I was thinking about how to auto-reload a node server, and then I came across a great solution by accident. DracoBlue has some good Node.JS articles. In particular, check out this one about auto-reloading in addition to a link to the code in their Spludo Node.JS framework which makes this happen.

Simply save the file to your apps top-level directory, change the 'run_server.js' to the name of your file that you want watched, and presto, you're app will be restarted if any js files changes. Love it.

Here's what the console looks like:

steggie:appstat nstielau$ node dev_server.js
DEBUG: DEVSERVER: Starting server
Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8124/ in development
DEBUG: DEVSERVER: Restarting because of changed file at ./appstat_tracker.js
DEBUG: DEVSERVER: Stopping server for restart
DEBUG: DEVSERVER: Child process exited: null
DEBUG: DEVSERVER: Starting server
Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8124/ in development

I wish node had a --watch flag that would do this for me. I took a peek at the node code, but I'm not quite ready to make that happen.

I also configured nginx to proxy to the example Node.js application, mostly so that it would be accessible on port 80, which is enabled by default for EC2 security groups.

EC2 Launch Script

If you have the ec2 tools installed (I'd recommend brew), and you have your credential environment variables in place, you can run this script to launch an ec2 instance. It's using Alestic's ubuntu 10.04 AMI

Ubuntu 10.04 Configure Script

This is the config script that the launch script uses.

Copy host to Capfile

If you're following along, you'll want to copy the public DNS name of your ec2 instance to the 'host' variable in the Capfile.

Capfile

You can break these out into ./config/deploy.rb or whatever you like, but it's all here for succinctness.

Run the capistrano scripts

cap deploy:setup
cap deploy

References

• Mnutt's HUmmingbirdKevin's article on running node as a service on ubuntu Karmic
• How-to-node on upstart and monit
• Caolan's article on Node.js and upstart deployment

You can't. Or at least I couldn't. Make started throwing "virtual memory exhausted: Cannot allocate memory" errors after a few seconds. I tried setting some make flags. I confirmed make was increasing the fail count of 'privvmpages' in /proc/user_beancounters. I started trying to change the swap. And then I found an easier way.

Good News

It is pennies and minutes to upgrade to a VPS with 1gig of RAM, compile node.js, and revert back to your economic 512mb slice. You keep all your data. No problem.

Temporarily (<2hrs) upgrade your MediaTemple (ve) server

1) Enter your MediaTemple console

2) Select 'Upgrade Account'

3) Select the size container you need (1gig works for compiling node js)

4) Wait a few minutes, ssh in, configure && make && make install

5) Reverse the process, going back to the 512mb VPS.

Conclusion

At first I was pretty frustrated that I couldn't compile node. But MediaTemple does let you choose from a lot of new OSes, which is nice, err, pretty much a requirement. I consider myself pretty handy with a linux server, but I want to worry about improving the application and infrastructure, not hacking some memory issue on a shared server because I can't afford more power yet. That is wasted time. But media temple makes it amazingly easy to upgrade and downgrade your box. (mt) ftw!

IRC is a great way to get help when you need it, and it's even easier now that your favorite OS X IM client supports IRC. Here's how to get up and running.

How to

1) Create an account

Add a new IRC account. Enter your nickname, host server (irc.freenode.net). You probably won't need a password.

2) Join a group chat

Make sure your new IRC account is connected, and select 'Join Group Chat' from the File menu. Select the IRC account from the drop-down, enter the chat room (including the '#'), and join.

Chat away

Tutorials

10gen's got a solid set of docs. A good place to start is the general tutorial. Once you've got your head around the basic ideas, go over and try the instant online tutorial to convince you that you want to install MongoDB on your machine.

Examples

To dig into a little code, there are some good examples for both the ruby driver and mongomapper on github. Check out the Ruby examples and the MongoMapper examples for some concise usage examples. Even if you're not into ruby, these examples clearly demonstrate some of the Mongo principles.

Hosted MongoDB

If you don't want to install MongoDB locally, or you want to get a hosted database, I can't say enough about MongoHQ. Whether you are playing around with a free DB or launching a live project, MongoHQ makes it easy. Seamless Heroku integration? You betcha.

MongoFu

MognoFu.com appears to be gaining some momentum as a MongoDB resource, with nicely organized MongoDB tutorials as well as questions, articles and snippits. Check it out.

Other Resources

Lastly, there is a good list of external resources here that will no doubt be kept up-to-date better than this blog.

Dig in

I took the bait, and shortly after loading the page was the claim proven correct.

Most web apps on the web to day are completely loaded at 100%. Clearly, 280 Slides is so terrifically advanced that it goes to 105% . Genius. These new web technologies truly are groundbreaking.

All joking aside, some of the Cuppaccino demos are pretty cool. Go check them out.

Avoiding freakouts is certainly part of being a good developer. Self documenting code, a healthy test suite, multiple mirrored environments, etc. But like my dad coaching hockey, if you don't fall sometimes, you're probably not trying hard enough. Google better run exhaustive tests for the simplest features, but I can't afford to spend more than a few hours testing a trivial feature for a side project that will never pay my rent.

Hopefully a simple set of questions will help keep my blood pressure low, and keep me punctual for dinner dates. Please add any question that you think would help determine if now is the right time to embark on this particular problem.

I'd love to have an interactive little widget that I could pop open, answer a few questions, and get my coefficient-of-should-I-do-this-now.

• How long will this take, best case?
• How long will this take, reasonably apocalyptic case?
• What is the most number of people this could effect?
• How many times have I done something like this before?
• Have I ever done something exactly like this before?
• Has this been testing programmatically?
• Has this been tested in a dev/staging environment?
• What do I have to do in the next two hours?
• Where do I have to go in the next two hours?
• Can I stay here for the next two hours?
• Have I eaten recently?
• Had a beer or a couple martinis lately?

Give apache access to your Documents folder, so you can view your documents in a browser.

Why?

Working with web technologies, you can't (or shouldn't) avoid HTML, PHP and JavaScript. Apple provides the default webserver serving files from /Library/WebServer/Documents, and your user vhost under ~/Sites, but I don't find either very convenient. I keep all of the projects under ~/Documents, and I want to be able to view those files in a browser as well.

Some of this could be done through a browser over file://, but I find it easier to set it up this way. Additionally, when developing Flash/Flex apps, the security sandbox model can necessitate using HTTP.

How?

First, create a virtual host file with the configuration details at /private/etc/apache2/extra/documents_vhost.conf. Replace USERNAME with your username. I chose port 1234, because it is easy to remember, but you can replace that with a port of your choosing.

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:1234>
    DocumentRoot "/Users/USERNAME/Documents"
    ServerName 127.0.0.1
	<Directory "/Users/USERNAME/Documents">
	    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
	    AllowOverride All
	    Order allow,deny
	    Allow from all
	</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Edit the main apache configuration file, /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf. Add the following to the bottom.

# Tell apache to listen to requests on this port
Listen 1234
# Include the vhost details
Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/documents_vhost.conf

Lastly, you have to change the permissions of your Documents folder so that it has read and execute permissions, required by Apache to read from it.

chmod 711 ~/Documents

Restart apache

sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl graceful

and visit your Documents folder in your browser at http://127.0.0.1:1234/.

I ran across this CSS Sprite of google's the other day while looking at Google Map's HTTP requests. Juicy. Looking around, I found a sprite from Bing, as well as two long fellows from Yahoo Maps. Interesting that Yahoo went with a strictly vertical orientation, while the google sprite is jumbled together.

Enter Litmus

So just what is the state of HTML 5 comparability? Combining Litmus App and HTML5 Test provided a dead-simple way to check cross browser compatibility. Here's it at a glance, or check out the Litmus App results. Litmus didn't quite work for every browser, so you're on your own for Opera 10 and Internet Exploder 9.