First you’ll need to SSH to your server and perform all the following commands as root or via sudo:

$ su

Let cPanel set up Ruby and Rails the way it wants:

$ /scripts/installruby
$ /usr/local/cpanel/bin/ror_setup

Install passenger the normal way (see Passenger docs):

$ gem install passenger
$ passenger-install-apache2-module

Create /usr/local/apache/conf/passenger.conf with the lines that the Passenger install script tells you to add to your Apache configuration file, e.g.:

LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.11/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.11
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby

Include the Passenger config by editing /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf and, somewhere near the beginning, adding:

Include "/usr/local/apache/conf/passenger.conf"

We want to make sure cPanel preserves our edits to httpd.conf when it does updates, so we need to run:

$ /usr/local/cpanel/bin/apache_conf_distiller --update --main

Restart Apache with

$ /scripts/restartsrv_httpd

Upload your Rails app to somewhere outside of public_html (e.g. ~/rails_apps/yourapp) or use cPanel’s “Software / Services > Ruby on Rails” functions to create a new one.

Login to your domain’s cPanel and go to “Domains > Subdomains”
Create a new subdomain whose document root is path/to/yourapp/public
Make sure it’s pointing to yourapp/public

Visit your subdomain and see your app running — easy!

Google just announced their own sat nav/GPS software for Android phones,
based on Google Maps — how cool is that? This will probably change the
sat nav market quite a bit: no more paying for map updates, for one
thing, and sat nav developers will have to come up with new features to
get people to pay for their software rather than going for the free
Google app, which sounds pretty feature-laden itself.

I’ve been wanting one of the HTC Android phones for a while now, and this just intensifies the desire tremendously.

Ever since I switched to 64-bit Linux, I’ve been looking around for up-to-date 1.0pre builds of the Lightning calendar extension for my Thunderbird 3 mail client, as Mozilla for some reason does not provide 64-bit builds. For a time I was using a build from zaera-holo.net, but it was never updated and the site now appears to be down. Finally, from a comment on the Lightning AMO page, I found a new build from Friday, which appears to work well. Hope this helps others out as well.

If anyone finds a more regularly-updated channel, please let me know.

Install Adobe AIR Linux 1.5 on 64-bit Linux distributions

So Adobe has this knowledge base article — Install Adobe AIR Linux 1.5 on 64-bit Linux distributions — to describe how to install Adobe Air on 64 bit linux systems. Do yourself a favor — just install wine from the standard repositories, and then execute the last line in the instructions:

sudo cp /usr/lib/libadobecertstore.so /usr/lib32

Wine already sets up a complete 32bit compatible environment, so you
don’t have to worry about manually breaking out shared libraries.

Much easier.

Courtesy of the MC Studios blog.

We think of education as a right at this point, but it simply is not, in a national sense. OurEd points to a Supreme Court ruling which states that “Though education is one of the most important services performed by the State, it is not within the limited category of rights recognized by this Court as guaranteed by the Constitution.” This case specifically addresses the gap in education caused by differences in wealth, and the Supreme Court says that there is nothing in U.S. law that can do anything about it. I don’t want to get too preachy here, but you see the point — disadvantaged children remain disadvantaged because they don’t have a right to education that is equal to rich kids (or even middle-class ones!).

It is true that every state guarantees a free education, but how many of us have looked back and cursed our terrible public school education? Or vice versa — gone to college and wondered why some people never seem to have learned any basic math, history, or how to write an essay longer than a page? The fact is that educational requirements are wildly disparate between individual schools and even entire states, and this is why Americans on average come out as such morons against other countries with better national requirements.

When the Constitution was first created, formal education was still in its infancy, but now it is widespread and essentially a requirement for many parts of life. There is simply no denying that education not only directly affects a person’s ability to maintain their life and liberty and to pursue happiness, but is also crucial to the survival and advancement of the human race as a whole.

Certainly federalizing education will cause problems, but the current system has its own problems that cannot be solved as it stands. Certainly a constitutional amendment is an incredibly dramatic and powerful answer, but education IS that important. And, I mean, it’s not as if it hasn’t been done before. With stupider things. Remember Prohibition? We’ve already created two idiotic constitutional amendments dealing with alcohol — because that’s the most harmful thing on the planet, right? — I’m sure we can manage just one that addresses education, which is surely one of the most important issues of our time.

Anyway, that was a bit of a rant. And I haven’t even touched arts or sex education yet…

Our main stop along the way to Flagstaff was the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert national park. Arizona really has such stunning land and vistas. Photos do it poor service, of course, but at least you can get an idea of what I was looking at. Visibility out here was about a hundred miles. They said on a good day you could see a set of peaks 120 miles away.

Dad, the consummate photographer, capturing the dramatic view.

Another gorgeous thing about Arizona is the beautiful sky. The air is dry and clear, so sun is bright, the sky is a vivid blue, and the clouds look like paintings.

A tumble of petrified logs. The petrified wood isn’t that impressive at first glance, because it looks quite like normal wood from a distance. On closer inspection, though, it’s remarkable how the giant pieces of wood have completely turned to stone. Unfortunately, a lot of the most colorful crystals were stolen in the late 19th and early 20th century by tourists and people selling gems. They even blasted apart a number of the logs in order to get at the best crystals inside.

A closer view of some petrified wood. This area is called the Crystal Forest, but much of the color that gave it its name has been stolen.

Finally, a gorgeous sunset to end the day well:

These were only one-thirtieth of the photos I took that day, incidentally.

Our first stop was the “Cadillac Ranch,” just outside of Amarillo.

It consists of 10 old graffiti-covered Cadillacs half-buried nose-first in the ground and was created by an artists’ collective in the 70′s. They are occasionally repainted and people are encouraged to add graffiti.

Next, we crossed over into New Mexico and stopped in Tucumcari for lunch (and ice cream!). This is the Blue Swallow in Tucumcari, a recently restored motel on Route 66:

After lunch, we turned northwest towards Santa Fe. About 20 miles before, we stopped off at the Pecos National Historical Park, which contains the ruins of an old Pecos pueblo.

The sky was quite dramatic at this point, as there was a storm in the distance. Because there aren’t a lot of hills or trees, we could see the lightning from quite far away.

We arrived in Santa Fe and took a walk around its small but lovely downtown. Most all the buildings are done with a Pueblo-style facade.

I tried to take some artsy photos:

This is the St. Francis of Assissi Cathedral in Santa Fe. Notice the unfinished steeples.

We had dinner at a Spanish restaurant called El Messon, at which my dad criticized the paella heavily, then headed down to Albuquerque for the night. The drive south was very interesting, as there was a storm hitting Albuquerque. The lightning was frequent and extremely impressive against the night horizon; it was a terrific light show. Once in Albuquerque, it suddenly started hailing on us, which was quite a surprise to me, considering the temperature. After that, the rain got so thick that I couldn’t even see as I drove, and traffic slowed to a crawl of blinking hazard lights. We made it through those patches, though, spent the night here, and today we’re off to Arizona to see the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest!

The signs of Route 66.

The largest McDonald’s in the world by square footage (something like 29,000 I think?). It actually spans I-44 in Vinita, OK like a bridge.

Apparently the largest totem pole in the world, at 900 feet tall. This man, Ed, spent around 15 or 20 years building the thing, as well as a variety of other artwork around his house and just showing it off to passerby.

We stopped for dinner at The Big Texan steak house. Their gimmick (advertised on billboards all the way from mid-Oklahoma) is a massive 72 oz. steak which, if you can eat it in under an hour, you get free. We didn’t try it, and judging by the big empty chairs next to a table with a 60-minute timer in the middle of the room, neither did anybody else who was there. It’s a very chintzy place, as you can tell by the outside. Inside, it is decorated a bit like a saloon: everything is wooden, animal heads are mounted along the balcony, and waitresses are dressed in either hoop skirts or mini-skirts, flannel shirts, and cowboy hats. The food was good, though.

(Click for larger images:)

What a funky welcoming committee!

The Gateway Arch, just as you’ve seen it in photos a million times before. Only this time it’s my photo :)

My Dad, master of the Arch!

The Arch is reeeeallly big!

Our next stop was Ted Drewe’s Frozen Custard, a semi-famous mini chain out here. Their standard is the “concrete,” a cup of frozen custard mixed with any flavor you want. As for what frozen custard actually is, the best way I can describe it is to say that it’s like soft ice cream, except smoother and thicker. When they serve you the cup, they turn it upside down to show you it doesn’t fall out. So, I went for a regular raspberry concrete and it was delish. Sitting on a bench nearby, we enjoy our concretes and marvelled at the quantity of people passing through — its quite a popular place.

Our final sight-seeing stop for the day was Meramec Caverns, a 26-mile cavern system west of St. Louis. It was pretty cool, but not as impressive as I hoped and far too cheesy. They do an “impressive light and musical display” at the end of the tour that actually consists only of an old recording and the tour guide manually flicking a few lights on and off — the finale is what can be seen in this photo. I wasn’t surprised when I later saw a photo of the cave’s owner wearing a leopard pattern smoking jacket.

All the sight-seeing made for an even longer day yesterday, as we did the same amount of mileage in addition to the stops, but from here on out we’re only doing about 300 miles a day and more sightseeing. Today: Oklahoma and Texas!