn't resist. I think that it makes the tree look somehow much more ancient than it really is.
Read the rest …
Feb 04 ’07
Filed in food
My upstairs neighbor gave us some macha: Japanese powdered green tea. The Japanese are the only people on the planet who still drink this stuff — it's a very primitive form of tea, and when brewed it's quite bitter. They eat it with sweets that are too sweet, alternating bites of too-sweet with sips of too-bitter, and it all balances out.
I like drinking macha, though; but I'd rather make delicious tasty desserts with it, like this one which I made this afternoon. The recipe is based on the "Rich roll cookies" from Joy of Cooking.Read the rest …
Jan 18 ’07
Filed in plants
Many thanks to
Daniel Mosquin from the
UBC Botanical Garden for choosing my photo of Zantedeschia aethiopia, also known as the calla lily, for
today's photo of the day. Woohoo!
Read the rest …
Dec 10 ’06
Filed in design, site administrativa
Although this page went live a little while ago, I've just gotten around to writing it up. A scientist at the University of Santa Barbara contacted me about making a
professional page for her. I've
added it to my portfolio. I'm particularly happy about the image at the bottom of the page behaves: use a big screen and make your browser window wide. Very wide.
Read the rest …
About the author
Brent Miller is the owner and principal web designer of Foliosus Web Design LLC in Portland, Oregon. He enjoys food, plants, and the color green. If you are interested in hiring him for web work, please contact him.
Categories
Plant of the day
Cnidoscolus aconitifolius (Euphorbiaceae); Ts'its'n chay
Fresh photos
Avalanche lily
