Wow, this brings back memories.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
The Hidden Cost of Oil.
Insightful article from NPR on the real price of oil and the costs of an "Oil Defense" foreign policy.
<img href="http://media.npr.org/assets/news/2010/08/09/gas.jpg?t=1281355429&s=2" alt="woman pumping gas" />
In a nutshell:
a peer-reviewed study on the cost of keeping aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf from 1976 to 2007. ...came up with a total, over three decades, of $7.3 trillion. Yes, trillion.
Read the article.
Then read this McKinzie report about a possible strategy for finding a solution to oil dependency...
...and then maybe ask yourself why the government doesn't spend more of our money this way.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Ben Brenanke on the Fed's Options for Controlling Deflation
If you, like me, enjoy the occaisional econ geekout, you might enjoy this transcript of a 2002 speech by Ben Bernanke on the Fed's remaining options for controlling deflation (IE, "printing money") when the interest rates hits 0%.
It explains, among other things, why deflation causes interest rates to skyrocket:
Because the speech was made 4 years before he became head o' the fed, it may also give some insight into what his strategies might be, now that he's in the hot seat.
I was wondering about those Fed T-bills buy backs were all about:
Read the speech here.
Ben Brenanke on the Fed's Options for Controlling Deflation
If you, like me, enjoy the occaisional econ geekout, you might enjoy this article by Ben Bernanke on the Fed's options for controlling deflation. (IE, "printing money")
It explains, among other things, why deflation causes interest rates to skyrocket:
To take what might seem like an extreme example (though in fact it occurred in the United States in the early 1930s), suppose that deflation is proceeding at a clip of 10 percent per year. Then someone who borrows for a year at a nominal interest rate of zero actually faces a 10 percent real cost of funds, as the loan must be repaid in dollars whose purchasing power is 10 percent greater than that of the dollars borrowed originally. In a period of sufficiently severe deflation, the real cost of borrowing becomes prohibitive. and possibly why the Fed has been buying back so many T-bills lately.
I was wondering about those Fed T-bills buy backs were all about:
Monday, August 9, 2010
How to install Ruby Version Manager (RVM) in OSX for Ruby & Terminal Nubies, Part 2
Installing RVM Part 2
There are already a few great tutorials out there on installing RVM that assume the user has a certain amount of software development experience, or has certain software installed. If you don't, well, things can get confusing pretty quick.
This is part 2 of a step by step tutorial specially designed for Ruby & Terminal Nubies. If you can surf the web and use your mac for day to day stuff, this tutorial is designed guide you through everything else you need to know. No software development experience required.
If you haven't read part 1 of this tutorial: Setting up the Software Ecosystem, I recommend you do so before trying part 2. Otherwise, this stuff may not work for you.
Once you've launched Terminal, installed Git, xCode 3.2+ and Textmate, as described in part 1, we're ready to roll.
First type this in Terminal:
git --version
Terminal should reply with "git version 1.7.2" like this:
This means Git was installed.
Next, go to the RVM website, copy this script from the install page:
bash < <( curl http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/releases/rvm-install-head )
and paste it into your Terminal.
A bunch of stuff will happen. Let it.
Once it stops, take some time to read what came up. A lot of it actually looks like human-speak.
Type in the following:
cd ~
That should take you to your home directory.
Type in:
ls
You should see a listing of the directories/folders in your home directory. On my system it looks something like this:
Type:
touch .bash_profile
The touch command makes new a file in the current directory if that file does not exist.
and then Type:
mate .bash_profile
This should open the .bash_profile file you made in Texmate. The file should be blank.
IMPORTANT: if there is stuff in this profile, don't mess with it! Just close the file without saving it and contemplate how close to disaster you just came.
If the .bash_profile file is blank like it should be, go ahead paste this in:
[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm"
So the file looks like this:
Save & close the file.
Save the file. You might get some prompts asking your for your password. Just type it in and save.
Now go to the Shell menu and select "New Window" or click command + N to launch a new Terminal window.
It's important you do this next step in a NEW Terminal window, and not the window we've been using til now.
In the new window, type:
type rvm | head -n1
and hit return.
You should get a screen that says "rvm is a function" like this:
And you're off. RVM is installed. Congratulations.
Now it's time to start downloading versions of Ruby and learning about rvm best practices. The best place to do that is probably Wayne E. Seguin's site, since he's the guy that wrote RVM.
I hope these tutorials were useful and tha you have a great time learning about Ruby and RVM. If you have any suggestions for tutorials you'd like to see in the future, feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment.
Best,
F
How to install Ruby Version Manager (RVM) in OSX for Ruby & Terminal Nubies, Part 1
There are already a few great tutorials out there on installing RVM that assume the user has a certain amount of software development experience, or has certain software installed. If you don't, well, things can get confusing pretty quick.
This step by step tutorial is specially designed for Ruby & Terminal Nubies. If you can surf the web and use your mac for day to day stuff, this tutorial is designed guide you through everything else you need to know to get started with RVM on Mac OSX. No software development experience required.
For those who are new to Ruby Version Manager: "RVM is a command line too written by Wayne E. Seguin which allows you to easily install, manage and work with multiple ruby environments from interpreters to sets of gems." You can learn more about it at the RVM Home Page.
Setting up the software ecosystem.
To install RVM on OSX you're going to need an ecosystem of support applications including:
Mac OSX 10.6.3+
Terminal
Git
xCode Tools 3.2+
Textmate (optional but recommended)
If you have all those apps already installed, installing RVM should take about 10-15 minutes. If you DON'T have them installed, grab a cup of coffee and sit down, cause you're going to be here for a while.
In fact, if you're installing or using these apps for the first time, one of the fastest ways to multiply your productivity overall is to get familiarized with Terminal, Git, and Textmate. If you're interested in software development with Ruby, you're going to be using them again and again.
So here we go.
Mac OSX 10.6.3+
Click on the apple at the top left of your screen, then on "About this Mac"
You'll see a window like this one. If the gray text right under Mac OS X says Version 10.6.3 or higher, you're good to go.
Terminal
Terminal is the program you use to control your computer via the command line. If you're new to Terminal, taking a Quick Tutorial on terminal can get you more familiar with it.
You'll need it to do a lot of the cool stuff developers do.
If you have OSX, you've already got Terminal. Here's how you find it:
Do a spotlight search for Terminal or go to your applications/utilities folder and click on this guy:
A window should pop up that looks something like this:
Your computer may have a different name, and that's fine. The login info with the dollar sign means we're on our way.
Check the title bar of your terminal window. If it says bash, skip to the next step: Git.
IMPORTANT:
If it doesn't say bash somewhere in the title bar, go to terminal, preferences, click the green Startup flag, and the Command (complete path): radio button.
Copy and paste this in the text field:
/bin/bash
What that does, in case you're curious, is changes the default shell of your terminal app from tsch to bash. Real 1970's Unixy stuff.
Without clicking any more radio buttons, close the window. (It's important to leave the Command (complete path): radio button active. If you click on the Defaultlogin shell radio button, it'll change the Command (complete path) field back to tsch. It's sneaky that way.
Git
What's that? Revision control software like Git keeps track of your changes as you develop a software application. Did that new change to the code mess up your program? With a revision control system, you can "roll back" to the previous version. Think of it like "Undo" for programmers. Git also lets you share the code with other programmers so you can make contributions as a team.
You're going to need Git. So download it here.
Once you've downloaded the installer, which at the time of this writing looks like this:
Click on it, follow the instructions. Then come on back.
Xcode Tools version 3.2+
Because of a bug in the OSX 10.6 CD, you need to download the latest version of xcode, Apple's development environment, and install it. This might take a while but at least it's free.
Go to the xcode download page on apple's website. If you're not already an Apple developer, there's an involved registration process and the download is big. While you're waiting for the download is a good opportunity to skim the rest of this tutorial and spend some time with tutorials for Git, Terminal, and Textmate.
Once Xcode is downloaded, just follow the instructions to install it.
Textmate
Textmate is a commercial text editor, and if you plan on doing any software development, it's pretty awesome. It's also the only commercial application in this process. There's a 30 day free trial download so you can try it out gratis, and great online tutorials to help dramatically improve your productivity.
There are other free text editors out there, but I used Textmate to install RVM so that's the one in this tutorial.
Aaannnd...that's if for now. Once you've installed: Mac OSX 10.6.3+, Terminal, Git, xCode Tools 3.2+, and Textmate (optional but recommended,) congratulations. You're ready to install RVM.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of "How to install Ruby Version Manager (RVM) in OSX for Ruby & Terminal Nubies" in which we actually install rvm and get started with different versions of Ruby.
How to install Ruby Version Manager (RVM) in OSX for Ruby & Terminal Nubies PT 1
Part 1: Setting up the software ecosystem.
There are a few great tutorials out there already on installing RVM. However, many assume the user has a certain amount of software development experience, or has certain software installed.
This step by step tutorial is specially designed for Ruby & Terminal Nubies. If you can surf the web and use your mac for day to day stuff, this tutorial is designed guide you through everything else you need to know. No software development experience required.
For those who are new to Ruby Version Manager: "RVM is a command line tool which allows us to easily install, manage and work with multiple ruby environments from interpreters to sets of gems." If that sounds like something you're into, let's get started.
To install RVM on OSX you're going to need an ecosystem of support applications including:
Mac OSX 10.6.3+
Terminal
Git
xCode Tools 3.2+
Textmate (optional but recommended)
If you have all those apps already installed, installing RVM should take about 10-15 minutes. If you DON'T have them installed, grab a cup of coffee and sit down, cause you're going to be here for a while.
In fact, if you're installing or using these apps for the first time, one of the fastest ways to multiply your productivity overall is to get familiarized with Terminal, Git, and Textmate. If you're interested in software development with Ruby, you're going to be using them again and again.
So here we go.
Mac OSX 10.6.3+
Click on the apple at the top left of your screen, then on "About this Mac"
You'll see a window like this one. If the gray text right under Mac OS X says Version 10.6.3 or higher, you're good to go.
Terminal
Terminal is the program you use to control your computer via the command line. If you're new to Terminal, taking a Quick Tutorial on terminal can get you more familiar with it.
You'll need it to do a lot of the cool stuff developers do.
If you have OSX, you've already got Terminal. Here's how you find it:
Do a spotlight search for Terminal or go to your applications/utilities folder and click on this guy:
A window should pop up that looks something like this:
Your computer may have a different name, and that's fine. The login info with the dollar sign means we're on our way.
Check the title bar of your terminal window. If it says bash, skip to the next step: Git.
IMPORTANT:
If it doesn't say bash somewhere in the title bar, go to terminal, preferences, click the green Startup flag, and the Command (complete path): radio button.
Copy and paste this in the text field:
/bin/bash
What that does, in case you're curious, is changes the default shell of your terminal app from tsch to bash. Real 1970's Unixy stuff.
Without clicking any more radio buttons, close the window. (It's important to leave the Command (complete path): radio button active. If you click on the Defaultlogin shell radio button, it'll change the Command (complete path) field back to tsch. It's sneaky that way.
Git
What's that? Revision control software like Git keeps track of your changes as you develop a software application. Did that new change to the code mess up your program? With a revision control system, you can "roll back" to the previous version. Think of it like "Undo" for programmers. Git also lets you share the code with other programmers so you can make contributions as a team.
Once you've downloaded the installer, which at the time of this writing looks like this:
Click on it, follow the instructions. Then come on back.
Xcode Tools version 3.2+
Because of a bug in the OSX 10.6 CD, you need to download the latest version of xcode, Apple's development environment, and install it. This might take a while but at least it's free.
Go to the xcode download page<LINK> on apple's website. If you're not already an Apple developer, there's an involved registration process and the download is big. While you're waiting for the download is a good opportunity to skim the rest of this tutorial and spend some time with tutorials for Git, Terminal, and Textmate.
Once Xcode is downloaded, just follow the instructions to install it.
Textmate
Textmate is a commercial text editor, and if you plan on doing any software development, it's pretty awesome. It's also the only commercial application in this process. There's a 30 day free trial download so you can try it out gratis, and great <a href="<http://projects.serenity.de/textmate/tutorials/basics/#> online tutorials </a> to help dramatically improve your productivity.
There are other free text editors out there, but I used Textmate to install RVM so that's the one in this tutorial.
Aaannnd...that's if for now. Once you've installed: Mac OSX 10.6.3+, Terminal, Git, xCode Tools 3.2+, and Textmate (optional but recommended,) you're ready to install RVM.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of "How to install Ruby Version Manager (RVM) in OSX for Ruby & Terminal Nubies" in which we actually install rvm and get started with different versions of Ruby.
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