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topic: Free Map Services for Websites? in the forum: technical discussion › software

york 2006-04-22, 08:13 #1

since Feb 2006 · 112 posts · Location: Chicago, IL
Group memberships: co-owner, hardcore appletalker

Yup.Google Maps are the way to go. And you'll need to find a good geocoder too most likely, I like geocoder.us but it obviously is region-specific.

topic: which of your gadgets do you dream of sledge-hammering into oblivion? (AKA "the devices you love to hate") in the forum: community › appletalker lounge

york 2006-04-22, 08:05 #2

since Feb 2006 · 112 posts · Location: Chicago, IL
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In reply to post ID 2077

My cell phone. It sucks: no reception, dropped calls. But the battery life is great since I can never use it!

topic: all quiet on the "i"-stern front in the forum: community › appletalker lounge

york 2006-04-22, 08:03 #3

since Feb 2006 · 112 posts · Location: Chicago, IL
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In reply to post ID 2089

I'd agree that it's rather quiet in Mac-world right now. Everyone's waiting for software to get updated for i386 and for the new Power Macs.

Personally, I've been scarce because it's the last few weeks of my time at college and I'm completely overburdened with work.

Although, isn't WWDC coming up soon?

topic: ruby on rails in the forum: technical discussion › software

york 2006-04-01, 09:59 #4

since Feb 2006 · 112 posts · Location: Chicago, IL
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In reply to post ID 1551

Quote by Chuckit on 2006-03-23, 16:29:
Nah, it's not nearly as universal as PHP. The Ruby on Rails site has a list of hosts that are known to support it. Others will sometimes install it on request. But yeah, Rails doesn't have the advantage of being the only game in town in 1997, so not everybody has it yet.

To be fair though, a lot hosts are still on PHP 4, which to me is useless. Once I started using PHP5 a year ago, all of my code is heavily object oriented. OO programming in PHP 4 is terrible, and not compatible with the ways it has changed in version 5. So while finding a host that lets you run Ruby/Rails is a challange at times, it's not too different from finding PHP5, and due to the buzz around Rails, I think Ruby is being adopted faster.

In any case, in my experience is that you usually get what you pay for in hosting, so a $5 a month plan is probably not going to have everything you need to do serious web app development, like a version control system for example.

As far as the book go: keep in mind that Rails is a new framework, and that many book were being written as the API was being developed. Because of this there are lots of new features and changes in Rails that may or may not appear in your books. I bought the first Rails book, and while I learned a lot, there is a decent amount of code in examples that is out-of-date with the current vrsions of Rails. IThe code shown still works, but uses depreciated methods or different syntax. And I haven't even moved to 1.1 yet. There are also new topics like plugins or engines that didn't even exist (at least to end users) when my book was released.

Once I grasped the basics of the framework and Ruby in general (still have plenty to learn though), I really just keep a browser open with these two sites:
Rails Framework Documentation
(Ruby) Core API

I still refer back to the books occasionally to get some insight on broader concepts.

Also I would advise anyone learning Rails to use MySQL for there first project (at least) unless they are already familiar with another database package. Rails works great with other databases (I'm using Postgres for one right now), but it's not worth having to learn a new language, framework, and database at the same time. Plus there seem to be some quirks with Postgres that don't exists on MySQL, although these have been disappearing and this could be mostly resolved in 1.1.

topic: ruby on rails with apache and fastcgi in the forum: technical discussion › software

york 2006-04-01, 09:41 #5

since Feb 2006 · 112 posts · Location: Chicago, IL
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In reply to post ID 1748

As far as I know, you should be able to set up separate virtual hosts to accomidate as many testing environments as you have. Thats what I do, although mostly with various PHP5 environments.

You probably want to check out Locomotive. It makes running Rails really easy through a nice GUI. No more editing config files just to do some web app development.

In general webrick is only for development use, and is much slower than using Apache or Lightpd. In a production environment you'd never use it. I'd say that you might as well develop in an environment as similar to a production one as possible, but that's just me.

topic: Headphones (jpegs) in the forum: community › appletalker lounge

york 2006-03-23, 04:44 #6

since Feb 2006 · 112 posts · Location: Chicago, IL
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In reply to post ID 1492

I have two pairs of decent headphones. Sony MDR-V600:
[Image: http://infiniteexpanse.net/images/sonymdrv600.jpg]

and Grado SR-60:
[Image: http://infiniteexpanse.net/images/gradosr60.jpg]

I've had the Grados about two years and I love them. They aren't as comfortable for long periods as the Sonys, but I think they sound a little nicer, and I think are more neutral. They also have richer bass, at least to my ears. The are are open-designed so unfortunately they block little room noise, which led me to purchase the Sonys.

The Sony pair is a recent purchase, but I find myself using them daily. They have a nice response overall, and I am pleased with them.

Both are roughly $70-90USD.

topic: Microsoft Hands Christmas Buying Season to Apple. in the forum: community › appletalker lounge

york 2006-03-23, 04:23 #7

since Feb 2006 · 112 posts · Location: Chicago, IL
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In reply to post ID 1517

I'm going to go ahead and guess that the analysts are completely wrong. I don't see who is going to care that Vista is delayed:

í¢â‚¬Â¢ Average users don't care about OSes at all, let alone versions. You think Best Buy or whoever is going to tell consumers to wait? Not likely.
í¢â‚¬Â¢ Corporate customers (which could potentially be high volume purchases) aren't going to be upgrading to Vista for a while. No IT person would ever upgrade to a new OS untill it had been out for a while and th bugs/quirks could be dealt with. Plus there has to be a reason to upgrade in the first place, which, uh, Vista doesn't really have at this point.
í¢â‚¬Â¢ Education market- probably similar to corporate

So that leaves your PC enthusiasts, which are, what, .01% of the market?

The reality is that Apple's hurdle is to get PC users to consider the Mac at all. It doesn't even matter if Vista is out or not. Until Macs become options for more people, Apples marketshare will continue to grow slowly.

topic: who has the oldest computer running OSX? in the forum: technical discussion › hardware

york 2006-03-23, 04:13 #8

since Feb 2006 · 112 posts · Location: Chicago, IL
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In reply to post ID 1525

Quote by euphras:
I don't trust CDs or DVDs as backup media anymore because too many remained unreadable after some time.

Same here. I only use hard disks for backup.

topic: ruby on rails in the forum: technical discussion › software

york 2006-03-23, 04:03 #9

since Feb 2006 · 112 posts · Location: Chicago, IL
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In reply to post ID 1532

I've used Ruby on Rails to build several projects. I'm no expert, butI think I know a decent amount about it and Ruby in general.

If you want to try using it, I'd say that it's worth a shot. As far as the MVC concepts are concerned, in Rails it's pretty straight forward: Models are objects that represent one row of data from a database, views are basically templates for web pages, and controllers are what do the actual work- the application logic. Controllers are broken down into actions, which are really just methods of a controller object.

Rails is really quite clean and easy to get used to. You obviously need to learn Ruby but the language itself is pretty simple. Just remember that everything is an object, so you call

array.push(element)

and not

array_push($array, $element)

(OK actually you can also do

array << element

but that's just shorthand).Functions names are similar to PHP (actuall much closer to Perl) but there are a few little quirks (like else if is elsif in Ruby). The most confusing aspect of Ruby to me is the lack of strict rules- there is more than one way to do most things such as formatting code blocks, parenthesis around function arguments are optional, etc.

It will take a while to learn the Rails API though, and this is where you will spend most of your time. Compared to the Cocoa API it is a lot smaller and more managable.

If you want to get into AJAX I find it to be clunky in Rails right now. There is another framework called Nitro that actually appears to have a better approach to AJAX, but I haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

I like the idea of .NET, which is to create a standard API that can be used by any language with a bridge. It would be nice if Apple did something like this, so we could write Cocoa apps in something other than Objective C. Actually there is a Ruby-Cocoa bridge that is supposed to work fairly well, but syntactically it is sort of awkward due to the way methods are called in Objective C.

To get back to your question, madra, I think that Ruby itself is actually easier to learn than PHP. Rails is quite powerful, and does a good job of exposing that power when you want to get into it, but staying simple the rest of the time.

This post was edited on 2006-03-23, 04:08 by york.

topic: Is the quirk of OS 10 "Tiger" resolved (Appletalk unable to connect to machines running OS 8)? in the forum: technical discussion › connectivity

york 2006-03-16, 07:00 #10

since Feb 2006 · 112 posts · Location: Chicago, IL
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In reply to post ID 1355

Just wondering: did you try the connection going the other way (from the Quadra to the Tibook)?

topic: iQuadra in the forum: community › appletalker lounge

york 2006-03-16, 06:57 #11

since Feb 2006 · 112 posts · Location: Chicago, IL
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In reply to post ID 1365

If it is the bus that is limiting the playback of DivX, there is a hardware hack that will make the machine a 550/100 or 600/100 (depending on your processer).

Edit: it's here.

topic: I'm not much of a world traveler.... in the forum: community › appletalker lounge

york 2006-03-15, 06:02 #12

since Feb 2006 · 112 posts · Location: Chicago, IL
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In reply to post ID 1335

I trust everyone has been to Engrish?

Nice find BTW.

topic: How to apply sepia or indigo effect to black/white pics in the forum: technical discussion › software

york 2006-03-15, 05:59 #13

since Feb 2006 · 112 posts · Location: Chicago, IL
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In reply to post ID 1336

I've found that when going from color to black and white it can help to look at the different channels and build your b/w image from one or more of those. I think this is what you eluded to laeth. Then an 'indigo effect' can be built as was suggested, or using adjustment layers which is the way I usually go.

topic: dontcha just love support staff?! in the forum: community › appletalker lounge

york 2006-03-14, 07:50 #14

since Feb 2006 · 112 posts · Location: Chicago, IL
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In reply to post ID 1280

I'm pretty sure that I have ridiculously good luck with computer hardware (aside from the Firewire hard drive I fried. Note to self: Check the power rating on AC/DC when plugging them into computer equipment).

I've had an iBook 500 (one of the ones that was covered by the motherboard recall) and a Dual G5 for a year and a half. I've had bad RAM once, but never a need to call Apple. And I've never purchased Applecare either.

I'm a little afraid of buying a new computer. I have to get a lemon eventually.

topic: iChat - AIM - Instant Messages in the forum: technical discussion › software

york 2006-03-14, 07:46 #15

since Feb 2006 · 112 posts · Location: Chicago, IL
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In reply to post ID 1307

Quote by Gamoe:
... but I discarded my "@mac.com" address a long time ago and haven't bothered with the re-branded .mac service at all.

I did the same, but mostly because I outgrew their hosting options. You can get a heck of a lot more than twhat Apple offers for $100 a year, except you lose out on the special .Mac syncing and whatnot. But for me it's a worthwhile tradeoff.

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