Ruby - syntax error, unexpected $end

You encounter this error when there is a missing "end" somewhere.

Try running "ruby -w example.rb". The "-w" the warning mode for ruby to give more information about the missing "end".

If you are using Sublime Text 2, you can also try to re-indent your code.
Edit -> Line -> Reindent

How to conduct a Structured Creative Brainstorming Sessions

Preamble:

I find that I needed to improve at conducting meetings and discussions. A common kind of meeting required is a brainstorming session. However, I'm sure many people have experienced brainstorming sessions which seemed to be unfocused and resulted in a lack of actionable items. 

Much thanks to Ronald Wong, for sharing his thoughts.

How to create a Structured Creative Brainstorming Session

Quality of session depends on the 

  Diversity of ideas generated

  Quantity of ideas generated

  Inclusive participation of all the individuals

For facilitator

Before the meeting

  Send the agenda out with discussion items, directly responsible individual and timings, with sufficient buffer time

  Send background material, if necessary

Prepare the meeting overview

  Structure the meeting

  Prepare 3 possible solutions/ ideas

   

During the meeting

  Set the context for all participants: 5W, 1H

  Set the groundrules

    Only constructive comments

    No distractions such as mobile phones

  Be conscious of the discussion progress

  Get everyone's buy-in and conclusion at every stage before moving on

  Close the meeting by summarising all the points

  Seat in a position such that you are able to see all participants and make sure your body posture is "open"

  

Techniques

  To spur discussion - Ask "How" questions

  To be inclusive - Maintain eye contact with everyone and ask everyone around the table to contribute

  To draw participants who are drifting - Ask them for their opinion on a certain point

  Use props such as the whiteboard and monitor screen

After the discussion

  Send the minutes out, with tasklists

Gotchas during Chapter 8 of the Ruby on Rails tutorial

During the Ruby on Rails tutorial, I encountered several errors during Chapter 8. Luckily, I solved quite a few of them and learnt a few things about debugging along the way.

Problem: Cannot create users
The first thing that caught me was the error regarding creation of users. I could not create the user.

Code: app/controllers/sessions_controller.rb

def create
    user = User.find_by_email(params[:session][:email])
    if user && user.authenticate(params[:session][:password])
      sign_in user
      redirect_to user
    else
      flash.now[:error] = 'Invalid email/password combination' # Not quite right!
      render 'new'
    end

Reading the logs, I saw this message on the line where "find_by_email" is called. I was extremely puzzled as to why this message occurred.

Error message:

SELECT "users".* FROM "users" WHERE "users"."email" = NULL LIMIT 1

Why it happened:
You can't access the values of "email" and "password" through params[:session][:email].

The sessions hash looks like:

utf8: ✓
authenticity_token: 1D72gydJcrOzGslhOnfAotmkEUtghtQmOhEZRQGWpiw=
sessions: !ruby/hash:ActiveSupport::HashWithIndifferentAccess
  email: 'user@example.com'
  password: 'foobar'

Solution:
You can access the email and password values of the params through 2 methods:

params["sessions"]["email"]
params[:email]

Updated code:

def create
    user = User.find_by_email(params["sessions"]["email"])
    if user && user.authenticate(params["session"]["password"])
      sign_in user
      redirect_to user
    else
      flash.now[:error] = 'Invalid email/password combination' # Not quite right!
      render 'new'
    end

Problem: Cannot authenticate users in authentication_pages_spec.rb
As Postgresql is case-sensitive, we need to make sure the emails are downcased.

      before do
        fill_in "Email",     with: user.email.downcase
        fill_in "Password",  with: user.password
        click_button "Sign in"
        save_and_open_page    # useful to see the page that is generated
      end

The original code was 

user.email.upcase

My personal evolution - Going from "mono" to "stereo"

One of the biggest personal revelations I have made in the past few months was how much I lacked in empathy. It is almost like I have lived the last 27 years of my life behind a transparent sheet of almost impermeable glass that lets words and images through, but not the emotional nuances.

During a conversation, I tend to focus almost exclusively on the thought process of the person. "What made that person reach that conclusion?" That explains why I am often confused by the irrational way people seem to jump to conclusions, which kind of throws me into an increasing confusion feedback loop trying to understand their thought process even more. I have subsequently made my own life easier by applying the assumption with caveats that most people are irrational and not aware of how they think anyway. This similarly applies to myself.

My friend has commented that I have a highly developed sense for seeing how systems should be designed and the logical way processes should be structured. However, at the same time, I have an almost defunct ability to guess how people will react to my words and actions. This is in contrast to another person whom I work with, who is often able to think 3 - 5 steps in advance during conversations about how to guide the negotiation process forward. 

Luckily, I am now fully aware of this deficiency. Now, it is in the realm of "what I know I don't know". For the past few days, I have been more aware of the pauses in speech, people's facial expressions, the tone of voice and body language. It has been an interesting experience, albeit a bit overwhelming, as there are now more bits of information to process in parallel. I have also been looking for resources to beef up my lack of understanding. Lastly, I think I am only learning to be more human (although.. in a relatively more structured way than most people) =)

I wonder how many people are like me, who are unaware that they are seeing without feeling, in their daily lives?

Trying to solve a dysfunctional team?

You might witness teams that do not function well or even be part of teams that are badly broken. If you ever wanted to solve it, you might need to first identify the root causes. I've found the following framework useful:

The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team
http://flpbs.fmhi.usf.edu/pdfs/Five%20Dysfunctions%20of%20a%20Team.pdf

Bullet points:

• Absence of trust
• Fear of conflict
• Lack of commitment
• Avoidance of accountability
• Inattention to results

Doing it again.. (draft)

I will because the feeling of paying someone for a honest day's work and thanking them for a good job is awesome.

Because surprising your employees is sometimes way better than delighting your customers.

I will first understand the industry's in and outs..

I will aim to find an easy insertion point, then slowly wedge the rest of the business in.

I will focus on building a business, not starting a startup.

I guess I will never stop, it's just too much fun =)

Questions I have no answers for

Am I making full use of my time?
Are the choices I am making the best?
Am I learning as much as I possibly can?
What do I need to learn?
What are the problems that I should choose to solve?
What are the changes I can bring to healthcare and the environment?
Who do I need to team with?
What are the mistakes I have made?
What are the right decisions I have made?
If I had 5 more years of experience, how would the decisions I make change?
What are the things I think I know?
What are the things I don't know I need to know?
What are the fundamentals I need to learn?

Solved: Missing JDK - Error with Ant (Java build tool)

I ran into 2 errors while trying to build ZXing mainly due to the fact that I only installed the Java 6 Open JRE but I was missing the JDK (looked at /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk).


Unable to locate tools.jar. Expected to find it in /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/lib/tools.jar

...... /zxing-2.0/javase/build.xml:41: Unable to find a javac compiler;

com.sun.tools.javac.Main is not on the classpath.

Perhaps JAVA_HOME does not point to the JDK.

It is currently set to "/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre"

Problem solved by installing the JDK from Ubuntu Software Centre.

You can also use: sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk

Platform: Ubuntu 11.10

As a side note, I find it very useful to document all the major installations done on this blog mainly to aid my fallible memory.

Error: Piggyback SSL on Heroku - jetty.ssl.keypassword

I was using PiggyBack SSL (Heroku seems to have automatically enabled it for all apps recently) and I came across this error.. 

"jetty.ssl.keypassword "

Background: I am running a Clojure app (Noir) on heroku for testing. The app starts fine but the error message about the ssl keypassword made the app crash when I make a GET request to a https address under heroku.

Fix: I removed the ssl-port option for jetty options. It does not seem like it's needed.

However, if you have your own SSL certificate (not using PiggyBack), then you should set your own.

(def prod-settings 

  {:mode                  mode

   :ns                    'helen

   :session-cookie-attrs  {:max-age 3600

                           :secure  false}

   :jetty-options         {:port      (Integer. (get (System/getenv) "PORT" "8080"))}})

;; Removed ssl-port because heroku keeps requiring ssl password

;; Heroku's ssl-port is 443, no need to supply keystore or ssl password if using PiggyBack SSL

Collection naming problems with MongoDB - Do not include hyphens

Problem: Wrongly named collections in MongoDB will cause exceptions

Why the problem occurs:

I found most of my tips from this article.

http://blog.shlomoid.com/2011/08/how-to-fix-erroneously-named-mongodb.html

Collection names should begin with letters or an underscore and may include numbers; $ is reserved. Collections can be organized in namespaces; these are named groups of collections defined using a dot notation.

You can create collections with names that include hyphens. As explained in the article above, the db.runCommand for creating a collection can look like:

db.runCommand({"create":"test-col"});

However, since the javascript console will interpret collection names with hyphens in them as subtracting letters, you will get errors.

Solution:
https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/PHP-282

You need to be in to your admin db (and you might need to login first, might not for local)

> use db1
> db.auth(user, pass)
> use admin
> db.runCommand ({renameCollection: "db1.test-col", to: "db1.testCol"})

If that does not work, you might need to repair your database using mongod.
http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Durability+and+Repair

For my Clojure web app, I tried to keep to a naming convention for my data (using hyphens for spaces) and my functions (using underscore for spaces) but I got a gotcha with Javascript (I think this will happen when using ClojureScript too).