Nick Zadrozny

Here’s a recipe I’m using right now for a site of mine. It really is this easy—once you figure out what goes where. Note that I did need to dig in to Vlad and patch an issue or two (mongrel variables and web_command) but I’m told a fix is on the way.

My favorite part is the custom symlink_assets and deploy tasks to get around the lack of Capistrano style “after” hooks. It’s just so natural and Rake-tastic!

Rakefile (excerpt)

require 'vlad'
Vlad.load 'config/deploy.rb'

deploy.rb

set :application, "appname"
set :domain, "appname.example"
set :deploy_to, "/var/www/apps/#{application}"
set :repository, "svn+ssh://#{domain}#{deploy_to}/repos/trunk"

set :mongrel_port, 8020
set :web_command, "sudo /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl"

set :public_assets, %w(image_assets)

namespace :vlad do
  remote_task :symlink_assets do
    run public_assets.collect do |asset|
      "ln -s #{shared_path}/public/#{asset} #{current_release}/public"
    end.join(" && ")
  end
  remote_task :deploy => [
    :update, :symlink_assets, :migrate, :start_app
  ]
end

Nick Zadrozny is still wondering how exactly one might quantize fantasticness. 48m ago

Polo Gore is fantastic. Seriously. 23h ago

Amusing coincidence from Ariell’s Facebook news feed.

1. http://vyew.com/
   • Long and kindof annoying signup process.
   • Multiple account tiers, free account has ads.
   • Email account validation.
   • Can manage lots of different “books” and pages.
   • Graphics are a little bit laggy.
   • Most robust?
2. http://www.skrbl.com/
   • Drops you right into a whiteboard, no signup.
   • Doesn’t support Camino? Crashes Firefox? IE only?
   • No Mac support = deal breaker
3. http://www.imaginationcubed.com/
   • Drops you right into a whiteboard, no signup.
   • Less Software - less to think about.
   • Pen graphic is a bit distracting.
   • Easy (and very cool) replay tool.
   • No eraser? Type tool is a bit glitchy.
   • Sharing is a bit glitchy too.

In the end, I ended up being the most productive in Vyew. Working Software comes before Less Software, and some of their tools and features came in very handy indeed.