Naruzo's blog

Customer Support: Monster.com geolocation gone wild

Dear monster.com support,

I live in Japan but want to view US Job postings (in actuality I want to view Job postings in Sweden, but can't seem to view your Swedish site in English.)

Every time I try to access www.monster.com you redirect me to http://www.monster.com/geo/siteselection.

Even if I click 'United States' (http://www.monster.com/geo/siteselection/MONS) you redirect me back to the same geolocation page.

If I click any other country I am able to access that site without issue. The only problem is that the only sites I am interested in are the Swedish site in English, or the US site (neither of which I can access.)

If you have some kind of legal/contractual obligation to prevent people outside of the US from accessing www.monster.com please state as much on your geolocation page so people don't waste your time with customer service mails and just go through a proxy.

Thanks much.

ruby/rvm/gem: "no such file to load" on OSX

So I went with a single-user install of RVM and installed via the tutorial here.

All seemed to work well, until I tried to use some gems.

gem installs would appear to work fine, but whenever I ran my test code I would get errors like this:

/Users/naruzo/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-head/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:37:in `require': no such file to load -- bong (LoadError)

Then I noticed that gemhome didn't seem right:

naruzo:test naruzo$ which ruby
/Users/naruzo/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-head/bin/ruby
naruzo:test naruzo$ which gem
/Users/naruzo/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-head/bin/gem
naruzo:test naruzo$ gem env
RubyGems Environment:
  - RUBYGEMS VERSION: 1.8.10
  - RUBY VERSION: 1.9.2 (2011-12-28 patchlevel 312) [x86_64-darwin11.2.0]
  - INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: /usr/local/rubygems
  - RUBY EXECUTABLE: /Users/naruzo/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-head/bin/ruby
  - EXECUTABLE DIRECTORY: /usr/local/rubygems/bin
  - RUBYGEMS PLATFORMS:
    - ruby
    - x86_64-darwin-11
  - GEM PATHS:
     - /usr/local/rubygems
     - /Users/naruzo/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-head
     - /Users/naruzo/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-head@global
  - GEM CONFIGURATION:
     - :update_sources => true
     - :verbose => true
     - :benchmark => false
     - :backtrace => false
     - :bulk_threshold => 1000
     - "gemhome" => "/usr/local/rubygems"
  - REMOTE SOURCES:
     - http://rubygems.org/

Turns out I had a ~/.gemrc file that was confusing one or all of ruby, rvm, and gem.

I removed this file and all's well.

Crocheted Magic Mouse Cover

Supplies

1. 1 8mm hook
2. 3 colors of yarn: A, B, C

Original pattern:

With A

1. Ch 20
2. Ch 2
3. Sc into 2nd ch from hook using your edging of choice and complete 1 sc
   • I can't remember the name, but I hooked the top 2 strands leaving one to form the lower edging. This tends to make stitching cleaner later on
4. Sc 19 across (20st)
5. (Ch 2 and rotate work clockwise, hdc into last st of previous row, then for 19 more st) repeat for 8 rows (20st per row)
6. Complete one more row of hdc, joining B at the end

With B

1. (Ch 2 and rotate work clockwise, hdc into last st of previous row, then for 19 more st) repeat for 4 rows (20st per row)
2. Tie off

With C

1. Ch 20
2. Ch 2
3. Sc into 2nd ch from hook using same edging as you did with A above and complete 1 sc
4. Sc 19 across (20st)
5. Ch 2 and rotate work clockwise, hdc into last st of previous row, then for 19 more st (20st)
6. Tie off

Join the bottom

1. Align C strip across bottom rows of A
2. Pull up a loop of C through left edge of both A and C, complete 1 sc
3. Sc 2 down along the left edge, joining A and C as you go
4. Ch 1 (the corner)
5. Sc across the bottom, joining A and C as you go (20st)
6. Ch 1 (the right corner)
7. Sc 3 up the side (again, joining)
8. Tie off

Roll down the top

1. Cut a length of B roughly 10 inches, fold in half 1, On left side, insert hook through first and last stitches of B and pull through the loop of your freshly cut B length
2. Insert the 2 loose ends through the loop and pull snug, tying the 2 stitches together
3. Insert magic mouse into the cover
4. Using the loose ends, weave them progressively through the heads of the last B stitches and the A stitches along the left side, tightening as you go (I went across/down 2 stitches)
5. Tie off as you see fit
6. Repeat for right side, keeping magic mouse snug in the cover

Done!

Possible variations/improvements

1. Instead of making C separately, just start the pattern with C instead of A and ch20, sc20, ch2, turn, hdc 20, ch1, turn, sc20 then join to A
   • Avoids joining the bottom and would give the mouse a deeper pocket to sit in
2. Use 8 rows of A and 5 of C so the top roll looks cleaner after joining
3. Join a strip of hdc between the top roll and the bottom pocket to tighten up the middle
4. There's a lot of bare A to work with: add a design!

SSL with Magento behind a load balancer

If there is a load balancer or other server handling SSL in front of your webserver, you need a way to tell Magento that it's receiving a secure connection, or else it will put you into a 302 redirect loop.

Put the following above the Mage::run... line at the bottom of your index.php to prevent this issue without overriding any Magento code:

This example is for Amazon EC2, but if your load balancer uses a different header, just change the `HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO` portion.

/**
 * EC2's load balancer sets these for us so we know we're secure,
 *  preventing Magento from performing a redirect loop.
**/
if( isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO']) ) {
    $_SERVER['HTTPS'] = 'on';
    $_SERVER['SERVER_PORT'] = 443;
}

Amazon EC2 Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)

Random EC2 notes

• Comments welcome!! This is my first foray into EC2 land, so there may be better ways of doing these things.

Load Balancer

1. The health check interval is only valid to 1/10 of a minute
   • If you put "0.33" for example, saving the LB will fail with "Error: MalformedInput: undefined"
2. You need to open the port you're using for health checks in you Security Group or the check will fail
   • I don't yet know how to restrict access to -only- the internal LB addresses, so I used "10.0.0.0/8" to at least restrict to the internal network.
   • Combined with the User-Agent check below, it's OK security.

3. The HTTP health checker doesn't like anything except 200s.

   • If you have a password-protected site, allow the load balancer with something like this:

     # Let the health checker check our health
     SetEnvIf User-Agent ^ELB-HealthChecker IsHealthCheck=1
     ...
     <Location />
     ...
         AuthType Basic
         AuthName Restricted
         AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/htpasswd
         Require valid-user
         Order deny,allow
         Deny from all
         Allow from env=IsHealthCheck
     </Location>
     

4. If you setup your LB to handle SSL, and forward 80 and 443 to your webserver on port 80, you can use these headers to determine whether the original incoming connection was over SSL:

   X-Forwarded-Port: 443
   X-Forwarded-Proto: https
   

5. If you're performing IP-based authorization on your webservers, you'll need something like mod_extract_forwarded to process the X-Forwarded-For headers for you:
   • http://www.openinfo.co.uk/apache/

Greasemonkey: Copy/paste from 語源由来辞典

The 語源由来辞典 can be fun to browse through.

Today I stumbled on this entry and wanted to look up one of the words in the description (ずる賢い ).

On attempting this, I discovered that they used an "oncopy" attribute of the <body> element to display a copyright notice and prevent the copy action.

Theoretically, one could use a Greasemonkey script like the one below to disable this annoy...feature. What you do with it is up to you.

// ==UserScript==
// @name           No oncopy
// @description    Remove the "oncopy" attribute from the body
// @include        http://gogen-allguide.com/*
// ==/UserScript==
var elements = document.getElementsByTagName('body');
elements[0].removeAttribute("oncopy");

Magento: Event listeners and scope

If you're running any backend processing for Magento (unit tests, automated billing cycles, etc.) that rely on the Mage::dispatchEvent() mechanism, be careful of scope in your config.xml!

If your <events> block is inside <frontend>, then those events will trigger only when triggered by a frontend action (ie, someone interacts with your site using a browser.)

If you want your events to be triggered by backend processes as well, put them directly under your <global> block in config.xml instead (note: they will trigger from the frontend as well)

You can debug missed events by peeking into Mage_Core_Model_App::dispatchEvent and adding debug, such as this (version 1.4.1.1):

public function dispatchEvent($eventName, $args)
{
    foreach ($this->_events as $area=>$events) {
        if (!isset($events[$eventName])) {
            $eventConfig = $this->getConfig()->getEventConfig($area, $eventName);
            if (!$eventConfig) {
    if ( preg_match('/MY_EVENT_ONE|MY_EVENT_TWO/', $eventName) )
        Mage::log("MISSED EVENT: '$area' '$eventName' ".print_r($this->_events[$area],true));
                $this->_events[$area][$eventName] = false;
                continue;
            }
...

If you want to temporary disable Magento's email features (eg if you're unit testing the Checkout pipeline) then try this:

Mage::app()->getStore()->setConfig('system/smtp/disable', true);

More on my experiences using PHPUnit with Magento in the coming weeks.

Back in business!

Thanks to the TypePad support team, I'm finally back online!

It seems like I neglected to complete a very important step after my Vox migration, but TP was very patient and understanding.

Thanks to Melanie, Jen and Kymberlie for helping me out!

GreaseKit script to open all links in -same- tab: killTargets

I started to get very tired of websites forcing me to open new tabs or windows.

In Firefox you can apparently make all links open in the same window using TabMixPlus. However, I'm on Safari, and I couldn't find a similar plugin offering that functionality.

So I installed GreaseKit, which is a Safari implementation of the popular Greasemonkey site alteration plugin for Firefox.

After installing GreaseKit and restarting Safari, go to the link below and it will ask you to install the "Don't `target` me!" script  (named as such because it removes the "target='blah'" attribute from all links in the page.)

By default the script will only operate on Google Docs, but you can change this in the GreaseKit -> Manage Scripts dialog.

Enjoy!

• Install link:

Removed the link, as DropBox won't just share the file, it adds it's own frame and such. Oh well.

Just take the source below, save it as a file called "killTrigger.user.js" and then browse to that file from Safari (eg, "file:///Users/naruzo/filez/killTrigger.user.js")

• Source:

// ==UserScript==

    // @name        Don't `target` me!    // @description Removes the "target" attribute of all links on the page; this means that links that would have previously opened in a new window (or tab, depending on your browser settings) will now open in the same tab instead.

    // @version     0.0.1

    // @date        2010-08-09

    // @author      Naruzo <naruzopsycho at gmail.com>

    // @namespace   http://naruzo.vox.com

    // @source      https://www.dropbox.com/s/g1ljaho6ytcgtht/killTargets.user.js

    // @include     htt*://docs.google.*

// ==/UserScript==

// (CC) BY-SA: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>

function killTargets() {

    var links = document.getElementsByTagName('a');

    for (var i = 0; i < links.length; i++) {

       links[i].removeAttribute("target");

    }

}

killTargets();