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Yep, my blog now has a new design! It has been over a year since the last one, and I really wanted to try out a design I’ve had on my sketchpad for ages. I can’t remember where I saw this style of blog (dark, light, dark, stuff at bottom etc), but if it does come to me, or I see it again, I’ll put a nod in the right direction, or change it completely if I find it is too similar (This is why using a random sketch isn’t so great, you forget sources, and it looks like plagarism).
Design
- My navigation is now at the top, but has now been joined by the search box.
- On the bottom I now keep a short bit about me (which will soon link to the about page), some other links to RSS feeds and the like, and a sampler of gallery pictures (also to be implemented)
*Tag clouds now appear at the bottom of most pages when there is no comments or older posts to display.
Site Layout
- The front page of the site now displays the latest blog post, as well as some of the more recent ones.
- The Weblog page is now where the archives reside, and all my old posts can be found there.
- On each post’s dedicated page, there is short summary of the post up top, just so people coming straight into the site know where they are.
- There is a dedicated Tag Cloud page, making it easy to see what subjects I blog most often (bike is currently miles in the lead).
- These is now a comment feed for the whole site, individual comment feeds for each post, and feeds for each of the tags. I’ll link to the last of those soon so you can try them out.
Architecture
- Ruby on Rails! Yep, my new site is the result of about two weeks of work with RoR. No more PHP for this blog!
- Now with tagging. One of my main reasons for changing languages was that I could add new features such as tagging without having to work with old stale code, plus it let me learn something new.
Operating System
Installing mod_fastcgi on Fedora Core 5 was a bit of a nightmare, so I decided to change linux distributions. As I write this I’m currently running Ubuntu Breezy under Parallels desktop on my Macbook. Dapper doesn’t run under parallels for some strange reason, and the Edgy beta is also having problems, so I’ll stick with Breezy for these initial tests. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll also be trying out Solaris 10 and FreeBSD.
Currently the site is served using… Lighttpd under Ubuntu Dapper.
Still to Come
As with all my new releases, it’s a little rough around the edges. The backend is still pretty much a Rails scaffold affair, and I still have features to add such as…
- Gallery, might simply be Flickr, Zoomr, or Smugmug integration, I’m undecided as yet.
- About, Bike, Contact, Design, and Links pages.
Side Effects
Obviously all these changes mean that some URLs have changed.
- All the old blog post addresses will still work, but redirect to their new equivalents.
- The RSS feed for blog posts has also now moved to feed://douglasfshearer.dyndns.org/feeds/blog, so make sure you update your RSS readers.
See anything wrong?
If you see anything wrong, please don’t hesitate to get in touch: dougal.s@gmail.com
The past few days I’ve been having a play with Ruby on Rails. After all the praise on the web for it, i thought it was about time I gave it a try.
Most languages and frameworks require you to have a server, either as a stand-alone or running on your desktop system, to test the code. Rails comes complete with it’s own server, Webrick allowing you change and test code very quickly, The shipped version of Ruby on OS X 10.4 is unfortunately broken; you need to compile it yourself using the Xcode Tools (a free download from Apple) and these instructions. The instructions tell you to install Lighhttpd and fastCGI, but I just used Webrick, as it seems to involve a lot less fiddling around when I don’t need a fully blown server on my Macbook. Thankfully OS X 10.5 ‘Leopard’ is going to come with Rails already installed.
When I actually got down to doing some code, it was pretty easy to pick up. Compared to the time it takes to prototype and build a blog app or similar in PHP, it took about 15 minutes in Rails, and that’s with no previous Rails nor Ruby Experience! It’s very impressive how Rails matched your database with your business objectts, and I look forward to trying to build some more complex web apps using it.
After reading a Blender benchmarking, I decided to benchmark my new Macbook to compare to the other results.
I tested my Macbook and my flatmate’s Dell PC, just to give a comparison. The specs of these was as follows:
- Dell – Intel P4 2.4Ghz HT, 512MB DDR 400. Windows XP Home SP2.
- MacBook – Intel Core Duo 2.0Ghz, 512MB DDR2 667. Mac OS X 10.4.6.
For each build/machine two test were run, one with multiple threads off, and a second test with multiple threads turned on. This is a new feature which is part of the new render pipeline 2.42.
First up, the Dell running with Blender 2.42 RC 1" – One thread- 2:12. Multi threads- 2:13. (All times in M:SS format)
Next up I benchmarked the Macbook running the OS X PowerPC version of the Blender 2.42 RC1 release, requiring the use of Rosetta to translate the PowerPC instructions to Intel instructions. Times – One thread – 4:37. Multi threads- 3:22.
Lastly I benchmarked an Intel native version of Blender on the Macbook. This is a rather old build from around March. Some of the UI isn’t working as well as it could currently, with menus requiring you to hit F9 (Expose All Windows) twice to get them to render. Times – One thread- 1:37. Multi threads- 1.15.
As expected, the render times for the Intel Version were much faster than the PowerPC times. The times for the Dell were probably hindered by the fact the Windows renderer is known to be much slower than the Linux and OS X versions. I’ll try the linux version on the PC tomorrow, and Windows and Linux versions (If a live-CD exists yet) on the Macbook.
If anyone can point me in the direction of a newer Intel build, that would be greatly appreciated.
After about 20 hours of compilation, my Mac Intel build of the NeoOffice 2.0 Alpha 3 source code is ready to go. I’m not really sure if I can distribute this build, as I think it may infringe on NeoOffice’s trademarks. If you want a copy, I ‘may’ be able to give you a copy if you ask nicely in the comments.
It certainly is faster than the PPC build running in Rosetta, and is faster than PPC Microsoft Office as well. Now is the time to encourage people to use NeoOffice over MS Office, while MS Office is behind with their Intel transition.
If you want to try building this yourself, you’ll need the XCode packages, which are downloadable from Apples developer site. You’ll need to register, but it’s free. I then followed the build instructions available on the NeoOffice site. It took about 20 hours to compile all the packages on my Macbook 2.0Ghz 512MB, but it will be faster if you have more RAM.
If you need to be on the cutting edge, and use Java 5 instead of Java 1.4, then follow the instructions documenting the required changes on the Apple Developer mailing lists.
You can get an Intel binary directly from NeoOffice, but only by paying into their early access program. Think of this as a donation. If you build your own copy, that probably means you use this software, so consider making a donation. If anyone knows about whether or not I can distribute this software, then please get back to me in the comments.
Note: When you build this on an Intel machine you get an Intel binary, when you build it on a PPC machine you get a PPC Binary. As far as I know there is no way to make a Universal Binary outside of XCode, or by using Intel’s own compilers.
Since there isn’t a Linux version of Apple iTunes, I’ve been looking into other methods of streaming music to my workstation.
I basically want a system that works similar to what the Airport Express does. I want to control the music from my iBook, and simply stream it to my workstation over LAN. The workstation is connected to my speakers in another room, and would simply decode the stream.
After giving up the search, I was looking for something else, when I came across this Engadget how-to covering a method of accessing your itunes music library on your mobile phone.
I took the basic idea, and came up with this for streaming iTunes to my Linux workstation:
- Install Cycling 74’s SoundFlower onto your system (Mac OS X Only). Make sure you restart after the install. It’s a small system plugin that appears as a sound device in the sound pane of System Preferences. Set both the input and output device in this pane to ‘Soundflower (2ch)’. In this way the Mac is fooled into using whatever sound would usually come out of the speakers as an input instead of the microphone.
- Now install Skype on both your Mac, and your receiving system (This can be any OS that accepts Skype). Make sure you are signed in with two different Skype accounts.
- Dial one machine from the other, what way round doesn’t matter.
- Start iTunes or any other audio producing app on your Mac. Now any sound that you play on your Mac will be played on the speakers attached to your other system.
I tried this out with my iBook running OS X 10.4, and my workstation running Fedora Core 5 Linux. The sound quality isn’t the best, not as good as it could be, but bearable. Perhaps a LAN only audio streaming app would be better, as this would have a higher bitrate codec. Any suggestions?
Update
I thought I might be able to use VLC to stream the audio over my LAN, but turns out UDP unicast from a device isn’t supported under the OS X version. Would work fine from Windows → Linux etc, but not Mac → Linux. The search is still on…
Update 2
I’ve now tried Darwin Streaming Server, the open source version of the Apple Quicktime Streaming Server. This turned out to be way too bloated and complex, and would only let me point to files that the client could stream, rather than pushing a stream taken from a device (In our case the Soundflower ‘device’).
Yesterday I while attempting to rename some video files in iTunes, I found that it hangs the whole iTunes apps for several minutes before the operation is complete. Why should this take so long?
To cut a long story short, I ended up with a corrupt iTunes Music Library file, resulting in iTunes crashing every time I tried opening it. Luckily I have been backing my entire home folder up on a weekly basis, so I don’t have to worry about loosing too much.
I do this by zipping my entire home folder into a gzip file, and storing it on my samba server. The terminal command I use for this is as follows.
$ sudo tar -cvzpf /Volumes/backup_location/backup/todays_date.tgz /Users/username
That is intended to be all on one line, copy and paste will pick this up. You’ll be prompted for an your administrator password, then it will get to work. Insert your own location and username to complete this. If you have many users you can always zip the entire users folder. The date is just a personal preference so I can keep several weeks worth of backups.
This has saved me once so far, and is definitely worth doing.
Had my first August exam today, went really well. I think all the work I did for building this site helped me out on at least the
SQL and
XML front. Computer Science down, maths tomorrow! Woo! :-/
Cycled up to the exam today, and cycled back, both times I had large coughing fits upon stopping. Maybe time to go to the doctors I think. Been two weeks off the bike now, but I haven’t had any of last weeks fevers again thankfully
Downloaded a free open source 3D modeling app today called Blender 3D. Works on WIndows, OS X and Linux, so something for everyone. The 5 minutes I played with it it seems similar to maya in terms of controls. Will play around with it more when I have time, but expect some 3D artwork soon.
