Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user infovore on 2005-08-07
So much for the success with Ruby on Rails detailed in the last post. Everything was going fine until I tried to create a scaffold. At which point I get a nasty little MySQL error:
Access denied for user ''@'localhost' (using password: NO)
So basically, even though I’ve defined all the database settings correctly in the database.yml file for the application, it’s trying to connect without a username or password. And as such, quite rightly, is failing. I’ve reinstalled the mysql gem, I’ve tried configuring the database.yml file to connect as root; none of it works. Bit frustrated – I can’t see that I’ve done anything wrong, but it’s just not working. I’ve also tried users with both old and new password hashes, and that hasn’t helped either. Anyone got any ideas? Anyone? Lazyweb?
Well, there’s a thing. I managed (with relatively no hassle) to get a local install of Ruby on Rails up and running on my 10.4.0 Powerbook. Quite surprised – given the scattered documentation – that it went so well. For reference, I used these instructions, which worked exactly as specified. I did already have an install of MySQL, but that was dead easy when I did it a few months ago, too.
Update: of course, then I ran into problems. What I discovered is that those instructions are for an install of Tiger with XCode 2.0, which still only has gcc 3.3. I upgraded to XCode 2.1, and gcc upgraded to 4.0 – and there my troubles began. Of course, then I solved them.
Now to get to work in it. I have an application in mind that it would be ideally suitable for; whether or not I can get my head around the language (especially without making my forget the other ones I know) is another matter. If I was a real programmer, I’m sure this wouldn’t be a problem, but alas, I’m not. Ah well.
Talk about big and bold. I think the sign up page for Flock (which appears to be some kind of social browsing service, however they’ll implement that) is one of my favourite web pages at the moment. Really. It’s calming, informative, and really simple. Big-font-textfields are going to become way more common soon, trust me.
I’ve got a small feature in this week’s New Statesman. It’s a short essay piece on Victorian terrorist literature, namely, the lost genre of the “dynamite romance”, along with some history about 19th century anarchists and their bombing campaigns against London. The quotations I found from records of the time were most powerful:
“An explosion on the Metropolitan Railway, near Praed Street. Three carriages sustained serious injury, and about 62 persons were cut by the broken glass and debris, and otherwise uninjured.”
You can read more on the New Statesman site [one article free per day, no registration required].
God, I’d forgotten just how well Greg Costikyan writes some times. In particular, his presentation to Free Play in Melbourne, downloadable from this post, makes its (very worthwhile) points well. If the games industry doesn’t collectively wake the hell up, and snap out of being marketing-and-publisher-driven, it could find itself in deep trouble. Greg explains this point in his slides in, well, a little more detail than me.
If things look a little odd around these parts, it’s because I’m in the middle of a live re-design. I’ll be going back and forth between the old template and the new whilst I iron things out. So don’t be alarmed…
Matt takes his games-as-tidying-up metaphor further, and touches on several things swirling round my head for a year or so now – the comparison between the western tradition of warfare-based games – chess, backgammon etc – versus eastern & African traditions of sowing, acquiring territory, growing. I like the distinction Matt suggests – the western games, more generally, as “literal”, and the eastern games as “oral”. Food for thought – thoughts I ought to start joining together, soon.
Dude, seriously: the trailer for the Doom movie looks like the final product will suck. A lot. It’s reminding me of Paul WS Anderson’s Resident Evil quite a lot. Combined with a bit of Paul WS Anderson’s Soldier. And maybe some of Paul WS Anderson’s Aliens Versus Predator to boot.
Paul WS Anderson is not a man whose oeuvre you wish to emulate.
Whilst the excellent Blinksale has been getting a lot of plaudits recently, I only just discovered Side Job Track (launched in November 2004), which is in many ways just as noteworthy. It exists to track progress on projects and jobs for freelance, part-time, or small business workers, and it’s really pretty good; simple to use with excellent help and notifications – it’s very consistent about letting you know what you’ve just done, and what will happen when you click something. The only slight problems are that the invoicing is a bit less awesome than Blinksale, and that it’s very focused on building up lists of standardised “services”… when many people are consistently doing bespoke work. Still, worth checking out.