The virtualization world is not only for Windows and its name is not only VMWare. Specially since the migration of Apple’s Macs to the Intel x86 platform, that kind of software has seen in the Cupertino computers a new and fresh market to exploit. And one of the software pieces who has built one of the best virtuaization products for the Macs has been Parallels Desktop.
Altough the Windows virtualization offered by Parallels is pretty nice (I’m still impressed of the Coherence Mode and I can’t wait to test the new 3D support features of the last version), it has also support for other Operating Systems such as Linux. And because Ubuntu is at this moment one of the most popular Linux distributions, a lot of people (including myself) have tried to install it in a virtual image on a Mac.
Unfortunately, the latest Ubuntu version, 7.04, aka Feisty Fawn, seems to have some problems installing on Parallels. The most important one is that the Live and installer CD will simply not boot correctly, showing a “Black Screen of Death” when loading the frame buffered splash screen.
But don’t worry, everything should be fine if you choose Solaris and Other Solaris as a OS Type and OS Version respectively when creating the virtual machine. Simply boot the Live CD, install the Linux distribution and when it asks you to reboot, shut down, change the virtual machine type to Linux and “Other 2.6 Linux” and it’s done! Enjoy the wonderful open source operating system on your Mac OS!
My laptop is an ibook G4 and maybe because of madness or because I’m so geek, I use linux on my ibook. One of the most annoying problems is that there is no good support for flash in linux PPC. This causes that all webpages viewed with firefox that requires the flash player plugins makes firefox requesting to install it.
Install Missing Plugins
After being annoyed for months I search for this configuration in about:config page and I finally found it. The only action to avoid this message is to set plugin.default_plugin_disabled to false and that’s all!. Now I can surf the web without any Install missing plugins message.
While developing a Ruby application or while learning ruby, one of the things you must use is IRB (interactive ruby). As in its man page is said “irb is a tool to execute interactively ruby expressions read from stdin.”. In this tool you can type and execute directly ruby code. It’s very useful but like most other programs like ViM (Vi IMproved) the real power is its customization.
Here I post my .irbrc and to make things clear there are some explanations on each line.
# autocompletion of methods when pressing TAB
require 'irb/completion'
# Wirble is a plugin to colorize your irb, it's installed from a gem (gem install -y wirble)
require 'rubygems'
require 'wirble'
# Make use of readline library
ARGV.concat [ "--readline" ]
# autoindent of code while typing it
IRB.conf[:AUTO_INDENT]=true
# wirble initializations
Wirble.init
Wirble.colorize
As I said before, IRB is very powerful and a proof is that in Ruby Lang they encourage you to try ruby in your browser with an embedded IRB.
Also in rails the console for debugging your application is an irb instance preloaded with all rails configuration. In RailsCasts there is a screencast that shows you some tricks about it.
If you’ve been assigned to a new web application project lately, you’ll probably have had to deal with this [not] new AJAX technology. To be honest, AJAX is good, and websites like Google Mail and Flickr are good examples of that. But remember something: it’s always bad to abuse of something. It’s always bad to abuse AJAX. Don’t use it if it doesn’t really make sense to do it, and if your boss insists on it, ask him if he would use truck wheels on his BMW.
Continue reading “Developing Javascript involved web applications with Firebug” »
The time when application versions where stored in different folders or in zip files has ended. Today we have great tools like Subversion or CVS. This tools must be known by everybody, but for those who aren’t known, they are applications that control versions of files.
While developing a Ruby on Rails application it’s good to use a system like Subversion. In this howto I’ll explain my experience subversioning my Rails app.
Continue reading “Subversioning a Rails App” »
If you begin to have a lot of computers at home, or even you manage a little LAN on an office, it may come in handy to have a little domain configured. Having a domain configured has some advantages, including easy machine naming and name resolution of those machines. We’ll explain here how to setup a little domain with a linux machine and an opensource DHCP and DNS servers.
For this to work you’ll need:
Continue reading “Create your own local domain with DHCP and BIND” »
Do you like running? The Nike+Ipod Sports Kit fits perfectly to your needs.
When I bought this gadget some weeks ago I was a bit averse. I didn’t believe that this cheap sensor (30€/$) could measure my training accurately. I was wrong.
Like in all company products, Apple have achieved again a perfect symbiosis between simplicity and power. For people who like go running this is a perfect gadget. Apart from the functions of a normal music player, it has some extra ones that make the difference. You can measure your distance or your pace, you have the information of pasts trainings stored and maybe the most important, you can inject some extra forces with the PowerSong. The PowerSong is only a song that you preset before go running and it’s the song that makes you run faster or give you extra motivation.
Apart from the functions of the kit, there is a good community of runners. On Nike website of Nike+ you can interact with the community and you can view your history. There are other interesting features like set goals and see if you can achieve them or challenge other runners to see who is the best.
To get this features up and running, you hace to tune your kit. The tune process consist on plug in the receiver in the Ipod and put the sensor in your Nike+ Shoes hole. For those who can’t pay for a new shoes, like me, there are some solutions like buy an adapter o make a homebrew hole inside your shoes reed.
For ending I have to say that the sensor doesn’t have the possibility of changing this battery but Apple people says that the sensor’s battery should outlast five pairs of running shoes. Would it be true?
Nike+
June 17th, 2007 | tags:
gadgets,
ipod,
sports |
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In the developing process of applications that are not as small as the typical “Hello, World!” examples, there are a variety of factors than can lead to important time savings.
There’s a lot of documentation out there on how to design and specify application before the coding process starts, but there is a crucial factor on success that is not usually spoken of: the way you manage, create and edit your source files.
And of course there are some beautiful software pieces to help developers in that process. They’re called IDEs (Integrated Development Environment).
The problem with most of those IDEs is that they offer so many options that you usually have to read a user’s manual to really take the best from them. Ok, this is something normal, you might say. Maybe you’re right, but be honest, how many software user guides have you read in your life? And I’m not talking about the usual RTFM for a linux man page which can be 4 pages long at most. I’m talking about a user’s manual of 500 pages. I haven’t.
And that’s the reason today I’ll be talking about a nice feature I found on one of the most powerful IDEs out there (regardless of being from Microsoft): Visual Studio 2005 Code Snippets.
Continue reading “Code Snippets in Visual Studio 2005” »
What is Think in Geek, you may ask. Well, the obvious answer is simple: a geek blog. We could have named it Yet Another Geek Blog, but we couldn’t find a nice domain for that name (yagb.com sucks hard). And why another geek blog, you may ask too? The answer is another question: why not? Or, if you prefer it: If others have their geek blog, we want one, too!
Talking seriously (although what has been said until now it’s true, too), this is a space were we want to simply share our thoughts and knowledge about the geek world in general and the IT world in particular. We simply love those topics, and after having visited thousands of other web places where we have found some interesting tips or solutions to common problems, we though the best way to thank that was precisely to give back what we got to the community.
So feel free to enjoy our thoughts, to find answers to problems we’ve already solved before, or simply to know what other people (we and people who want to contribute with comments) thinks about particular things about the geek world.
June 15th, 2007 |
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