In May of this year Google introduced their Font API. For way too long web developers have resorted to workarounds to get a particular font on a web page. Now, Google has an easy to use API and a directory of fonts which you can easily embed and use on your website. All it takes is an include of a CSS file hosted by Google. Google does not yet offer many fonts but what they offer looks really nice, even when you want some big text to show up. The fonts all look pretty crisp on any screen I’ve tested.

You can find more on implementing the Google Font API on this page.

Working for a corporation seems simple. You’re there 8 hours a day doing work to achieve goals for the greater good. And you get paid a certain amount of money every month. For most, this is a pretty comfortable position to be in but I find myself increasingly annoyed with it. Certainly now I’m really in need of a long holiday. It’s not like I’m more productive over at the office then where I am now, at home with all the comforts I need.

Working from 9 to 5 doesn’t mean you’re actually doing work 8 hours straight. It means you’re inside an office building regularly working but surfing the web for the most part. There’s another problem too: background noise. Even in a very small company you have people constantly talking or making other noises. Now, you can block this by buying yourself a nice pair of headphones, but this won’t make you a very social person according to most colleagues. Don’t tell me the noise doesn’t bother you, it has a huge impact on your productivity.

And then there’s the holiday problem. I’m not the kind of person who plans going on a holiday one year ahead. I want to go on a holiday when I feel like it. Working for a corporation sometimes means you have to plan your holiday around a dozen others. When you want to, for example, go to France for 2 weeks sometime in August, you have to plan things at least 6 months ahead else someone else will take your desired time off leaving you to work throughout the summer.

I don’t have a solution for these problems, sometimes it’s good to just get things off your chest.

This is part 1 in a series I’m going to attempt.

There’s more ways to install Ruby on Rails along with Apache and MySQL on Mac OS. You could either use the Bitnami Rubystack or compile a lot from source using MacPorts. I’m going for the latter due to it giving me more flexibility. 

Requirements

First off you need to install Xcode which includes the necessary libraries and compilers to use MacPorts.

Enable Apache

Mac OS includes Apache by default. You can enable it by going to System Preferences > Sharing > Web Sharing.

Bonus: enable php

To enable PHP you need to edit a file.

vim /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

Search for ‘php’ and uncomment the following.

LoadModule php5_module        libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

Now restart Apache in the Sharing Preference Pane and test PHP by putting a file called index.php in your webroot.

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Install MySQL, Subversion and Ruby using MacPorts

I’m going to asume you already installed MacPorts. If not, read their documentation.

There’s really just one commando that should get you up and running with MySQL, Subversion and Ruby on no-time.

sudo port install mysql5-server ruby rb-mysql rb-rubygems rb-termios subversion +tools

This command will pull the source, compile everything and give you a few pointers on how to proceed. These are the additional commands to setup MySQL so that it starts automatically during boot.

sudo -u _mysql mysql_install_db5

sudo ln -s /opt/local/var/run/mysql5/mysqld.sock /tmp/mysql.sock

sudo port load mysql5-server

Install Ruby gems

All you need to do now is install a few Ruby gems. There’s a bunch of Gems I install by default. I recommend you lookup the documentation of each gem to determine whether you need it or not. Gems you ‘Rails’ and ‘Mysql’ you’ll probably need, though.

sudo gem install rails rake capistrano mysql haml ruby-debug will_paginate sqlite3-ruby

Again gem will figure out all the dependencies for you. In order to get the latest and greatest pre-release of Rails, enter the following command in your favorite Terminal app.

sudo gem install rails —pre

Starting off with Ruby on Rails

To generate your first Ruby on Rails application you just need to ‘cd’ into your Sites directory and create the Rails structure.

rails new myapp

Test that everything’s working by invoking the WEBrick server.

Rails 2.x

cd myapp; ./script/server

Rails 3.x

cd myapp; ./script/rails server

Both will give you a working web server on http://0.0.0.0:3000. You can now proceed with one of the excellent tutorials on how to build you very first Ruby on Rails application.