CircleCI, Rails 5, Minitest, and avoiding the OptionParser::InvalidOption exception

After updating a project to rails 5 I was no longer able to use the minitest-ci gem without making a few changes. My project was failing with the following exception: /home/ubuntu/ebth-com/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.2.0/gems/railties-5.0.1/lib/rails/test_unit/minitest_plugin.rb:57:in `plugin_rails_options’: invalid option: –ci-dir=/tmp/circle-junit.pSCJhIM/minitest (OptionParser::InvalidOption) To fix I basically had to override the test command so –ci-dir wouldn’t be specified. Here is the process… Read More »

VTDecoderXPCService using 100% of your CPU? Use cputhrottle

Since upgrading to macOS Sierra (10.12.1) I’ve been having problems with the VTDecoderXPCService process spinning out of control. Closing the Messages app will fix this, but inevitably starting Messages at a later time will cause the problem to resurface. I didn’t really want to fire up IDA Pro and dig into why VTDecoderXPCService was doing… Read More »

Elasticsearch – Creating an english analyzer with asciifolding

When using the english analyzer with my Elasticsearch index I also wanted to use the asciifolding filter to remove accents. I couldn’t find a simple way to do this so I ended up just replicating the existing english analyzer, and then adding asciifolding to the list of filters. See below: module ItemIndex settings index: {… Read More »

Running server density on startup on OS X (El Capitan Edition)

For some reason the existing solution for configuring server density to run on startup with OS X was failing for me. For whatever reason, this is what ended up working for me, and I dare not touch it now! Label com.boxedice.sd-agent.start RunAtLoad StandardOutPath /tmp/sd-agent.out StandardErrorPath /tmp/sd-agent.err ProgramArguments /usr/bin/python /usr/local/bin/sd-agent/agent.py start

Using pg_activity with Amazon RDS

By default you aren’t able to use pg_activity to connect directly to your Amazon RDS instance. This is due to two things: You don’t have superuser, ever, on Amazon RDS pg_activity tries to get information on all databases, which includes the rdsadmin database that you will never have access to.  This database is owned/managed by… Read More »

TechTool Pro 6.0.8 Download

It took me a while to find the download link for TechTool Pro 6.0.8 so I thought I’d share it for others: TechTool Pro 6.0.8 Download Mirror

Building your own solar panels

I was getting tired of powering a lot of the computers I use in my home office every month so decided to try out building some solar panels!  I’m going to start off small, but try to plug the batteries into my existing electrical system.  Luckily my fiance’s uncle is an electrician so he’ll be… Read More »

Check for a NULL/nil YAML value stored in a database column

I was trying to google for searching a database for a nil yaml value and it took me a bit so I thought I would post my findings.  Basically if you do this in the rails console: nil.to_yaml you’ll receive: — \n…\n Kind of irritating when you’re trying to write a SQL query. So to… Read More »