Normal joke

I was considering going out with Mrs. Normal's daughter, Abigail, until I discovered she was Abby Normal.

Ruby on Rails with Ubuntu

Ubuntu wants to make it to the masses, but even a developer has trouble building the developer tools.

I am talking about Ruby on Rails. First off, the Ruby included in Ubuntu is jruby. The real ruby needs to be installed. That is fairly easy with an apt-get.

Then, to install sqlite3, the libraries are installed, but not the development package. That needs to be done.

gems has to be installed which can also be done with apt-get
But, the gemspec files are wrong (bad date format) and this causes a bunch of errors pointing at "tilt-1.3.3 not found" (but it is there.)

We "gem install rails". That works.

Once everything is ready to run, then rails complains that there is no javascript runtime.

But that is not the only thing. node.js is the javascript runtime, but it won't compile unless it has openssl. Openssl is there, but not the development package.

So, now that the gemspec files are fixed, the openssl dev, sqlite3 dev, gems, ruby are installed, we can finally run rails.

Whew!

Relax

You could rest more if you were not restLESS.

-Me

Stereotypes

Ethnic and cultural stereotypes are generalizations no more related to what an individual is actually like than are the pictorial representations of constellations to the actual nature of a star.

Great day for a run

Today could not have been better for a run. The temperature was 62, the sun was only 1 hour high, and there was a light breeze. Not only that, I ran 5k in 27 minutes. Barefoot, of course.

Barefoot running hints

When I first started running barefoot, there was not much to it. Take off your shoes and run.

However, I have found more enjoyment following these tips.

• It is easier to run on grass or sand. It is not so ethical to run in others' yards.
  
• Wearing shoes for even short distances puts strain on your knees.
• If it is cold (<42 F) you are likely to get numb feet and won't feel an injury.
• If your toes are getting ripped by pavement, put some medical tape on the affected toes until they are calloused enough.
• If the top of your foot hurts, your strides are too long. Take shorter strides and speed up the cadence.
  

Running 5k

Just ran the 5k in a little under 26 minutes. 25:56.