Adobe does not yet have a 64 bit version of the AIR SDK or runtime for Linux. They do have some instructions for getting it to work. If you run Ubuntu, it is much simpler. just type:
$ sudo aptitude install ia32-libs lib32asound2 lib32gcc1 lib32ncurses5 lib32stdc++6 lib32z1 libc6 libc6-i386
I have only tested this on Jaunty, so I can’t promise it works on earlier releases, but it’s lots easier than the manual unpacking stuff on Adobe’s page.
My sister, Liesl, and I recorded this song for our family and friends. Merry Christmas to all of you, may you have a wonderful holiday season, and best wishes for a prosperous new year.
[Zenoss](www.zenoss.com) is a great open source system monitoring tool. I usually configure it to get data using SNMP. However, I have a few remote OpenBSD boxes that I want to keep an eye on, and I am not going to expose SNMP to the universe. Zenoss has a cool thing called [Zenoss Plugins](http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/howtos/zenoss-plugins/) which let your collector SSH into a machine and get basic statistics. The current version of Zenoss Plugins (2.0.4) does not have support for OpenBSD.
Here’s how you add it:
I have I have had Kubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) on one of my machines for a month or so. I really miss [baghira](http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=8692), which makes linux look at much like OSX as linux can look. Alas, there will be no baghira for QT4. I thought I’d try out [cloudcity](http://cloudcity.sourceforge.net/) (or bespin, I can’t figure out what the real name is), written by the same guy who wrote baghira. It’s not an OSX clone (boo), it’s still early code, and you’ll have to compile your own, but it’s not hard. Here’s what I did:
Some people are perfectly happy with the $2 keyboard that came with their Gateway. Personally, I would rather write with a pencil than use one of those mushy plastic heaps. I have always tried to find nice keyboards, but they always have been second best to the metal clicky keyboard on the IBM 286 that was my computer at my first job. Ever since then I have never really loved my keyboard, until now.
ActiveResource is one of the cooler parts of Ruby on Rails. It uses the dynamic goodness of ruby to consume RESTful resources without having to hardly write any code. How about this for a stupid-easy class:
class Person < ActiveResource::Base site = http://api.example.com end
Three lines of code makes a proxy class for a remote service, ActiveResource dynamically figures everything else out.
I needed some Java code that could consume RESTful resources in a Rails application. I looked around to see if I could find any code that would do this for me. I found Restlet, which looks like a pretty good server side framework for writing and publishing restful services, but I need the client side of that. So I decided to start a new project called jactiveresource, which is a port of ActiveResource to java. Because java is statically typed it won't be quite as easy as it is in ruby, but I think we can get close. This weekend I stood up a site to host it, and got the first bits of code working. Stay tuned....
In Anapolis, MD there is a nice little restaurant called The Rockfish. It isn’t that far from the Main Street tourist trap. I have been there a couple of times for lunch, and practically had the place to myself. They have the best Seafood Cobb Salad in the world. Grilled shrimp, lots of jumbo lump crab, red grape tomatoes, and a wonderful creamy vinaigrette.
There are a ton of template engines out there, for every different language and platform you can imagine. Some people claim PHP is just a fancy template engine. Others say printf is the first and only real template engine. There are many tools out there that meet various niches and requirements in this fairly broad space. Many templating engines are only available for one or two programming languages/platforms. Without debating the merits of the platforms, here are the criteria for the perfect template engine.
I don’t care where you live, this is freaking cool.
These guys are jumping into the Cave of Swallows in Mexico. This clip is from the “Caves” section of the BBC’s awesome documentary Planet Earth.
This weekend I installed Gutsy, now officially known as Kubuntu 7.10 on my X61. I decided I’d try and write up a guide on thinkwiki.org. Because I don’t have an optical drive for my laptop, installation was a bit tricky, I ended up booting off the network. Once over that hurdle, everything else pretty much just worked. No fussing with X configuration settings, wired and wireless network just worked, sound worked etc. Installing Linux has come a long way in the last few years.