SugarStats.com launches private-beta of online diabetes management site
Posted on February 28, 2007
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So after almost a year of working on our Rails app, we’re ready to launch SugarStats and get some real feedback on it besides our own internal team.
I’ve been using it myself for over 9 months and it’s helped me greatly. I guess its the same with making ANY decision and not just diabetes health choice: The more info you have on something the better you can make a judgment. Plus seeing line graphs and pie charts doesn’t hurt either 
We’ve built it off Rails 1.2 using REST. The main application is 90% straight CRUD goodness with a sprinking of Ajax/RJS in all the right places as we primarily focused on making a clean, easy-to-use user interface.
As for gems/plugins we’re using the usual suspects:
- Act_as_tree
- Restful_authentication
- Gruff_graphs, tzinfo
- Rspec (more of this soon)
- Simply_helpful
- Active_form
- Google_analytics
- Mocha
- Act_as_attachment
- Flex_image
- Flex_times
- Secure_actions
- Enkoder
Maybe in the future we’ll hop on the OpenID bandwagon, we’ll see. One thing at a time, we have much polishing to do to get to public launch.
As for hosting we’ve been running great on Slicehost.com (Highly Recommended) and have design it for easy horizontal scaling via simply adding extra VPS slices. The entire stack is open-source: MySQL, Ubuntu Server, Postfix, Ruby 1.8.5 etc.
Thanks to all of those who have support and kept up with us. Stay tuned as there will definitely be more to come!
.
Posted on February 28, 2007
Filed Under Analytics, Apple, Business, CSS/XHTML, Daily Thoughts, Design, Entertainment, General, Hardware, Hosting, Marketing, Productivity, Quotes, Ranting, Ruby on Rails, SEO, Security, Startup, SugarStats, Tech, Travel, Web
My ultimate tool for free-thought data input, organization and getting things done
Posted on February 27, 2007
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So I’ve been going over my methods for organizing my thoughts, all the things I need to do and trying my best to “Empty my head”. For the last 3 years I’ve been fairly successful at this using various methods and trying this technique or that.
In reflection I’ve noticed one tool I’ve used that has stayed constant as a crucial part of my data input, brain dumping and organizational note taker. What is this tool?:
The Post-It Note
Thats right, the time-tested Post-It note. It is an amazingly executed, efficient masterpiece. Thought I must admit, with all the technology, methodologies and hand-held wonders in the world I sometimes think to myself:
“Am I missing out on something? How can this work so well? It’s almost TOO simple… Right? I should be using my PDA… Shouldn’t I?”
But no, it always comes back to one thing: It just works
So here are a few reasons why it works best for me and how I use them:
- Easy Input – I guess the number 1 reason here, its EASY. Write it down and go!
- Easily Noticeable – It’s easy to find with very bright colors. Lets face it, there is a good chance you’re using one to help get organized. With bright colors they’re very easy to find in a cluttered bag or messy desk.
- Rugged – When I say rugged, I do mean you can throw them anywhere but more importantly I don’t feel like I have to handle them with care. Now I think this is an important point, as with PDA’s or other things (even small notepads such as moleskine) I feel as I have to handle them with care because they’re “worth more” or “more delicate”. I find this a barrier to entry and another reason I love Post-It’s, they’re cheap.
- The Stickiness! – It is of course what makes Post-It’s, well, Post-It’s. You can put them anywhere. What I end up doing is making an aciton-list, take it and sticking it on the opposite side of the Post-It pad. So I can start another list if needed. With this, I’m able to keep track of things but not TOO MUCH info at one time. Should I need to, I take it off the back and stick it on my desk or monitor.
- Size – Size matters, they come in very convenient sizes to carry around. I usually have the original 4×3inch size, easy to put in my bag, pants or jacket pocket.
- Satisfaction – I have to admit, there is nothing like just taking a Post-It full of finished actions and RIPPING IT TO SHREDS or CRUSHING IT INTO A LITTLE BALL with my hands and throwing it in the trash. Its an awesome and quite fulfilling experience.
I mainly use them to write down quite thoughts I have, create immediate action lists or to create an action list that I’ll input into my GTD system at a later time.
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Posted on February 27, 2007
Filed Under Business, Business Books, Daily Thoughts, General, Productivity, Ranting, Startup, SugarStats, Tech, Travel, Web
Here’s my Ruby on Rails Stack … Literally
Posted on February 26, 2007
1 Comment
Its getting pretty high…
So far:
- Agile Web Development with Rails v1 (Why not, its free now.)
- Agile Web Development with Rails v2 (Just in, worth it.)
- Ruby for Rails (ehhh…)
- Rails Recipes (Recommended)
- Rails Cookbook (Best Buy)
I’ve seen the Ajax for Rails (or is it Ajax on Rails?) out, though we don’t do Ajax FOR EVERYTHING, it might be a good reference. I’ll take a gander, anyone have opinions of it?
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Posted on February 26, 2007
Filed Under Books Reviews, Business, Business Books, CSS/XHTML, Daily Thoughts, Design, General, Marketing, Productivity, Ranting, Ruby on Rails, Startup, SugarStats, Tech, Web
Amsterdam “Morning Coffee” Ruby on Rails Meetup
Posted on February 26, 2007
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It was a great meeting at the “Morning Coffee” Rails meet up at the Coffee Company in Amsterdam. I met a lot of great people (There was around 20 people that showed up) and found a few new companies creating other Rails apps such as Soocial.com and Wakoopa
Funny too, first person I talked to actually is doing something Diabetes related with Rails kind of like SugarStats.com. I still need to get that link but its mainly geared towards the doctors here and some propreitary system they use only in Holland.
Hopefully we can get this going monthly, the Coffee Company was an excellent spot. (Free WiFi I think too?)
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Posted on February 26, 2007
Filed Under Business, Daily Thoughts, Design, Entertainment, General, Hosting, Marketing, Productivity, Quotes, Ranting, Ruby on Rails, SEO, Tech, Web
MySQL encoding and converting databases to UTF8
Posted on February 21, 2007
3 Comments
I found a great tip over ath the fingertip blog: Ruby and MySQL encoding flakiness
It details some shady behavior related to UTF8 / MySQL encoding and Rails. The tip worked fine but I found that my production Rails database was still in latin1 even though everything else in my app is setup for UTF8.
So after some searching I found a relatively quick way to convert your MySQL database into UTF8 encoding (Though there might be a easier method.) Basically using the following tasks:
1.) Dump the DB:
mysqldump –user=username –password=password –default-character-set=latin1 –skip-set-charset dbname > dump.sql
2.) Replace all latin1 instances with utf8:
sed -r ’s/latin1/utf8/g’ dump.sql > dump_utf.sql
3.) Delete the old DB, create a new one in UTF8:
mysql –user=username –password=password –execute=”DROP DATABASE dbname; CREATE DATABASE dbname CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;”
4.) Load the dump into the new DB:
mysql –user=username –password=password –default-character-set=utf8 dbname < dump_utf.sql
Check out the MySQL database to UTF8 how-to here
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Posted on February 21, 2007
Filed Under Business, Daily Thoughts, Design, Hosting, PHP/MySQL, Productivity, Ruby on Rails, Startup, SugarStats, Tech, Web
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I'm Marston and here you'll find my rantings, rhetoric and other useful info. I dig tech, photography, quantum physics and organic food. I'm the founder of SugarStats.com and thats my days developing.
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