Tomorrow will be the third wedding I’ve been to this year. It’ll be the fourth for the Girl. The difference this time is that it’s one of my friends getting married – all the previous ones were friends of hers. And, as a result, in Scotland. This one’s in Essex, and I’m really looking forward to it. It’s a lovely couple getting married, for starters, and then there’s the chance to catch up with a whole host of friends – especially old schoolfriends who I haven’t seen for a while. So, all in all, lots of fun to be had, and a nice chance to get out of the city.

Gosh, I’ve been busy. Still, in between evenings out and work, I’ve been starting work on a fairly large personal project, which (unless I encounter a colossal brick wall) be written in Ruby, with the Rails framework playing a large part. So far, despite some hiccups, it’s been very pleasant; a fair amount of headscratching (in part down to my unfamiliarity with the langauge and its at-times-bonkers syntax, and in part down to working out just what I wanted to do), but every breakthrough has been delightful. A bit of trial-and-error, and then, suddenly, boom: I’ve got a whole new piece of functionality working with minimal code. I’m enjoying the langauge a lot – it’s reminding me of what I’d learned of Python a fair bit, but with some interesting twists. Particularly a fan of the idea that it’s a language that’s very understandable when spoken aloud, to the point of suggesting that methods with boolean outcomes should end in a questionmark, and that destructive methods should end with an exclamation mark. That’s fun.

More on this mystery project later, perhaps; I’m hoping it could be moderately big.

“The games press is often painted as corrupt, lazy and – as I mentioned – fundamentally stupid. This is because we tend to be corrupt, lazy and fundamentally stupid.

It’s not entirely our fault.”

Kieron Gillen has put up a full transcript of his talk from Free Play, a conference in Melbourne. In it, he explains to independent developers how to leverage the power of the gaming press – who, after all, really care about indepedent developers, whatever it may look like from the outside. It was probably a great talk. It’s certainly a great piece of writing, if only because it clearly explains the hectic, rushed, pressurized world that is magazine publishing to an audience who – whilst they might not understand publishing or journalism – certainly understand hectic, rushed, and under pressure. Well worth reading.

Haha! I solved the problem in the previous post with some cunning. And Google.

Basically, even though it looks like the mysql gem has installed correctly, it won’t have, because, once you’ve upgraded to Xcode 2.1, gcc is upgraded to 4.0. If you try and install the gem with gcc 4.0, it breaks. You need to install it with gcc 3.3 as your compiler. Doing this is as easy as typing

sudo gcc_select 3.3

in your terminal window before you run

sudo gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-dir=/usr/local/mysql

Once you’ve done all that, you can then type sudo gcc_select 4.o to return things to normal.

Phew. Scaffolds now work. That was an exciting little detour.

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.

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].

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.

“Where are all the startups?” asks Tom Coates. It’s a good question, and, as the 2lmc boys rightly note, his theories regarding marketing and advertising might have something to do with it. Tom and I discussed this topic at the New Media Awards ceremony a few weeks back – it’s been something that’s crossed my mind several times in the last month or two – and whilst I agreed with his complaint, I found myself somewhat lacking in inspiration. I mean, I’d try to do something about it, but I seem short on ideas right now. Still, I’ll keep racking my brain. Could be something in it.

Exhausting weekend. OpenTech on Saturday was pretty good, though as it drew on I became more and more tired of lectures and more and more in need of networking and chat-time. That did eventually happen, and it was great – good to catch up with some and meet others for the first time; set lots of cogs whirring and helped others along their way. Today saw some much-needed sleep, after a tiring week, and then afternoon (and evening) of article writing. For once, the topic wasn’t technology. More on that later.

Oh, look. Another week’s here already.

Drat.