4 hours of downtime
I apologize for the downtime icoretech.org has experienced, my ISP suddently knocked out icoretech's public ip address from their router for no know reason.
Meanwhile I switched the site to another ip address, DNS servers are catching up with this change.
Thanks for the patience, remember that you can follow me on Twitter.
Bowtie doesn’t scrobble to last.fm, solution
Apparently there are some issues with Bowtie when using the last.fm integration.
Remember I'm using Snow Leopard.
Bowtie is a valid freeware alternative to CoverSutra for managing iTunes, showing cover art, current song, etc.
Using version 1.0b2 I found out two things:
- if you open the preference pane, Last.fm and check "Enabled", the checkbox goes automatically away
- it doesn't scrobble
A workaround to fix the first problem is to leave the checkbox alone and instead enable last.fm integration by right clicking the icon in the upper tray and selecting "Enable Last.fm".
The solution to the fact that isn't scrobbling is to capitalize your last.fm username in preferences, so for example if my username is "kain82" I will write "Kain82".
With those settings in place it does seem working, however I'll keep this post as reference for future updates on the matter.
Oh, and if you're into metal, add me to your friends over last.fm ;)
Snow Leopard server wallpaper
Just a small post, I would like to share the HUE-modified version of the default wallpaper in Snow Leopard, applied currently to the server version.
Install Passenger (mod_rails) in Snow Leopard 64 bit
Update: passenger 2.2.5 release notes states that there are know issues with Snow Leopard, but developers didn't had chance to test them out yet. I personally found no problems on 2.2.4. To upgrade simply run:
sudo gem install passenger sudo passenger-install-apache2-module
and change apache config according to new version. Follow me on twitter for up to date info.
The installation works out as usual and it's pretty straightforward, version 2.2.4 2.2.5 and using stock Apache which comes with Snow Leopard as default.
Install Xcode from Snow Leopard DVD, and it would be also wise to upgrade rubygems before doing this operation, search older posts.
Install the gem:
sudo gem install passenger sudo passenger-install-apache2-module sudo mate /etc/apache2/other/passenger.conf
passenger.conf doesn't exists on a vanilla installation (of course), therefore create it or look below. I'm also using the "mate" command, which fires up TextMate, replace "mate " with your preferred text editor, like vi, nano, etc.
If you want to use your personal configuration file instead of passenger.conf:
sudo mate /etc/apache2/users/username.conf
Replace username with your username in Snow Leopard.
Paste those lines in:
LoadModule passenger_module /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so PassengerRoot /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5 PassengerRuby /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby RailsEnv development # or production, but anyway production it's the default value if you don't specify.
Now edit the main file:
sudo mate /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
Around line 465 you will find the commented line:
465 | #Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf |
Remove the # and save the file, this will make Apache pickup extra vhost configuration file.
Open up your Control Panel, go into Shares (Condivisione in Italian), Web share, toggle the checkbox and leave it enabled to reboot Apache and let it pickup those changes.
I'm refraining from installing the complementary PassengerPane at this time since it still uses RubyCocoa instead of MacRuby and its last update is dated 2008, therefore open up:
sudo mate /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
and paste a similar code to deploy your rails application:
<Virtualhost *:80> ServerName www.yourhost.com DocumentRoot /somewhere/public # < -- be sure to point to 'public'! </VirtualHost>
Reboot again Apache as described above, as an extra as usual you can edit /etc/hosts to add your ServerName mapped to 0.0.0.0 or 127.0.0.1 or what you prefer by writing a simple line:
127.0.0.1 www.yourhost.com
There's another method of adding custom hostnames by not tampering with /etc/hosts, but I'll leave it for another blog post.
Glimmerblocker: block ads in Safari 64 bit mode on Snow Leopard
Safari AdBlock worked quite well, however since Input Managers are finally totally discontinued in Snow Leopard we can't use it in Safari running 64 bit mode.
In fact, as the developer states, a new version of Safari Adblock is out in the wild but requires you to run Safari in 32 bit mode, by checking the appropriate flag in Get Info window of Safari.
But since I'm running a 64 bit operating system, kernel and application, I took a step further and began hunting for the appropriate tool and seems that I found it.
GlimmerBlocker doesn't hack Safari, instead it runs a local proxy to filter ads, pretty neat if you ask me.
And for this reason after the installation you won't find preferences directly in Safari, instead you'll find them in your Control Panel, directly in 64 bit mode (PrefPanels that are still 32 bit requires you to reopen the whole Control Panel in 32 bit mode).
The only thing is that when blocking an ads, Adblock removed visually the ads, without leaving empty spaces, meanwhile GlimmerBlocker does (depends on the site you are visiting); however this doesn't change the fact that it's an excellent replacement.
There are also other solid features, ranging from creating your own lists, hacking with javascript to let a page behave like you want and showing youtube download links. By running a customizable proxy transparently like this possibilities are infinite, like using it with other browsers and other native applications which uses http. You can even setup your iPod or iPhone to filter ads when over WiFi.
Thumbs up for this software.
Ruby ordered hash tip with Rails
This is quite old, as many of you ruby coders knows that ruby 1.8 doesn't keep a Hash ordered, while 1.9 does.
This is seldom necessary however, there are bit of codes where it's important to have the Hash keep the order:
# ruby 1.8.7 >> {:a => "a", :c => "c", :b => "b"} => {:b => "b", :c => "c", :a => "a"} # ruby 1.9.1 >> {:a => "a", :c => "c", :b => "b"} => {:a => "a", :c => "c", :b => "b"}
If then you're using Rails and Ruby 1.8, instead of relying on some kind of black magic sorting by keys or values you can access directly the namespaced ActiveSupport::OrderedHash like this:
1 2 3 4 5 | def build_recurring_hash returning(ActiveSupport::OrderedHash.new) do |map| (1..5).each{ |n| map[n] = n } end end |
Install Git from source on Snow Leopard 64 bit
There are many methods to get git running on Snow Leopard, this is the source approach.
Go to http://git-scm.com/ and download the latest package (1.6.4.3 as of writing).
Decompress it in a directory, and run this command:
make prefix=/usr/local all
kain-osx:git-1.6.4.3 kain$ lipo -detailed_info git input file git is not a fat file Non-fat file: git is architecture: x86_64
seems good, issue:
sudo make prefix=/usr/local install
to install.
test:
kain-osx:~ kain$ git --version git version 1.6.4.3 kain-osx:~ kain$ which git /usr/local/bin/git
Of course be sure that /usr/local/bin is in your $PATH.
My Rails .gitignore
config/database.yml config/*.sphinx.conf config/s3_credentials.yml *~ *.cache *.log *.pid tmp/**/* .DS_Store db/cstore/** db/sphinx/** doc/api doc/app doc/plugins doc/*.dot coverage/* db/*.sqlite3 *.tmproj *.sw?
To always ignore those files system-wide:
git config --global core.excludesfile /path/to/.gitignore
How to install pg (postgresql) gem on Snow Leopard, 64 bit
Install PostgreSQL from source/port for this, does not currently build against binary package.
PATH should be /usr/local/pgsql.
export PATH=/usr/local/pgsql/bin:${PATH} env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" gem install pg
Or if you are using macports:
export PATH=/opt/local/lib/postgresql83/bin:${PATH} env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" gem install pg
How to mirror a SVN repository on GitHub
Start by creating a project on github.
In this example we will mirror Sphinx search engine.
On your server or local machine create a new git repository, with the same name of the github repo.
mkdir ~/src mkdir ~/src/sphinx cd ~/src/sphinx git init
Now setup the SVN repository as a remote source to track.
It should be noted that the '-T' switch points git directly to the trunk, which is fine for our purposes.
git svn init -T http://sphinxsearch.googlecode.com/svn/trunk
Perform the initial pull.
git svn fetchThis will take some time, based on the size of the remote repository.
After the first pull is finished, go ahead and run the garbage collector, this will help to speed up things and reduce size.
git gcI'm going to use a different public key for pushing to github, with no passphrase.
ssh-keygen -t dsa -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa_github_for_mirroring
Now, edit '.ssh/config' and add
Host githubmirror User git Hostname github.com IdentityFile /home/yourusername/.ssh/id_dsa_github_for_mirroring
Now, copy and paste your public key into your github account.
cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa_github_for_mirroring.pub
Add the origin, do the first push.
git remote add origin git@githubmirror:yourgitusername/sphinx.git git push origin master
To keep stuff in sync we need to do
git svn rebase
git push origin masterThis is an operation you should do every X minutes or so.
Better setup a cronjob to handle that.
mkdir scripts cd scripts nano mirror.sh
and add the following:
#!/bin/sh cd /home/yourusername/src/$1 git svn rebase git push origin master
Save and close the file.
Now edit a crontab entry:
crontab -ePress 'i' and start pasting this line:
*/15 * * * * /home/yourusername/scripts/mirror.sh sphinx >/dev/null 2>&1
Press 'ESC' and digit ':wq!' to exit.