Author Archives: Alastair

Spork, Rails 3, and rspec-rails play nice together

Getting the following error when starting up spork?
undefined method `specifications’ for “/Users/{your-name-here}/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180″:String (NoMethodError)
Add the following to your Gemfile under test and make fix!
gem ’spork’, ‘~> 0.9.0rc7′

Getting a blank screen when using Adobe’s Flash Packager for iPhone?

Chris Cantrell released an iPhone packager refresher a few weeks back but when I packaged up my AIR app I was getting a blank white screen (as were a few others). However I got it to work after I made a few changes to my Application descriptor file – the XML file created with your [...]

A Datamapper is remixable example

I struggled a bit this afternoon getting Datamapper’s dm-is-remixable plug-in as there aren’t too many posts out there and some are out of date. Hopefully this quick overview will spare you my pain
Many sites allow you to comment on blog posts, images, videos, status, etc. having one comments table with post_id, image_id, etc. [...]

A Sinatra before only filter

In a Sinatra application you can use the ‘before’ filter to run something before every each event.

before do
puts “I will run all the time…”
end

Here’s a module that will allow you to run code only before certain routes:

module Sinatra

module BeforeOnlyFilter
def before_only(routes, &block)
before [...]

Getting Netbeans 6.9 to work on OS X 10.5.8

After downloading and installing Netbeans 6.9 I launched the app. It bounced a couple of times in my dock as dreams of exciting new features danced in my head. Then… nothing, well not quite nothing, I received a message informing me that:
“Java 6 Standard Edition or newer required. Cannot run on older versions of Java [...]

Flex/Flash Builder will soon be the easiest way to develop mobile apps

OpenPlug just released the latest beta version of their ELIPS Studio, which adds Android support. Currently ELIPS Studio is Windows only but in a month they will add OS X support, yay!
The latest version of ELIPS Studio has just been released. It brings the ability for developers to create native mobile apps in ActionScript and [...]

Automate font compiling for Flex with Ruby

I came up with this solution when I had to compile over 100 fonts into SWF files for a recent project. Doing this by hand would have been madness so I wrote a ruby script and a shell script to automate the process.
Step 1: Setup
The directory structure I used was as follows.
convert.rb (the ruby script)
compile.sh [...]

PureMVC for JavaScript Released

I won’t be dropping my beloved Flex anytime soon but it’s nice to know if you must do JavaScript (and let’s be honest Flex isn’t always the best tool) you can at least use a familiar framework.
Check out PureMVC for JavaScript.

Paperclip for easy Rails file uploads

It’s my first post in months*, so it must be worth it right?
Rails Inside has the details on Paperclip as an alternative file upload/association plugin, I’ve tried them all and paperclip covers all your file upload bases.
*I’ve been busy with Fatherhood 101 and my new job as a Flex Dev at Captial Group (the largest [...]

Skinning a Flex button with one MXML file (and Degrafa)

Skinning a flex button can often take multiple graphics and/or MXML files for each state. Here’s how to skin a button using MXML and Degrafa to handle three button states with just one file (plus a bonus ‘glow’ filter as an alternate way to get a drop shadow).
The secret is to override the updateDisplayList method [...]