random ramblings

This is more or less to add to what James Duncan Davidson has already said about OpenID and delegates.

Even though I had been using OpenID for a while prior to his post, I hadn’t set things up to use my own domain. After his post, I realized how easy it was to do. In his example he’s using myOpenID, which I don’t use; so, I had to figure out how to do it using my provider, Verisign Labs PIP. I had to do a bit of searching to find the server URL (https://pip.verisignlabs.com/server), but after that it was simple.

So, to amend James Duncan Davidson’s three easy steps, replace the HTML snippet in step 2 with the following:

<link rel="openid.server" href="https://pip.verisignlabs.com/server" />
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://yourid.pip.verisignlabs.com" />

Today I also tried out another OpenID provider built on Google App Engine, which authenticates with your Google ID; that’s a plus if you already have a Google account (such as Gmail) because that’s one less account you have to remember (isn’t less IDs part of the point of OpenID?). Anyway, the HTML snippet you need to use that provider is the following:

<link rel="openid.server" href="http://openid-provider.appspot.com/" />
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://openid-provider.appspot.com/yourid" />

Update: The above provider built on Google App Engine is currently a bit buggy. I would shy away from changing any of your accounts to use that as your OpenID URL directly. That’s another plus of using your own domain as your OpenID URL, you can change the server you use on your site without having to change the accounts that use your OpenID URL.

I'm currently playing around w/ merb 0.9, and using haml. Trust me things are not starting off super smoothly. But, I am enjoying using something new, something that's changing daily; reminds me of when I first started using Rails, and all the frustration of not being able to figure something out, followed by the joy when it worked.

That said, there will probably be quite of few posts dealing with all the things that hang me up along the way, so that I have a place to come back to in the future to find the answers.

It appears as though there used to be a file called dependencies.rb (before I tried Merb). In this file you'd specify what dependencies your app needed, using something like:

dependencies "RedCloth", "merb_helpers"

or

dependency "RedCloth"

That was changed, and would then declare your app's dependencies in config/init.rb. Apparently, since yesterday that has changed again slightly. You still declare your dependencies in config/init.rb, but instead of going in the body of the file, it now goes in the after_app_loads code block, as such:

Merb::BootLoader.after_app_loads do
  ### Add dependencies here that must load after the application loads:
  require "merb-haml"
end

Some might have noticed that you no longer call the dependency method, but just plain old require.

When I put this blog up, I had all the intentions in the world to really use it. I wanted to write about all the cool/interesting/weird things I’d discovered. But, that is definitely not what has happened. But, I really want to start using it more.

I have ideas for things to write about. I recently attended acts_as_conference, I really enjoyed it, and even learned a little in the process. I’ve been attending the Orlando Ruby Users Group (orug) meetings for a while now, and presented at the last one. What I’ve learned from these activities are just some of the things I want to write about on here.

I switched to a new hosting company, (slicehost). It’s a little bit more than I was paying before, but has double the memory, along with other pluses. I’ve only been using their services for a few days, but I’m already glad that I switched.

I’ve upgraded my server specs, and loaded a proper blog (mephisto)

Website has (finally!) been uploaded on to my server, so I now have a proper website

Today I finally purchased my domain name (jacobswanner.com), as well as getting a web host (www.vpslink.com)