Ever in Flux Not another webcomic.

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.)

So ends Bean’s Free Music Month

Last month I ran an experiment, of sorts. I listened to nothing but "Free" music. I dubbed it Bean's Free Music Month and removed from my playlists any music that was married to a restrictive license. For all of October, I listened to artists and tracks that I was able to download and distribute.

Jamendo was a predictable starting point for this adventure through the world of liberally-licensed music.  I had already thrown a few of the more popular artists into regular rotation: Tryad, [add info about the band], [list 2 others w/info].

 I've already been listening to some of the top artists there but decided to branch in to genres that didn't lean toward the electronic. I am a fan of electronic music (some of my favorite artists being The Crystal Method and BT), but I wanted to hear something that would be similar to the rock I love to listen to most.  Artists like Disturbed, Staind, dredg and the many others that produce commercially available music.

So, I began looking around on Jamendo for rock acts or at least bands that didn't describe their music using an electronica genre.  One band I found, TenPenny Joke, was a welcome discovery.  At times sounding like Silverchair, this aussie band knows how to play rock.  Their melodies remind me of 80s post-metal alternative with an updated style.

One thing I can say now that October is over and I've re-added some commercial artists into the mix is this: Much like open-source software, free music suffers from a glut of glorious garbage. However, if you weed through it, there are some real treasures to be found.

Now Playing Notification using ncmpcpp, libnotify and Gnome

I missed the functionality of a Mac OS X application and through the a mix of LinuxJournal's tip for using at with libnotify, some tinkering and assignment to <Mod4+F5>, ncmpcpp and this code:

notify-send -i audio-x-generic "Now Playing" "$(ncmpcpp --now-playing '?? %t    ??^M^M?? %a ??^M^M ?? %b ??')"

EDIT: Crikey!  The above code was pasted from vim in a terminal, so the ^M's are actually the following keystrokes: <ctrl-v><ctrl-m>.  It's to get the linebreak needed to separate the track, artist and album so nicely.

I get the following via libnotify when I press the "Windows" key and F5: