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[thoughtbot]

One month ago, we informed Copycopter customers that we would be shutting the service down on April 15th and they would no longer be charged.

This news triggered a domino effect across the internet. AOL followed up by shutting down Instant Messenger. Milk then shut down Oink and users are...

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Finding apartment in Berlin

I didn't post anything since almost 2 months, neither IT stuff nor Happy New Year or Marry Christmas (btw Happy NY!); I have a reason for that - I moved to Berlin for indefinite time and all this time I was busy with this project. In this article I will write about finding a flat in this city and I hope it will be useful to anybody wishing to move in Berlin.

Choose a District

Berlin is very big and diverse city, before even start searching a flat, you must know what you want to find, and where. Berlin is divided in 23 districts or so called Bezirke. I won't speak of all of them, because that's boring, but I will outline few of them which I considered or dismissed in my search for the flat. Let's start by shortening search domain - just drop Wedding, Marzahn, Hellersdorf and Neukoln. In short - this districts are not representing Berlin/germany at all, the majority population there are migrants likes asian, turks, arabs, russians. I also cut out from my search Mitte (Center) because of pricing, and Lichtenberg because that is associated with neonazis and all other sort for criminal life.

What I really considered and wanted to find -a flat in a quiet and green area not so far from the city-center i.e I was looking in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Pankow, Tempelhof, Schoenberg and Reinickendorf. 

For my search I used web site immobilienscout24.de. If you don't know german, just open this site with chrome browser and it will be automatically translated into your language - very useful ;) enter location Berlin and start choosing for what fits you best.

Flats in Germany

Flats are rented without furniture. Some of them are with kitchen (mit EBK = Einbaukueche), and sure there are flats with furniture. generally speaking most of them are in really good conditions, because they are renovated very time before letting.

Pricing Scheme

There are two prices listed for each flat: kalt (cold) and warm price. The kalt price is for walls so to speak :). But you probably will use elevator, garbage collection service, cleaning on the stairs service - all those plus heating  are included in warm price.  Because heating the flat is so expansive, what germans do is they divide average price for heating by 12 and include that number in monthly warm price. Thus, every month you will pay warm price calculated by this formula:

Warm = Kalt + Heizung (heating) + Nebenkosten (ex: garbage,elevator)

Heizung (heating) also includes price for hot water.

Kaution is german word for - deposit. Usually for every flat you will be asked to provede an amount of deposit.  Another important termin is Provision which is german word for commission - the amount of money you will pay to agency... oh, I completly forgot to tell you the story of 

Privat vs Agency

Most of flats here in Germany are rented mostly by agencies and in very few cases by owners of the flats themselves. Dealing with agencies is lengthy and bureaucratic process. The point is that in Germany laws favors those who rent, which means for example that if you won't pay for apartment with a noble reason that you don't have money because you lost your job - nobody will throw you on the streets - neither landlord nor police. And there are lots and lots of cases like this - people just refuse to pay apartment for years!!! In order avoid this issues, owners are just happy to handle everything to agencies which will take care of everything: checking your payment history, bank statement, your income, your origin etc. All this is done with single purpose - to minimise the risks for them. The good news about agents is that most of them speak english. 

Appointment for the Flat

Once you found in Internet a few apartments you like it's time to arrange an appointment. Most of the cases, appointments are for groups of people. Agents just tell you day and hour and all people interested for that flat will come to see it. Once, I went to see a flat and there were so many people that they barely fitted inside, few of them were waiting outside for their turn to see the flat :). At every appointment, agent comes with application form and if you like apartment then he gives you this form. You fill it and send the form to agent. I saw one flat, let say at 13:00 (1:00 pm) , with a group of other 20 or so people. I took the form as usual. But when I come home in the evening I found out that the flat was already rented :) - someone liked flat immediately filled the form and gave it to agent on the spot. Flat was gone for good! So...  act fast.

WBS

If you do a few search experiments you'll see that in Berlin you can find a surprisingly good flat with unusually small price. So, what's the catch? The catch is so called WBS or if that's easier to read: Wohnberechtigungscheinn. The story is that some of house construction companies get help (money) from the Government to build the house. Government in its turn oblige the construction company that in future a number of flats will be used only by those who have WBS. And WBS have only families with small income. Got it? This way german Government helps social disadvantaged families. Unless you have really small income - you can drop apartments that requires WBS.

Applying for a Flat

For application you will be asked for passport copy, job contract, statement for you last 3 salaries and so on. Because I am new in Germany and without financial history here, for all application along with application form I just sent my job contract (where salary was specified) and the copy of my passport. Obviously that lowered a lot my chances. Anyway, my advice is to apply for as many flats as possible. 

[railsdevtips-blog]

Vim cheat sheet.

Even though most RoR developers tend to prefer TextMate vim is maybe a second most popular choice, especially if you have to edit files remotely. This is an awesome cheat-sheet I learned a lot from it.

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Do websites need look same in all browsers?

http://dowebsitesneedtobeexperiencedexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/

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Chisinau in 1966 at its 500 years

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css positioning

There are four types of positioning of CSS elements: static, relative, absolute and fixed.

Static: This is the default way that an element is positioned; it simply follows the normal flow of the document. The top and left properties have no effect when an element has static positioning

Relative: Is very similar to static positioning, as the element will continue to follow the normal flow of the document until instructed to do otherwise. However, setting the top or left properties will cause the element to be shifted in relation to its original (static) position

Absolute: Positioning an element absolutely completely breaks it out of the normal flow of page layout. An element that’s been positioned absolutely will be displayed in relation to the first parent element that has a nonstatic position. If no parent exists, it’s positioned in relation to the entire document

Fixed: Fixed positioning works by positioning an element relative to the browser window. Setting an element’s top and left to 0 pixels will display that element in the top-left corner of the browser for as long as the user is on that page, completely ignoring any use of the browser’s scrollbars

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Limassol in Pictures

All these photos were made by Plamen Matanki. Check his flick account for more great photos.

Limassol is second biggest city in Cyprus. I think it as best city in Cyprus, because it of its location on seaside of Mediterranean, great climate (9 month of sunshine in a year, it that enough?) and high quality of life. Whenever you are planning a vacation in Cyprus it is definitively worth considering to visit.

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5 reasons to leave Cyprus

Cyprus is a great place to have vacation here, to visit friends.You know sea, mountains. But living here full time is completely different than it seems during that vacation week. 

Internet speed here Sucks

3 Mb/s Internet ADSL connection here is most usual. Fiber Internet ? Not in Cyprus. There is no Fiber Internet here. This speed for internet is just enough for seniors to check their email or facebook account, but if you want to get more from it... not here. It can sound funny, but as a geek, this is one of my main concerns for Cyprus. I spend lots of time connected, so when download hardly gets 50 kb/s for whole day (like today :( ) it is a pain.... :(. Did I mention that for 2Mb/s I pay 39 Euro/Month !? wtf?

No public transportation

 Everyone in Cyprus has a car. That's great! But the problem is that there is no public transport at all. What this means for daily life is that you are 100% dependent on your car. If car breaks - you are doomed. It becomes weird when  friends comes from another country to visit you... because they will also depend on your car. When you go to some party - forget about beer, you need to drive. You need to go for a walk? Only with your car, because neared park is 5km away.

 No central heating

 Central heating? Who needs it here in sunny Cyprus? 9 months in a year sun shines, no clouds, no rains. Great weather. Yeaaaah!

And suddenly, in middle of November winter comes. Night temperature drops to  15 C or even 10 C. Wow 'how cold' you will say... Indeed, 10-15 C is not so cold for temperate climate, but for Mediterranean climate is. Well, it is not damn cold as all there is no central heating and there is no sane way to warm your house. Houses are build from concrete which retains outside temperature (say 10 C) and during the night your flat works against you - instead of keeping you warm, it keeps you cold. The only source of hot water are sun and electric heater. In winter only heater. Want a hot shower in middle of December ? Switch on heater. Wait for 30' or so. Go in that damn cold bath, and start very quickly, until hot water won't run out have a shower. During the summer process is exactly opposite. August and July are unbearably hot. You concrete house become like a big oven. The only way to chill it out is with AC - which reflects on your electricity bill like nothing else. 

Prices are exaggerated

Cyprus is very expensive place. ~40 Euro/month for 2Mb/s ADSL Internet...  A visit to the doctor for simple checkup costs around 50 Euro. Rent for average 2 bedrooms apartment in Limassol can cost around 600 Euro.

Isolation

Living on the island is different than living on the continent. You are completely isolated. Options are limited. You cannot just jump in your car and go whenever you wish. No. Only by pane. Air XYZ. Limited options is a huge drawback. At some point I got a feeling like all real action is somewhere else - but not here in Cyprus - a feeling that I am isolated from the rest of the world.

Actually I started whole this post because whole day today internet is f*#g slow. This is the reason the post may seem negative... geeks without Internet are angry.

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Organic startup ideas

This is reblog from full article here 

The best way to come up with startup ideas is to ask yourself the question: what do you wish someone would make for you? There are two types of startup ideas: those that grow organically out of your own life, and those that you decide, from afar, are going to be necessary to some class of users other than you. Apple was the first type. Apple happened because Steve Wozniak wanted a computer. Unlike most people who wanted computers, he could design one, so he did. And since lots of other people wanted the same thing, Apple was able to sell enough of them to get the company rolling. They still rely on this principle today, incidentally. The iPhone is the phone Steve Jobs wants.

There is no sharp line between the two types of ideas, but the most successful startups seem to be closer to the Apple type than the Viaweb type. When he was writing that first Basic interpreter for the Altair, Bill Gates was writing something he would use, as were Larry and Sergey when they wrote the first versions of Google. Organic ideas are generally preferable to the made up kind, but particularly so when the founders are young. It takes experience to predict what other people will want. The worst ideas we see at Y Combinator are from young founders making things they think other people will want. So if you want to start a startup and don't know yet what you're going to do, I'd encourage you to focus initially on organic ideas. What's missing or broken in your daily life? Sometimes if you just ask that question you'll get immediate answers. It must have seemed obviously broken to Bill Gates that you could only program the Altair in machine language.

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ruby design patterns 2. Strategy

Strategy is a particular pattern, whereby algorithms can be selected at runtime. The shortest example ever with ruby is sort method:

In example above, sorting algorithm is provided as external block, which can be anything you need - or in pattern language - you provide what strategy sort method will use.

A more practical example is tax calculation. Tax calculation algorithm can vary, but basic principle is same - some sort of strategy is applied to a numerical amount. Example below illustrates this concept quite well:

With different strategy (different tax calculation method), net salary is different

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ruby design patterns 1. Template method

This article as well as other that will follow are my notes on design patterns in ruby from Russ Olsen' book Design Patterns in Ruby. However examples given here are not from the book.

Quote from Wikipedia

 A template method defines the program skeleton of an algorithm. One or more of the algorithm steps can be overridden by subclasses to allow differing behaviors while ensuring that the overarching algorithm is still followed.

For example let's say we have class Wizard that is meant to guide users to fill in html form. Form can vary. It can be sign up form, maybe password recovery or maybe something else. Method responsible to display form was left to be implemented later. This way Wizard class acts like a template for later reuse.

And now let's implement display_main_form in inherited classes, to create two wizard different forms from the same template.

Above example will produce this output

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StringIO example

In this short article I will present a scenario where I found StringIO class useful. 

According to ruby reference manual 

Another way to obtain an IO object is to use the stringio library to read from or write to a string [...]The StringIO class is not a subclass of IO, but it defines many of the same methods as IO does, and duck typing usually allows us to use a StringIO object in place of an IO object.

Suppose you are writing some sort of file cruncher (file parser for example).  When it comes to testing your functionality first what strokes your mind can be create a folder test/tmp/ with test files - and run tests on them. However this option becomes tedious when you will have to deal with 100 file 5-10 lines each. Here StringIO comes into play. You can use StringIO object instead of File object. StringIO - behaves like a String and like File object in same time. There is no need to open file from somewhere to read text content - just push that content to StringIO object and then feed StringIO object instead of File.

An example is worth one thousand of words:

Conclusion

During testing it can be more convenient to use StringIO object instead of File object.

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Ruby - bad parts

Ruby is a wonderful programming language. I really love it! However, in this post I won't tell you how great is this language, there are lots internet resources for that. In this post I will focus what I don't like about Ruby or to be more precise - one issue which ruby community don't even recognize as problem.

The gist of my concern is that out there is no central location for Ruby developers. All ruby related resources are spread all over Internet in very chaotic and unorganized manner. Let's pick  just few of them:

Ruby language webpage itself is here. Ruby core library api can be found in different place - here. Ruby gems can be found, in yet another location -  here. I will stop little bit at last one - rubygems. Rubygems can be searched only by title of the gem :(. Let's say I need some sort of library that will parse yaml files. First result in rubygems search by keyword 'yaml' will is erubis gem with this description:

Erubis is an implementation of eRuby and has the following features: * Very fast, almost three times faster than ERB and about 10% faster than eruby. 

wtf? Also irrelevant are 2nd and 3rd search result. Well, you got the point. Rubygems searches gems only by title and description :((((

Let's continue. You want to find useful gem from category X (finance, calculus, linguistic) go to ruby toolbox, which is yet another place. Another repository like thing -  Github - which is so wonderful, but again, it make is so difficult to search something relevant to you problem. I can go on and on, list is very long (I didn't even mentioned about Rails).  This problems makes ruby developers very dependent of google searching. 

Solution?

I think ruby community can borrow idea from perl community and build something similar to cpan - a centralized place where developer can find everything - from beginning learning of perl to very detailed information for each and every module (equivalent of gem) - documentation, examples, issues, comments, ratings, activity.

Anyway, I am sure that in future, ruby community will recognize this as a problem and will find a cpan like solution :D. 

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Web page with a gallery of open source Ruby on rails projects. 

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Parking in Cyprus. 

In Cyprus there is no public transportation and because of this, everyone in Cyprus  has a car (yes, every member of every family). That's why, whenever there is some sort of event, where people flock, you can easily see scenes like in photos. 

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bulk encoding into mpeg using find and ffmpeg

You downloaded big AVI files from your camera. My Canon PowerShot S5 IS for 3 minutes of video produces AVI file with aprox 500MB in size. Lets say you have about 5 or 6 of such AVIs files spread around. It is really easy to compress them. One nix command. Here it is:

Explanation:

find command searches for all files with AVI extention and for each of them executes command after --exec switch (which is ffmpeg -i input file -b bit rate). Curly brackets stand for currently found file.