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Random observations

Installing nokogiri on Mac OS X

A quick search reveals that I’m not the only one who’s had difficulty installing the nokogiri Ruby gem on Mac OS X. The official docs recommend installing the fink or macports versions of libxml2, and so does this nokogiri tutorial over on the Engine Yard blog. I like macports. It’s a good way to stay up to date with the latest and greatest versions of everything, but I have this thing about trying to make things work with the libraries that come as standard on Mac OS X. I don’t know, maybe it’s that it reduces dependencies, or maybe I’m just strange.

Anyway, here’s how I got nokogiri to install under Snow Leopard without resorting to macports or fink:

sudo gem install nokogiri -- --with-xml2-include=/usr/include/libxml2 --with-xml2-lib=/usr/lib --with-xslt-dir=/usr

What’s weird is that, unless I’m mistaken, those paths are exactly where nokogiri should be looking for the relevant libxml2 files in the first place! I’m still to find out whether it all works as it’s supposed to. But installation is the first step! Let me know if it works for you.

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Random observations

iCal/Exchange Integration in Snow Leopard – Booking Shared Resources

So I’ve been using Snow Leopard for a few weeks now. Not too many changes on the surface. The integration of Exposé into the Dock is probably one of the more visible changes. But being in an organisation where Microsoft Exchange is the chosen communication and, dare I say it, collaboration platform, the Exchange support in Mail, iCal and Address Book is really useful.

However, there was one thing I couldn’t figure out how to do: booking a shared resource, such as a meeting room or a car park. Today, we figured out how to do it, and, in hindsight, it should have been obvious.

To book a shared resource, create a calendar event in iCal as you normally would, making sure the event is created in your Exchange calendar as opposed to your personal (local) one. Then, in the invitees field, add the resource you wish to book. Start typing the name of the resource, and if your Exchange integration is working correctly (and your IT people have set up the resources in Exchange correctly), it should find the resource just as if you were adding a person as an invitee. Once you’ve added the resource, you should see a link that says “Available meeting times…”. Click it. This will show you when the resource is available and when it’s booked, as well as the availability of any other people you’ve added to the invitees field. Once you’ve done that, you’re good to go! Microsoft Outlook users will see that the resource has been booked (if they’ve added the resource as a Shared Calendar to their Outlook console).

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Random observations

The Landing Pilot is the Non-Handling Pilot

The Landing Pilot is the Non-Handling Pilot until the “decision altitude” call, when the Handling Non-Landing Pilot hands the handling to the Non-Handling Landing Pilot, unless the latter calls “go-around”, in which case the Handling Non-Landing Pilot, continues Handling and the Non-Handling Landing Pilot continues non-handling until the next call of “land” or “go-around”, as appropriate.

In view of the recent confusion over these rules, it was deemed necessary to restate them clearly.

— British Airways memorandum, quoted in Pilot Magazine, December 1996 (and in The Pragmatic Programmer, which is where I read it).

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Random observations

Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal

Heard this song on the radio a while ago and couldn’t track it down. But today I caught it on ABC Local Radio, would you believe.

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Random observations

ReCaptcha asking a bit much?

captcha

The ReCaptcha guys need to invent an algorithm that gives an estimate of the likelihood that a human could actually decipher a word, and then only present those above a certain threshold. That’s a different problem to the one of having a machine actually decipher the text, and I reckon it’s probably an easier one. The ReCaptcha above is just plain silly.

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Random observations

Upgraded to WordPress 2.7

WordPress 2.7So as per my last post, I’ve been playing around with my weblog a bit. I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.7, which features a completely overhauled administration dashboard. In addition, threaded comments are now built into WordPress, so there’s no need for a plugin. I just needed to hack my theme a little bit to take advantage of this feature. I’ve done a minimal job, so threaded comments don’t look that great at the moment. I’ve added some test comments in the comments section below.

Another thing I’ve done is fully widgetize my blog. So everything that used to be hand-coded into the various PHP files that make up my theme is now a widget (Twitter feed, Google Analytics and so on). This makes everything much easier to maintain, and change, if I feel like it.

In related news, AJ has made the switch to WordPress from Blosxom. I’m pretty sure he won’t look back. I’ve been using WordPress since mid-2005, and I reckon WordPress is getting better with every release (2.7 in particular is a pretty big step in the right direction, IMHO). It’s very well supported, has a large user community, and it just works. Fantastic.

Update 29 Dec, 2008: I’m now using a variant of Chris Harrison‘s threaded comment styling. He’s written a tutorial on how to style your comments.

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Random observations

Re-organised weblog categories

The list of categories on my weblog was slowly growing. So I overhauled them. I’ve reduced them to a set of six, and converted the others to tags. I noticed that, for a long time now, when it comes to publishing an article, I’ve been fighting the urge to add a new category. Now I choose a single category for the post, if I can, and then just add a bunch of tags, which is pretty much whatever flies out the ends of my fingers as I type. If I can’t choose a category, it gets filed as a Random Observation, and tagged as just described. If you read The Thin Line web site as opposed to the RSS feed, you’ll notice a tag cloud on the left, and a much shorter list of categories. I don’t know whether this will help you navigate, but it removes a mental hurdle for me.

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Random observations

Herman’s Hermits – No milk today

Herman’s Hermits – No milk today

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Random observations

The SVNMate plugin for Textmate

For anyone who’s using Subversion through Textmate, you might be interest in Ciarán Walsh’s SVNMate plugin. It changes the icons for files and folders in the project drawer depending upon their SVN status. Very handy.

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Random observations

We will remember them

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Updated especially for Clinton:

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