All you want to do is to get up & running
on OSX Snowleopard (Ruby 1.8.7 - included with the OS & Gem 1.4.2 - after runnning gem update --system) , the sequence of steps to get a simple Rails application up & running:
> rails new app_path/app_name
cd into the app directory & add anything special to the Gemfile - which specifies Ruby gems to add to the apps library
> bundle install
>rails server
you should see the WEBrick test server start up
This post is necessary as using this built-in server seems to be really out of favour in Ruby-land (the Mongrel webserver is suggested) & what docs there are about it - well some paths & commands have changed...
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
gnu screen keyboard commands
tipsheet
I don't know what I did before I discovered Screen but I sure forget the keyboard commands all the time:
I don't know what I did before I discovered Screen but I sure forget the keyboard commands all the time:
OSX SnowLeopard: switch audio
someone just told me: if you have the volume icon in your menubar (ie. this can be turned on/off in the audio preference panel) option-click the speaker icon & it will show you a menu to change input/output on all your audio devices.
this is something I've always wanted. Someone even created a little menubar app to do the same thing (well, it does a bit more really) - so I imagine it's a recent Mac addition. Apple have a long history of additions to the UI like this, stretching basic into System 7 days & it often makes 3rd-party accessories no longer relevant or necessary. I guess it's a risky market - adding functionality that is sort of 'obvious' (but is missing) - your app might suddenly become obselete.
Centos 4: install Ruby, gem & mechanize
what's out there 'in the field' is rarely the latest & greatest version of anything. Given the necessarily arcane ways that software is packaged for varieties of linux (wtf is irb a separate package?) - having 'the latest' version of your OS distro usually only means that you can actually get packages for it:
anyway - you want to install Ruby & gem on an older centos box.
1. Use the instructions here to get ruby & gem. These are GOOD instructions - as they seem to work across several Centos versions.
2. update gem: 'gem update --system'
you want to install the 'mechanize' gem for some web-scraping, first install libxslt using yum - this should pull in all the dependencies like libxml2 etc.
There's a set of discussions about installing mechanize on ubuntu here.
anyway - you want to install Ruby & gem on an older centos box.
1. Use the instructions here to get ruby & gem. These are GOOD instructions - as they seem to work across several Centos versions.
2. update gem: 'gem update --system'
you want to install the 'mechanize' gem for some web-scraping, first install libxslt using yum - this should pull in all the dependencies like libxml2 etc.
There's a set of discussions about installing mechanize on ubuntu here.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Apple annoyances : you downloaded this file from the internets
note: that this 'hint' doesn't appear to work - it may have but certainly not with Snowleopard 10.6.4. Sigh, OSX becomes less & less functional as a server platform (that's where this 'security' feature will really screw you around).
- and snowleopard decides to show a dialogue asking permission to do anything when you try to open a file. It's an idiot feature in an otherwise OK operating system ESPECIALLY as it affects programs that try to open other programs & things start to silently fail. I've suffered long enough & decided to stop it.
open a terminal and type:
sudo defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO
reboot & it should stop happening
This was from the article: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10425093
with further ideas at: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20071029151619619
you downloaded it from the internets: does it contain cats?
- and snowleopard decides to show a dialogue asking permission to do anything when you try to open a file. It's an idiot feature in an otherwise OK operating system ESPECIALLY as it affects programs that try to open other programs & things start to silently fail. I've suffered long enough & decided to stop it.
open a terminal and type:
sudo defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO
reboot & it should stop happening
This was from the article: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10425093
with further ideas at: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20071029151619619
you downloaded it from the internets: does it contain cats?
Thursday, November 11, 2010
projects...
looks like 2010 will be bookended by postings. It's been a year to forget in many ways.
current projects (or things I've been asked to look into):
* For Love: a piece of software to convert text into morse code & play the resulting audio. For some reason or other, I started doing this with Processing (pulling in various other Java language items). It seemed like a good idea at the time, as a framework that encompassed transferring data via http, reading & cleaning up text & generating audio. Ultimately, this app is just a client for a backend which aggregates & stores messages sent from web forms, text message, tweets, whatever, in a predictable format.
* For Money: a package of scripts to generate a quite large brochure-style website from catalogues (manufacturers, items, pricing etc) in an easy-to-edit form (such as Excel spreadsheet). The plan is to employ the site's existing structure & styling but to re-engineer how the content ('the information') is maintained & updated. This is like a classic case of 'separation of content & presentation' that used to be all the rage a few years ago when XML was touted as the next big thing.
I'm using - as a model (& it's the reason I started the conversation to begin with) - something similar I created using Perl & XSL transformation several years ago, which was a solution to create several fiddly table-based webpages that matched data & download links for a file repository at my previous employer.
* sort-of For Money: building new mail/file etc. servers to replace a few boxes for a long-standing associates. I'll probably end up re-cabling their network onsite as well...after the renovations... As this is based upon 64-bit Centos linux, that could have it's intriguing/frustrating aspects as well as this is going out there the the bleeding-edge for some aspects .
* For Love - or something like that: I recently completed building an Octomod & it seems to be working fine. This is a device to convert digital commands (from a computer, via USB) to analogue control voltages. In the event that someone wants to say, use this from an application like Ableton Live they need to map MIDI data from to the OSC data that the device understands & converts. Max patches & also Max 4 Live device to facilitate this conversion are a starting point. Ultimately, a standalone app (could be created using Max) which does this work would be the best for people who don't own either Max or Live.
current projects (or things I've been asked to look into):
* For Love: a piece of software to convert text into morse code & play the resulting audio. For some reason or other, I started doing this with Processing (pulling in various other Java language items). It seemed like a good idea at the time, as a framework that encompassed transferring data via http, reading & cleaning up text & generating audio. Ultimately, this app is just a client for a backend which aggregates & stores messages sent from web forms, text message, tweets, whatever, in a predictable format.
* For Money: a package of scripts to generate a quite large brochure-style website from catalogues (manufacturers, items, pricing etc) in an easy-to-edit form (such as Excel spreadsheet). The plan is to employ the site's existing structure & styling but to re-engineer how the content ('the information') is maintained & updated. This is like a classic case of 'separation of content & presentation' that used to be all the rage a few years ago when XML was touted as the next big thing.
I'm using - as a model (& it's the reason I started the conversation to begin with) - something similar I created using Perl & XSL transformation several years ago, which was a solution to create several fiddly table-based webpages that matched data & download links for a file repository at my previous employer.
* sort-of For Money: building new mail/file etc. servers to replace a few boxes for a long-standing associates. I'll probably end up re-cabling their network onsite as well...after the renovations... As this is based upon 64-bit Centos linux, that could have it's intriguing/frustrating aspects as well as this is going out there the the bleeding-edge for some aspects .
* For Love - or something like that: I recently completed building an Octomod & it seems to be working fine. This is a device to convert digital commands (from a computer, via USB) to analogue control voltages. In the event that someone wants to say, use this from an application like Ableton Live they need to map MIDI data from to the OSC data that the device understands & converts. Max patches & also Max 4 Live device to facilitate this conversion are a starting point. Ultimately, a standalone app (could be created using Max) which does this work would be the best for people who don't own either Max or Live.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
audio filters & such
I am quite interested in a device like the M Resonator
This machine is essentially a couple of filters in a feedback network. Notwithstanding any particular sound qualities their filters might have,it's a reasonably effective (& old!) idea for shaping music...and it would be fairly easy to build a crappy knock-off myself, using DIY. After all, there's plenty of schematics for the building blocks available on the web.
It's missing MIDI control though. That would be a cute arduino/mididuino project. Edit: in the sense of adding MIDI control to a filter - not simulating audio-rate DSP via an Arduino.
I'm a bit of a Korg Kaoss pad enthusiast but some kind of multi-band resonant filter - with envelope control would be a real nice thing to have as a way of shaping the spectrum of music. Actually, sounds like I'm describing a modular synth now. Especially something a little like the Doepfer A 127 module
This machine is essentially a couple of filters in a feedback network. Notwithstanding any particular sound qualities their filters might have,it's a reasonably effective (& old!) idea for shaping music...and it would be fairly easy to build a crappy knock-off myself, using DIY. After all, there's plenty of schematics for the building blocks available on the web.
It's missing MIDI control though. That would be a cute arduino/mididuino project. Edit: in the sense of adding MIDI control to a filter - not simulating audio-rate DSP via an Arduino.
I'm a bit of a Korg Kaoss pad enthusiast but some kind of multi-band resonant filter - with envelope control would be a real nice thing to have as a way of shaping the spectrum of music. Actually, sounds like I'm describing a modular synth now. Especially something a little like the Doepfer A 127 module
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