Adventurous Computing

I am a lazy person. I do like things to just work, run out of the box, name it. I like Ubuntu for it’s packaging system and ease of installation of various software. However using Netbeans from the default repo could cause you a headache when developing Rails 3 apps. These just won’t run.

Let us start with installing the newest version of the IDE

sudo apt-get install netbeans
#then go to the Tools->Plugins->Available and install all regarding Ruby

Now go ahead and try running some Rails app.

/var/lib/gems/1.9.1/gems/activesupport-3.0.3/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:239:in `require': /var/lib/gems/1.9.1/gems/activesupport-3.0.3/lib/active_support/cache/mem_cache_store.rb:32: invalid multibyte escape: /[x00-x20%x7F-xFF]/ (SyntaxError)

you say ? Here’s a quick fix

#edit /usr/share/netbeans/6.9/etc/netbeans.conf
#=> append -J-Druby.no.kcode=true to the the netbeans_default_options and volia
# the whole line im my case goes like that:
netbeans_default_options="-J-client -J-Xss2m -J-Xms32m -J-XX:PermSize=32m -J-XX:MaxPermSize=200m -J-Dapple.laf.useScreenMenuBar=true -J-Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true -J-Dsun.java2d.pmoffscreen=false -J-Druby.no.kcode=true"

Long term solution ? Wait for Netbeans 7.0 as the devs promised it to be fixed there

My env is Windows 7 64bit en, with Visual Studio 2010
What I do is

* download ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org//pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.2-p136.tar.gz
* depack
* launch visual studio command prompt

C:devruby-1.9.2-p136>ruby --version
'ruby' is not recognized as an internal or external command
operable program or batch file.
C:devruby-1.9.2-p136> cd win32
C:devruby-1.9.2-p136win32>
C:devruby-1.9.2-p136win32> configure.bat
cl -nologo -MD rtname.c user32.lib -link > nul
Checking unicows.lib
Creating Makefile.new
type `nmake' to make ruby
C:devruby-1.9.2-p136win32> nmake
cl -nologo -MD -Zi -W2 -wd4996 -O2sy-  -Zm600 -DRUBY_EXPORT -I. -I.ext/i
nclude/i386-mswin32_100 -I./../include -I./.. -I./../missing     -Fodmyversion.o
bj -c -Tc./../dmyversion.c
dmyversion.c
-I./.. ./../tool/compile_prelude.rb ./../prelude.rb miniprelude.c
'-I.' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '-I.' : return code '0x1'
Stop.
C:devruby-1.9.2-p136win32> nmake
Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 10.00.30319.01
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.
-I./.. ./../tool/compile_prelude.rb ./../prelude.rb miniprelude.c
'-I.' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '-I.' : return code '0x1'
Stop.

but wait, I was able to compile this before. I remember linux version complaining about not having base ruby version installed, maybe such a thing could help ?

* download http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/73722/rubyinstaller-1.9.2-p136.exe
* install, adding to PATH
[restart visual studio command prompt]

C:devruby-1.9.2-p136win32> configure.bat
cl -nologo -MD rtname.c user32.lib -link > nul
Checking unicows.lib
Creating Makefile.new
"type `nmake' to make ruby."
C:devruby-1.9.2-p136win32> nmake
[...]

proceeds with the compilation, too bad that this requriement isn’t specified explicitly in the error messages.

C:devruby-1.9.2-p136win32> nmake install

* remove old ruby installation folders and PATH entrances

PS C:Userscyryl> ruby --version
The term 'ruby' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program.

* add new ruby installation [/usr/bin] to PATH

C:> ruby --version
ruby 1.9.2p136 (2010-12-25) [i386-mswin32_100]

C:> gem --version
1.3.7

seems like working ruby install, however

C:> gem update
ERROR:  Loading command: update (LoadError)
no such file to load -- zlib
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (NameError)
uninitialized constant Gem::Commands::UpdateCommand

So we do have working ruby version with broken gem tool, I’ll try to cope with that and will give you an update.

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For years I’ve been involved in the open source community. I encouraged company managers to use open source solutions, I reported bugs, I did tests. Since this Monday I am officially a part of Sharpdevelop team, pursuing the goal of better F# support within the IDE. The project itself made has made a impressive progress last years, had MonoDevelop forked from it and has some pretty good people working on it right now. What more can I say.

After some not so pleasurable experiences with the previous VPS hosting provider I started my search for some other one. This time not only google was involved but also aardvark and some of the “top XX best hosting providers” sites. Two results kept showing up. server4you and tilaa. Which one to choose then ? I wanted to give both of them a chance.

server4you. I really tried to buy a VPS there and I failed. Lots of forms to fill and no instant money transfer available. I entered my credit card details only to receive the email after a day or so stating that they were unable to process my payment.

tilaa. What caught my attention there was that clean website of them. I like such a design style, as you can also see it here. Not so cheap, I must admit, but definitely easy to buy. Payment transfered and after about a minute I had a full access to the VPS. That’s how I like things to work. I am using tilaa’s the most simple VPS plan since then and I am pretty happy with it. Here gathered are some things I like or don’t about its services.

• friendly, responsive staff
• 2x RAM amount of swap space – seems great compared to no swap on other VPSes
• KVM+qemu based, you get full control of your system
• good overall system responsiveness – I experienced occasional lags when using OpenVZ virtualization before, there’s no such thing here
• they work fast – the day the new Ubuntu 10.10 was released, they had the VPS image ready !
• their motto “We try to be good open source citizens” just convinces me
• the only disadvantage is the price, it’s 8.95 euro net montly, it’s also easy to miss that info on the site

As I already have a safe place to tinker with my system the real work on the server configuration begins. Stay tuned for the next episode.

As every guy in the software industry I need ways to promote my humble self. A decent web page and online resume plus a blog maybe are a must these days. The question remains where to put them.

Previously I had my site published within one of the polish hosting companies for free, as my friend was involved in its operations. Thanks Kajetan for 5 years of support ! And maybe it’d stay that way if not of that desire of mine to tinker and have control of every aspect of the technology power. Some platform with ability to boot the system I want up would be appreciated.

Real servers are good when you have a place to put them. And want to pay electricity bills, provide UPS, KVM, BGP and other three-letter abbreviations. And oh, I simply don’t like the fan noise anymore. VPS then it is.

Since I recently made contact with Ubuntu Server edition and liked it for its simplicity, I started searching for a cheap VPS which supports the newest Ubuntu. Two googles later I found dmehosting.com. 6$ for 25Gigs of space and 256MB RAM seemed ok, so I bougth the VPS1 plan. Payment went without problems, they support PayPal. With 6$ less on my account I was waiting for them to give me the IP + login & password. I didn’t expect that I would take the whole day long.

My first contact with the machine was that of apt-get update, which failed. Because of lack of network connectivity. I was logged by ssh to that machine, so definitely some sort of connectivity had to be in place. I dug into and found not working DNS servers, so I made VPS connect to the other ones and everything started working. I jumped into their ‘live’ tech support line just to hear that it was really bad of me to change the resolv.conf and I just shouldn’t do that. In the meanwhile their DNSes went back so I in fact did revert the resolv.conf after all.

It’s OpenVZ-based hosting, so policy of “no-no’s” is pretty much embedded in the very system. No kernel reinstallation. No swap space. No system clock write access. No clicking too fast in the administration panel. Never heard of such virtualization platform property. Back to google then my search for VPS is. Stay tuned for the next part.

I have always been fascinated by works of Adrian Chmielarz, from the times of Metropolis Software on. Naturally then, I am following really closely on the development of Bulletstorm. Damn, I even hoped to talk to The Guy or Mieszko Zielinski at the gameaiconf in Paris, but Alex told me that “whoa, PCF is so busy with the new IP that they didn’t have time to come this year, next year they’ll be here, hopefully”.

Having something so deeply embedded in your mind that you’re always thinking of it. While you eat, while you talk, in your sleep. That’s the way I do like to work. Reading about making of Bulletstorm gives me creeps as I do feel their hyperenthusiasm about the thing, I do feel that they take this game everywhere with them. To dinner, breakfast, party. That’s the way I do like to work.

Now back on track, an interview which triggered this urge to flush my thoughts here. Interview with Tanya Jessen, producer at Epic.

People make games so other people can have fun. How selfless.

It seems that being so much into other programming things I missed the Google AI Contest announcement. It’s supercool that they sponsor such challenges but also it’s really uncool [so like warm ?] that apparently I won’t have time to participate.

About the challenge itself – it involves working with GalconFusion-like game. Easy to learn, difficult to master type. As they provide starter packs with a sample bot it’s easy to start. However, getting some decent place would involve some really long time of good old hard work.

As a side note on .NET being spread around the unix world,  there’s a C# starter pack. Good. After few secs I realised that the code will be run under antique Mono 1.2.6, therefore none of my young C# friends would be there. No type inference, no linq, no other fancy stuff.  Not good.