I’ve written a very rough and ready Objective-C media player. It sits as an OSX menu icon, near the spotlight and airport icons, and allows you to pick a directory of audio files to play. That’s pretty much it. You can choose “pause”, “skip” and “quit” to control the player, but there’s no notifications, libraries, fancy features or airs and graces.

I want to thank Matteo Bertozzi for teaching me how to create the system bar items, and P.J. Onori for the icon from the Iconic set which I used. I’m using this player daily, so it works for me, but we’re putting it in our labs and it’s on github, so please fork the audioplayer repo if you have any features you want to add.

So we’re always in Campfire, and it’s an integrated part of our working day. As Go Tripod is going from strength to strength, we’ve started to need a way of doing a similar thing with projects – a very simple way for anyone to see and overview of projects that are on the go right now. We’ve kind of tried this before, but the stuff that we’ve tried either hasn’t been simple enough or we’ve only used it rarely because it’s separated out from every other part of our work. In the latter case, it just gets left by the wayside and forgotten.

The idea sprang to mind to somehow involve Campfire in the proceedings. Maybe we change the room title to reflect the current open projects? The problem with the room title is that it’s a bit out of the way up the top of the screen and could be affected by the same issue as I described above – out of sight, out of mind. So the solution needed to be integrated. In fact we basically needed another team member in Campfire, our communication method of choice, talking to us and updating us. Some kind of automated team member… Some kind of robot?

The Technical Bit

I did a quick search – Tim Riley’s Campfire Bot looked absolutely perfect, with its plugin system, so I tried to use that. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the latest source code to work, and I had other issues when I tried to use the Tinder library which underlies the Campfire Bot.

A quick scout around for some more libraries led me to Broach, a simple wrapper for the Campfire API, and the 37 Signals example code for the Campfire Streaming API, which uses the twitter-stream library. I quickly put together a proof of concept using these tools and some sneaky code which allowed us to issue commands to the bot from the Campfire window itself.

The Results

A picture tells a thousand words:

A list of current projects! And Simon decides to add another:

GoTripodBot is a helpful fellow:

And a brief insight into the world of development (I wrote some unit tests after this):

Conclusion

Of course there’s a lot more to our project management process than this (and a lot more projects to manage than I’ve shown!) but having such easy transparency into this top layer of our work is really going to improve our awareness of what’s happening right now in the world of Go Tripod.

The Ext JS 3.0 Cookbook is for developers who want a book of useful techniques, with explanations, that they can refer to and adapt to their purposes.

I was a Technical Reviewer for this book, and it contains not just simple recipes to get you started, but complex ones to allow you to bend Ext JS to your will. If you buy Ext JS 3.0 Cookbook eBook along with the eBook edition of the book I co-authored, Learning Ext JS, you can get a 50% discount using the promo code jsco34ler on the Packt website. Congratulations Jorge!

“How can it cost so much?! It’s just a website!”

I can see their point. Most websites contain common elements – login, lists, articles, shopping carts, and so on – so you’d think that once you’ve written one, you’ll have the bits and pieces you need to make more. And taken individually, each of these parts are fairly straightforward – a list of products contains some pretty basic HTML, surely? And HTML is just a text file?

And again, that’s a fair point. The real time isn’t taken in writing these bits and pieces, it’s taken in understanding how the customer wants them to be written and how they need to fit together in a certain situation. For example, a shopping cart quickly becomes more complex when the customer adds on a few more features:

• Integrates with Google Checkout
• Customers can save carts for later ordering
• Customers can reload past orders into a few cart

But it’s not just the cart, it’s viewing products too – what if certain customers see custom trade prices? Or products can be assigned to multiple categories and the customer wants to see how many products are in each category next to the category name? All of these things are minor when taking in isolation, but together they are a thousand tiny cuts which bleed development time.

As well as a collection of features, a specification for a website will also discuss requirements in language which is specific to the company you’re quoting for. Rather than “cart” you might have “basket”. Or you could have “assessors”, “reviewers”, “investigators”, or any other number of terms which a company uses internally and when referencing all of the features they want on their site. Eric Evans talks about the “domain” of a problem when discussing software – not only do you have to appreciate what kind of features are necessary but you have to understand the domain in which they’re going to be used, in order to create a solution which fits together correctly.

So software is a whole big bag of questions and clarifications and solutions. From a developer’s point of view, it’s not just a case of taking some standard components and piecing them together – though that does happen occasionally. Instead every step of the development process is about solving problems, by understanding what the customer wants and by understanding the problem domain. Every day of development sees a developer tackle a new bit of work that needs resolving in a novel way, and that’s why making software isn’t just a case of shoving some parts together and hoping that it works, but a process, an evolution of the initial ideas.

When clients come to us and ask for software, they’ll pitch it by saying “make us a website”. But we know that what they really mean is “look, understand, and solve our problem”. And that’s what we do.

I am not going to go into detail about this feature as Ryan Daigle has an excellent write up on his blog.

However I have been looking at ways to easily add and remove nested form blocks using Javascript/RJS and came across a good method of achieving this by Marsvin on the RailsForum website.

We have used this method a few times now, so thought we would roll it up into a plugin. Simply install the plugin to give you two new view helpers that allow you to create links to add and remove these nested form item partials using RJS.

Visit the plugin’s page on GitHub to install or view the documentation.

My favourite use of this feature is for development – when you’re sending loads of test emails you can avoid polluting your inbox and simply check the pickup directory. You also avoid having to set up an SMTP host and all of the associated configuration.

Simply add the following to your web.config’s system.net section:

<mailSettings>
	<smtp deliveryMethod="SpecifiedPickupDirectory">
		<specifiedPickupDirectory pickupDirectoryLocation="c:\temp\"/>
	</smtp>
</mailSettings>

Make sure you’ve got the right permissions on the directory. Now, send an email from your application and watch it appear in c:\temp, as if by magic!

I have recently been doing Cocoa Development on Mac OS X 10.5 and was looking for a way to do this in Cocoa and came across a great drawing method named NSDrawNinePartImage. The method has the following signature:

void NSDrawNinePartImage(NSRect frame,
   NSImage *topLeftCorner,
   NSImage *topEdgeFill,
   NSImage *topRightCorner,
   NSImage *leftEdgeFill,
   NSImage *centerFill,
   NSImage *rightEdgeFill,
   NSImage *bottomLeftCorner,
   NSImage *bottomEdgeFill,
   NSImage *bottomRightCorner,
   NSCompositingOperation op,
   CGFloat alphaFraction,
   BOOL flipped
);

This method requires the developer to provide 9 separate images to create the 9 sections of the scale 9 image. Luckily the article I had stumbled across had a handy example for using a single class, so I thought that I would use their technique to create a simple generic class that can be used to draw a single NSImage as a Scale-9 scalable image. This could be used for example in an NSView or NSButtonCell.

//
//  GTDrawImage.m
//  StretchMyView
//
//  Created by Jon Baker on 17/06/2009.
//  Copyright 2009 Go Tripod Ltd. All rights reserved.
//
 
#import "GTDrawImage.h"
 
@implementation GTDrawImage
 
 
+(void) drawScalableImage:(NSImage *)sourceImage scaleTopLeft:(NSPoint)topLeftPoint scaleBottomRight:(NSPoint)bottomRightPoint inFrame:(NSRect)frame
{
	NSSize sourceSize = [sourceImage size];
 
	// Top left
	NSRect topLeftTileRect = NSMakeRect(0, 0, topLeftPoint.x, sourceSize.height - topLeftPoint.y);
	NSRect topLeftCutRect = NSMakeRect(0, topLeftPoint.y, topLeftTileRect.size.width, topLeftTileRect.size.height);
 
	// TopRight
	NSRect topRightTileRect = NSMakeRect(0,0, sourceSize.width - bottomRightPoint.x, topLeftTileRect.size.height);
	NSRect topRightCutRect = NSMakeRect(sourceSize.width - topRightTileRect.size.width, topLeftPoint.y, topRightTileRect.size.width, topRightTileRect.size.height);
 
	// Top
	NSRect topTileRect = NSMakeRect(0, 0, sourceSize.width - topLeftTileRect.size.width - topRightTileRect.size.width, topLeftTileRect.size.height);
	NSRect topCutRect = NSMakeRect(topLeftPoint.x, topLeftPoint.y, topTileRect.size.width, topTileRect.size.height);
 
	// Bottom Left
	NSRect bottomLeftTileRect = NSMakeRect(0, 0, topLeftCutRect.size.width, bottomRightPoint.y);
	NSRect bottomLeftCutRect = NSMakeRect(0, 0, bottomLeftTileRect.size.width, bottomLeftTileRect.size.height);
 
	// Bottom Right
	NSRect bottomRightTileRect = NSMakeRect(0,0, topRightCutRect.size.width, bottomLeftTileRect.size.height);
	NSRect bottomRightCutRect = NSMakeRect(topRightCutRect.origin.x, 0, bottomRightTileRect.size.width , bottomRightTileRect.size.height );
 
	// Bottom
	NSRect bottomTileRect = NSMakeRect(0,0, topTileRect.size.width, bottomLeftTileRect.size.height);
	NSRect bottomCutRect = NSMakeRect(topCutRect.origin.x, 0, bottomTileRect.size.width, bottomTileRect.size.height);
 
	// left
 
	NSRect leftTileRect = NSMakeRect(0, 0, bottomLeftTileRect.size.width, sourceSize.height - topTileRect.size.height - bottomTileRect.size.height);
	NSRect leftCutRect = NSMakeRect(0, bottomRightPoint.y, leftTileRect.size.width, leftTileRect.size.height);
 
	// right
 
	NSRect rightTileRect = NSMakeRect(0, 0, topRightCutRect.size.width, leftCutRect.size.height);
	NSRect rightCutRect = NSMakeRect(bottomRightPoint.x, bottomRightPoint.y, rightTileRect.size.width, rightTileRect.size.height);
 
	//center
	NSRect centerTileRect = NSMakeRect(0, 0, topTileRect.size.width, leftTileRect.size.height);
	NSRect centerCutRect = NSMakeRect(topCutRect.origin.x, bottomRightPoint.y, centerTileRect.size.width, centerTileRect.size.height);
 
	NSImage *topLeft = [[NSImage alloc] initWithSize:topLeftTileRect.size];
	[topLeft lockFocus];
	[sourceImage drawInRect:topLeftTileRect fromRect:topLeftCutRect operation:NSCompositeCopy fraction:1.0];
	[topLeft unlockFocus];
 
	NSImage *top = [[NSImage alloc] initWithSize:topTileRect.size];
	[top lockFocus];
	[sourceImage drawInRect:topTileRect fromRect:topCutRect operation:NSCompositeCopy fraction:1.0];
	[top unlockFocus];
 
	NSImage *topRight = [[NSImage alloc] initWithSize:topRightTileRect.size];
	[topRight lockFocus];
	[sourceImage drawInRect:topRightTileRect fromRect:topRightCutRect operation:NSCompositeCopy fraction:1.0];
	[topRight unlockFocus];
 
	//setup center section, left, right
	NSImage *left = [[NSImage alloc] initWithSize:leftTileRect.size];
	[left lockFocus];
	[sourceImage drawInRect:leftTileRect fromRect:leftCutRect operation:NSCompositeCopy fraction:1.0];
	[left unlockFocus];
 
	NSImage *center = [[NSImage alloc] initWithSize:centerTileRect.size];
	[center lockFocus];
	[sourceImage drawInRect:centerTileRect fromRect:centerCutRect operation:NSCompositeCopy fraction:1.0];
	[center unlockFocus];
 
	NSImage *right = [[NSImage alloc] initWithSize:rightTileRect.size];
	[right lockFocus];
	[sourceImage drawInRect:rightTileRect fromRect:rightCutRect operation:NSCompositeCopy fraction:1.0];
	[right unlockFocus];
 
	NSImage *bottomLeft = [[NSImage alloc] initWithSize:bottomLeftTileRect.size];
	[bottomLeft lockFocus];
	[sourceImage drawInRect:bottomLeftTileRect fromRect:bottomLeftCutRect operation:NSCompositeCopy fraction:1.0];
	[bottomLeft unlockFocus];
 
	NSImage *bottom = [[NSImage alloc] initWithSize:bottomTileRect.size];
	[bottom lockFocus];
	[sourceImage drawInRect:bottomTileRect fromRect:bottomCutRect operation:NSCompositeCopy fraction:1.0];
	[bottom unlockFocus];
 
	NSImage *bottomRight = [[NSImage alloc] initWithSize:bottomRightTileRect.size];
	[bottomRight lockFocus];
	[sourceImage drawInRect:bottomRightTileRect fromRect:bottomRightCutRect operation:NSCompositeCopy fraction:1.0];
	[bottomRight unlockFocus];
 
 
	NSDrawNinePartImage(
						frame,
						topLeft, top, topRight,
						left, center, right,
						bottomLeft, bottom, bottomRight,
						NSCompositeSourceOver, 1.0, NO);
 
	[topLeft release];
	[top release];
	[topRight release];
	[left release];
	[center release];
	[right release];
	[bottomLeft release];
	[bottom release];
	[bottomRight release];
}
 
@end

To use this generic classes, you simply need to import it where required:

#import "GTDrawImage.h"

…and then you can call from within, for example the drawRect:, selector using the following method:

- (void)drawRect:(NSRect)rect {
	[GTDrawImage drawScalableImage:baseImage scaleTopLeft:NSMakePoint(8, 16) scaleBottomRight:NSMakePoint(16,8) inFrame: [self bounds]];
}

drawScalableImage takes an NSImage, in this case baseImage, and two reference points (NSPoint) to split the image into nine slices, firstly the scaleTopLeft: and secondly the scaleBottomRight:, both located from the bottom left corner. So for example to split a 24px x 24px image into 9 equal 8px by 8px segments (see below), the topLeftPoint would be x=8px, y=16px and the bottom x=16 and y=8.

Just download the following classes into your projects and away you go:

• Header: GTDrawImage.h
• Implementation: GTDrawImage.m
• Sample Project using GTDrawImage: StretchMyView.zip (Adapted example I found. Unfortunately I can’t remember where and so don’t know who to credit)

This is a great way to capture the interest of would be browsers that would normally see this page and immediately hit the back key, instead not only do they capture my attention, but they also tap into my curiosity which gets me to immediately click the products link.

In this case I didn’t need any of their products but this is a great tip.

Also note the search bar being visible. This is essential on a 404 page for keeping customers that know what they are looking for on your site.

gem update --system

Then install the Phusion Passenger gem

gem install passenger

Once complete you can run the Phusion Passenger install that compiles mod_rails for you.

passenger-install-apache2-module

Once this completes it will give you some code to past into your httpd.conf file and you are ready to start configuring your sites.. Well actually if you have been using Mongrels then time to strip most of the configuration out of your https.conf file. You can have as simple a configuration as shown below. Note: The DocumentRoot should be set to the public folder within your app. Passenger automatically detects that this is a rails app.

    ServerName www.stubmatic.com
    DocumentRoot /websites/stubmatic/public

One thing to note is that by default Passenger disables ModRewrite for that VirtualHost and in our case we use ModRewrite for a number of things such as providing a Maintenance page when maintenance.html is in our public folder allowing us to take the app offline. We also use ModRewrite to hide .svn folders, so we needed to use ModRewrite. Thankfully Passenger provides a solution. Note: You must first make sure you remove the .htaccess file in your rails public folder!

So our new Apache configuration looks like this:

    ServerName www.stubmatic.com
    DocumentRoot /websites/stubmatic/public
 
    RailsAllowModRewrite on
 
    RewriteEngine On
 
    RewriteRule ^(.*/)?.svn/ - [F,L]
 
    RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/maintenance.html -f
    RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !maintenance.html
    RewriteRule ^.*$ /maintenance.html [L]

If you want to setup an Apache / Phusion Passenger testing server you will also need to add the following directive to your VirtualHost configuration:

RailsEnv development

As you can see Phusion Passenger make deployment of Ruby on Rails as trivial as deploying a PHP. You can easily reload Phusion Passenger by running the following command from within your Rails project root.

touch tmp/restart.txt

In terms of performance, Phusion Passenger holds it’s own against Mongrel and there are plenty of details on Phusion’s website.

For more information:

1. Phusion Passenger
2. Phusion Passenger Documentation

iPhone and Adobe Air developers (as well as any others that use SQLite 3) Menial has just released an excellent little app for creating, managing and running queries against SQLite 3 databases called Bases.

The application is simple to use, very user friendly and has worked well from the testing I have done. It costs just £10 and there is a free trial available so you can try before you buy.

Find out more and download here