Ever in Flux i {work, rant, geek out, lost my mind}

A gripe about my Aspire One.

Gotta knock my netbook's cool factor down a notch. The keyboard, while larger many, is not full-size and line breaks created by the inadvertent tap of the Enter key can drastically change a conversation.

For example, what I had intended to type was the following:

I have an erectile dysfunction medication clock and an alarm on my phone.

Referring to the Viagra promotional wall clock I purchased at the local ASPCA Thrift Store. Gem like that has got to be worth a lot, eh? Nope. $1.49 out the door. Best purchase I've made in weeks.

So here is the consequence of having man-sized fingers while typing on the dainty keyboard of a netbook:

I have an erectile dysfunction
medication clock and an alarm on my phone.

Dammit!!

Before reading any further, please be aware of the following points.

1. This is a personal website.
2. Information here is provided to you without warranty of its accuracy.
3. If you find any material offensive, exercise your choice to leave.
4. The intended audience is people that know me or wish to know more about me.

As with anything in life, you have a choice. Read further...or don't. It's your time, your life and your web.

Installing the Ruby/MySQL gem on Snow Leopard server

This is a follow-up to the last post about installing the Ruby/MySQL gem on Leopard Server.

Following the steps for downloading and installing the MySQL headers provided by Apple, I was able to compile and successfully utilize the mysql gem without having to resort to third-party software like MacPorts or Sun's MySQL. This was done because of a project I am working on.  I wanted to keep the server as close to stock as possible.

While that worked for Leopard, I needed to do the same for Snow Leopard Server since the project may move to a newer server.  So, I followed the steps in Technical Article 25017 and retrieved the MySQL binaries for Mac OS X 10.6.1 (last version to have changes to MySQL).  After untarring the binaries and installing the gem, Rails would fail every time it had to access the MySQL database.

A combination of FLAGS and command line switches is necessary to get the gem to compile properly:

sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" gem install mysql


Having done that, the gem compiled and installed, my Rails app functions correctly and I didn't have to install any additional software beyond the gem itself.  Downside of this method, however, is that MySQL is still frozen in an older version and there is no way of telling when Apple will update it.

Also, the Apple-supplied documentation for Deploying Rails Applications on Mac OS X Leopard is incredibly out-of-date and should be avoided until it's updated for Snow Leopard.

The further adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Wannerbob

On December 24th, 2009, my beautiful girlfriend and I legally bound our lives to each other. It was a private ceremony and family wasn't even told until after the event. This wasn't because we wished it to remain a secret, but more a matter of convenience. Just like a good bank heist, the fewer people involved the smoother the operation works out.

While researching options for name changes, Jen came across "The Name Equality Act of 2007." It's the document that spells out your options for changing your name after being legally wed.

I discovered two things that night:

1. The California Department of Health has a Genetic Disease Branch
2. You can change your middle name when you're married

Neither of these are earth-shattering, but still revelations to me. Turns out you can also use a combination of both last names in whole or segmented. The act doesn't state whether you can use only a single segment or multiple, so I anagrammed our names and thus we are now Mr. and Mrs. Wannerbob.

Allow me to present…

Mr & Mrs Wannerbob.

Best of 2009? Really?

Ok. What is up with this? 64 million? 64 MILLION sites with "Best of 2009?"

Results of 'Best of 2009' search on 12/15/2009. 64,700,00

Recently, friends have been sending me links to "Best of 2009" lists. Best of 2009? Really? I believe it's still the year 2009. How can anyone be deciding what's the best of anything for this year when it's not even done yet?

Winners aren't declared in sporting events until it's done. Movies don't start rolling credits 5 minutes before the end although some should. Your torrent is not marked as completely downloaded when you've only got 95% of the file(s).

I understand we're only a few weeks from the end of the year, but no matter what category your list covers, there is still a chance that something or someone could happen to change your feelings about any items on it. Patience, people.

Making Rails/Passenger ignore a subdirectory.

While I would strongly advise one to use a subdomain or install their Rails application into a subdirectory, there are situations where the optimal solution is not available.  A good example is my current project at work.

I have a Rails app deployed with Passenger through Apache. That same server also has PHPMyAdmin in a folder outside the Rails application.  The problem here is that any request to domain.com is absorbed by Passenger and passed on to Rails.  Thus, an attempt to reach http://domain.com/phpmyadmin results in a Rails error since I don't have a phpmyadmin controller.

Rails doesn't provide any easy way out of this that I could find.  Passenger's documentation suggests that one can write a .htaccess file in the folder's directory to have Passenger disabled for that directory. That would work if the directory were inside the Rails application.

After spending several hours trying to force the Rails app into a subdir, trying to setup an alias to the phpmyadmin folder, etc., I stumbled across this post at StackOverflow. While I'm not using Trac, this turned out to be the solution I needed.

I put the following in to httpd.conf:

<LocationMatch "^/phpmyadmin/.+">        PassengerEnabled off        AllowOverride All</LocationMatch>

Alias /phpmyadmin "/path/to/phpmyadmin"<Directory "/path/to/phpmyadmin">        PassengerEnabled off        AllowOverride All</Directory>

I am not sure if it is necessary to have the Passenger options listed in both sections, but I have it setup this way and now those that need it can access phpmyadmin.  I also tried putting this in the vhost config specific to the host, but Passenger captured the request.

Goodbye Gnome, hello KDE. Goodbye KDE, hello wmii

It's not unusual for me to try out different window managers for Linux.  In fact, I've tried most of them: Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment (DR16 and E17), jwm, twm, XFCE, *box, LXDE and Awesome to name a few.

While I enjoy having a modern, graphical desktop, every single one of them fails to be functional for me in one way or another. Thus, I always have at least one open Terminal window. Some things are easier and faster that way.

So, recently I stopped using Gnome because I was unable to compile a new version of Gnome due to some dependencies on Mono. I'm not a Mono hater, but I'd rather use software I know will remain free forever.

Switched to KDE because I have friends who swore that 4.3 was the bees knees. If you're looking for a slick, shiny user interface, then KDE 4 is a real treat. I enjoyed it for about 3 weeks, then I became disheartened with how sluggish my computer felt. That, and I spent more time in Terminal than in any part of the GUI.

About a week ago, I switched to wmii. Minimalist interface, manages windows (a good goal for a window manager), and stays the hell out of my way. While there's a bit of a learning curve, it's not so steep that I had to spend hours tweaking it before I began using it.

One of my favorite features is the "tagging." Similar to having multiple desktops in another WM, tags create separate screens for applications. So, tag 1 has a terminal maximized, tag 2 has my browser window and tag 3 has IM, irc, or whatever.  Any WM does this, but what wmii does better is that when there are no more apps on that tagged screen, it disappears.  This means I never have an empty workspace unless there's only the one.

Another is a feature that's implemented in similar window managers: tiled windows with layouts. I can have all my windows line up like little tiles in the one screen, have them overlap each other with only their title bars showing or even have some windows float while others remain attached to the background.  Handy.

Most interesting for me is the way that I can interact with wmii. wmii implements a Plan 9 interface to itself. That means every piece of the wm can be accessed as a file. No more wondering where the configuration is hiding (Gnome and KDE could take a lesson from this.)