Should you ever be in the need of finding out where RubyGems installs all of your precious gems, just run the following command:

sudo gem environment

This will give you an overview of the environment settings for RubyGems. Find the “GEM PATHS” settings and there you go:

A screenshot of my l33t Terminal.app.

If you have a controller that uses a general layout, but you want to use a custom layout for one of your controller methods and the corresponding view, what you do is simply to add a render :layout => ‘my_layout’ to the method. Have a look at the below example:

class MyController < ApplicationController
layout ‘main’

 def my_method

   # Do stuff here…
   render :layout => ‘my_layout’

 end

end

Whether you’re a night owl like me or just occasionally stay up late to work on your computer, you might be interested in a piece of software called f.lux. The software can alter the color temperature of the computer display to match your indoor lighting and in doing so hopefully take some strain off your eyes during work. This is not purely meant as a cosmetic change but also intended to aid sleeping after working at the bright screen in the wee hours.
One caveat is though, that the software’s color distortion is no good for graphic design work.

Versions of f.lux for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux can be downloaded from http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/.

If you are using Ubuntu 9.10 with GNOME and really would like to get a window overview like the Exposé overview on Mac OS X, you can use Compiz to accomplish this. Please follow my mini guide below:

1) Install Compiz

First of all, make sure that Compiz is installed on your system. Go to Applications -> Ubuntu Software Center and search for “compiz”. Make sure that both Compiz and Advanced Desktop Effects Settings are installed. If they are not, go ahead and install both of them.

Screenshot of the Ubuntu Software Center.

2) Access CompizConfig Settings Manager

Next, you click System -> Preferences -> CompizConfig Settings Manager. Here, go ahead and select Scale under Window Management.

Screenshot of the CompizConfig Settings Manager.

3) Define how to initiate the Window Picker

Finally, you need to define how to initiate the Window Picker. You could make this the top left corner of the screen (named “TopLeft” in the settings). Once you have chosen an active screen corner, just close the CompizConfig Settings Manager and move your cursor to the corner you have picked – and then, marvel at the Window Picker effects displaying all of your windows in one neat overview!

Screenshot of the Window Picker initiation settings.