Installing Ruby on Ubuntu

By Martin Murphy | Published: November 6, 2006

These are my experiences of installing Ruby on Ubuntu. I didn’t install the Ubuntu package but went with the source on the Ruby On Rails website. Everything worked fine out of the box, just downloaded the files and followed their instructions (basically the following, in this order.)

Download ruby-1.8.4.tar.gz and rubygems-0.9.0.tgz from the links on http://www.rubyonrails.org/down

Ruby

tar xzf ruby-1.8.4.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.8.4
./configure
make
make test
sudo make install

RubyGems

tar xvf rubygems-0.9.0.tgz
cd rubygems
sudo ruby setup.rb

Rails

sudo gem install rails –include-dependencies

Test installation

rails railstest/
cd railstest/
ruby script/server

Point your browser at http://127.0.0.1:3000

Posted in Networks, Technology, Work | 1 Comment

Blogging and the work–life balance

By Martin Murphy | Published: September 4, 2006

There is a new “blogging initiative” at work (well I think it’s new, I’m not there long myself). The company line seems to be that blogging is good for both the employer and the employee. The company has offered to setup blog hosting on their servers. It seems like a reasonable idea, but, I’m not convinced that the company website needs to be associated with the latest news at the local dog show, cinema, or companies alluding to the discovery perpetual motion machines. I’m equally unconvinced that local movie-goers, dog-lovers, or mad scientists are interested in advances in the state-of-the-art in telecommunications software and systems.

So I would suggest that personal blogs are good for subjects that the blogger is interested in, and that work blogs are useful for dissemenating project related info on a per project basis. In addition, seperate work CV pages can be used for “these are our incredibly smart employees” and “why you should put money into our project” pages. And because of hypertext links (which are fundanemtal to “the web”) all of these can be associated, while keeping their individual identies.
I’m interested in what other people think about this.

Posted in Blogs, Technology, Work | Leave a comment

Delays are in the mind of the beholder

By Martin Murphy | Published: September 4, 2006

Wow! it’s been a while since the last post. Looks like August never happened. I must at least think about blogging a bit more often.

Posted in Blogs | Leave a comment

Videos of the talks from RailsConf 2006.

By Martin Murphy | Published: July 31, 2006

Paul Watson informs that videos of the talks from RailsConf 2006 are available at http://blog.scribestudio.com/pages/rails/

Posted in Software, Technology, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Dave Johnson: Beyond Blogging: Understanding feeds and publishing protocols

By Martin Murphy | Published: July 31, 2006

Mícheál Ó Foghlú links to this PDF slideset. I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds interesting.

Posted in Blogs, Technology, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Google Calendar

By Martin Murphy | Published: July 27, 2006

This post is just a test of my Google Calendar Google Canendar

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Where in the world?

By Martin Murphy | Published: July 25, 2006

It might be of use if you knew where I went on holiday. (Although I may have taken the photo at a different time.) Where in the world?

Posted in Photography | Leave a comment

What camera?

By Martin Murphy | Published: July 24, 2006

I’ve been thinking about buying a digital SLR for a while. I currently prefer the idea of a Canon EOS 350D (I think that’s a Rebel Xt in the US). The reason for looking at an EOS is that I already have a flash and lenses (for my Canon EOS 500N film camera), otherwise I might have thought about a Nikon. The dpreview.com website seems to be a good resource for anyone buying a digital camera.

Posted in Photography | 2 Comments

Holux GPSlim236

By Martin Murphy | Published: July 24, 2006

I bought a Holux GPSlim236 GPS receiver recently. It’s a bluetooth device that can be used with a laptop, PDA, or Smartphone. I’ve used it with all three and I’ve been impressed. (However it is my first GPS device, so I’m not comparing it with anything else. There are lots of reviews on the Internet if people are interested – Google search)

It was also my first eBay purchase. (I find it surprising that it took so long for me to buy from eBay – my first Internet purchase was probably over 10 years ago)

Posted in GPS, Positioning | Leave a comment