SydneyFX - A Web Designer Blog

If your like me, you are constantly trying to keep up with the latest changes in the rails world. One of those changes is moving from Subversion as a version control system to GIT. One of the Macs I work on is still running Tiger so I needed a quick guide on getting GIT up and running. You can install GIT using mac ports you can;

sudo port install git-core +svn +doc

but it is recommend to compile your own from source so you get the latest version. Check out this guide to installing GIT on OS X Tiger.

Toolman Tim has a guide on how to setup a new rails app with GIT.

Robert Ruby on Rails

Hey! Are you a great web designer and are looking for a great place to work in Sydney?  Maybe you know someone who is a great web designer looking for work? Well your in luck because Click2it Digital based in Sydney is looking for a great web designer.  Click2it is a great place to work. How do I know? Because these days I work there as an internet marketing consultant!!!

This role is for a website designer but you need to be very creative for this role. If you have a smashing portfolio, then you might be just the person they are looking for.

The core of your work will be in designing websites for Click2it clients from scratch, and integration with our content management system when required. You will also undertake some email design work and banner design.

To qualify you must be able to present examples of web work that showcases your abilities to design and build web sites. You should also be able to demonstrate an ability to work independently.

Skills required:

• Advanced Web Design skills
• Proficiency in Adobe apps (Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks)
• Knowledge of Flash & Actionscripting and advantage
• XHTML and CSS (W3C web standards compliant)
• Basic understanding of dynamic and scripting languages like PHP, JavaScript (Ajax)
• Experience with CMS and Email Marketing tools

The salary is dependant on experience. Early to mid July Start.

Interested? Send your portfolio to jobs[at]click2it.com.au

Robert Jobs

I’ve done a quick video tutorial on how to use subversion with rails for managing your code. Now if you’ve been a developer for a long time you’ll already know this stuff and more so it may be a good way to put yourself to sleep!

If your a new to rails, development, and source code control then this tutorial will hopefully make things a little easier to get your head around and you’ll find it’s quite easy to get started. For this tutorial, I’ve used a free subversion account with beanstalkapp.com which is easy to setup and use and gives you one free subversion repository to get started. Later you can upgrade your account to include SSL encryption and more for a few bucks a month

Before you start… you need to have rails and subversion already installed. This tutorial doesn’t show you how to install them. It just shows you how to use subversion with beanstalkapp.com. I also don’t show how to ignore files in subversion, often Rails developers ignore log files so they aren’t uploaded to the subversion repository.

This subversion tutorial is done on a Mac using the Unix command line terminal. If you have windows, you’ll need to setup your machine with a Unix style command line.

Watch the Subversion using Beanstalk Tutorial

The tutorial is one of my first so it’s a little rough around the edges. Any feedback would be great and any suggestions as to what you might want to see in another tutorial. If there’s enough interest, I’ll consider doing more video tutorials related to web design and development. Post any comments… good, bad or otherwise below.

Robert Video Tutorials subversion tutorial

The much anticipated release of the third edition of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass from Big Nerd Ranch is just around the corner for release.

If your like me, you buy every coding book under the sun and have a bookshelf of tech books right at your finger tips. Funnily enough I have a copy of the 2nd Edition but never spent much time actually using it partly from not having enough time and not long after purchasing the book I moved from Tiger to Leopard which became a problem because of the new version of Xcode and other changes.

Well I’ve started reading the third edition from the start, and the third edition from a beginners perspective is great. The examples are easy to follow and reading the code samples and instructions on how and why they work just makes sense.  You will however find it much easier if you know another language as Cocoa applications are programmed using the Objective C language.

This new book covers all the latest features of programming in Cocoa including Xcode 3, Objective-C 2, core data, the garbage collector, and core animation. If your interesting in starting application development for the Mac, then this is the book for you

Robert Tech Book Reviews cocoa programming

Ubuntu has just released the latest version and according to founder Mark Shuttleworth, the best release of Ubuntu yet. My BenQ laptop has been running Ubuntu 7.04 and I’ve always done a fresh install with each release. This time I didn’t want to do that so I went with the built in upgrade in the update manager. Unfortunately I didn’t have any success on my first attempt at the upgrade an error during the upgrade related to not accessing files in the repository correctly. Not sure if this is a common issue of just something to do with my machine.

Although Linux has a huge following for the diehard linux user, I personally don’t know anyone who uses it for a day to day operating system. I love the Linux movement and look forward to when Linux is truly a desktop ready operating system for anyone other than advanced users. I know there are going to be people who say I’m wrong, however I’m only basing my opinion on my own experiences and of those people I know.

Until that day, my MacBook Pro is my best friend.

Robert Ubuntu Linux