Decoding the Rails session cookie

 
Marshal.load(Base64.decode64(CGI.unescape(cookie.split("\n").join).split(’–’).first))

As found here.
Update: you can dump your session and verify your session signature using:

 
secret = "your session secret" # from config/initializers/session_store.rb
verifier = ActiveSupport::MessageVerifier.new(secret)
signed_message = CGI.unescape(cookie.split("\n").join
verifier.verify(signed_message)

A whole new level of Fluid Layout

Courtesy of Jacob Maine:
This is a whole different level of fluid layouts: http://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/finally-a-fluid-hicksdesign. Worth playing with.
And the tools it’s based on: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design

Setting up Synergy keyboard/mouse sharing

Download synergy from http://sourceforge.net/projects/synergy2/files/ and install on the machines you want to participate in sharing. For this example let’s say I two systems with hostnames notebook and desktop, and I want to share the keyboard and mouse of desktop.
Create a configuration file, something like this:

 
section: screens
mydesktop:
mynotebook:
end
 
section: links
mynotebook:
[...]

Upgrading to Snow Leopard

Somewhat following the instructions from rubyonrails.org:

Install Snow Leopard from DVD.
Install XCode tools from Optional Installs on same DVD.
Start 1Password – install 1Password3 when prompted.
Evernote Safari clipper seemed to be overwriting the 1Password button in Safari. Upgraded Evernote to release candidate, still had problem. Disabled Evernote Safari Clipper. Also enabled “Show in Top [...]

CSS grid system resources

This is just a place to hold my bookmarks relating to use of CSS Grid Systems:

YUI/Blueprint/960gs comparison chart: http://synapse.neural9.com/css-frameworks-comparison-chart/
Site dedicated to grid system design: http://www.thegridsystem.org/

Completely uninstall mysql from Mac OS X

Remove mysql, prefpane item, startup item.
then:

sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/mysql*

There is a good complete explanation of this here.

Password protected CruiseControl.rb with git support

Here is how I setup my internet accessible CruiseControl.rb server and password protected it, using apache on MacOS.
As I use Git for VCS so I installed the version from GitHub that supports it. This appears to be the most actively developed version as far as I can tell.
After cloning it to ~/cruisecontrol.rb I wrote [...]