Recently in Geeky Category
But this isn't about XP. It's not about Windows (not directly, anyway.) It's about Fedora. Linux. That penguin OS that I've started to (finally) adapt and evolve to. Linux developers, meanwhile, have finally started to realize that even the most seasoned veterans of the Windows world (shy of those insane pundits of Microsoft technology, the MCSE) really have no idea how to write their own wireless-card drivers. This means good things for the rest of the world as "that other OS" finally becomes something my mom can use.
That's not a totally fair analogy - my mom's actually pretty good with a computer. Point is, however, that Linux distros have finally become useable. Some will thank Ubuntu, and it's true that Ubuntu is responsible for a nice, big, fat marketing campaign that spanned far and wide to make itself (well, Debian) the marketshare dominator. But I don't agree. I think that Red Hat is the real driving force behind it all. RH has been there since the beginning, and they were the first to offer a distro that wasn't freakin' impossible to use.
I remember the first time I tried using Linux. My roommate at the time - some jackass named Manesh, or Manish, or who the heck knows (or cares) - convinced me to give up my comfortable Windows environment in favor of what he called "Slackware". The name, you gotta admit, is appealing. Thing is, unless you're a CS major (that's Computer Science for the under-nerdy) Slackware is downright useless. To this day, I once in a while throw in a Slackware CD just to see how far it *hasn't* come. You know what, though? It's cool that there's even a distro for the ultra-nerdy kids out there.
Anyway, Red Hat was the first distro I got my hands on that installed mostly well. Hardware worked without too much kicking and screaming. Software worked. It wasn't half bad.
Now, granted they went and got all commercial. I can't blame them for wanting to make money. But it's cool, they're totally down for making money off the Big Dogs... the Corporate Giants that can't imagine using something that might be 'free'. No, seriously, I'm convinced that Red Hat went commercial (as commercial as open-source can really get) just because Big Corporate won't do it if it's free. "Well, that's fine" said Red Hat... "it'll cost ya." And now RHEL is firmly ensconced in the trenches with such greybeards as Sun Microsystems and IBM. Good for you, boys.
Seems like they didn't forget us, either. While they were busy charging down Corporate hills while wearing kilts and swinging big nerd-sticks around, the Fedora project was created to keep RH In The Game. And, let's face it, it's a good place to try new stuff out.
8 iterations later. It works. Fedora is one sweet distro. People (very nerdy people) are waving their live-CD's around and saying "try this. try it. you won't regret it." People who are fed up with Ubuntu's weird hug-the-world mentality are finding Fedora. And it lives up to the hype.
Linux is one buggy freakin' system. That being said, it's significantly more stable than Windows will ever hope to imagine being (doesn't say much for Windows, considering.) Nonetheless, it is still twitchy, a bit buggy, and stuff doesn't always work right out of the box unless you're meticulously careful about every last bit of hardware. And even if you are, you might still run into issues. But it's okay, because there's this thing associated with Linux... it's called a community. And there's lots of people in these communities, and they're all willing to help. It's awesome.
So Fedora 8. What makes it so hot? I'm going to save that for the next post. This one was just to say "Hey. Try this. Try it. It doesn't freakin' suck." It really is worth a look. And if you're not into Linux, well, maybe it's time to start.
Really, social networking via the morass of different websites is just... wrong. Really, there should be a unifying, underlying network that connects all these different sites and networks into one giant interconnected web. Like the interweb. Yeah.
Enter FOAF and XFN. Old-school precursors to Google's new Social Web API, which is in and of itself a pretty darned cool step forward. There's lots of resources on FOAF, XFN, and the Social Web API, so go hit up Google and knock yourself out. If you can't see the implications of these technologies, then I know a sheepherder that'll take good care of you.
I, for one, am going to thank Ryan Porter for showing me this so many years ago (before MySpace and all that noise). At the time I definitely saw the potential, but I wasn't on-point enough to see where it was going. Now, many years later, it's all just so painfully obvious. So kudos to you, RAP, for being one far-sighted guy. Hope you're still surfing the Government Cut, dude!
Lemme just say this upfront: the blind helmet-wearing monkeys that created Windows Vista should be drowned in a pool of their own feces. Seriously, so many things about Vista strike me as A Bad Idea that it almost seems comical. But I'm not going to rant about Vista - there's plenty of that all over the interweb already.
I'm gonna get way more specific. I'm going to get into Windows Vista and just how badly it plays with MySQL. I'd say it the other way around - MySQL plays badly with Vista - but I'm a spoiled Mac user. I don't believe that the OS should interfere with my productivity. Looks like someone at Microsoft didn't get that memo.
Anyway, the point is that I need to roll out MySQL on my machine to develop. I mean, technically I suppose I don't have to... I could fire up a dedicated MySQL box every time I wanted to develop a database app locally. Oooor I could just install MySQL on my development machine and not have to freakin' deal with it. Unless you have Vista. If you have Vista, you cannot install MySQL. It just won't let you.
Okay, sensationalism aside, that's not true. I mean, it's true that Vista won't let you install MySQL. And it's true that Vista has been created specifically to piss off every animal in Userland. And it's also true that while it's a simple enough matter to take the reigns from Vista and gitterdun, the documentation to do so is ridiculously sparse.
A little bit of research on the net (okay, a lot) will garner you instructions on how to successfully install MySQL on your Vista machine. Heck, there's a whole paper written on it, and how you have to tweak security settings. Let me break it down for you: you have to turn off UAC. What's UAC? Apparently it's Windows' version of Admin authentication. Who knows, who cares, all I know is that in every other OS that uses this type of mechanism, it just works. In Windows, it creates headaches and stops me from being productive for hours. I've found that when it comes to WIndows, productivity loss due to mysterious errors is common.
To turn off UAC, go to Control Panel->User Accounts & Family Safety->User Accounts->Turn User Account Control On or Off. If you couldn't follow that, then you probably shouldn't be turning UAC off anyway. Fact is, it sounds super foreboding to turn off... after all your Family Safety is at stake here.
Theoretically, turning off UAC before attempting to install MySQL should result in the ability to install and configure MySQL successfully. Theoretically, I want to be President of the United States. In practice, neither happens. MySQL 5.01 continuously fails. Over, and over, and over again. Like a scratched record. More annoying, even.
The solution to this is mind-bogglingly simple, although many people won't like it. Install MySQL 5.1. It's not the 'stable' version, sure, but shit, at least it works.
Hours, it took, to go through all that. If this post took you 3 minutes to read through, I just saved you a heap of time and trouble. Buy me a beer. Now go forth and make that database scream for mercy.
Sometimes you run into trouble when using bleeding edge stuff. Ruby, Ruby on Rails, RubyGems... it seems like all of these technologies are changing so damned much that calling it 'bleeding edge' just isn't nearly enough. And there's big differences in versions, so you just gotta stay on top of it.
That's an arguable point, I know. Lots of people just don't update until it's all stable. Me, I like to live dangerously. And it inevitably lands me in heaps of headache inducing trouble. Fortunately, there's no shortage of smart people out there.
Hennywayz. I tried to use RubyGems from behind the Moto proxy/firewall, and it failed miserably. I used the recommended syntax for RubyGems behind a proxy, but nothing. Just errors. Then I ran into this guy's website, where he describes a patch to use RubyGems from behind a proxy with authentication. He suggests a patch to RubyGems (it's easy, not scary, and if you're scared of making this little patch then you ought to be considering a different career path... just sayin'...) that is heretofore undocumented, and unimplemented in RubyGems. It works like magic. Once you've patched 'er up, run the command:
gem update rails --include-dependencies -p http://username:password@proxy_url:portReplace the variables with your own, of course. And voila. Magical. Now, why the heck isn't that little snippet of code in RubyGems, I wonder?
Gems has been causing me endless headaches since I got back on the RoR wagon. My Powerbook has been steadfastly rejecting all solutions ever since I updated to the most recent version of Ruby, Rails, and Gems. Annoying? More than a little bit.
