When I create a rails app from scratch I like to include certain plugins to help me write the app, such as the Rspec testing framework instead of the built-in Test::Unit and jQuery instead of prototype.

Back in the day I swapped the keys on my 12" powerbook keyboard around to read macgenius across the middle row.

This is just another example showing how I refactor code down to its bare minimum. The reason why I do this so much (and indeed I think why ruby is so easy to read compared to other languages) is because it makes my code more readable and less of a bugger to pick up after a while.

To search your php.ini file quickly and easily with the option to use regular expressions, I tend to drop back to the cli. The reason for this is I can easily parse the output of phpinfo() with grep, and can do various things with the output, could even pass it to a script if I really wanted to.