Setup RubyGems path in ubuntu

Building Virtual Machines (VM) using Vagrant this week. Unfortunately the Ubuntu Natty does not add Ruby Gems directory to system path variable. Using Ruby Gems on command line is tedious if you have to type the full path prefix everytime. For example I have to type /var/lib/gems/1.8/bin/vagrant .

Instead I used the solution suggested in libgems-ruby bug #145267 .

sudo echo "PATH=/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin:$PATH" > /etc/profile.d/rubygems1.8.sh 

Perhaps someone could add this to Vagrant Ubuntu installation documentation.

Running WATiR On gnu/Debian Linux

Last time I had a dekko at WATiR (Web Application Testing in Ruby) it worked only on Internet Explorer (IE), I didn't think that it was worth an effort to run it on IE under Wine on gnu/Linux.

Now WATiR supports both Firefox and Safari on gnu/Linux and Mac. I was able to install the FireWATiR tool which has a ruby gem and Firefox JSSH(JSSh - a TCP/IP JavaScript Shell Server for Mozilla) plugin on Debian/Sid running Iceweasel (2.0.0.11-1)/Ruby(4.1)/Gems(1.0.1-4) with no problems.

If you are looking for a simple open-source library for automating web browsers on gnu/Debian Linux, you don't have to look any further.

Entertaining Lisp Tutorial From Lisprati.com

Here is a very entertaining Lisp Tutorial Casting SPELs In Lisp from Lisprati.com's Conrad Barski, M.D . This comic book like tutorial teaches the basics of lisp programming language by writing a text based adventure like game.

If you are a Emacs user like me, then there is a Emacs Lisp Edition of the book too. However the book is only translated into only one language Turkish. I guess translating this book into other languages would be a wonderful idea. Get in touch with Conrad if you are interested.

Lastly, If you don't like lisp then you may try the examples in Ruby and Haskell (almost) too.

Happy Spell Casting!!

Reading RSS/XML feeds in Elinks Line Browser

This one is for console monkeys out there. Reading RSS/XML feeds in your web browser is not limited to graphical browsers alone, even our light weight console based Elinks line browser can do it with Raggle console RSS aggregator written in ruby.

Using WEBrick-based Raggle web interface allows us to use raggle from your Elinks line browser itself instead of its default console interface (see above image). The raggle web interface listens on port 2222 by default (you change it with command line parameters), point your Elinks browser to http://localhost:2222 and enjoy reading RSS/XML feeds at your leisure.

Its a good idea to run 'raggle --server' inside a screen session, once raggle is started, open a new Elinks window and give the type this URL http://localhost:2222

$ raggle --server Raggle: Loading config... Raggle: Loading feed list... Raggle: Loading theme... Raggle: Loading feed cache... Loading templates from "/home/arky/.raggle/web_ui/inc". localhost - - [03/Nov/2007:20:45:05 IST] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 681 - -> / localhost - - [03/Nov/2007:20:45:08 IST] "GET /raggle/desc HTTP/1.1" 200 2186 - -> /raggle/desc localhost - - [03/Nov/2007:20:45:08 IST] "GET /raggle/item HTTP/1.1" 200 6934 - -> /raggle/item localhost - - [03/Nov/2007:20:45:10 IST] "GET /raggle/feed HTTP/1.1" 200 72146 - -> /raggle/feed localhost - - [03/Nov/2007:20:45:12 IST] "GET /titlebar.html HTTP/1.1" 200 1001 - -> /titlebar.html localhost - - [03/Nov/2007:20:45:20 IST] "GET /inc/default.css HTTP/1.1" 200 7345 http://localhost:2222/raggle/desc -> /inc/default.css

Here you can see raggle web interface in Elinks. There are some issue and bugs with the raggle web_ui but I guess they would be solved in near future.