Month: September 2005

Thursday, 22 September 2005

Locally Running Multiple Rails Apps on OS X

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Locally Running Multiple Rails Apps on OS X

There’s a couple of place describing how to support multiple Rails apps locally. They were either unavailable or way more complicated than I’d like (the HowtoDeployMoreThanOneRailsAppOnOneMachine at the RubyonRails wiki was both). Here’s how I was able to get multiple Rails apps running under Apache on OS X 10.4 Tiger.

  1. Created 2 Rails apps; AppOne and AppTwo
  2. In each of the apps’ public/index.html file I changed “Welcome to Ruby on Rails” to “Welcome to AppOne” and “Welcome to AppTwo” respectively. (You don’t need to do this, though it did seem to be the easiest way to see when it works.)
  3. Opened up and unlocked NetInfoManager, duplicated machines > localhost twice, renamed one “appone” and the other “apptwo”.
  4. Opened up Apache’s httpd/httpd.conf file, uncommented NameVirtualHost *:80 and added the VirtualHost blocks.

    NameVirtualHost *:80

    <virtualhost *>
    ServerName AppOne
    DocumentRoot /Users/garrickvanburen/Rails/AppOne/public/
    <directory /Users/garrickvanburen/Rails/AppOne/public/>
    Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride all
    Allow from all
    Order allow,deny
    </virtualhost>


    <virtualhost *>
    ServerName AppTwo
    DocumentRoot /Users/garrickvanburen/Rails/AppTwo/public/
    <directory /Users/garrickvanburen/Rails/AppTwo/public/>
    Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride all
    Allow from all
    Order allow,deny
    </virtualhost>

  5. Restarted Apache > sudo apachectl graceful
  6. Opened up two browers; one to http://appone/ and the other to http://apptwo/
  7. Clapped and victoriously declared “Yea” to an empty room.

As I should have known, this blew up my non-Rails localhosting – specifically phpMyAdmin. Repeating the steps above for phpmyadmin returned access to my database.

Hoegaarden and Tivoli as Storm Provisions.

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on Hoegaarden and Tivoli as Storm Provisions.

We picked up a Tivoli iPAL a couple weeks ago. I’m glad we did. Tonight was the first big storm of the summer – without the Tivoli we would have been without a battery-powered radio.

Before the weather went south, I thought a nice Belgian beer would be refreshing in the 80 degree heat.

The wind and rain were so bad, I was sure the paperboard 6-pack holder would completely give out as I unlocked the back door.

It didn’t.

Yes, I was right. Beer is refreshing. No matter the weather. Think the advertisers know?

Anyway, by the time I got home the power was out.

While I listened to the storm roll through the weather reports. Jen “watched” the season premiere of Lost via commercial-break mobile phone conversations.

Afterwards we plugged the laptop into the Tivoli and watched the second season of the Amazing Race.

A seemingly civilized way to spend the evening.

Monday, 19 September 2005

The Second Lesson From Las Vegas

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on The Second Lesson From Las Vegas

Sam and I checked out the grand opening of the Shoppes at Woodbury Lakes last week. Yes, it is a Shoppes at Arbor Lakes for the east Metro. Same developer.

A couple years back, I did a deep dive into urban planning books and one of the texts Lewis Dijkstra recommended was Robert Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas.

The biggest thing I remember from the book; giant signs, visible from miles away, indicating giant parking lot moats around the building they’re marking.

At Woodbury Lakes (and all other modern shopping lifestyle centers), the exteriors of the buildings are somewhat different and fake. Fake windows on the fake second story. Fake brick veneer on fake pillars. Yet the interiors are identical. Just like in Vegas – the exterior of the casinos fights to be more unique, more interesting and more attractive than the next. Once inside, each casino is an identical warehouse (in a post modern twist Turtle Lake’s St. Croix Casino looks like a warehouse from the outside).

But then again, how else do you go from a vacant lot to bustling shopping village in fewer than 11 months?

I don’t remember if the the different-on-the-outside/same-in-the-inside lesson was in Venturi’s classic book. Should be.

Jonathan Coulton Spells Jonathan Coulton

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Jonathan Coulton Spells Jonathan Coulton

I can’t believe I haven’t raved about Jonathan Coulton here yet. He’s been on heavy rotation since I stumbled across Ikea nearly a year ago. The honesty and bizarre humor of his song writing is matched with some of the catchiest guitar riffs.

Everytime I hear Skullcrusher Mountain I envision Skeletor serenading an increasingly uncomfortable She-Ra.

Screwed is one of those songs you play over and over again as you come to terms with doing something really, really stupid. Flip that sentiment around and you’ve got First of May and Laptop Like You. Both magical tunes for nothing-can-go-wrong days.

Ok, two more.

That Spells DNA – “D-N-A, baby that Spells D-N-A” still cracks me up.

Dance, Soterios Johnson, Dance on the night life of NPR commentators. Brilliant. Just Brilliant – though I prefer the Terry Gross version.

Buy the way, after you give these songs a listen give Jonathan a few bucks. He’s trying to make a go of doing this as a day job.

In the early seasons of the Gilmore Girls, Grant Lee Philips played a strolling Troubador. Jonathan Coulton is a Troubador for the 21st Century.

Print Publication Says Podcasting Is a Horseless Carriage

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Print Publication Says Podcasting Is a Horseless Carriage

I like to thank Steve at Micro Persuasion for pointing out MacWorld’s sensational “Is the Clock ticking on podcasting” rant. As usual, the Jennifer Berger only listened to radio ported to podcasting (KCRW, Inside Mac Radio). These are good listens, but they are not where podcasting’s future lives. They are not even an example of what’s interesting in podcasting today – for a sample of that, just skim PodcastMN.com or audio.weblogs.com.

Podcasting existing broadcast radio programs is today a convenience for radio listeners (listeners have independence from programmers schedule) tomorrow it will be the only way for broadcasts to have any relevance. Yes, if this were the future, podcasting is dead in the water. Anyone that’s hit record knows the least engaging audio is coming from existing producers. If you will, these carriage makers only now trying to leave off the horse. Like the weblogs before them, the promise comes with creating you own and sharing it with the world.

I agree with part of Berger’s closing statement:

“The answer is in the content—it has to be valuable and of high quality—and possibly even in a different format we can’t foresee now. I also think that someone or something, the iTunes Music Store or otherwise, will need to help listeners pick their podcasts.”

We do need help on what to pay attention to, this has always been a problem. Whether with movies, tv shows, websites, or people in general. We’ve always used the same solution – each other. I don’t see that changing at all.

I object to her uses of the words “valuable” and “high quality”. In this long tail world, both are far too subjective to be requirements.

Sunday, 18 September 2005

Exchanging Petroleum’s Problems for Ethanol’s

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Exchanging Petroleum’s Problems for Ethanol’s

I’m all for a regional-specific energy solution. Petroleum makes sense in places – like Texas – where petroleum exists. Less so in Nebraska where it’s easier to grow crops than dig for oil.

Despite being more renewable than petroleum, ethanol has it’s own problems. It’s a little cheaper per gallon than gasoline (bigger subsidies?), but mpg drops.. And now reports are coming out that ethanol factories are some of the biggest polluters in the midwest (Des Moines Register, Norwegianity).

Combine this with high fructose corn syrup making us fat and the corn lobby (yes, you ADM) has some serious questions to answer.

Uncovering Secrets, Uncovering Ourselves

by Garrick van Buren 1 Comment on Uncovering Secrets, Uncovering Ourselves

Today’s Star Tribune has an article on the dangerous and frequently illegal act of urban exploring (also look for Melody Gilbert‘s documentary on the subject Into the Darkness). Outside of trespassing and putting yourself in harm’s way, authorities don’t like it because regular people are gaining knowledge of their city’s infrastructure.

On a related note, governments are pissed at Google Maps for giving regular people access to satellite photos.

Seems to me both of these are opportunities rather than risks. Opportunities to off-load surveillance and risk assessment to everyone. Rather than overworked, underpaid government employees. The Wisdom of Crowds showed us a group of independent people looking at something are smarter than a centralized committee. I’m betting on the independent group to be smarter at judging risk than a single bureaucratic authority.

We talked about privacy at a MNteractive meetup a while back. I still think having cameras everywhere is fine, as long as everyone has access to them. Google Maps is one step towards this. With that in mind, I encourage Target and the Minneapolis Police Department to provide web-based access to the surveillance cameras running down Nicollet Mall.

Because people are generally good, the benefits of better understanding our world, city, and downtown far out-weigh the risks of any nefarious activity. Like in a wiki, the more independent people invested in the success of something (a city, a website) the more self-correcting it will become.

Friday, 16 September 2005

Google Buys Then Kills Urchin

by Garrick van Buren Comments Off on Google Buys Then Kills Urchin

If you’ve been tracking the ‘Most Popular Episodes by Downloads/Day’ way down on the far left column of the website, you’ve probably noticed it hasn’t been updated in a while.

I know I have.

The great guys at TextDrive moved servers and as such needed to revise their licensing on the Urchin – the server log analysis tool Google bought a while back.

Prior to the server move, I’d grab the mp3 download numbers via Urchin and update the ‘Most Popular’ list.
After the move. Nothing. The people at Urchin won’t return TextDrive’s phone calls.

TextDrive hosts 5000 domains, 1 of them is this site. None of them have any idea how their sites are performing because Urchin is “re-evaluating” their pricing model. In the mean time, all their existing customers are left in the dark. Not cool Google. not cool.

For more, check out the Where’s Urchin? thread on the TextDrive Forum