Typo upgrade

We upgraded Typo to the ‘trunk’ from subversion, pretty much without any issues. As a result, we now have a few improved services (e.g. comment RSS feed now works, as do trackbacks in general, improved anti-spam for comments). We’ve also tweaked the CSS slightly to make it a bit more readable. Apologies for any fun … Continue reading “Typo upgrade”

We upgraded Typo to the ‘trunk’ from subversion, pretty much without any issues. As a result, we now have a few improved services (e.g. comment RSS feed now works, as do trackbacks in general, improved anti-spam for comments). We’ve also tweaked the CSS slightly to make it a bit more readable. Apologies for any fun and games with your feed reader.

Moving from WEBrick to lighttpd/FastCGI in Nitro

As we rapidly approach our semi-public Beta stage, I’ve switched from using WEBrick to Lighttpd (or ‘lightie’ as they like to call it *shudder*) as the web server. This also means switching to FastCGI. A brief overview on Oxyliquit gives the configuration that you’ll need which usually lives in /etc/lighttpd.conf on Linux or /usr/local/etc/lighttpd.conf on … Continue reading “Moving from WEBrick to lighttpd/FastCGI in Nitro”

As we rapidly approach our semi-public Beta stage, I’ve switched from using WEBrick to Lighttpd (or ‘lightie’ as they like to call it *shudder*) as the web server. This also means switching to FastCGI. A brief overview on Oxyliquit gives the configuration that you’ll need which usually lives in /etc/lighttpd.conf on Linux or /usr/local/etc/lighttpd.conf on FreeBSD.

Here are some issues I’ve run into, in the hope that they’ll be useful to someone else.

When starting lighttpd, if I have more than one fcgi process (min-procs and/or max-procs > 1), Nitro starts the Og.setup once for each process. This means that you have to turn off schema evolution (:evolve_schema => false) and obviously make Og not drop the database at start-up (:destroy => false).

Nitro doesn’t know what your template directory is by default under fcgi. In your run.rb (or whatever script you use to start your Nitro app) insert Template.root = '/path/to/your/template/dir' before you start your app.

Nitro (and Og) doesn’t log everything properly into your log/app.log. This is some weirdness in the code base, which hopefully will get tracked down (possibly by me), but as a work around (thanks Brian!) put the following two lines at the top of your run.rb:

require 'glue/logger'
Logger.set Logger.new('/path/to/your/app.log')

Finally, if like me you’re using Nitro/Og in a REST-style manner, you may want to get access to the body of any post request. In WEBrick I did this with request.raw_body, but this doesn’t work with FastCGI. Unfortunately, there is no workaround for this that I can find, so I’ll be writing a fix tonight, and posting to the Nitro mailing list (and here in the comments).

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The Art of the Business Card

Business cards are tricky things. You meet people, exchange cards and wonder if it will be responded to. The conventional wisdom is also to put as much information as possible onto the card so that the individual has no excuse not to be able to get in contact including but not limited to telephone number … Continue reading “The Art of the Business Card”

Business cards are tricky things. You meet people, exchange cards and wonder if it will be responded to.

The conventional wisdom is also to put as much information as possible onto the card so that the individual has no excuse not to be able to get in contact including but not limited to telephone number (with or without international dialling codes), fax number, pager number, web site, email address, street address, their name, their company name, their position in the corporate hierarchy, some blurb about what the company does, a logo. How about a small thumbnail of the holder? How about a pithy joke witty remark on the reverse. And all in colour.

That’s an awful lot of data to cram onto a small card. In today’s digital world, how many people will use a pager? How many people will write a letter? How much of the writing on these cards could be replaced with “whitespace”?

We’re a small company. I mean, there’s only two of us at the moment. We’re also “Bedouin” by necessity (as well as by plan). We don’t have anyone available to answer telephone queries. In fact, with the exception of some official paperwork, we’re entirely virtual. You want to speak to me? Email me and ask for my VOIP line. Or we can meet in person. Even if we grow much larger, I don’t see much point in greatly increasing the amount of data on the card.

Distilling the essence of a business card is what we did. At the end of the day, Infurious is a brand and we want to get the name out there. Hence our business cards reflect that. It should provide you with just enough “data” to find out some “information”.

That’s not to say that the approach wasn’t met with some resistance especially from our friends. But the first public test was certainly interesting and the search referrals in the website log files were just as interesting. Provide people with the most basic of information and they will find you. Google is your friend.

Anyway, I’ve waxed on long enough without actually showing anyone the card. You can see it here:

 

The reverse is plain white (because you may want to scribble a note on it). We’ve had some very good reactions (Wow, very minimalist and avant-garde!) as well as some not entirely positive ones (But what if I want to phone you?) What do you think? Do you think that’s entirely enough information for a startup to provide on their business card?

Seems weird not to have it for the Mac

A new game,Tremulous has released some binaries and source for Windows and Linux. Is it just me but does it actually feel weird that it’s not available as a DMG for Mac OS X? I guess I’ve been used to recent developments being available Mac-first or Mac-early. Tremulous is a free, open source game that … Continue reading “Seems weird not to have it for the Mac”

A new game,Tremulous has released some binaries and source for Windows and Linux. Is it just me but does it actually feel weird that it’s not available as a DMG for Mac OS X? I guess I’ve been used to recent developments being available Mac-first or Mac-early.

Tremulous is a free, open source game that blends a team based FPS with elements of an RTS. Players can choose from 2 unique races, aliens and humans. Players on both teams are able to build working structures in-game like an RTS. These structures provide many functions, the most important being spawning. The designated builders must ensure there are spawn structures or other players will not be able to rejoin the game after death. Other structures provide automated base defense (to some degree), healing functions and much more…

To their credit, in the FAQ they answer the question:
In order to get a Mac version you need to do one of three things: 1) buy us a Mac. 2) fix Mac ioq3. 3) find somebody else to fix ioq3.

Someone on their forums has managed to get it working though.

Maybe it’s the whole alpha geek thing but I just assume that “cool new stuff” will be available on the Mac.