The latest programming fad: Ruby on Rails

I guess I have to figure out what this one is. O'Reilly is always the best source: ONLamp.com: Rolling with Ruby on Rails.

What is Ruby?

Ruby is a pure object-oriented programming language with a super clean syntax that makes programming elegant and fun. Ruby successfully combines Smalltalk's conceptual elegance, Python's ease of use and learning, and Perl's pragmatism. Ruby originated in Japan in the early 1990s, and has started to become popular worldwide in the past few years as more English language books and documentation have become available.

What is Rails?

Rails is an open source Ruby framework for developing database-backed web applications. What's special about that? There are dozens of frameworks out there and most of them have been around much longer than Rails. Why should you care about yet another framework?

What would you think if I told you that you could develop a web application at least ten times faster with Rails than you could with a typical Java framework? You can--without making any sacrifices in the quality of your application! How is this possible?

Part of the answer is in the Ruby programming language. Many things that are very simple to do in Ruby are not even possible in most other languages. Rails takes full advantage of this. The rest of the answer is in two of Rail's guiding principles: less software and convention over configuration...

OS X Tiger includes the Ruby interpreter.

MacWorld: Secrets of Safari

MacWorld did secrets of Firefox a while back. Now they do Safari. News to me! I never even noticed the 'add to iPhoto Library' feature.

Controlling Apple AirTunes with SlimServer, or how I was turned to the Darkseid

I've been around long enough to know how pernicious and nasty these DRM (digital rights management) schemes are. I knew sooner or later they'd turn me to the Darkseid where one skirts the edges of the foul abyss of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. (DMCA badness befouls both Republicans and Dems alike.)

So my 3,500 iTunes tunes are 99.99% from our large CD library. Only a few are AppleStore FairPlay DRMd. Still, they are largely AAC, which is theoretically an open (mp4) standard. All the same, I've been cautious.

Good. Because Apple has broken their implied contract. The contract worked like this:

1. We will grudgingly accept Apple's four DRM scheme as the best of a bad bunch.
2. Apple will provide us solutions that work.

With their failure to provide a half-decent remote control solution for iTunes/AirTunes Apple has left us with no good way to stream music from a server based iTunes library to an AirTunes speaker. Even the Keyspan remote is a weak solution. We needed an Apple solution at least as good as the SoundBridge and SlimDevice solutions; Apple has persistently failed to provide.

So it's with a clear conscience that I now skirt the twilight zone of SlimServer, the iTunes LAME plug-in, and even (dare I mention the word?) JHymm (though the last is least important). Solutions that are legal today, but certainly unpleasing to Apple.

Thus far the results are remarkably better than my attempts with AirTunes (I walk upstairs to adjust the volume?!), TuneConnect (no playlists, still this is very promising) and NetConnect (disappointing). At the moment SlimServer and iTunes are running on my iMac upstairs in a background user session. SlimServer is reading in AAC files, transcoding them using the iTunes LAME plug-in, and streaming them as high quality .mp3 files to iTunes. iTunes is then transcoding them to FLAC (I think) files and streaming them to my remote AirPort Express, the music then plays on my speakers. I can control play from a web browser on my iBook, or I could use the Java softsqueeze app for remote control. This cost nothing, though it all works better if one buys the Squeezebox hardware remote.

Weird. Kludgy. Hard setup with a few odd bugs I had to work around. Limited documentation. Had to download and install several pieces. It will all work better, of course, the further I move from Apple's DRM vision.

I hope they're listening. Apple has the capability to provide a great solution, but they're choosing to really irritate their customers.

Spotlight can now index OpenDocument files (OpenOffice, NeoOffice/J)

NeoLight (NeoOffice Spotlight Importer) - Spotlight Plugins: "A plug-in that allows Spotlight to index metadata and content within the files created by NeoOffice/J and OpenOffice.org. It is compatible with documents generated by NeoOffice/J 0.8.4, NeoOffice/J 1.1, OpenOffice.org 1.x, and OpenOffice.org 2.0 (OpenDocument)."

Kensington Stereo Dock for iPod

The alternative to using Apple's new integrated cradle: Amazon.com: Electronics: Kensington 33164 iPod StereoDock Charger and Transmitter for iPod, iPod Mini, iPod Nano or iPod Photo.

I wonder if it really charges the G3 (rest can charge via USB).

Aperture -- not for the iMac?

I'm getting bad vibes about Apple's Aperture.

The video card in the iMac I bought a few months ago is not supported. In fact, neither is the video card in the iMac they're selling now.

Here's the supported list:

One of the following graphics cards: ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition; ATI Radeon X850 XT; ATI Radeon 9800 XT or 9800 Pro; ATI Radeon 9700 Pro; ATI Radeon 9600 XT, 9600 Pro, or 9650; ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 or 9600; NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL or 6800 GT DDL; NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT; NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500

My 3 month old iMac has an ATI Radeon 9600. The new iMac has an

ATI Radeon X600 Pro (17-inch model) or X600 XT (20-inch model) graphics processor with 128MB of DDR memory.

And yet the G4 PowerBook's card (ATI Mobility) is on the list.

Did Apple explicitly decide to shut out the iMac customer base? If they did, they will lose me as a customer.

Update: My buddy Andrew dug deeper in the tech specs and found a different list. Looks like this was a marketing error. The iMacs qualify. Phew. I want this software!

• ATI Radeon x600 Pro or x600 XT
• ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition
• ATI Radeon X850 XT
• ATI Radeon 9800 XT or 9800 Pro
• ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
• ATI Radeon 9600, 9600 XT, 9600 Pro, or 9650
• ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 or 9600
• NVIDIA GeForce 6600 LE or 6600
• NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL or 6800 GT DDL
• NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500

Keyspan AirTunes remote (Airport Express)

Amazon.com: Electronics: Keyspan URM-17A Express Remote Control

This is the only hardware device I know of for controlling AirTunes play. The only software option that works for me thus far is TuneConnect running on an iBook.