Jose's Cerebro

Video: Public Advocate candidate Andrew Rasiej announces the “I Want My Wi-fi!” vision for New York City in conjunction with Non-Profit organizations like NYCWireless

If you live in New York City you should be very happy.  There’s a candidate for the Public Advocate that actually gets it!  You don’t believe me?  Watch this little video I recorded with my Nokia 6630, in which Rasiej proposes his visionary plan to provide broadband to NYC citizens.

Enjoy.

Download Rasiej.3gp

Thoughts on Apple's Intel strategy

I've been a bit busy over the last few weeks and I haven't had a chance to share my thoughts on the "new" MacIntel strategy. I've read the posts from developers, VARs and comments from some of the heavy-hitters like Microsoft and Adobe. From where I'm standing I think this is a great move, a win-win for customers and for the industry as a whole.

I feel bad for the Gateways and Sonys of the world. Once those MacIntel laptops/desktops/servers start hitting the market they won't know what hit them. Why? Put it this way, everyone in the industry knows that Apple makes the best hardware systems, period. With Intel now on board and with Apple's superb systems design, there's no way competitors will be able to just ship "white boxes" to the masses. Possible customers will compare their run of the mill "white boxes" to the Macs and once they start doing that, Apple has them right where they want them. Put it this way, why will I buy a Dell, HP or whatever main PC maker is out there if on a kick ass MacIntel I can run Windows, Linux and Apple's crown jewel's; Mac OS X. Did I mention that you'll only be able to run OS X on Apple hardware? Exactly. And if you are thinking that some hacker will try to get OS X working on a regular PC, think again. Do you remember TPM (Trusted Platform Module)? In a nutshell, TPM is DRM on a chip (not software). It can prevent any OS or piece of software from running if not authorized to do so. Sorry Dell and HP. You are not part of this game this time around. Steve Jobs may have had cancer on the pancreas, but he is not going crazy.

Expect the PowerBooks and iBooks to be released in January and March respectively. Shortly followed by the Mac Mini and iMac. By this time next year Intel will have its act together on the server chips and we shall see a PowerMac shipping as well as some Xserves. The Xraids are already on Intel chips, so those are already migrated.

In the next year or so you will not hear anything about an Apple-Microsoft head to head battle. But make no mistake, Leopard - the next version of OS X - will be released right around the same time Longhorn will (Dec. 2006). Once that happens it will like the early 90s all over again. And as far as Linux is concerned, I have one question for you? Why in the world would anyone run Linux when you can run OS X? Why?

That's all for now.
10-4

Installing Ruby on Rails on Tiger

UPDATE:  Rails 1.0 is available now.  Get it here easiliy for OS X and here for Windows.

I tried just about every method to get Rails going on Tiger and nothing worked well.  I followed all the other suggestions on other blogs and I was still getting errors.  I finally got it working and this is how I did it.

1. Get your Tiger DVD out and install the Xcode tools.

2. Use Arnold's Rails installer for Tiger at:

http://users.tpg.com.au/aarnold/Ruby%20on%20Rails.zip

3. Install the Standard version of MySQL from MySQL AB.  I used version 4.1.12 for OS X 10.3.  Go to the following link and download the package:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/4.1.html

4. If you want MySQL to start automatically every time you boot your machine, install the MySQLStartItem package that's bundled with the MySQL installation.

5. Type the following commands once the MySQL installer is finished:
cd /usr/local/mysql
sudo chown -R mysql data/
sudo echo
sudo ./bin/mysqld_safe &

6. Make sure everything is working ok.  Type:
/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql test

and you should see something like:

Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 3 to server version: 4.1.12-standard

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql>

If you see the message above, MySQL is running and working correctly.  Type the following command to exit from the mysql> prompt:
quit

7.  You don't want people to messing around with your machine, right?  Well, then you should set the password for the root user of MySQL.  You do this by typing the following command on a Terminal window:

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root password AGOODPASSWORD

Make AGOODPASSWORD something unique and easy for you to remember.

Once you are done with this step you've completed your MySQL installation.  All upcoming steps are Rails specific.

8. Now you need to install the Ruby MySQL bindings.  Rails uses this component to communicate with the MySQL database.  Open a Terminal window and type:

sudo gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-dir=/usr/local/mysql

9. The last step finished the steps you need in order to use Rails.  Now we are going to set up a directory for your application to reside in.  The exact location of your application directory is up to you.  Some people create their Rails application directory right off the root of their home folder.  Below you'll find a few option on where and how to create this directory.  Make sure you read this whole step before you proceed to type anything on your Terminal window. 

If you want to create your Rails directory off the root of your home folder type:

mkdir ~/whatevernameyouwanttogiveyourapp

and then:

cd ~/whatevernameyouwanttogiveyourapp
rails whatevernameyouwanttogiveyourapp

I personally like to have my Rails applications off the Sites directory.  If you want to have your apps there type:

mkdir ~/Sites/whatevernameyouwanttogiveyourapp

cd ~/Sites/whatevernameyouwanttogiveyourapp
rails whatevernameyouwanttogiveyourapp

If you are following the tutorial found in the PDF of the Agile Web Development with Rails type:

mkdir ~/work

and then:

cd ~/work
rails demo

If you want to follow the tutorial using the Sites directory (like I am), then type:

mkdir ~/Sites/work

and then:

cd ~/Sites/work
rails demo

10. Now that you've created your Rails app directory, you should test that it's actually working. On a Terminal window navigate to the directory that you created on the last step.  The command you'll type will depend on the option you used during Step 9.  Read this entire step before you type anything on your terminal window.

cd ~/whatevernameyouwanttogiveyourapp

or

cd ~/Sites/whatevernameyouwanttogiveyourapp

or if you are following the tutorial, type:

cd ~/work/demo

or if you are following the tutorial, but your app resides in the Sites folder, then:

cd ~/Sites/work/demo

Once you are in the directory that Rails created on step 9, type:

ruby script/server

11.  Test that your application is running by typing the following URL on your favorite browser:

http://localhost:3000/

That's it!

Please let me know if you have any questions or if there are changes I need to make to these instructions.