Category: Software Development

Quick Look at Notepad++ as a Windows Ruby/Rails Editor

Last year, I looked at the better Ruby/Rails editors in Windows. With Notepad++ version 6 released recently, I decided to check whether it’s good enough to be an alternative to those two.

Screenshot again with my depressing lotto app:

notepad++

Overall, it’s ok, especially with the Explorer plugin. However, there are still a bunch of stuff I’d nitpick about:

  • Split screen is limited to 2 screens. Which is weird limitation considering both vim and emacs can do an infinite number of them.
  • EOL symbols are ugly and can’t be modified.
  • No Haml support yet.

Convert FanFiction.net Stories into PDF

Had a coding itch last week related to web scraping and LaTeX PDF conversion. One thing led to another and the end result was my first ever Ruby Gem:

ffnpdf, a tool that converts FanFiction.net stories into PDF files.

(Great for putting your favorite Harry Potter slash fics on your mobile phone or tablet for portable use! LOL)

The code and documentation are found at the Github page. Theoretically, this gem can work anywhere Ruby, pandoc, and XeTeX can be installed (e.g. Windows, OS X, *nix) but I’ve only been able to make the whole thing work in Ubuntu/Mint.

Demo and how-tos are posted in this playlist:

I haven’t gotten around to make a license for this, but I assume that anyone into fanfiction knows that publishing and selling fanfics without consent from the rights owner is a big no-no. Thus, I don’t need remind them that this tool is just for personal use and not for commercial purposes.

Project Я: A Ruby/HTML5 Visual Novel

first scene

As promised, here’s the game I made for the Global Game Jam.

Seeing that I couldn’t think of a quick web-based game matching the theme “Ouroboros”, I just went ahead with a joke I made sometime after the Ruby Rumble:

Sa susunod na Rumble, gagawa ako ng hentai game sa Ruby!
(For the next Rumble, I’ll make a hentai game in Ruby!)

So yeah, that’s how I ended up with a Visual Novel. Unfortunately for the people expecting sexually explicit scenes (which was about a third of the people who saw the game), the “game” I made was more ATLUS/Capcom than Key/Type-Moon.

Anyway, it’s more of a tech demo than a game, with me trying to implement a Cloud-based multi-platform visual novel with psychological themes and non-standard tactical RPG gameplay. Or in non-buzzword speak, an HTML5 adventure game playable over the internet.

Play it here.

Please use fake email addresses so you could view the changes when you change the answers to the initial questions.

—

Some boring technical details:

I didn’t release the code because of how ridiculously horrible it is. I mean, using GET to update state, WTF?!?

RailsFTW, now twice as fast!

Rails FTW

My Game Jam post is waaay overdue but some stuff happened this week (impromptu upgrade, server migration) so I’ll only get around to post about it probably later today.

Anyway, this post is just about the new version up over at RailsFTW. This experimental build is based on TCS’s patched Ruby build which boasted a ~200% increase in performance.

See it for yourself: