It's really pretty cool how easy Pow makes running a Rails server. Powder makes it even easier. Here's how to run your Rails server via Pow on a VM in order to test IE.Install PowGet your Ruby environment otherwise setup for Rails dev. Then install Pow. It's a nice little utility created by the folk...

Pinterest currently does not have an official webservice API. It seems kind of crazy in this day and age. They really should have one. I can't think what the business reasons might be for not having one.They've not had one for long enough that it's high time we write our own. It'll be surprisingly e...

In JavaScript, functions can be defined and used in the same statement. This makes creation quick, and the functions are considered anonymous because of their inline use and lack of assignment to a local variable. But, there are a couple reasons you might want to label them.ReadabilityA great thing ...

When working inside your test suite, it's often the case that you don't want to run all of your tests. Mocha has a great mechanism that allows you to easily specify what exactly you want run. This can help make your processes such as TDD faster and more focused.Run a Single Test FileUsing the mocha ...

When you're trying to test your authenticated URLs via supertest, there are just a couple things you'll need to do that aren't spelled out in the docs.SupertestSupertest is a library written by the prolific TJ Holowaychuk. It is a companion to superagent. Superagent provides a clean API for issuing ...

When you're working on a software project, what's the most important deliverable? Why, the software! It's your eventual product. Along the way, however, there will be some things you can do that will make it more likely you successfully ship great software. One of those is logging issues. Here's why...

When you're interviewing and are asked to share what you're most interested in. You'd better know. You'd better be enthused about it. And don't abandon it, or you'll look insincere.Recently my teammate and I had a lunch interview with a potential future teammate. As a lunch interview, it was mostly ...

When you test your AngularJs code, you need to explicitly inject the services that your controllers and modules require. It has its own special syntax. It requires mocking. You'll see a slightly different syntax than you may have expected.The Solution: Mocking AngularJs InjectionsAngular is simple a...

Aren't environment-specific bugs some of the hardest to troubleshoot! You may find yourself scratching your head after building and deploying your AngularJs code. If you minimize or uglify your Angular code, there may be a few things you need to do differently to make it work.Dependency InjectionAng...

Sometimes you'll want to use npm to install a package that doesn't exist in the official npm registry for some reason. Maybe you're developing the package yourself. Maybe it's an internal use-only package. Maybe the package writer never published it. Here are a few ways to install a local package wi...

I've used IntelliJ since version 6. Now we're version 12. It's just gotten better. Version 12 is definitely an incremental release. There's nothing too whiz bang here that I care about, but the quality overall is increased.IntelliJ 12 New Core FeaturesThe highlights of the "What's New" list include ...

Grunt is a great build tool for JavaScript projects. It comes with a lot out of the box, and you can write your own custom tasks. It joins a world fraught with many, glorious build tool options. So, a bit has been made of the decision to have Grunt join the fray. Perhaps most prominently, Miller Med...

RequireJs makes dependency management on the client mostly better. Once it's setup, it's nice. Getting the patterns of your paths to work correctly can be difficult to setup, depending on the constraints of your system. Making the same paths work in a prod, test, and build environment can be even mo...

Sometimes things change in different environments. For one, I wear a tie to church but try not to otherwise. In Node, you might want variables to change per environment. And it turns out people have wanted this exact thing, creating marvels of code for us to use as we please. Enter, nconf.NconfNconf...

Sometimes it may be useful to know how many attributes a JavaScript object has. There's not a fantastic way to do this. Or maybe there is. Do you know one? Could cut out IE8 support. Or, for what it's worth, here's a way.Which Objects have a LengthIf instantiate a new object, it does not have a buil...

Spring is a great addition to your Java stack. It helps you access the request for inside your Spring beans easily. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but reading the request body seems blasted verbose after that. It takes a surprising amount of code.Access the RequestSpring's bread and butter, of course, is...

If you have any sizeable stylesheet these days, you should use a CSS preprocessor. They're awesome, but they come with a few cons. The pros still definitely out-weigh the cons. Use the preprocessor. The cons are just things you'll want to look out for to make your experience with CSS preprocessors b...

Why would one choose Octopress over WordPress? What are the pros and cons? I've recently implemented a blog -- this blog -- in WordPress. It was a difficult decision for me. At the time, I looked at Octopress, but I was jazzed by the success of others on WordPress, and I wanted to try it out. I'm gl...

Sometimes a table element is the most semantic element one can use in markup. It is true. If you're displaying tabular data, a table is a likely option. If you're on a responsive site, however, you'll cringe at this option. It turns out that tables aren't very responsive web design-friendly. One way...

Testacular is a test runner for running browser tests. Once you have it up and running, you may want to integrate it with your Grunt build process. This will allow Testacular to be started and your tests to be run from Grunt.grunt-testacularLucky for us, Friedel Ziegelmayer has created a nice little...

Did you write your source code as JavaScript AMD modules in RequireJs? Do you want to test them in real browsers? Do you want the flexibility of using Mocha or Jasmine? This is the moment you've been waiting for.Testacular is a "spetacular test runner for JavaScript" that was written to support the ...

Does your project use GruntJs as a build tool? Have you ever to customize your build to the environment you're deploying to? It's handy to be able to specify certain commands to run or keep from running. It's likely essential to be able to change environment-specific variables via Grunt. It's not ba...

RequireJs features a fantastic optimization tool, r.js, that utilizes UglifyJs to minimize and concatenate your JavaScript code. Grunt is a build tool that is great for standardizing your build configuration and coordinating multiple build steps -- amongst its other wonders. Hopefully you get to use...

Have you used GruntJs to build your JavaScript project yet? It's a great tool. Often as a part of the build configuration, you'll want to access your package.json with grunt. Grunt has some built-in support for this. Some bits can be a little tricky, and some plugins have limited support. Here are s...

I was inspired by Michael Hyatt's book, Platform, to start writing this blog. As he suggested, I just started writing. But also as he suggested, I've been percolating over what my blog topics will be. I've just been writing for several weeks. I've finally settled in on a number of categories that wi...

A logo is an essential part of a brand or image. For me, I like something iconic that is captured through an eye catching image that is simple and elegant. Logos have to be one of the visual elements that I enjoy watching others' creativity in the most. For JakeTrent.com, one of the goals has been t...

The Agile method of software creation contains many principles of development that will help create good software. Some of my most successful projects have had as a key feature an agile designer. As Jobs said, design is how it works, and that means that to really deliver well in an agile environment...

Have you ever showed up in the App Store looking for an app in a particular category and been overwhelmed at the number of choices present? This is certainly the case for the drawing and art app category. But, there is at least one art app that stands out clearly from the others: "Paper" by FiftyThr...

Backbone.js is a great MV* library created by Jeremy Ashkenas. It is small and powerful, yet unopinionated. That means that it will let you walk straight into a pit. It so happens that I'm speaking to you now from the bottom of such a chasm. Do not fall into the same pit. As a guide to your travel, ...

Have you every wished you could change your node script and not restart the server? Restarting your node server after changing your script can get annoying. This is especially true if you're in guess and check mode, changing and checking a lot. Luckily, there are a few tools to save you the pain.Nod...