I used the python bindings to develop this commandline tool. While this script is tied to this particular dataset and task, it should be easily modifiable to automate other similar tasks that would otherwise require significant repetitive input from a GIS analyst. These powerful tools are worth checking out.

WordPress is one of the best blogging platforms available, but it isn’t really designed to be used in multiple environments. It isn’t too difficult to setup multiple environments, though. Configuration variables can be read in from environment variables that tell WordPress which environment it is in.

With Apache, add the environment variables to your .htaccess file:

SetEnv WP_DB your_database_name
SetEnv WP_USERNAME your_username
SetEnv WP_PASSWORD your_password

Then you can grab these settings in the WordPress configuration file, wp-config.php:

// The name of the database for WordPress
define('DB_NAME', $_ENV['WP_DB']);
// MySQL database username
define('DB_USER', $_ENV['WP_USERNAME']);
// MySQL database password
define('DB_PASSWORD', $_ENV['WP_PASSWORD']);
// For developers: WordPress debugging
define('WP_DEBUG', $_ENV['WP_DEBUG']);
// Override the wp_options and set the site
define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://' . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']);
define('WP_HOME', 'http://' . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']);

You can also set these environment variables using nginx:

include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param WP_DB your_database;
fastcgi_param WP_USERNAME your_username;
fastcgi_param WP_PASSWORD your_password;

You probably also need to tell php to load your environment variables in php.ini:
variables_order = "EGPCS"

Now you can have multiple environments set up to use with your version control without any additional direct configuration of WordPress.

In this site for the Fisk-Vanderbilt Bridge Program, you can see some of the highlights.  The directory allows you to browse through a list of community members.  When your mouse hovers over a member’s picture, a tooltip box appears with more information about the member.  The member profiles also take advantage of some cool jQuery tools, including overlays and tabs to present information in an easily accessible, aesthetically-pleasing way.

I also integrated an actionbar into the site to provide easy access to commonly used functions such as adding a new blog post and viewing and editing your profile.

Other interesting features of the site include a social networking addon to facilitate sharing content with other social networking sites and a lightbox photo gallery.

Anyway, I threw this together using ruby, the Sinatra web framework, and the haml templating language.  This is a pretty powerful toolset and I was very pleased at the ease with which everything came together.   It’s deployed on heroku using git. You can browse the source code on github if you are curious.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to Sam’s version of the game. It’s a little more polished then my initial implementation. I think he’s still planning to add more features. Anyway, nice work!

It has an object-oriented model that can be reused in other card games. Inheritance is used to add blackjack-specific logic to the basic deck and hand objects and implement the scoring method.

The Sinatra web framework was used to provide the underlying scaffolding to create the web application. I’ve used Sinatra for a few projects recently and been really pleased with it. It is lightweight and makes it possible to create web applications quickly and easily without making a lot of assumptions about how you are going to use it.

Sinatra supports the haml templating language, which is such a pleasure to use compared to most of the other templating languages I’ve used. It has a great asthetic and is clear and easy to understand, resulting in some beautiful code. It even lets you use regular Ruby code in a simple way.

I chose redis to persist the game data. Mostly, this decision was because I wanted to try out a new noSQL database, but redis seems a decent fit because it allows data to be stored as a list associated with a key. This is similar to the internal structure implemented in Ruby and operations like pop and push to move the cards from the deck to the player’s hand just work the way they should.

The source code for this game is managed using git and deployed with heroku and redis to go. I’ve been impressed with the heroku deployment platform. It fits right into the workflow, is free for small projects like this, and seems easily scalable once more capacity is needed.

This site showcases many of the capabilities on Plone as a intranet portal and community networking platform.  Unfortunately, access to the bulk of the site is restricted to students, so I’ll just have to describe some of the things going on behind the scenes.

The design and layout of the site is done in vanilla HTML/CSS and integrated with Plone using deliverance, a python-based tool designed to facilitate theming and integration of web applications.  Theming Plone has historically been somewhat challenging, but deliverance is a game-changing tool that revolutionizes theme development.  It also provides to capability to integrate different platforms in a seamless way.

The site features a rotating carousel highlighting important content.  Superfish,  a jQuery-based dropdown menu system, makes it easy to navigate the content in the site.  A helpdesk system, Zendesk, is integrated into the theme, allowing the students easy access to support staff.   A number of other useful plugins are installed to facilitate the generation of forms and surveys as well as a discussion board.

The aspect that I spent the most time on, and has become a core product in several other sites as well, is a community social networking area.  Each student has a profile and can post content to their own blog/wall.  The students can tag their content in various ways that allows it to be aggregated in other areas of the site using Plone’s most powerful content type system.

I’ve been using Nginx for a while now as a web server, caching proxy, and load balancer for some Plone sites.   It’s been fantastic – fast, reliable, easy to configure – greatly simplifying my life as a sysadmin.  I was interested to see how it would work for serving wordpress.

If you haven’t checked out homebrew, you should.   No, it’s not beer, but a package manager for OS X.  Homebrew is, they claim and I agree, the easiest and most flexible way to install the UNIX tools Apple didn’t include with OS X.

First, install and start the mysql server:

brew install mysql
/usr/local/bin/mysqld_safe --datadir=/usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.5.10/data

Installing PHP is a little more complicated, since there isn’t an official homebrew formula. Instead, grab this formula:

wget https://github.com/ampt/homebrew/raw/php/Library/Formula/php.rb
mv php.rb `brew --prefix`/Library/Formula

Then, build PHP with mysql and fastcgi support:

brew install php --with-mysql --with-fpm

Tell PHP to listen on port 9000:

/usr/local/Cellar/php/5.3.6/bin/php-cgi -b 9000

Installing nginx is as simple as:

brew install nginx

You’ll need to modify the nginx.conf, which can be found in /usr/local/etc/nginx, and add this configuration:

server {
    listen       8080;
    server_name  localhost;

    location / {
        root   /path/to/wordpress;
        index  index.php index.html index.htm;
    }

    location ~ .php {
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /path/to/wordpress/$fastcgi_script_name;
}

Start the Nginx server like this:

/usr/local/sbin/nginx -c /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

There are more robust ways to start these services, but since this is just a development environment, I prefer not to have them running unless I am actively working with them. Now you should be ready to install WordPress.  Happy developing!