Installing Sproutcore on Mac OS X
I’m using Leopard (10.5.8), but this process is largely the same for Snow Leopard (10.6).
- Register as an Apple Developer. You’ll need to do this to install XCode.
- Install XCode.
XCode is Apple’s developer platform. For Leopard you’ll need XCode 3.14. For Snow Leopard, you’ll need the latest version. You can find both of them here: Apple Developer Downloads – Developer Tools.
- Install MacPorts
MacPorts allows you to run specific versions of Ruby, Rubygems & Sproutcore without messing about with the default Mac OSX installations. You will also be able to run other versions side-by-side in the future.
- Install ruby and rubygems
Open up Terminal and install ruby & rubygems on to MacPorts:
sudo port install ruby rb-rubygems - Install Sproutcore
sudo gem install sproutcoreThis can take a while to start showing that it’s working, but it is. Be patient. - That’s it! Now you’re ready to get your first Sproutcore app up and running. See how to get started with Sproutcore.
Sproutcore
Sproutcore is a rapid development JavaScript App platform. It is, so far, very impressive. I’m currently running through their tutorials (the todos app). So far (45 minutes in) I’ve found them easy to follow and nicely productive. I think in another half an hour I’ll have a working app and a good understanding of the systems involved – enough to build a similar, basic application.
Onwards!
Koya
Last week saw myself and a friend visiting the new Soho star, Koya, a noodle-lover’s heaven. If you like soba, that is. Koya specialises in soba (large buckwheat noodles) to a degree that would seem unhealthy, if only they weren’t so damn good! The texture is perfect. The broth is perfect. The toppings and ingredients and range and service and just about everything else about this little eatery is, essentially, perfect.
Anyone for noodles?
What’s going on?
I am:
- getting fit.
- current weight: 14st 4lbs.
- target: 12st 7lbs by this time next year
- i have cycled to work twice in the last two weeks. laaame.
- learning to drive
- target test date: November 1st
- looking for new, active things to do. on the list are:
- kayaking
- climbing
- trying out new restaurants and bars
koya- chilli cool
- the ledbury
- bob bob ricard
- wahaca
- purl
- planning on going to Thailand over Christmas
- Rome in September
- going to finish the decking in my garden by the beginning of September
- going to finish the painting & draught-proofing & water-proofing in my hall, lounge & bedroom by the end of October
Blue sky stuff for the coming year
- build a web application using html5, css3 and an rapid-development platform (sproutcore?)
- build an extension and put a kitchen in it
- visit two new countries
- go back to contracting?
SuperFreakonomics – A bit of a rant
I read Freakonomics some time back and was quite impressed at the “let’s think about this differently” concept. On the whole it seemed to be about how how hard it is to find the real cause of change in a complex system; that the simple cause-and-effect ideas we have in a lot of areas are flawed.
I expected more of the same in SuperFreakonomics but instead seem to have been reading a surprisingly biased collection of stories, in some cases based on heresay.
These stories include: why drink driving is safer than walking home, why becoming a prostitute is a good idea and why we shouldn’t worry about climate change.
I can see, at the root, some good research. There’s a lot of information to take in. I think a lot of it is said tongue-in-cheek. None of that makes it alright to say “Driving [drunk] is safer than walking”.
Apparently drunk people get themselves killed on roads quite a lot, which makes it okay to say this. It doesn’t take in to account the fact that it was their own stupid fault, rather than having a drunk motorist plough in to a mother and child. It’s cold, hard numbers.
Now, I can’t deny this has some relevance to the real world. I can suggest a few ideas on how to deal with the problem:
- provide safer walking routes with pedestriansed areas, better crossings, underpasses, better lighting, etc
- reduce road speeds
- safer cars (auto-braking, impact safety, computer assisted hazard warnings, better lights, better brakes, etc)
- better public transport
The one thing I wouldn’t put on this list is:
- don’t walk, drive
At the end of the book they go on a bit of a crusade against the Global Warming brigade. The basic premise is that the Global Warming Scare has been manufactured by biased scientists with (unintentionally) doctored results, pushed in to it by Green campaigning and, even if it were true which it is we don’t have to worry about it because there are untested, unproven scientific solutions with unknown side-effects which will solve the problem for a while, maybe.
So that’s okay then. We’ll let the scientists deal with it.
I wouldn’t mind, except for the self-congratulatory tone of the piece. It’s like they’ve discovered the answers that everyone else is looking for by some sort of magic. Now, I’ve seen these solutions mentioned before. They might work. Maybe. If anyone gets around to building them. It’s nice to have a back up plan. But, in the meantime, I’m going to do what I can and I’m going to think hard about how to do more.
They liken the worries about climate change to a religion. They belittle them and ridicule them in an awfully arrogant manner.
Apparently the data don’t lie, but I’m not sure that’s the point.
Brown Bag
In an attempt to make working here a little more interesting, a little more start-up, I’ve managed to convince our tech lead to run a brown-bag session bi-weekly. We’ll all be looking at bringing ideas to the meeting, whether they are technical, artistic, fun or simply cool.
There are smart people here but our structure means I don’t really get to talk to many of them. I want to work in an environment where people care about what they do and where they can share that passion in a productive way.
On my list for the first session is:
- allourideas.org, a site which allows you to ask questions and get answers. From a creative point of view this is more exciting than it may at first appear.
- CSS3 & HTML 5 Demos. A few examples of what is acheivable in modern browsers.
Pamphyllia, Muswell Hill
If one goes by ratings alone, Pamphyllia appears to be one of the best restaurants in Muswell Hill. This could be explained the surprising scarcity of such establishments in this increasingly gentrified area, though I’ve yet to sample the others.
The service is friendly and fast. Having said that, you should understand that we were the only folks in the restaurant at 5pm on a Sunday. I can’t say what it might be like at a more popular time.
We sampled the patatas bravas, pollo al ajillo, queso al pimiento and chorizo in red wine, accompanied by a decent house red.
Other than the wine, none of it was good at all. The patatas bravas managed to come out on top, though it’s a hard dish to get wrong. The fact that the best dish on the table was potatoes in tomato sauce says a fair bit.
The nicely spicy chorizo was slightly overcooked and oozing more oil than could ever be necessary. Thing is, chorizo is always tasty no matter what you do to it.
The menu described the chicken as having been fried in garlic & olive oil. What we received had been boiled to within an inch of its life and then left in the fridge for a day or two before being re-heated in a watery and almost tasteless sauce.. It was dry and slightly chewy and tasted not one jot of garlic.
The greek side of things, herbed cream cheese in rolled sweet pepper, was fine. It was perhaps a little bland and the peppers had no bite, but it was okay. Acceptable. Alright.
We were also presented with some greek flat-bread, which had obviously just been re-heated. It was dry and had a crumbly texture. Not very appetising.
Overall… it’s acceptable for the price. Meal for 2 with a caraf of decent red wine was 24. The food here is defintely a filler for the booze. This is, then, traditional Spanish tapas. It’s designed to fill a hole while you chuck back some cheap plonk and a sherry or two. I’d visit again, but it wouldn’t be a destination.
Inky Fool
I sometimes think if I applied myself I may become a writer worth reading. In the mean time, here’s a blog worth reading if you’re in to writing or reading writing: the blessed Inky Fool.
The Surreal House
I went to the Surreal House exhibition with high hopes. It’s been getting good reviews and it sounds interesting. Having experienced the wonder of the Dali museum over in Spain I was expecting twisted version of everyday items. Sofas that eat you, cabinets with human feet, mirrors that reflect someone else…
What I got was unexpected, and not in a good way. The Surreal House is pretentious, dry and dull. It presents surreality as something to be regarded in silent contemplation rather than enjoyed. The layout is dark, angular and minimalist. It says nothing about surrealism. It says nothing about anything other than a vast lack of imagination on the part of the curator.
A surrealist’s house should be surreal!
The explanations of works said less about the work (method, idea, form) and more about the ability of the writer to confuse and baffle with artsy rubbish. If someone talked to you like this in real life you would laugh at them. It’s ridiculous and unhelpful and, at the bottom of it, boring and annoying.
There is the occasional good piece. Something that fires your imagination. Something that challenges you, or entertains. But a woman wearing a horse’s head and flapping around in some soap doesn’t do it for me. It’s staid. It’s unoriginal. It’s dull. It’s pretentious. It is, not to put too finer point on it, wank.
Best bits
The humour in these two pieces shows what is possible when surrealism doesn’t take itself too seriously, which made them stand out from the crowd.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Tower of Babel – Paul Thek (1976)
Unfortunately you can’t really see the detail that went in to the construction in the picture (above). There are rats ascending a ladder from the cabin up to an olive tree that rests at the top of the structure. I’m not quite sure what it means, but the rats (and the fact that they are red) piqued my interest. Also, the tower is a bizarre and clever piece of sculpture.
Jan Svankmajer – Down to the Cellar (1983)
This lovely short film conveys fears, both imagined and real, of a young girl going down to the cellar to get some potatoes. I found it fun and serious and silly and dark all at the same time. Superb.
Top 8 Cloud Applications
The Cloud has come of age with the advent of Chrome and Chrome OS. With Chrome’s application shortcuts, we see web-based applications appearing in our start menu, desktop and quick launch bar. They are, other than the fact that they don’t work off-line, near-indistinguishable from their desktop equivalents.
The following apps are all targeted at the home user. Throw away Photoshop. Abandon Excel. The Cloud is here to stay.
- Best photo editor: Pixlr
- Best feed reader: Feedly
- Best task manager: Remember The Milk
- Best IM Client: Meebo
- Best Email Client: Google Mail
- Best Calendar: Google Calendar
- Best Music Player: Audiobox
- Best Word Processor: Google Docs
best photo editor: pixlr
Pixlr provides photoshop-like photo-editing tools such as red-eye reduction, brushes, filters, alpha transparency, feathering, anti-alias, and layers. It supports PSDs, JPEGs, GIFs and PNGs amongst others. The array of filters is impressive and work continues on adding new features. Pixlr Grabber allows Pixlr to behave even more like a desktop app. A plugin for Explorer, Firefox and Chrome, it adds an option to the context menu to allow you to open images in the Pixlr editor directly.
Runners up
- FotoFlexer
- FotoFlexer came a very close second. It offers extensive filters and editing tools, but I prefer the Pixlr interface. Very good integration with photo sites such as flickr.
- Picnik
- Nice to look at and simple to use, Picnik just doesn’t have the power of Pixlr. It’s MS Paint to Pixlr’s Photoshop.
best feed reader: feedly
Feedly is in fact a Chrome extension but, once installed, it behaves just like any other cloud app. The download site has the tagline: “feedly organizes your favorite sites into a fun, magazine-like start page,” which is pretty accurate.
It’s the most original, prettiest and by far the most usable feed reader I’ve seen. Serious attention has gone in to the typography and landing pages. Landing pages have intelligent content filtering, leading to an experience that’s more like a magazine than a classic feed-reader.
Subscriptions are managed through your Google account, so any subscriptions you’ve set up in Google Reader will appear here and (of course) this works the other way as well, so it’s already integrated with Buzz.
Feeds can easily be sorted in to categories on a drag-and-drop management page, making organisation easier than ever. It also provides various feed discovery methods: “popular” shows you what posts are popular right now; On a category page there’s the “you might also like” section in the sidebar; In the digest view there’s a section called “explore”, which allows you to browse feeds by category.
It’s all wonderfully well presented and seamlessly integrated with Flickr, Google, Buzz, Facebook & Twitter. It really goes that extra mile. Don’t miss out.
Runners up
- Google Reader
- Very powerful, but little else. Reading feeds should be enjoyed, not treated as a chore.
- Bloglines
- Much like Google Reader in style and functionality, Bloglines is just another feed reader. It fails to go the extra mile.
best task manager: remember the milk
Keep track of your day-to-day tasks with this superb task and list manager. The interface is simple at first view but provides quite advanced functionality including useful default lists, tags (and lots of other meta data), dynamic search-based lists, sharing options, iCal exports, GoogleMail and Google Calendar integration and an excellent app for both the iPhone and Android handsets.
A good task manager, like a calendar, is essential for a busy life. The trick is learning how to use it effectively. Check out Getting Things Done: How to Achieve Stress-free Productivity for the best tips on keeping your task list (and your life) well organised.
Runners up
- GQueues
- Still in it’s early stages, GQueues may take the crown if they manage to perfect the Google Calendar integration.
best IM client: Meebo
Meebo is the only cloud-based IM client I’m aware of, but that doesn’t mean that calling it the best is unwarranted. It supports every conceivable protocol (MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, GoogleTalk, etc) and does it well. Log in to Meebo from anywhere in the world and have all your friends and colleagues right there waiting for you. It’s awesome for going travelling, where computers may or may not have a random IM client installed, or for ensuring that IM accounts at work and at home are always synced.
Bright, reliable and nicely user-friendly, Meebo’s the way to go.
Runners up
None.
best email client: GMail
The granddaddy of all cloud apps, GMail just about started the revolution. It was the first sign that applications we had always thought of as desktop apps could really become web-based. It was cloud computing before the term had been coined. It still does it better than any other mail reader I’ve seen, including most desktop versions. It’s not pretty, but oh how it works, and with unlimited storage you’ll never need to worry about losing email ever again. Awesome.
Runners up
None. If you want an email app, use GMail.
best calendar: Google Calendar
Google Calendar is the defacto choice for an online calendar. Just about everyone I know has one. This is how I find out if my housemate is going to be home for dinner, or the best day on which to hold a party, or when bank holidays are, what time the sun rises, when clubs run, etc, etc.
The ability to import as many calendars as you like and have them appear alongside your own is fantastic. Some great public calendars are available, such as Victoria Line Closures, telling you which days the Victoria Line will be out of action so you can plan those trips to South London without fear.
Runners up
None.
best music player: Audiobox
Audiobox offers the ability to store your music in a central location and access it from anywhere over their streaming server. It’s lacking a few features, but it’s improving fast.
Dropbox offers a very similar service, but requires a local installation, while Audiobox is web-based. It’s a super little app and one which I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend.
Runners up
- Extension FM
- A lovely little extension for Chrome that records the location of all the mp3s you see on your web travels and presents them as though you had downloaded them and stored them locally. Play them back at your leisure without having to visit the site and trawl through their pages.
best word processor: Google Docs
Google Docs offers a lot more than just a word processor, but for most people this is the start and end of an office suite. Google Docs’ word processor does everything the average user wants to do and is straight to the point. There’s no clutter here. No confusing options. No hidden menus. It’s straightforward and up front about what it is and what it does.
And it has autosave on by default.
Honestly, how could you not have autosave on by default? Why would you ever want to lose your changes? Really?
Use it. Relegate MS Word to the tip and let the crows pick on its bones. It’s time to move on!
Runners up
None.