Uh, really awkward. I've been posting so little that i've actually forgotten what the standard post structure is like, and am now forced to steal despicably from my other posts. I'm a dirty thieving bastard :(

But, i digress.

As of late, I've been messing around with merb for a personal project of mine, as old men do in the privacy of their own homes. Being the original fellow that we all know i am, my project has nothing to do with lolcats. Wanting to enforce that as thoroughly as possible, i decided to send a clear message to everybody, and screw up the inflector for 'lolcat'.

Long version ( filled with passion and romance )

It seemed like a good idea at the time, although i must admit, alcohol was involved.

Lawfully, i read the init.rb file, and found the code i was craving:

# Here we define erratum/errata exception case:
#
# Language::English::Inflector.word "erratum", "errata"

"If it works for a fancy word like that, it's sure to work for 'lolcat' !", i thought, conspiring to the demise of humorous felines. Alas, having uncommented that piece of code, i was greeted by my old friend, the shit storm. Do say hello

/Users/zmack/Projects/omgpron/config/init.rb:133: uninitialized constant Language::English::Inflector (NameError)
        from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/merb-core-0.9.4/lib/merb-core/bootloader.rb:304:in `load'
        from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/merb-core-0.9.4/lib/merb-core/bootloader.rb:304:in `load_initfile'
        from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/merb-core-0.9.4/lib/merb-core/bootloader.rb:253:in `run'
        from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/merb-core-0.9.4/lib/merb-core/bootloader.rb:65:in `run'
        from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/merb-core-0.9.4/lib/merb-core/server.rb:51:in `start'
        from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/merb-core-0.9.4/lib/merb-core.rb:87:in `start'
        from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/merb-core-0.9.4/bin/merb:12
        from /usr/bin/merb:19:in `load'
        from /usr/bin/merb:19

Dug around a bit, turns out the class was Language::English::Inflect. No worries, we just change it to that and it does the trick. Well, not really.

>> "locat".pluralize # omg omg ?
=> "locats" # gnoes :(

Elegantly, i break out the hammer, and mightily unleash it upon the unsuspecting merb

require 'ruby2ruby' # => true
"lolcat".method(:plural).to_ruby # => "def plural\n  English::Inflect.plural(self)\nend"

What is this treachery ? I was strictly instructed to use Language::English::Inflect and now this doppelgänger comes to haunt me ?

The trouble is, apparently, that Datamapper's extlib, being the eager little beaver that it is, also implements a pluralize method, and uses the english gem with no namespacing.

Using English::Inflect in init.rb results in more fail, as Datamapper apparently isn't loaded by that time. The thing that came to my mind by this point was to just stick the inflector rule in a model. If it's loading a model, Datamapper is bound to be loaded, wouldn't really make sense to be in the model without Datamapper, so our Inflector is bound to be in reach down there.

And now, after a hard day's work, it is finally time to admire the fruits of our labor

"lolcat".pluralize # => "lolyourmum"

Awesome !

Short version

If you're using merb and want to add a custom inflector, the init.rb comments are bunk, and what you have to use is

Language::English::Inflect.word "erratum", "errata"

Moreover, if you're also using Datamapper, the method on String gets monkeypatched, so you need to patch DM's inflector as well, by sticking the following in one of your models ( well, _near_ them anyway )

English::Inflect.word "erratum", "errata"

class SomeModelOmg

For the past few days i've been basically migrating all of my working hours over to another machine. While this sounds horrendously dull and annoying, i can pretty much assure you that it is. The most annoying thing, by far, though has been getting vim to act the same as it had on my former electronic helper.

The quick fix for this would've been to just import chelu's hardcore .vim folder, but that just left me with a nagging feeling that i wasn't actually using all of the stuff in there. I wanted to go bare bones, raw bit mode, hunter hunted, man and nature, leaf and squirrel ! In layman terms, i just wanted to know what the hell each line of my conf was actually doing, instead of importing 2000 lines of stuff which had a pleasant outcome.

In the end, the stuff that i managed to boil my config down to contained two main things:

Having vim not deselect after indenting in visual mode

This irritated me more than having warm beer served to me by a fat waiter. I'd continue on with the prose on this topic, but the bulk of the matter is that it pissed me off. This fixes it, or rather it uses a 'large hammer' approach to solve this issue

vmap << >gv
vmap >> >gv

It basically tells vim to reselect the last selection after shifting left/right. Not the most elegant approach, but most effective.

Temp files all over the place

You know vim tempfiles. They're those things that show up when you want to check the status in your SCM of choice and just piss you off by being the background noise to your lovely afternoon on the country. The way to swat this nuisance is to simply tell our lovely friend vim to place his goddamn trash someplace else. Anywhere else, but preferably somewhere we would have nothing to do with it. The way to do this is to alter the directory variable in vim. Initially, that lists "." as the first acceptable option. Just set it to something else, or simply erase the "." folder from the bunch, and you're good to go. Gray hairs no more !