マーク・ピーターセン氏の「日本人の英語」、「続・日本人の英語」を読んでいる最中なのですが、この本はとても良いですね。

日本語は複数形が無いので、片足なのか両足なのかを決定せずに、「足が痛い」といっても何の問題も無いですが、英語では必ず片足が痛いのか両足が痛いのか決定しないとならないようです。
一瞬、Lazy Evaluationをサポートする言語としない言語の違いのようなものかなと妙な理解をしかけました。

が、実際のところ、
僕の場合、「足が痛い」といわれたらなんとなく片方の足が痛いのだろうと推測するし、「目が痛い」といわれたら両目とも痛いような気がする。
何が痛いのかによって、両方なのか片方なのか暗黙の了解があるゆえに、日本語では複数形や単数形の明示を要しなかったのかもしれないですね。
文化的な等質性のなせる業なのかな。

そういう意味では、英語の方が異文化コミュニケーションに適した言語なのかもしれないですね。

The title of this blog has the meaning of forcing me to think English as a programming language so that I can learn it as well as programming languages.

I have started English lesson since last Saturday.
I had found myself that my listening skill of English is so poor. It's necessary to do strong effort.

I have also started to listen
ESL podcast.
That is very easy to listen, because the speakers speak very slowly and clearly.

度々見かけるけどあまり良く意味が分かってなかった。
書くことで記憶に残るので、記事にしてみます。

So far の意味は、今までのところ、ここまでは。

And so far, みたいな接続詞として使ったり、副詞的に使ったりする。

• So far, so good. 今のところ万事順調
• I am fine so far. 今のところ元気です
• Are you with me so far? ここまではOK?

So far awayだと、とても遠いになる。farというと遠い感じがするけど、
3文字にエンコーディングされてるだけあって、
用法によって意味をたくさん持っている。

• as far as I know. 私の知る限り

あとは、比較級・最上級の強調にも使われる。

• far better 遥かに良い
• It is the best by far. 断然良い

From yesterday to this morning, we had set up two MySQL servers as master-to-master configuration.

One server is located in Tokyo, the other is in Shiga.
They are replicated each other in order to get our system redundant and load-balanced. We had used
OpenVPN
for this purpose.
It is very easy to setup by using tunnelling.

Okey, we agree with that the VPN will become the neck of a bottle if our network get heavy traffic.
But fortunately or unfortunately, it is not so heavy.
So we considered that a performance issue would be still no problem, against a stability issue.

This is a memo of an idea that I'd wanted to do for about a year since my starting to write some codes for a comet server.

By using Comet, JavaScript tests by various browsers can be automated. It's sure to be able to do even by any browsers to say nothing of the Firefox with MozRepl.

I've said in each place about this, but it has been hard to make a time to touch it, because too many exciting ideas struggled in my brain to make my hands type them out.

I wrote this entry with a hope that it might be going to be done by someone else.

Now, we are working on ShootingStar-4.0.0

It will be working on Windows by using WaitForMultipleObject API.
I loved it since more than 10 years ago and thought it as is one of a beautiful aspect of Windows.

It may be shipped on next month.

You can see also http://blog.s21g.com/articles/212, the article written about the same theme for
comparison, if you are familiar to Japanese.

1. p/pp

This is a very popular method used not only in Rails but also in other
debugging. In Rails this method should be used on web server which is in the states of foreground process.

shell>>
$ ./script/server
<<--

If you are familiar with p/pp, it should be simple and easy.

2. logger.debug

For logger.debug, the following example will explain fully.

rails>>
logger.debug "something interesting information"
<<--

Calling logger.debug, you can create a log file of
log/$RAILS_ENV.log such as log/development.log.

By configuring the output file to:

shell>>
$ tail -f log/development.log
<<--

you can check the debug output log in the same manner as in p/pp debugging.
Furthermore, as the result is output in a log-file format, you can
refer it later on.

3. script/console

script/console comes in handy when you check the DB contents during
the operation. Executing "script/console" command, irb
launches after confirming Rails environment.
You can change DB as you like by using ActiveRecord, such as find,
create and destroy_all.This is very tactful feature.

4. script/breakpointer

As previously described, although script/console
comes in very handy and tactful, it can not check session status
during the action.
In that case, you can use "script/breakpointer" for it.

shell>>
$ ./script/breakpointer
<<--

Please make sure to launch a breakpointer initially.
Then locate a "breakpoint" to the position where you want to check
the status.

rails>>
class FooController < ApplicationController
def bar
# something
breakpoint
# something
end
<<--

Then you execute bar action through brower access and check and
manupulate the necessary information
after the launch of irb at the set breakpointer.

5. better rails debugger

script/breakpointer is very useful but it has a weak point
as it cannot operate step execution.
We understand you rarely experience the need for step execution,
however, it's better to have a method than nothing. The ruby-debug
Gem, informed by yugui in the last Rails meeting, will meet the need.
First of all, make sure to install ruby-debug in advance.

shell>>

gem install ruby-debug

<<--

Then, add a breakpoint.

rails>>
class FooController < ApplicationController
def bar
# something
debugger
# something
end
<<--

After launching Web server such as Webrick or Mongrel on foreground,
which is used in p/pp debugging,
you make an access to execute targeted code through the browser. Then
something similer to debug.rb launches in Web server process.
Now you can start debuggin in the same manner as you do with
general ruby script.

6. test/autotest

In Ruby on Rails, test framework is ready to use by default.
Generally, specification is designed after writing a test code in test
operation development.
However, you can write a test code for
verification of desired behavior and also utilize it for debugging.
It takes time to operate every test by using "rake" command, I
recommend to use autotest in ZenTest.This autotest operates only
related tests for modified files, and can provide quicker response
than using "rake" command.
If you use a redgreen as a combination, the smooth operation will
please you while debuggin.

7. tail -f log/development.log&; autotest

Lastly, let me intriduce my current method.I launch a separate
terminal other than for development, and operate following command in
RAILS_ROOT.

shell>>
$ tail -f log/development.log&; autotest
<<--

This arrangement enables to display the autotest output in editing
program and test code
and the logger output when there is an access from the browser.
Basically, those two runs asynchronously, you can fully use one
terminal.

acts_as_searchable
is one of the most useful plugins which's enabling us to add a fulltext search feature to our models/resources easily.

Unfortunately, it is lacking an interface to the features of searching by similarity provided by
HyperEstraier.

So I wrote some codes to add an interface to exploit it.
This is
acts_as_searchable_with_similarity.

How to use?

Here is an example.

app/models/article.rb

rails>>
class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
acts_as_searchable
end

Article.similarity_search(target_article, :limit => 5)
<<--