sudomasochism

I’ve moved one of our projects over to edge rails after hearing about the new support for multiple routes files. I’ve been wanting this for a long time. It’s pretty easy to setup too:

First, make your custom routes file in config/

config/routes_custom.rb

Next, add an initializer to load that routes file on boot:

config/initializers/load_custom_routes.rb

If you clone from a master repo for custom projects, this is ideal as it won’t muck up the core routes file annoying you with conflicts and such.

At Coco, we are starting to build out some e-commerce sites. In order to expedite the process, we are using Substruct as a solution. While working with it, I have noticed a few things that needed to be fixed.

With engines setup properly, you are capable of extending routes beyond what’s provided with the substruct engine. This was not the case beforehand. I was able to track down the bug and submit some patches to mend the problem.

If you are using substruct and want to customize it (adding additional controllers either to the admin or outside the admin) you’ll need to get the latest substruct. Check out the issue here.

You can find download links there.

Working on open source projects is a lot of fun. It’s interesting to see how other people do things. Contributing gives developers like me a boost of confidence. I plan on finding and fixing more bugs in the future for this project and others.

I added some new features including:

• Ability to refresh the list of playlists
• Reload playlist data functionality
• Status area indicating the current track being updated and overall progress.

Most of these features allow you to keep the app open (as long as it doesn’t crash). Check it out! Download now

Please download the latest version. There was a problem with using smart playlists. I had to remove them from the playlists dropdown temporarily (or maybe even permanently).

Download now

Due to problems with the Universal build, I had to build strictly for 10.5. So, here’s a new version with some cool new features. Let me know if you have any problems with it.

Download now (10.5.x build)

That is, until I get column sorting going. That’s my next task. In this release, I have integrated sparkle updates! I’m so happy about that. Thanks to Fool’s Ruby and Cocoa Workshop, adding sparkle updates was a breeze. Thank you K.M. Lawson!

As always, I will provide a screenshot and updated download link. Get it now!

XCode is giving all kinds of problems. After a while it just stops letting me build. It likes vague error messages too:

The Debugger has exited due to signal 5 (SIGTRAP).The Debugger has exited due to signal 5 (SIGTRAP).

Oh well, just an excuse for me to rewrite the thing again. I’m now making snapshots with XCode so that I can just revert if anything goes awry. New features and much increased performance as I’m actually using an NSArrayController. I’m looking at my old code and laughing…

Thanks to Matt, I now have an icon for the Last.fm Tagger.

Love it!

Also, I setup a github account for this project.

So, I’m trying my hand at Cocoa, namely RubyCocoa. Objective-C is a bit out of my grasp right now. If I start needing big performance boosts, I’ll go that route. In the meantime, writing RubyCocoa apps is insanely fun. I wrote this basic tagger in 2 days (roughly 6 hours) and it works pretty well! If you plan on trying out this app, create a small playlist with the name ‘lastfmtagger’ and put a few albums in there. Problems I am aware of:

1. Can’t load huge iTunes library/playlist yet without taking forever to load
2. App craps out if the file is missing in iTunes when trying to write
3. Some more I can’t think of right now…

Give it a shot, and let me know what you think. Here’s a screenshot.

After asking a few friends to beta test the app, I found out that it wouldn’t run on any machine but mine. Luckily, I have another mac around and was able to test. I ended up having to rewrite the whole thing! My problem was when I was trying to match the sender of the ‘tableView_objectValueForTableColumn_row’ delegate method to an NSTableView object. This wasn’t working on any other machine for some reason. So, I ended up rewriting it all and refactoring things into separate controllers which is really nice.

The app will close out properly if no playlist with the name of ‘lastfmtagger’ exists. I am working on integrating a way to create the playlist on demand so that the app will continue running.

I would also like to be able to refresh the list of artists on demand, or on a timed observe of some sort so that when you add artists to the playlist, the app is updated accordingly. Tons of ideas, tons of time!

Here’s an updated screenshot:

And the download link of course.