I’m currently involved in a web development project; having both the roles of the designer as well as the programmer. My search for a lightweight framework I could use on this project has ended, and I’ve decided on using Kohana. Kohana was based on CodeIgniter (CI), which I have been able to play with already, so I’m quite familiar on how it works already.

By viewing the documentation of Kohana, I could say I love it! The way Kohana handles views is perfect, compared with CodeIgniter which I found to be quite limiting. I’m very excited on using this framework on this project, may this be another good learning experience for me. I’ll be posting the progress of this project on every milestone I reach.

My web application is small and lightweight since it uses Sinatra which is a very light framework, so I know it won’t be needing much resources. The starting up is the only problem, since running ruby applications on DreamHost creates a sudden spike on the ram by starting up.

To tickle the application, you need to create a cron job that will visit the application every 5 minutes.

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/curl http://your-domain.com/ -s -o /dev/null

I noticed some odd behavior though. When you try to run another ruby application on the same server, the loading of my ‘tickled’ applications are also being delayed.

I had this idea a long while ago, and when I saw that this method being used by other ruby users hosted on DreamHost, I decided to try it out too.

LoadError: no such file to load — openssl

The error message states that they cannot find openssl, even though I currently have it installed on my machine. After reading advices from helpful forums, people who encountered the same problem stated that I need the library of OpenSSL. Here’s the code to install the OpenSSL library easily:

sudo apt-get install libopenssl-ruby1.9

I worked for me, and now I can continue working on my project.

• Ruby
• Sinatra Web Framework
• Datamapper ORM
• Haml

I’m currently filled with excitement similar to the anxiousness I had during my thesis days, just without the worries and deadlines. I’m already created the models, and I’m looking forward on the creation of my administrator panel for ChanLu. Doing something without pressure does feel better, but doing something with pressure and finishing it with flying colors feels more satisfying. So, I’m placing a deadline on myself, the application must be 90% working after two weeks, or better yet – earlier. I’ll be documenting my progress at least once per three days.

No personal comments for Symfony yet, since I can’t try it out due to some difficulties. I’ll be posting here about my experiences after coding something using Symfony.

So, what’s making me pout then? Yesterday, Wayne gave me the code for the config.ru file for the ruby application. The ruby gem path now works in DreamHost! But I still have an error, just one error though, there’s a fastthread installation in DreamHost currently version 1.0.1, but DataMapper requires 1.0.4. The fastthread 1.0.1 is activated by another gem first, so 1.0.4 can’t be activated anymore. I contacted DreamHost about the problem, they won’t upgrade the gem on a server basis. I must add the fastthread upgrade to the suggestions corner and wait for people to vote if they want the upgrade or not.

I’ll try to find other means of using DataMapper for the recoding of ChanLu Design, since I won’t give up on using that wonderful gem. Here’s the code that Wayne gave me, tell me though if there are other better alternatives.

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if (ENV['HOME'] =~ /^\/home\//)  ## DREAMHOST
  require "#{ENV['HOME']}/.gems/gems/rack-0.9.1/lib/rack.rb"
  require "#{ENV['HOME']}/.gems/gems/sinatra-0.9.1.1/lib/sinatra.rb"
  ENV['GEM_HOME'] = "#{ENV['HOME']}/.gems"
  ENV['GEM_PATH'] = "#{ENV['HOME']}/.gems:/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8"
  require 'rubygems'
  Gem.clear_paths
else
  require 'sinatra'
end
require 'datamapper'
require 'haml'
require 'app'
run Sinatra::Application

The rack and sinatra gems are being required manually because when requiring it by using their names, a lower rack version is activated which is installed default in DreamHost.

Besides that, I have been watching The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Though I still haven’t been able to finish the series yet due to my personal projects and work. I do like the series, its worth a few laughs and the characters are cute! I also find Itsuki Koizumi quite appealing.

I will be posting more about this series after I watch all the episodes, maybe this weekend if my brother bugs me onto watching this show.

Also, I have been reading Japanese comics (manga) – shoujo manga is my current genre of interest, I read Kimi ni Todoke (Reaching You) but sadly there are no more scanlantions for the other chapters. But this manga is really fun! It is about a girl who is really pale having long black hair and is being called as Sadako, encounters the “refreshing” guy – Kazehaya which will open her up to new opportunities such as having friends. This story is a love comedy, which has cute artwork and will hook you up wanting for more.

I am also reading Hana to Akuma, it is about a Demon who decided to live on earth, and adopted a baby human. Though the story focuses when the child is 14 years old already. The artwork of the male characters is awesome, they look cool, handsome and cute, depending on what they want to portray. But the girls in this manga seem like blank looking, it’s only my own opinion though. I do find the story entertaining and it gives me a good amout of laughs. I haven’t finished reading the current chapters of this manga, so I may post later more about this series.

Related Links

• DreamHost
• DataMapper
• Haruhi Suzumiya vector source
• Kimi ni Todoke
• Hana to Akuma

Since yesterday, I installed DataMapper on DreamHost, but it has some errors. Since the gem path in DreamHost is different,  DataMapper can’t include the necessary gems it has dependencies on.

I even asked for Wayne’s help today, and he also wasn’t been able to fix the problem. We even tried overriding the paths but it did not work.

Due to this, the recoding of ChanLu maybe put on hold. Since I don’t want to code ChanLu locally, which may not be actually used online. I do hope a miracle will arrive and let me use DataMapper on DreamHost (Wayne finds a solution to this problem is the literal meaning of this sentence).

Today at work, I was given one very big responsibility. The designers in our office has a project – to create our “Designers’ Website”. While we raffled papers among ourselves of who are going to be the members of the “Design Team” of the site – I was one of them. Just today, our Senior Designer Wayne, assigned me to be the leader of the “Designer Group”. I do have a lot of personal projects which I’m about to start working on, here comes another one that is time demanding. I have to improve my time management from now on, since a lot of projects are up on me. Gah, just when I thought that I can relax after I graduate, a lot more stuff than thesis comes in my way.

I drew a rough sketch of a woman which is supposed to be “possessed”. If I don’t feel lazy this sketch maybe cleaned and colored in using my favorite designing software, Photoshop. I entitled this sketch as “Possessed”, since my brother said that the character looks “sinasaniban (Tagalog word for possessed)” when I showed him the drawing. I’m actually happy about his comment about the drawing, since I was aiming for that emotion/image from the very beginning. Though this character has no clothes, this is not Hentai or porn. I haven’t placed any details yet since its a rough sketch, but it may belong to the “artistic nude” genre/category. The artwork style doesn’t look like anime/manga, it looks rather western and semi-real, but I like it more that way, since it adds up more to the “possessed” look. I don’t think it would look nice having a cute faced anime girl doing that pose instead.

I’m posting this sketch so as you readers may comment if this looks awkward or if there is something wrong with the anatomy of the body that I can’t tell. I did base some parts of the pose at Posemaniacs then improvised to have the certain look and feel that I want. So please do feel free to comment or suggest anything to make this sketch better.

Also, besides drawing I have been thinking of redesigning ChanLu, though I assigned the task of creating the logo to Rogelio. With the redesign I’m also planning to recode ChanLu from scratch at the same time.

I will be using the Ruby programming language (thank goodness the Dreamhost supports it) using Sinatra web framework this time, with an additional ruby gem called Haml, it would help me speed up on developing ChanLu and the template codes would look so pretty and makes it more fun to code! Wayne helped me on installing the ruby gems on Dreamhost. But I’m gonna install Datamapper myself, but I’ll ask for his help again if I encounter any problems.

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I’m glad, since the WIO team’s (actually, Ma’am Gigi and Wayne’s) aim since the very beginning is to make WIO be the Best Thesis in our school. It did came true, and we all are very happy.

Currently I posted the rest of the screenshots of WIO’s web app. I’ll also be editing the WIO page for the description of the finished thesis. I am quite sad though, that I haven’t been able to properly document the progress of WIO. I’ll make sure that it won’t happen again to my future projects.

Click here to view the rest of the screenshots.

So my school life is over now and tomorrow is my graduation, I’ll be posting about my graduation too! So don’t forget to visit Pixelmai.

Currently WIO:

• Has the major functions of the single user
• Has a minimalistic basic design
• Has its SMS queries working

Screenshots

Login Page

Dashboard (when the user is logged in)

I’ll be posting only these screencaps for now, since  still have lots of stuff to do. You’ll get the big picture about WIO by the next time I post an update containing more screenshots.