Cron As A Service

2012-02-11 10:35:19 by jdixon

I recently found myself in the need for a way to run a one-off Ruby script at scheduled intervals. As this is a work project I didn't just want to run it on my laptop or some random server. Turns out there's an easy way to run this for free on the Heroku Cedar platform without having to piggyback it on a "real" application. Because there are no web processes running, we'll be able to limit our dyno usage to a single dyno (in other words, it's free).

The script itself handles garbage collection duties for removing expired hosts off our beta account with Boundary. Basically I just want it to run every hour and cull anything that hasn't reported to their collectors in a day. For the purpose of this article the contents of the script are inconsequential, although I intend to present it fully in a future post.

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Trying to Get Shit Done

2012-02-09 23:38:00 by jdixon

This evening I asked for your suggestions on blocking online distractions, allowing me to focus on code for an extended period of time. I have a constant struggle with interruptions (read: shiny things) including online news, email and Twitter. There was a flood of responses in no time. Here are the more popular suggestions, along with my winners below.

  • quit the offending apps
  • block websites
  • login with a different user
  • work offline
  • coffee
  • music
  • self-control (lol rite)

I suspect that all of these would have some benefit, perhaps except coffee, which has never given me much of a boost anyways. As a side note, I've quit Diet Coke since my surgery and am exclusively drinking water. So it's possible that coffee might give me an insanely productive hit, but I'm not willing to tread that path yet. Here are the specific steps I took which seemed to work quite well for my particular workflow.

  1. quit Twitter app
  2. quit Chrome (primary browser)
  3. quit Firefox (used for HTML email, Facebook and banking)
  4. quit Propane (Campfire app, work communications)
  5. quit Adium
  6. quit Skype
  7. detached my remote screen session (mutt and irssi)
  8. equipped Sony MDR-V6 headphones
  9. launched Spotify radio (trance)
  10. put iTerm2 in full-screen mode (used for psql, git and debugging development server)
  11. put MacVim in full-screen mode
  12. launched Safari for API docs and development site

I'm pleased with the recent experiment, even if it only lasted one hour. I'll continue to make adjustments and report any significant improvements I find.