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Author: ricky
Husband, dad, R&D manager and resident Lean Startup evangelist. I work at NICTA.
There are so many sites offering suggestions on how to get the mysql rubygem working on Mac OS X Leopard. None of them worked for me. Here’s how I got the gem installed.
After attempting to install the gem normally, with sudo gem install mysql (which bombs out), go into /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.7 or wherever it tried to install the gem. Add the line
#define ulong unsigned long
near the top of the file mysql.c.in.
Repackage the gem by issuing sudo gem build mysql.gemspec
Then install with
sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" gem install --local mysql-2.7.gem -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config
You’re done. You may not need to wrap the gem install command with the env command.
It’s been a while in the making, but augmented reality on your mobile is just about here. And by that, I mean that these applications are available for your mobile phone, and it will only be a matter of time before they gain critical mass. So what am I talking about?
In the research space, among others I can refer you to iCam (2006) and MARA (2006) from researchers at Georgia Tech and Nokia respectively. iCam allows the placement of virtual sticky notes on objects in the physical world, through a mobile device. This is neat, since the sticky notes only appear to those whom you want to see them. A limitation of iCam is that, while placement of these sticky notes is very accurate, it only works indoors. MARA overlays information about the real world (and even the people in it if information about objects is being streamed from a central server) in real time.
The there’s this concept device from petitinvention, which takes the idea a few steps further. The user can see information about buildings and locations overlaid on the video stream from the mobile device’s camera. But the same tool can be used to select text from a piece of paper (like a newspaper). Essentially, it’s an augmented reality search tool.
In the commercial/start up realm, a couple of companies have been creating a bit of buzz. First there’s Enkin. Enkin has been developed for the Google Android mobile phone platform. It enables users to tag places and objects on Google Maps, and then to see these tags overlaid on the real world as you walk around with the phone. My favourite is Sekai Camera from Tonchidot. I’m not going to explain it. Just watch the video below. But note that even products on the shelves in shops are tagged in the virtual world and overlaid on the real world. And it’s a very social application.
There’s probably still all sorts of hurdles to overcome, but what a great presentation.
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End of the world
Just in case the world ends tomorrow in a haze of sub-atomic particles, there is something I must confess: I ate the last papadum.
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The lateness of the 460
As if to bear out the frustrations I described in my last post about the go card, this morning the 460 was 26 minutes late. The bus was due at 8:10am, and I arrived at the bus stop (Forest Lake ‘E’) at 8am. The bus showed up at 8:36am, just six minutes before the next 460 was due.
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Many Eyes
I’ve been playing with Many Eyes from IBM Alphaworks. It’s a visualisation tool for data sets of various sorts. To test it out, I uploaded my Olympic medals per kilotonne of carbon emissions data sets. You can see the data sets here and here, and the resulting bar charts here and here, respectively (Java required).
I’m still ahead. But would you believe that, on the very day of my previous post about the go card, the go card machine in the bus failed to work when I needed to get off the bus at Forest Lake? How’s that for coincidence? Exactly the same thing happened again last night when trying to touch off.
What happens is this. I get on the bus at Indooroopilly, touch on, the light goes green and says something about a continuing journey. This is correct, as I change buses at Indooroopilly on my way home from NICTA’s new location at UQ. But then, as I’m exiting the bus at Forest Lake, the go card machine says “Please wait…”. I walk down the front of the bus to speak to the driver, who tells me (on both occasions) “but the machine wasn’t working at the start of the route, so you don’t need to touch off.” I tell him, “No, at Indooroopilly it was working. The light went green and everything was normal.” Rather than holding up the other passengers any longer, I just hop off the bus and call TransLink to make sure I’m not overcharged (except that I haven’t got around to doing that this time).
The thing that irks me even more is the consistent lateness of the 460. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was always late by the same amount, but it’s not. Although my Twitter page records the many occasions the 460 has been late in the evening, it’s my morning trip that really frustrates me. I have not known 8:10am 460 from Forest Lake E to run within 10 minutes of its scheduled time ever since I’ve been catching it. This is quite unbelievable given that the bus is supposed to start at Inala at 7:58am, and couldn’t possibly be getting caught in traffic between there and my stop.
I think overall Brisbane’s public transport is improving. But, jeez, it still sucks so badly, and I’m not sure it’s keeping up with the growth of our population.
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Gold, Silver, Bronze, Carbon
Georgia, it seems, may finally have reason to celebrate after what’s been a tough few weeks for the former Soviet nation. A revised tally of the 2008 Olympic gold medal count, which adjusts the tally according to carbon emissions, puts Georgia at the top of the rankings, well ahead of its nemesis, Russia. Jamaica, Ethiopia, Kenya and Cameroon round out the top 5 in the revised tally.
Australia, Russia, China and the USA are left trailing by some margin, as shown in the figure below.
Armenia tops out the revised ranking when all medals are taken into account.
It gets even worse for the traditional powerhouses of Olympic sport.
Notes:
- The medal tally is from the official overall medal standings for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
- Emissions data is from CDIAC – A Compendium of Data on Global Change. This means the emissions data is from 2004 (i.e., it is a little out of date). Anyone know of a complete set of more up to date data?
- This article is, of course, for your amusement only; this analysis is completely meaningless, and should not be cited as evidence in any argument (in pubs, courtrooms, scientific conferences or elsewhere).
Macs are increasing their share of the personal computing market, and Aussies are leading the charge: in the last quarter, Mac sales grew at a whopping 52% in Australia. Overall, Macs are still way behind, at about 3.5% of the global market. But apparently that’s double what it was five years ago.
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A year of parenthood
It’s been just over a year since Xander was born, and I can quite honestly say it’s been the most fulfilling year of my life so far. Parenthood is everything they say it is: tiring, rewarding, sometimes difficult, but ultimately truly wonderful. To me the year seems to have passed fairly quickly, although it’s been jam packed with stuff.
Xander had a fantastic 1st birthday party, meticulously organised by his mummy. He’s just started walking, and he has a penchant for climbing stuff. He likes to try to climb the dresser by sort of doing chin ups and then getting traction with his feet against the cupboard. His favourite word is “bird”, though lately he’s really into “balloons” (because we’ve still got bunches of them hanging around our house from his birthday). He’s a happy and frightfully energetic little soul.
We’re still dealing with his allergy problem, but we’ve got an appointment with one of the two paediatric allergists in the state in October (somehow we managed to jump the 13 month waiting list, which we’re kind of relieved about, because his allergy isn’t limited to cow’s milk protein, unfortunately). One gets the feeling that allergies are still not well understood by medical researchers. Nobody seems to agree about how they come about or what the best course of action is.
The second year of his life is going to be an eventful one for our family, with a few things on the agenda before next July. Here’s hoping it all goes smoothly!