I am not quite sure what this was like in Panther, but I’m fairly impressed by this. In particular the secure virtual memory feature impresses me as this is definitely a geek feature that really should be the default for anyone who values privacy.

Great news for all Mac Jabber users. iChat now supports jabber out of the box. I connected to my openssl based server without any problems by just typing my jabber id and password.

I was always a psi kind of guy before, but this integrates really with osx as you might expect.

Tiger the new version of OSX for Macs comes installed with the latest and grates Ruby, version 1.8.2. However there are a few problems with it. Under Panther I had used Marks ruby package

The case of the missing readline

The largest and probably easiest solvable problem is the lack of readline support, which meant that irb (Interactive Ruby) doesn’t work. Apple didn’t include readline allegedly because of license issues, but I don’t quite get that as they include gcc and other gpl/lgpl tools. There is a libreadline in /usr/lib, however it is symlinked to libedit and ruby’s irb didn’t seem to like it.

So my job number one was to get hold of readline. I first tried building it from scratch and got some wierd errors:

gcc version 4.0.0 20041026 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 4061)
powerpc-apple-darwin8-gcc-4.0.0: -compatibility_version only allowed
with -dynamiclib
make[1]: *** [libreadline.5.0.dylib] Error 1
make: [shared] Error 2 (ignored)

As I’m a mac nuby this went a bit over my head. I started a quest of reading up on the jois on dylib, library bundles etc. Which I still don’t quite understand.

In the end I ended up using DarwinPorts which I recommend. This installed readlines without a problem.

I then did a manual configure and built just the readline module:

./configure --prefix=/usr
cd ext/readline
make
sudo make install

This just builds and installs the readline support into the existing ruby library.

Rake sans database == bad rake

Now irb would work. However running rake on my rails projects gave me an even stranger problem.

No database selected: SHOW TABLES  

I got this from within rake where it would happen as it was trying to setup the database for the unit tests. At first I thought rails in it’s entirety had a problem with the database, but running the server I realised it ran fine.

I’m pretty religious about unit and functional testing in my rails apps, so this was obviosly a problem.

I still haven’t found out exactly where the problem lies, but I ended up just building my own ruby and placing it in /usr/local just like Marks. This works just fine.

./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install

Remember to place /usr/local/bin at the beginning of your path by editing /etc/profiles.

Last Friday it finally arrived, the main object of desire I’ve had in the past 3 years (besides my wife of course). My Powerbook arrived. Using a combination of ADC discounts and that I’m a business it was actually a lot cheaper than you might think.

Good news as well that it came, because right as I was getting ready to move data over from my work issued Dell notebook, the disk on the Dell started freezing the computer ending in a massive crash.

Due to a bunch of bootstrapping exercises the last real computer that I bought myself was in 2000. This dell 5000e has served me well with it’s still perfect screen. However it was by now falling apart. The disk drive has died on me 3 times now. I’m cursed I think. In the past year the PC card started acting flaky, loosing connection several times an hour on my ethernet and/or wireless card.

In the last 3 years my plan has been to buy a Powerbook. I can not count the amount of times I have gone to apple.com with much obsesiveness as a kind of big sad and very alumunum like carrot keeping me going dyring the many dark hours.

I have to say it is pretty fantastic. I nearly cried tears of joy when I opened up my first term session. Maybe it’s just the humiliation of having to use cmd.exe in the past 6 months.

The software works great and I’ve already got a bit too much software installed than is probably decent. I guess it’s alright to mention it now as it’s been announced, Tiger is fantastic. My main annoyance is that iSync still doesn’t support my Nokia 6330. I don’t know if it is possible to hack it like I know some people have done with the Motorola A1000.

Spotlight is fantastic. I actually find myself using it all the time. Almost as much as Quicksilver

So Ive been working intensely the past couple of weeks on a new project that I think will be extremely cool. Using Ruby on Rails of course.

So I just saw Rui describe his killer app which is almost uncanningly like what I am working on.

Not entirely ofcourse, but some of his more unusual features are exactly what I am working on.