Monday, July 30. 2007
MacPorts
I have a situation where I need to switch back and forth between two different versions of Ruby. I'm doing some work for one of my clients which is based on Ruby 1.8.6 and I'm also working on the EasyBrandingTools.com site which is based on Ruby 1.8.4.
Ruby 1.8.6 has a particularly nasty bug in its XPATH support which completely breaks EasyBrandingTools.com so we are unable to upgrade to that version until this bug is fixed.
I did some digging through the MacPorts documentation and discovered that it didn't remove the 1.8.4 installation when it upgraded to 1.8.6 and since both versions are there, I can easily switch between them by deactivating one and activating the other. The magic to do that is...
This makes it very easy to support multiple different versions of Ruby on the same machine and saves me a lot of configuration grief.
Ruby 1.8.6 has a particularly nasty bug in its XPATH support which completely breaks EasyBrandingTools.com so we are unable to upgrade to that version until this bug is fixed.
I did some digging through the MacPorts documentation and discovered that it didn't remove the 1.8.4 installation when it upgraded to 1.8.6 and since both versions are there, I can easily switch between them by deactivating one and activating the other. The magic to do that is...
sudo port deactivate ruby @1.8.6_0
sudo port activate ruby @1.8.4_2
This makes it very easy to support multiple different versions of Ruby on the same machine and saves me a lot of configuration grief.
Thursday, July 26. 2007
Magnets and pennies
When I was a kid, we used to use magnets to pick up coins. Of course, this never worked with pennies since they're made of the wrong kind of metal, but you could pick up other coins with a magnet.
Tonight, my son was doing this and we discovered that about a third of the pennies we sampled do get picked up with a magnet. The remaining two thirds don't. We couldn't find any obvious patterns in the coins that can be attracted.
I thought at first that it might be newer coins being attracted and older coins not but we found a mix new and old ones that were attracted and a mix that weren't.
Tonight, my son was doing this and we discovered that about a third of the pennies we sampled do get picked up with a magnet. The remaining two thirds don't. We couldn't find any obvious patterns in the coins that can be attracted.
I thought at first that it might be newer coins being attracted and older coins not but we found a mix new and old ones that were attracted and a mix that weren't.
About me
Email: mbowler
@GargoyleSoftware.com
Mobile: (289) 385-0120
Skype: mikebowler-soc
My businesses
- I'm a distributor for Send Out Cards, which is a phenomenal way for businesses to improve customer retention and increase profits. It's also a great way for individuals to create an extra source of revenue. I use it both ways and can't recommend it highly enough.
- I'm the founder of Gargoyle Software Inc, a Canadian company focused on improving the software development process. We offer consulting around Agile methodologies such as Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP) and technologies such as Ruby on Rails and Java.
[More...]. - I'm one of the founders of EasyBrandingTools.com
My other blogs:
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Open source projects I started:
- HtmlUnit a project to simulate a web browser for testing
- GSBase which contains lots of common pieces for UI's and testing and ...
Recommend me at:
