You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'mac' tag.
Shaping up to be another busy week; fortunately the weekend was good for catching up this time.
- iCHM - Nice-looking CHM reader for OS X. Unfortunately I’m not finding that its search works as well as that in Chamonix.
- REST, I Just Don’t Get It - Heretical musings from Damien Katz. The comments are well worth reading. Also worth reading is Dare Obasanjo’s Explaining REST to Damien Katz.
- Use MacVim and rails.vim plugin to edit your Rails work - An alternative if you don’t want to drink the TextMate koolaid.
- GitHub RubyGems - It really is dead simple to publish a gem via github.
- GemPlugins: A Brief Introduction to the Future of Rails Plugins - And it’s easy to convert an existing plugin to a gem, too.
- App Update - Dashboard widget to track software freshness on your Mac.
One of the first RoR sites I contracted on has finally launched. I thought it was cursed forever.
- Beware OS X 10.5.3 Bug That Destroys Adobe PSD Files - This one sounds nasty. Haven’t hit it myself, but then, I only piddle around in PhotoShop once in a great while.
- Rubular - Online regex tester for Ruby.
- Growl 1.1.3 - Finally, non-beta Growl support for OS X Leopard.
- Engine Yard Express - Want to see how Engine Yard set up their Rails hosting? Download a VMware image of one of their slices.
- Waiting for a Factory Girl - Another approach to replacing fixtures with factories.
- Composite Primary Keys Goes 1.0.0 for Rails 2.1 - More news from Dr. Nic.
Theoretically a holiday in the States today. Given the amount of “rush rush” work on my plate, I’ll take a rain check on that.
- Community Engine - Add social networking features via a Rails plugin. (via Ruby Inside)
- Content Generation and the Law - A quick survey from Eric Goldman. Worth reading before you try to come up with a glib answer to Twitter’s recent TOS/stalking issues. (via Denise Howell)
- 28 mod_rails/Passenger Resources to Help You Deploy Rails Applications Faster - Great roundup from Peter Cooper. I wonder if I want to tackle this on one of my servers.
- The Return of Rails Components - Another scheme for adding interchangeable functionality to Rails apps.
- YAML 1.2 Ensconces and Envelopes JSON - A new draft for the next YAML spec is out.
- Useful JavaScript: textCounter - Show the number of characters remaining in a text input. Where was this when I needed it?
- Living on the Edge (of Rails) #22 - The big news this time is that all the tests for Rails now pass in Ruby 1.9.
- ClipboardSharing - Free utility for folks with multiple Macs.
- Spike - Clipboard sharing with multiple clips and clipboards for OS X or Windows. Not free, but at $7 and down per copy it looks worth paying for.
No matter how well things were running before, the deployment always reveals new teething pains. I suppose some of this is a process issue.
- Karelia iMedia Browser - Cute little file management doohickey for OS X.
- Textmate Gem - A new way to manage Textmate bundles.
It was a productive weekend; I got a major feature shipped for one of the sites I work on. Now back to the regular workweek.
- Pitfalls in RESTful “wizards” - dealing with page-caching fun in Rails.
- Nightly Tester Tools 2.01 - I don’t think I could live on edge Firefox without this. The ability to selectively recover tabs from the previous session is a winner.
- Stage 0.3.1 - Code generator for Rails and Merb using the presenter pattern.
- Prototip - Flexible tooltips for Prototype/Scriptaculous.
- Scripteka - Library of extensions for Prototype.
- Living on the edge (of Rails) #18 - It’s been a quiet week.
- Making Compact Forms More Accessible - Easiest way I found to get hints in textareas that vanish when users start typing.
- The Apple “i” - Nice sendup of the prototypical Apple keynote.
- Promise and Peril for Alternative Ruby Impls - Probably more Ruby VM gossip than you really need.
My initial reaction to Live Mesh is that it’s just another attempt to co-opt the web with a proprietary Microsoft platform, no different conceptually than the original MSN/”Blackbird” (which failed, as you may or may not recall). Perhaps I’ll change my mind later.
- TMTOOLS plugin - For those who want to do some low-level TextMate hacking.
- RubyAMP TextMate Bundle - Adds another grep implementation, better completion, hooks into tail and firing up servers, and other goodies for Rails & Merb developers.
- New in Rails: ActiveResource Timeouts and why it matters - Protect yourself from the vagaries of other peoples’ servers.
- Today - Tiny event & task manager that synchronizes with iCal.
- What’s up in Ruby? - Dedicated search engine based on Ruby community RSS feeds.
- Software as a Service Rails Kit - New bootstrapper that gets you up and running quickly with ActiveMerchant, SSL, multiple levels of accounts - all the stuff under your typical Web 2.0 app. $249 base price.
- Better messages for ActiveRecord validation errors - A tiny bit of fit and finish work for your Rails app.
Today it’s back to the CSS mines for me. Seem to be lots of folks wanting work in that area lately.
- Freezing Rails with Git - Using git submodules. I’m probably going to have to learn this sooner rather than later.
- MacUpdate Parallels Bundle - Interesting to me not because I want Parallels (so far both my Macs are 100% Microsoft-free, and I intend to keep them that way), but for some of the other packages.
- Introducing Mingle 2.0 - Major rev of the commercial agile management tool from Thoughtworks.
Well, I know a good deal more about cron than I did yesterday. Which isn’t actually saying much.
- textmate-missingdrawer - UI tweak for TextMate. Doesn’t float my boat, but some folks will like it.
- LearningRails - A Rails course in the form of free podcasts and screencasts for beginners.
- Phusion Passenger - a.k.a. mod_rails for Apache. Now available in beta form.
- Rails 2.1 Time Zone Support: An Overview - Good info on what’s coming down the pike. (via Riding Rails)
- Mack Framework - Yes, it’s yetanother Ruby web framework. (via Ruby Inside)
- Crappy Graphs - An online generator, just in case you need one.
- Psystar OpenMac - White box Mac clone & a lawsuit waiting to happen (via Gadgetopia)
- Living on the Edge of Rails #16 (Github edition) - The latest from Edge Rails development.
I find that I’m not in any particular hurry to upgrade to WordPress 2.5.
- Deploying Rails Applications on Mac OS X Leopard - Another article from the Apple Developer Connection.
- MySQL Workbench - Visual database design tool for MySQL, including the ability to reverse-engineer a schema to a diagram. Alas, Windows/.NET only at the moment.
- StrokeDB - Embeddable distributable document database written in Ruby.
- Exciting Times in Rails Land - A rundown on what’s coming in 2.1.
- Rails CHM Documentation - Another version of the docs for 2.0.2 in downloadable form.
And now I get to become an instant Liquid expert. I’ve got the greatest clients.
- Managing Required Gems on Rails Projects - Check out the comments, too. Turns out there are a whole bunch of solutions. I must investigate.
- Cyndicate 1.2 - The web site isn’t updated yet, but version 1.2 is out. This continues to be my newsreader of choice for the Mac.
- Living on the edge (of Rails) #13 - Git script/plugin install, has_one :through - And other changes to edge Rails.
- markItUp! Universal markup editor - jQuery plugin to convert any texarea to a markup editor, in a variety of formats.
- Rapid Rails part 1: Command-line Mastery - A variety of tips to make your more productive in Rails-land.
- ADS Mantis Hosting - New alternative for managed Rails hosting.
It’s shaping up to be another busy week. Can’t complain about that.
- Safari 3.1 Breaks Your App - Apparently the new Safari doesn’t play nice with Prototype. Here’s a workaround.
- DownThemAll! - Firefox add-on that came in very handy the other day when I needed to grab all the images from a page redesign. If you use Images, View Image Information from the Web Dev toolbar you can build a page that has URLs for everything including CSS background images.
- Absolute Moron’s Guide to Forms in Rails, Part I - From the Softies on Rails guys.
- RailsMan - Rails application management utility for OS X, aiming to replace the now-discontinued Locomotive.
If there’s a really good crosstab query solution for Rails, I wasn’t able to find it yesterday.
- Customizing Rails Applications on Mac OS X Leopard - Another bit of evangelism from Apple.
- How to Export Data as CSV - From Rails, that is. Proves to be trivially easy.
- Living on the edge (of Rails) #12 - More incremental progress is coming our way.
I really don’t like being in a situation where I don’t know whether the tests are bad or the code is bad.
- Use attr_protected or we will hack you - How to tighten up security on your user models.
- A three finger salute to git - Combining the latest “swipe” gestures on Mac touchpads with git commands.
- iPhone SDK Bug Filing - Rogue Amoeba appears to be leading the charge to make the iPhone a more open system. Good luck with that.
- SVN Externals are Evil; Use Piston or Braid - Why you don’t want to keep your plugins in your repo as externals.
- Braid - Like piston, but can handle SVN or git repos.
Another weekend of slinging Rails code - but I made the deadline.
- Gemedit - Gem to make it easy to edit the source code of other gems. Useful for learning.
- Developing Rails Applications on Mac OS X Leopard - Very basic article from the Apple Developer folks, but it does show how to use XCode for Rails development if you don’t have another preferred project editor.
- Howto use the Ext JS Treeview (Ext.tree) with Ruby on Rails - And with lazy loading, to boot.
- jQuery plugin: Treeview - Plugin for the jQuery JavaScript framework. Useful to me, since I just had to implement a treeview in a Rails project that was already using jQuery.
I actually have a working Cocoa app that implements all the “must have” features. Moving on to the “nice to have” features now.
- Cocoa JSON Framework - I’m going to have to swap some data between the Cocoa app and a merb site. Looks like this makes it easy, since merb can do native JSON output of anything. I looked into using YAML, but the only existing Cocoa YAML code doesn’t seem to have been revised in several years. I could use a ruby class to do the import, but why not stick to all native Objective C?
- Mac Help Writer - The help authoring scene on OS X is much bleaker than on Windows. This is the best one I’ve found; it builds nice-looking standard help files for the Mac, but I can tell I’m going to be hand-editing HTML files to do anything tricky, as it hits its limits quickly. I looked at several other applications that run on OS X, but they’re all cross-platform, building help files that look like WinHelp in an OS X container. That’s a fail.
- Capistrano 2.2.0 Preview - Eek, I’m not done grokking 2.0 yet. Fortunately the changes are minimal, mainly better git support.
- scope-out-rails - Plugin for adding easy scopes to your models.
QuickTime portion of the Cocoa app is working now. Today’s task: figure out the FTP portion.
- Embedded Cocoa Frameworks - Video tutorial showing how to get a private framework to actually embed itself in your compiled app. I’m sure this information is somewhere in the copious Apple docs, but darned if I could find it.
- Connection Kit - Open-source Cocoa framework bringing some sanity to FTP, SFTP, WebDav, Amazon S3, and some other network protocols. (via Matt Long)
- CoRD - Open source RDP client for the Mac. One less reason to visit the Windows desktop. (I may some day get rid of the remote Windows servers, but for the moment I’m stuck with them).
Nailed down another contract yesterday - this one for some design and building work in Second Life. Nice to have the billing base broadened a bit.
- About the Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update - This installed smoothly for me, though I’m not seeing any amazing changes (except for the temporary loss of my beloved GrowlMail again).
- Andrzej’s Rails tips #5 - A couple of nice RSpec-related tips.
- RubyFringe - Rails is too staid for some folks now; here’s a new conference for people who want to work with Ruby stuff (mainly web-related) “outside of the Rails monoculture.”
- Nginx & Memcached, a 400% Boost! - More fiddling with the Rails production stack.
As I ease into the weekend I’m contemplating whether I can cram in a bit more work each day. I think not, but there is just so much new stuff to learn…
- Skitch - Fun little graphics and photo-sharing app for the Mac that’s just gone into public beta.
- Navicat 7.1.0 - My tool of choice for MySQL on OS X has just had another little version bump.
I don’t know whether anyone else is trying to do this, but I just wasted four hours of a perfectly good day getting this tiny piece to work right. To save you the time, here’s what (finally) worked for me:
- Install MacPorts
sudo port install file- Download ruby-filemagic-0.1.1.tar.gz
- Open a shell and unpack it somewhere reasonable.
sudo -(This prompts for your password rather than the root password)cdto the ruby-filemagic-0.1.1 folderARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" ruby extconf.rb --with-magic-dir=/opt/localmakemake install
Although I’m aiming for daily updates here, I do plan to take tomorrow off. Merry Christmas!
- Tactile Pro 2.0 - Have I ever mentioned how much I detest membrane keyboards? The Mac Pro keyboard is better than most, but it still stinks. It turns out that Matias makes a mechanical switch keyboard for Mac; I’ve got one on order, and I’ll let you know if it’s as good as the Unicomp PC keyboards when it arrives.
- BetterZip - An actual GUI archive application for OS X. Not entirely sure this is worth paying for, though I do get annoyed at the lack of fine control over zip options that the OS gives by default.
- BitNami WordPress stack - This is what I used to install WordPress, and it was pretty painless. I did have to muck around in the Apache configuration files, though; by default it puts the install on port 8080 in the /wordpress folder.
- Installing ffmpeg on Mac OS X - Needed this for a client the other day; here’s the easiest install instructions I could find.
- Acts_as_ferret Tutorial - Another chunk of software I’m needing to come up to speed on; this is helpful.
I spent a good chunk of yesterday wishing that someone had already written an RSpec book. I’ve got the general idea, and the PeepCode screencasts are great, but I find I really benefit from paper I can flip through when learning a new tech. Maybe there’s a nice RDoc-to-pdf bridge out there somewhere.
- GrowlMail in Leopard - I’m surprised at how useful I find Growl notifications. I’ve been living - unhappily - without Growl notifications from Mail since upgrading to Leopard. Here’s news of a new beta of GrowlMail that fixes the problem. I installed it, and it’s working fine for me.
Yesterday was one of those days for tracing through code for two hours and then writing five characters to fix a bug. They were the right five characters, though.
- Stacks Overlays - I got sick of the stupid default appearance of OS X stacks and installed this fix.
- Firefox 3 Beta 2 - I’ve been using Firefox 3 as my default browser since beta 1 came out. It’s been quite stable for me.
- GemInstaller - Automated management tool for Ruby gems, designed to avoid the “but it works on my machine” syndrome when moving to production (among other issues).
- Amazon DevPay - Limited Beta - Yet another new service from the Amazon Web Services team: billing and account management.
No doubt there is some tool to make the data cleanup I spent yesterday afternoon doing easier, but if it’s the sort of thing that only needs doing once in a while, straight SQL queries are as easy as anything else. At some point it’s not worth learning one more tool for occasional use.
- Instant Rails - Drop-in and run install for Windows with Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL. Looked like it was taking a dirt nap but a new project admin is in place and it’s moving again.
- BackgroundFu - Another way to run Rails-launched tasks in the background.
- Fluid - Wrap up web applications as faux desktop apps for OS X Leopard.
Now that I’m back to writing Rails code daily, it’s all starting to make sense to me. Well, almost. Just in time for a new version!
- Rails 2.0 - it’s landed - Looks like a release announcement is imminent.
- Redirecting nginx to Tomcat. - Somehow I hope never to have to do this. Most of the Rails deployment stack is still a black art to me, even though I’ve managed to set it up successfully a few times. A failing, I know.
- MacSanta - A dangerous site to watch if you have a relatively new Mac and like utilities. 20% discounts on different vendors’ software every day until Christmas. They have an RSS feed too.
- SVNMate - Subversion integration directly in the TextMate file tree. (via Softies on Rails)
Always nice to wake up to email from a client saying “by the way, we’re demoing the site tomorrow, here’s a sudden list of changes we’d like made.”
- ZigVersion - Subversion UI for Mac. Haven’t tried it but saw some Twitter-friends say good things about it.
I actually spent much of the weekend writing Rails code (along with a bit of LSL code). It feels good to be back in the saddle again.
- Running gem_server on Leopard - Making up for Apple’s oversight when you want local documentation.
- ANN: Spraypaint - yet another tagging library for rails - In case the other tagging plugins don’t quite float your boat.
It’s Monday. Must be, all of a sudden my e-mail is full again. If you need distractions, here are a few potential ones:
- Code Spaces - New free project hosting (at least, seems to be free while in beta) with project management, issue tracking, and Subversion source code repository.
- Free Ruler - Found myself needing to count pixels on the Mac screen. This utility had the virtue of the right price.
- A taxonomy of Rails plugins - Hints on how to write one, rather than a zoo. (via Ruby Inside)
- Deploying Rails Applications is Released as a Beta! - A new book hits the virtual shelves.
There are always about a million little fiddly bits to do to get an application out the door, aren’t there?
- Backing Up Your Mac - Recently-revised article from MacZealots listing some easy alternatives. Doesn’t answer all of my questions but it’s a good starting point.
- mirRoR Placement - A pure Rails job shop. It’s another sign of the rapid growth of the Rails ecosystem that we’re seeing firms like this pop up.
- Announcing Multisite Plugin for Rails - Serve multiple domains from a single Rails application by giving each a distinct set of views.
Woo, starting another consulting job today, without a speck of MS stuff in sight. I feel all vindicated and stuff.
- iStat Menus - There are about a million different Mac system monitors out there. This one is free and doesn’t take up screen real estate when you don’t want it to.
- VSS to SVN: Part 3 - This tutorial for source code control switchers continues.
- Ruby on Rails EC2 ‘Appliance’ - Practically turnkey Rails deployment to the Amazon server cloud. (via Ruby Insie)
- Sake Bomb - Sake is system-wide Rake. Looks like it still has some warts, but is already useful
As I switch more of my computing life over to the Mac (it’s now home to most of my e-mail accounts, my calendar, my task list, and some of my Web work, as well as the bulk of the Rails development I’m doing), I find myself accumulating bits and pieces of software. It’s dangerous to draw any conclusion based on the small exposure to Macs that I have so far, but it seems to me that most of the Mac apps I’ve looked at are more visually polished and have more internal coherence (i.e, they do one thing and do it well) than most Windows apps that I’m familiar with, but they also tend to have less inherent functionality. On the whole I’m very satisfied with the Mac experience (especially on days like today, when my main Windows development box blue-screened five times).
Stereotypes and sweeping statements aside, it might interest some other Windows refugees to have a list of some of what I’ve found it reasonable to install so far:
- Adium (free) is a reasonable enough multi-network IM client. It’s still a bit lacking in functionality compared to “Trillian”http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/ on Windows though.
- Chamonix (free) is a CHM file viewer. Not as pretty as Chmox but more functional.
- CSSEdit ($29.95) is a real find; this CSS Editor is way more functional than anything I’ve worked with on the Windows side.
- EasyTask Manager ($19.99) is my choice for task lists at the moment. They oversell the GTD-ness of the application, but they have one key feature I can’t live without: recurring tasks.
- Firefox (free) remains my browser of choice. I can’t imagine doing without its wealth of extensions in favor of anyone’s native browser.
- Growl (free) is somehow far less annoying, perhaps because it’s more consistently a standard, than any of the “toast” notification options on Windows.
- Navicat ($99) is doing for a MySQL GUI client for now. It’s got a ways to go, but it’s better than doing everything with the command line tools.
- NeoOffice (free) is so far handling my light word processing and spreadsheet requirements on the Mac. I’ll probably have to revisit this as I move more office work over, but I have no intention of letting a Microsoft product on to this box.
- OmniOutliner Pro ($29.95 upgrade price) is taking care of my unstructured text and list needs. This is a category I’ve always kept some application or other busy in, so it was good to see lots of choices here on the Mac. This one clicked for me better than Yojimbo or Tinderbox though they’re both intriguing as well.
- Pukka ($5) is a del.icio.us client. That’s not a category of software I thought I needed, but it’s very well done and useful.
- QuickSilver (free) has actually gotten me using a keyboard-driven program launcher, something none of the Windows entrants in the field ever done. I’d like to see it pick up some of the Web-driving goodness of DQSB on Windows (I know, I could program a lot of that in myself but I’m lazy).
- Shrook (free) will probably be my RSS reader when I move my feeds over. Everyone raves about the look of Newsfire but trying to read 400 feeds in that UI would drive me mad. NetNewsWire probably has the right functionality but I’m not going to subject myself to Newsgator’s software registration system.
- TextMate (€39) is just as fabulous a prrogrammer’s text editor as everyone says it is. It’s obvious why people are trying to clone this for the PC.
- Twitterific (free) does absolutely nothing for my productivity but it’s fun to watch all these random people wander by on my screen.
Why “Double Shot”? Why not? My daily links column over at Larkware is called “Daily Grind,” so somehow that just seems to fit. Well, at least as much as anything fits.
- Shiny new Subversion and Trac cluster - The Rails team has just gotten a server upgrade, and having checked out a new Edge tree last night, I can confirm that it’s a whole lot faster. There’s also a change of URL for the Rails Subversion repository, though the old URL will continue to work. Here’s some info on switching an existing checkout to point to the new URL.
- Streamlined 0.0.7.1 - I blinked and missed the announcement a few days ago, but the plugin version of this tool for building spiffy Rails views is out now.
- Show database migration versions with Rake - A simple Rake task to pull the current version out of the database. I imagine this could be useful in a busy shop with multiple devs writing migrations.
- Site5 Deployment Problems with Capistrano > 1.2 - A fix to some mystery Capistrano permissions problems. I think it’s a feature, but this could still be pretty helpful if you hit the same situation.
- Getting Started with Subversion on OS X - Ben Wong has some basic information.
Dan Benjamin has an updated article on how to do it - Building Ruby, Rails, Mongrel, and MySQL on Mac OS X . This will give you all the necessary bits from source, which is how I prefer to work, so I recommend it to you as well. A detailed recipe that can save you much pain.
- SQLGrinder is another DBA tool, this one using JDBC for connectivity. $59 to register. My initial attempts at using it to connect to a MySQL database on a different machine weren’t successful, but then, so far everything I’ve tried to connect to a MySQL database on a different machine have been unsuccessful.
- BuildFactory is a continuous integration tool that runs on the Mac, integrated with Subversion and various editors. $35 to register. I don’t need this yet, but might come in handy in the future.
James Higgs has been on the PC-to-Mac trail longer than I have. His Mac OS X applications I use post has plenty of links that I’ll be checking out (though, thankfully, I think I’ll be able to avoid putting MS Office on my Mac).
Well, the new Mac is here and happily chugging along. I haven’t started coding on it yet, though I have installed a batch of software. A few initial thoughts:
- It sure is purty, in an industrial design sort of way. But I suspect it could have been $50 cheaper if the case wasn’t so overdesigned, and the keyboard and mouse frankly suck as far as I’m concerned (your ergonomic preferences may vary of course). I’m almost certainly going to pitch the Mighty Mouse in favor of a decent trackball. Unfortunately Unicomp doesn’t make a Mac keyboard, so I don’t know what I’m going to do in that department.
- OS X is reasonably easy to transition to, but I was surprised at the lack of any obvious “start here” introduction for new users. People who say it’s intuitive are full of poop (just like the people who say the same thing about Windows).
- Some things, like getting hooked up to the Internet via my wireless access point, did indeed just work. But they just work in Windows these days too.
- James Duncan Davidson’s Guide for Installing Rails on Mac worked perfectly after I tracked down one broken link.
Much more to come, I’m sure.
Looks like I’ll be needing these links in a day or two:
Like a lot of other geeks, I paid some attention to the keynote at MacWorld yesterday. Though nothing announced there really interested me (oh, the iPhone looks like a fairly sexy bit of engineering, though it’s a perplexingly stupid decision to not let users install their own software on it, but I don’t carry a cel phone), I hopped over to the Apple store yesterday afternoon anyhow. That’s because I was just waiting to see if there was any changes in the Mac Pro lineup before ordering one.
So, a couple weeks from now I should have a Mac sitting on (well, under) my desk along with the Windows and Linux boxes. I also splurged a bit and treated myself to a new Dell 24″ monitor. I figure I’m going to cover about half the cost of this system by not renewing my MSDN subscription this year. Now it’s time to get serious about spending a couple hours each day working on new skills.
VMware Fusion looks like a great way to preserve existing investments while I slowly migrate.
