dirtystylus

Plugout – Flash Player Version Switcher

Update 2008-12-16: A coworker found that simply typing "plugout" has the (unintentional?) effect of deleting the flash plugin entirely, which is useful for testing with no Flash plugin at all.

While developing the recent AllStateGarage.com site I had to do regression testing on different versions of the Flash Player, to make sure that both the swfobject embedding script and the built-in ExpressInstall upgrade functionality were working properly. After doing a bit of searching I found Plugout, which in a brilliant twist of fate was written by Aaron Smith (the guy behind RubyAMF that we used on the AllstateGarage.com project).

Plugout is a command-line utility that makes switching to different versions of the flash player easy. You can specify the plugin, version number, and browser. It's smart enough to restart and run the browser under Rosetta if the plugin version is PPC-only. For example, to switch to Flash Player version 9.0.28 in Safari I fire up Terminal and run:

You can also add different plugin versions as they get released, including debugger versions of the plugin (the debugger versions are denoted by a "d" following the version number). For example:

The only wrinkle I ran into when using Plugout was that Ruby is required for it to work. This isn't a big deal to Leopard users, since Ruby is included, but before I upgraded to OS X 10.5 I just ran the plugout command in a shell session launched from within a Locomotive Ruby context. Speaking of Locomotive: development has been halted on the project, mostly because of Ruby's inclusion in OS X Leopard.

Streaming from Mac to PS3

Took a stab at setting up media streaming from the Mac to the PS3 and found it to be relatively straightforward. There's a few options for doing this, the first being Elgato's EyeConnect and the other being Twonky Vision. EyeConnect appeared to be a little more polished and installs as a System Preference Pane, so I tried that one first. Unfortunately, while I could browse my media just fine, playing the media usually didn't work. Occasionally I would get a song to play or mp3 to load, but most of the time I ended up with a generic network error message. I've noted a few online forum messages that imply that the latest firmware update (v2.0) to the PS3 seems to have broken things for EyeConnect, so hopefully this is just classic blip in the relatively new space of media streaming and they'll have that patched up quickly.

In the meantime, I've installed the Twonky Vision media server, which runs quite well. Management is done via a web panel, and so far playback has been pretty solid aside from the occasional hiccup. Resetting the media server's client table usually solves those issues. The drawback is that for some reason AAC files (even unprotected ones) don't play – they're listed as "Unsupported Data" in menu listings. Thankfully most of my music is in regular old mp3 files, but it's still a bit disappointing given that the PS3 actually can play AAC files just fine. EyeConnect supports unprotected AAC, but of course getting it to actually play the files without constant network errors was impossible.So this solution works ok for now, and I'm going to ride out the 30-day demo on the Twonky Vision software while keeping an eye out for EyeConnect updates before plunking down for one of them. It's nice to be able to route my media to the home system without using an iPod dock (or an AppleTV).

iPod Touch

(Photo courtesy of Apple)

The iPod Touch was finally announced yesterday (along with a revamp of the entire iPod line). It's been rumored for a while, and when the iPhone was released everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the touchscreen technology made its way into a new iPod. We're definitely going to get one to replace Jordan's old mini with the busted clickwheel. As for me, I'm not too sure I'll be getting one on release day. It's pretty much what I expected/wanted, but why the curious omission of the Mail/Maps applications? I guess they were left off so that AT&T doesn't jump off a bridge, but the Maps app was the one I would've used extensively. Obviously they're just one software update away from being added, but it irks me nonetheless.

My real problem is that my commute is too short to really listen to music/watch video (especially when I'm on the bike), which is the main reason I've survived without an iPod since mine got stolen last year. There's also that price drop on the iPhone to muddy the picture a little bit, but I feel like Apple will give the iPhone a capacity bump/3G update early next year so waiting makes sense. Plus while I hate Sprint, I'm not sure that going to AT&T would be an upgrade.

The bottom line is that I'm glad they weren't available immediately, because I'd have rushed out and bought one. At least now I can weigh it against other things (league fees for ice hockey at Chelsea Piers + a new helmet/gloves, for instance).

Locomotive on Rails, with MAMP as a Caboose

Update 2008-07-14: Looks like Locomotive is no longer being distributed, since OS X 10.5 now ships with Ruby on Rails installed.

Pretty soon we'll have a framework called "ChooChoo" just to take this metaphor to its logical demise. I've just started dipping my toe into Ruby on Rails, and have found it relatively easy to get up and running on OS X. I've been using a combination of MAMP and Locomotive. MAMP, of course, is the Macintosh/Apache/MySQL/PHP app that takes the pain out of setting up those respective components and allows you to focus on writing code. Locomotive is similar in that it takes care of setting up your Rails environment so you can start developing. In this situation MAMP is only being used for the MySQL component. I have a feeling Locomotive will eventually have this as part of its package, making things even easier.

There were two things I needed to do to get my setup working smoothly:

• Tell Locomotive to use MAMP for MySQL. I did this by going to Locomotive > Preferences > Terminal and putting "/Applications/MAMP/db/mysql/" in the Additional Paths field.
• From this tip at aralbakan.com: adding a socket definition to my database config file - “socket: /Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock”

I like that you can open up a terminal session from Locomotive and it'll set the context to be the Locomotive Rails environment - this way I don't have to mess with setting up my PATH to point to the Locomotive's Ruby instead of the default OS X one.

TextMate, of course, makes working with Ruby/Rails quite easy. I've been spending some time in Flex Builder lately, and coming back to the TextMate environment is a breath of cleaner, simpler air.

This was the tutorial I started out with: Using Ruby on Rails for Web Development on Mac OS X.

I also ran through the Merb/AIR tutorial here: Merb on AIR - Drag and Drop Multiple File Upload. Merb isn't Rails per se, but the example illustrates the way that Ruby apps can be used with AIR/Flash applications.