Ever since i heard about node.js i have been curious to try out one of these things. My ideas on it will come later but, for now, here are the required steps to make Sproutcore work well on OSX snow leopard. And i say work well because if you rely on the vanilla Ruby 1.8.7 that comes with snow leopard you will have a very crappy experience with Sproutcore; It will take approximately 35 seconds to reload any webpage every time you make a code change. And that will make you not want to use it at all.

Fortunately a lot of people have been kind enough to explain me, on twitter, how to make it faster.

But let’s start from the beginning:

1. Install Sproutcore using GEM, like so:

sudo gem install sproutcore

Note: I don’t remember if gem comes installed with snow leopard. If not, you can always google it

2. Follow the rest of the steps to setup your first application

By now you should have realized that (if you are using OSX snow leopard) the damn thing is freaking slow. So…

3. …download and compile the Ruby 1.9 source code for OSX

tar xzvf ruby-1.9.1-p376.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.9.1-p376
./configure --enable-shared --enable-pthread CFLAGS=-D_XOPEN_SOURCE=1
make
sudo make install

Note: The actual version could be different, as stuff evolves over time

4. Update the symbolic link on your system to point to the new ruby installation

sudo rm /usr/bin/ruby
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/ruby /usr/bin/ruby

5. Make sure the correct Ruby version is in use

ruby --version

Should return something like this:

ruby 1.9.1p376 (2009-12-07 revision 26041) [i386-darwin10.3.0]

6. Install thin. This server is faster than the one that comes with Sproutcore

sudo gem install thin

7. All done. Give it a try again

If you try to refresh the page of a Sproutcore example now you will notice the speed difference, like night to day. Have fun coding client-side desktop web applications

I’m planning to also take a look at Capuccino, another similar framework, but created in Objective-J – a derivative of Objective-C for javascript. Looks interesting and it might get me into iPhone development at last

Related posts:

1. Recover iSync after removing it from OSX
2. Websockets tutorial/example with pywebsocket

Nevertheless, between trying out iTunes, Songbird, and a few other options, i have always felt like there should be something, you know, simple and memory efficient. Don’t get me wrong, i love the interface on iTunes. And i do love what the guys at songbird are trying to accomplish. But the fact remains: I want a music player for OSX that does not freeze whenever i task-switch back to it. This happens on a 4GB ram macbook pro with both iTunes and Songbird!

So, a lot of google queries later, i came across Cog. It’s a very minimalistic music player that does one thing: it plays music. No multiple playlists, no plugins, no fuzz, it plays music. Period.

Time will tell if i’ll stick to it or miss something, but so far so good.

If anyone knows a better one, please let me know

Related posts:

1. OSX: Preventing iTunes from launching when pressing multimedia key
2. Video speed controls on youtube’s HTML5 player

1. No camera – Really? In this day and age of videoconferencing?!? What are you guys thinking?
2. No GPS – It does have assisted (wifi/3G) GPS but it’s not quite the same, is it? Especially when you don’t have wifi or 3G available;
3. No magical, shiny, new multi-touch UI paradigm – Maybe i was affected too much by the hype that has been created around it but i like to be surprised. And i have to say i wasn’t. Apart from the changes to the iWork suite to make it usable on a touch screen there is nothing really awesome about it;
4. No multitasking – No comments there. I wonder if it has copy & paste?
5. No phone calls (and SMS’s) – Has 3G but you cannot make phone calls or send messages? Doesn’t make sense to me;
6. 64 GBs is really not enough for what you are going to want to carry around in it.

Now things that i *do* like in the iPad, so that this is not a bashing post:

1. It looks like the mockups that drifted on the internet before. And those looked cool;
2. The iBook application and store. As long as they support free/open PDF files;
3. Seems to be powerful enough to play basic 3D games (quake II – like);
4. Battery life is really nice. 10 hours for normal usage and up to 1 month in stand-by mode;
5. The price was a nice surprise. I always said that they would compete with netbooks’ prices and apparently i was not mistaken;
6. I love the keyboard dock and also the hard cover that changes into stand. Really clever!

That being said, i believe this is nothing more than a big iPod touch (not even an iPhone, since you cannot make phone calls) and will not deserve my $499 this time.

Related posts:

1. Some Apple tablet features
2. iPad jailbroken one day after coming out. That was fast.

No related posts.

Choosing another default email application

1. Open the Mail application (/Applications/Mail).
2. From the Mail menu, choose Preferences.
3. Click the General button.
4. Choose your default email client from the pop-up menu.

Choosing another default Web browser

1. Open Safari (/Applications).
2. From the Safari menu, choose Preferences.
3. Click the General button.
4. Choose your default internet browser from the pop-up menu.

As an extremely important side note, NEVER DELETE Safari OR Mail. You may need to change your default applications later and that is the only (easy) way to do it.

Read the full article, here.

Related posts:

1. OSX: Preventing iTunes from launching when pressing multimedia key
2. Recover iSync after removing it from OSX

Here are the steps. You can do one of 3 things to restore isync:

1. Restore iSync from your Time Machine backup (or any other backup you’ve made).
2. Copy a fresh, unmodified version of iSync from another Mac running the same version of Mac OS X.
3. Re-install iSync from the original Mac OS X Installation Disks by following the instructions below:
   1. Download Pacifist (a program that allows installing parts of Mac OS X)
   2. Insert your original Mac OS X Installation Disk.
   3. Open Pacifist and click ‘Open Apple Install Discs’.
   4. Wait while it loads the packages.
   5. In the window that appears, type ‘iSync’ into the Find dialog at the top and press return.
   6. Click once on the ‘iSync.app’ it finds, then click ‘Install’ at the top of the window.
   7. Follow the instructions to install it.
   8. Then you must download and install the latest Mac OS X Combo Updater for your Mac from Apple (even if its already installed), to update iSync from the newly installed version to the very latest version.

Happy syncing

Related posts:

1. Life saver
2. Sproutcore on OSX snow leopard
3. Video

But, no matter how good it is, the only thing that has been going constantly through my mind lately is the thought of jumping again. I have been doing some spare time math, figuring out how much time one can spend in free fall (with and without a winged suit). I think once I do the AFF course (Accelerated Free Fall) I will be addicted for good

Related posts:

1. Computers and jumps
2. The aftermath of the jumps