Category: Life

After upgrading gems on my Macbook Pro a few months ago, I started getting this horrible error whenever I tried to get to my application’s console in Rails.

The-Me:~/Sites/socialight michael$ script/console
Loading development environment.
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rmagick-1.14.1/lib/RMagick.bundle: [BUG] Bus Error
ruby 1.8.4 (2005-12-24) [i686-darwin8.6.1]

Abort trap

I tried everything. Reinstalling Ruby, Rails and the RMagick gem. Downloading new versions of ImageMagick and GraphicsMagick as discussed here. I threw DarwinPorts, fink, HiveLogic and even resorted to reading installation instructions, all to no avail. script/console seemed destined to be something I used on other machines, something I watched others caress lovingly. *sigh*

Then, one day, after half an hour of my usual round of aimless download and reinstallation of ImageMagick and GraphicsMagick, I finally got it. I randomly started reading the non-OS X install instructions for RMagick which pointed out that by adding the “–with-graphics-magick” option to ./configure, it forces RMagick to use GraphicsMagick instead of ImageMagick. Voila! It’s all working. Yippee!

Some exciting news about mobile games from actionscript.it

“FlashLite is fast developing into one of the most exciting new tools for mobile development, and the large pool of talented flash developers world wide promises to make it extremely successful. However, for most mobile professionals, J2ME is still the preferred choice. Mobile.Actionscript.it is open to the best of both worlds, and has decided to honor J2ME developers with an new category dedicated entirely to J2ME, with its own dedicated prizes.”

Awesome! Great to see that although the Flash Lite community is still gung-ho for their platform, they’re also making some concessions towards what people actually use to play games. Good stuff.

Teaching a class at ITP called Mobile Application Design.

Building the next version of Socialight with some awesome people.

Getting the next version of Identity ready for the awesome Come Out and Play Festival.

Judging a Mobile Marathon Ad Contest at the Inspiration Festival in NYC.

Meeting people in the Communications pavilion at the Wired NextFest. Look out for the Socialight Booth. See ya there.

Eep!

Korea is the closest thing to a place where you can run into the future every day, while casually munching a kimchee pajeon and sipping some Soju. Suhjung and the Nabi crew have put together another great mobile competition – the Mobile Asia Competition 2006 – enter quick while there’s still time! (Submissions end 31 August 2006)