Yes, like every other human being who has come across Ruby On Rails there is a strange temptation to start playing with words to show how clever we are but I’m fast to realise that its not the only thing you can do with Ruby On Rails, much to my relief.

If you have no idea what Ruby on Rails is see: http://rubyonrails.org. 

Having been introduced to Rails many moons or perhaps about 2 years ago, it had always remained concealed behind a cloud of mystery for myself and as I developed websites for different clients using mainly PHP scripted Content Management Systems I didn’t feel the need to waste time and learn how to use it.

Silly me?

Perhaps so, though at some point there comes the urge to write a new system alot simpler than those systems such as Joomla! or others like it, a system that is tailor made to clients needs and not overloaded with features that have no relavance or are perhaps useless.

Time to removed that cloud of mystery … Enter Ruby on Rails.

Setting Up Rails

I currently am using Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 so I set out to find information on setting up Ruby On Rails.

A brilliant tutorial which has pretty much got me set was from hivelogic:

http://hivelogic.com/articles/view/ruby-rails-mongrel-mysql-osx

Though now with new updates and other current changes there was a few things that triped me up.

• In the Paths section of the tutorial you will see that you are to edit the .bash_login file so that terminal looks in our /usr/local directory though I found when I entered ‘ruby -v’ into terminal it was still showing my old 1.8.2 version of ruby. After scratching around some time on the internet I found that I would actually need to edit .bash_profile instead of .bash_login for terminal to recognise a new path.
• When installing the MySQL native bindings gem using the gem install method it was downloading yet failing to build, again I scratched around the net for a bit and found that due to Ruby Version 1.9.1 I would need to get the latest version of MySQL/Ruby and for some reason gems was only getting version 2.7 and the latest is 2.8 .1 (http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=4550) so I downloaded that tar.gz file and installed it, tested and everything was looking great

I haven’t bothered installing a http server for Rails yet as I am just using the one packaged.

With everything installed, the fun begins…

More on Ruby On Rails comming soon!

Η Apple ανακοίνωσε το Security Update 2009-001 για τις εκδόσεις του Mac OS X 10.4 και 10.5. Η έκδοση ασφαλείας διορθώνει περίπου 28 ευπάθειες του λειτουργικού συστήματος, που θα μπορούσαν να προκαλέσουν απρόβλεπτο τερματισμό εφαρμογών, αυθέρετη εκτέλεση κώδικα, επιθέσεις άρνησης υπηρεσίας (denial of service) ακόμα και σε αποκάλυψη του κωδικού πρόσβασης.

Μία πλήρη λίστα με τις επιδιορθώσεις που περιλαμβάνονται στην ενημερωμένη έκδοση μπορείτε να βρείτε εδώ, ενώ μπορείτε να κατεβάσετε το security update από αυτή τη σελίδα.

[via]

UPDATE (8/12/08): I simplified the awk portion of the command.

Mac OS X comes with a very convenient tool called networksetup that makes it relatively easy to view or change network settings from the command line. In Leopard, the command is readily available at /usr/sbin/networksetup. Since /usr/sbin exists in the default path, you can access the command directly. In Tiger, Panther, and Jaguar, the command is not anywhere in the default path, but lives buried within the bundled ARD Agent at /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/networksetup. (If you’re not using Leopard, be sure to include the full path to the executable in all of your commands.) Apple’s man page for networksetup covers all the available options but it’s short on real examples of its use.

Let’s say you manage a menagerie of mottled (i.e. striped or spotted) Macs on a non-dhcp, statically-addressed network. Let’s also say that your network’s DNS servers are about to change addresses to 10.0.0.11 and 10.0.0.12. Without the convenience of dhcp, you’ll have to modify the network configurations of each Mac. Fortunately, networksetup makes it easy. The command you’ll need to use — which must be run as root — takes the following format:

networksetup -setdnsservers networkservice dns1 [dns2] [...]

where networkservice is the display name of the interface (e.g. Built-in Ethernet, Airport) that you want to modify, and dns1, dns2, etc. are the ip addresses of the new dns servers. Depending on the kinds of Macs you manage, you’ll likely have to use two or more versions of this command to update all Macs with your new network settings. Mac Pros have up to three network interfaces (Built-in Ethernet 1, Built-in Ethernet 2, AirPort), iMacs, MacBooks, and MacBook Pros have two (Built-in Ethernet, AirPort), and MacBook Airs have up to two (AirPort, USB Ethernet).

So, for example, an iMac that uses its ethernet interface to access your network needs to be sent

sudo networksetup -setdnsservers "Built-in Ethernet" 10.0.0.11 10.0.0.12

while a MacBook that uses its wireless interface needs

sudo networksetup -setdnsservers "AirPort" 10.0.0.11 10.0.0.12

to update its dns settings.

What if you want a one-size-fits-all command?

I’m glad you asked. Since you can safely assume, in most cases, that the default network interface is the one you want to update, this task begs for a scripty solution. We can use another feature of the networksetup command to determine the default network interface.

sudo networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder


This lists the computer’s network interfaces in their priority order. On my MacBook Pro, I get

    (1) Built-in Ethernet
    (Hardware Port: Ethernet, Device: en0)

    (2) AirPort
    (Hardware Port: AirPort, Device: en1)

    (3) Built-in FireWire
    (Hardware Port: FireWire, Device: fw0)

    (4) Bluetooth
    (Hardware Port: Bluetooth, Device: Bluetooth-Modem)

The only part of this result we care about is the text that comes after the “(1)” on the first line. awk can extract that for us.

$ sudo networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder | awk -F'\\) ' '/\(1\)/ {print $2}'


Crash course in awk

If you’re not an awk-lover, then this command may need some explanation. Before I dive in, I’ll just tell you that awk is a powerful text search and text-processing language. By default, it breaks down search results by whitespace and assigns resulting “words” into numbered variables. $0 is the entire result, $1 is the first word, $2 is the second word, etc. Any manipulation you want to do with the awk command is put into curly brackets and separated by semicolons.

There are many great resources online to help you learn awk, so I won’t go into too much detail here.

Now let’s break down the command.

awk -F'\\) ' '/\(1\)/ {print $2}'

-F'\\) '
The -F switch tells awk that the character or characters immediately following it should be used as word delimiters. In this case, I want awk to use a closing parenthesis followed by a space to delimit words — “) “. (Note that the closing parenthesis needs to be double-escaped.) If you’re using more than one consecutive character as a delimiter, the characters must be enclosed in single quotes. Including a space in your delimiter is a handy way of excluding leading spaces from your results.

/\(1\)/
This section tells awk that you want it to operate only on lines containing “(1)”. (You need to escape the parentheses.) In this example, we’re selecting for the first line, only: “(1) Built-in Ethernet“. Now, moving within the curly brackets, we have…

print $2
This tells awk to spit out the second word of the line. Since we used “) ” as our delimiter, the second word will be everything after the “) ” on the line that contains “(1)”.

Also, note that the search portion and the command portion are enclosed in single quotes. The entire awk command turns this

    (1) Built-in Ethernet
    (Hardware Port: Ethernet, Device: en0)

    (2) AirPort
    (Hardware Port: AirPort, Device: en1)

    (3) Built-in FireWire
    (Hardware Port: FireWire, Device: fw0)

    (4) Bluetooth
    (Hardware Port: Bluetooth, Device: Bluetooth-Modem)

into this

Built-in Ethernet


The payoff — a universal DNS changing command

Now, attaining our universal command is simply a matter of assigning the output of our piped-to-awk command to a variable and then using that variable in the setdnsservers command. Since you’ll likely want to use ARD to send this command out, leave out the sudo portion as you can specify this to be run as root from ARD.

    mainInt=$(networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder | \
    awk -F'\\) ' '/\(1\)/ {print $2}')
    networksetup -setdnsservers "$mainInt" 10.0.0.11 10.0.0.12

The quotes around $mainInt in the last line are important because the interface name may contain spaces.

But wait, there’s more

Now that you can get the default network interface name, you can easily change other network settings — e.g. proxies, search domains, dhcp — on all your Macs with the same basic command format.

Want to change your search domains?

    mainInt=$(networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder | \
    awk -F'\\) ' '/\(1\)/ {print $2}')
    networksetup -setsearchdomains "$mainInt" sub.domain.com domain.com

Want to convert from static addressing to dhcp?

    mainInt=$(networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder | \
    awk -F'\\) ' '/\(1\)/ {print $2}')
    networksetup -setdhcp "$mainInt"

The possibilities may not be endless, but they’re definitely plentiful.

So today I took the plunge and finally converted my Dell Inspiron 6000 to Mac OS X 10.4.4 Tiger.  It was  relatively painless to start.  Some minor patching and DVD burning encompassed the brunt of it.

The difficulty began after the OS was installed onto my HDD.  I reformatted the Disk Space to be only OS X so there is no partition, and half the components in my computer are nearly incompatible.  Its humourous that I reformat my computer because my wireless is acting up and now it isnt working at all.

In addition to that the native resolution is incompatible and my touchpad is in less than stellar shape.  Still the mere idea that I am on the short list of people that have Mac OS X tiger on my computer makes me giddy with delight.  Also it seems to run slightly faster in general use but due to the minor incompatibility of my graphics card (radeon x300 mobility) the GUI of some games (ie chess) is very very slow.

I figure I will let this stick for the duration of winter break and see what I can do with it.  If i manage to fix most of the problems there is a good chance I might leave it on, otherwise it was a nice novelty and I remember it faintly.

Whatever happens, right now i feel really good.

Thats it for now, still got lots of debugging to do

Peace

Vam

For the past 7 months I have been the proud owner of a PowerBook G4 – in addition to my 3-year-old Pentium 4 tower. The regular use of both machines has given me a new perspective on both systems and their respective strengths and weaknesses. For many years I held a huge Windows bias. I still maintain that any Mac OS before OS X is crap…. the horrible memory management alone is enough to drive any user insane. However OS X has risen from the depths and seemingly passed Windows XP in terms of innovation and usability. Is that enough to overcome Apple’s much smaller software library and virtual absence of gaming power? I decided to do a little comparison of the systems – the whole system, not just the OS – and see if I could give the “monogamous” OS readers a better perspective.

Processor – Its no mystery that my PowerBook’s heat-spewing G4 gets burned by my 3.0GHz Pentium 4. However, that has become a dead issue with Apple’s Intel-based macs. Still, windows has one advantage: choice. Yes, I suppose you could choose to get a G5 instead, but who really wants one now anyway? AMD has been a great alternative to Intel, especially for value-conscious gamers and that’s an alternative that Apple can’t offer. Point: PC.

Operating System – Most people who use both XP and OS X Tiger would agree that OS X is a far more advanced OS. Spotlight and dashboard are indeed very “pretty” but they are also very well-designed, very useful tools. Expose – Tiger’s “window-organizing” tool – is super-handy as well. Where OS X really kicks is in the bundled software department. You can make fun of the whole “iLife” naming scheme all you want, but the fact is that you can’t get the functionality of iMovie, Garage Band, and iPhoto on windows without third-party software. Point: Mac.

Upgradeablity/Customization – This one is pretty simple: PCs are easily upgradable while Macs are, well, not. What disappoints me most is the iMac’s transition from a baseline, value PC to Apple’s mainstream desktop machine. I recently purchased a new 120GB SATA hard drive for a total cost of $60. Adding storage to an iMac would either require me to replace my old disk (not an easy task with all-in-one machines) and lose my old storage space, or add a much more expensive USB disk. I won’t even discuss graphics cards. I don’t really care to spend 2 grand on a G5 tower that’s still not even as flexible as my home-built PC. However, if Apple ever releases a version of OS X that runs on non-apple hardware, I’m all over it. Until then, Point: PC.

Software – This section could be divided into two sub-groups: Productivity and Gaming. In either case, the PC wins albeit with a larger margin in the Gaming world. On the productivity side the race is much closer. While there are fewer products that run on OS X, the ones that do are typically of very high quality. Certain Mac-only apps, such as FinalCut Pro, are simply legendary. It will be very interesting to see how new games designed for Intel Macs perform. The ability to dual-boot OS X and WinXP (or run them side by side with parallel software) is nice, but most people would rather just use one OS. Again, this could all change soon, for now its another Point: PC.

Security – The relative security of both operating systems depends on the user. On XP I make sure my virus defs are updated, I run Windows Defender in the background, and I only use Firefox for browsing. All of these take little effort and, so far, they have kept my system spyware and virus-free. On the other hand, OS X requires virtually no effort for the same outcome. The bottom line is that it is entirely possible to have a clean, smooth-running XP box that never needs reformatting – it just takes a little more love. Point: Mac.

Future Outlook – With Windows Vista and OS X “Leopard” due out within the next 6 months, consumers definitely have a lot to be excited about. Microsoft has a lot of ground to make up in this category; they don’t want to be embarrassed by Apple’s new OS before they even release theirs. The Intel transition also seems to point to a larger software base for Apple. Steve Jobs’s company seems to be making bigger improvements at this point. Point: Mac.

Bottom Line – Having my PowerBook has given me a chance to really get into OS X – and I like what I’ve seen. Despite an outdated processor, the GUI is smooth, media performance is more than sufficient, and the thing runs forever with a fully charged battery. My 12″ model is thin, light, and fits easily into my backpack making it an awesome little machine to take notes with during a lecture. Plus a cheap student version of MS Office in addition to good Windows file-sharing and network support allow me to keep things in-sync with my PC. However, if we did the “desert island” thing and I could only have one machine, it would have to a windows system – at least for now.

-C. Johnson

I just discovered a new use for my iPod and felt compelled to share it. This tip is for OS X users, but I’m sure there is an equally useful solution on windows. (I’m not biased, I own a PC as well – this tip is simply for mac users) Anyway I was using the “Yellow pages” widget on dashboard to look up some sporting goods stores and, after reviewing the results, went to get a pen and paper to write down addresses. Suddenly I noticed the little “+” button on the widget that adds the address to the OS X address book. I looked at it, looked at my iPod….. bang. A few seconds later I plugged in the iPod, let iTunes update the contacts, and went on my way. While I’m sure I’m not the first to discover this somewhat hidden feature, I’m sure I won’t be the last either…

-C. Johnson

No pensé que fuera a decirlo, pero he dado el salto a Illustrator CS2. Pensaba que me costaría más pero a la postre ha resultado más facil de lo esperado. Y es que no hay para menos… han corregido todos los bugs de la CS1 que no eran pocos (al menos bajo OS X). Incluso me puse en contacto con Adobe por teléfono inutilmente ya que cualquiera arreglaba semejante chapuza. Menos mal que la nueva versión es la cara opuesta…porque visto lo que hay, ya me veía teniendo que aguantar los bugs de uno y otro software en todo un mac (con la pasta que cuesta).

Bueno pues nada, estoy mas tranquilo ahora viendo lo bien que va, y contento por ver el potencial que tiene. No voy a empezar a diseccionarlo, pero si que quiero hacer referencia a las herramientas de extrusión (3D).

En solo 1 minuto he hecho este jarrón, a partir de 1 solo trazo con la herramienta “Girar” de los efectos 3D. Interesante no?
Pues eso, vector powah!

Parece que a Steve Jobbs se le ha olvidado incluir alguna simple opción para gestionar el indexado de spotlight. Pero tranquilos!! que está todo controlado

El otro día en el canal #mac de irc-hispano estuvimos indagando junto a linuxppc sobre el tema y encontramos la solucíon. Hay que hacerlo a traves del terminal del sistema y la linea de comando es la siguiente:

sudo mdutil -i off ruta_del_volumen para desactivar el indexado
sudo mdutil -i on ruta_del_volumen para activar el indexado

Hay otras funciones. Solo teneis que poner: en el terminal man mdutil y accedereis al manual.

La verdad es increible lo bien que va la busqueda de archivos gracias al indexado ya que en menos de 2 segundos tienes todos los archivos relacionados por la busqueda y ordenados por tipos de archivo. Ya veremos si el nuevo buscador de Windows Vista estará a la altura del original!