Scott Rutherford

If you have seen this sort of thing:

ActionView::TemplateError: Expected image.rb to define Image

or this:

SystemExit (exit):
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/RubyInline-3.6.5/lib/inline.rb:70:in `exit'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/RubyInline-3.6.5/lib/inline.rb:70:in `rootdir'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/RubyInline-3.6.5/lib/inline.rb:84:in `directory'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/RubyInline-3.6.5/lib/inline.rb:258:in `so_name'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/RubyInline-3.6.5/lib/inline.rb:294:in `load_cache'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/RubyInline-3.6.5/lib/inline.rb:678:in `inline'
    /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/image_science-1.1.3/lib/image_science.rb:84

in your log files when using ImageScience you may well of been a bit confused and frustrated – I was.

I was looking for a neat way to crop images last night and had originally planned to use the excellent jsCropper library from Dave Spurr, which I have used on projects before. When, during a bit of googling about I came across Kropper from Jonathon Wolke. It takes a slightly different approach to Cropper with the crop area staying put and the image moving under the crop area, but also includes a neat zooming feature and some pretty slick design. Another plus, from a Rails perspective, is that the code comes in an example Rails app!!! Makes it very easy to integrate.

Its taken a long time (well about a year) and a lot of messing about with Skype, but the first site from the Cominded stable is open for invitations to join the beta. Yabb is a social utility based on conversation, “talk more, type less” being the motto. So go along and sign up, I look forward to chatting with you online.

It has to be said integrating with the Skype API is an experience, and not usually a particularly consistent one!! Anyway now we are out of stealth mode I guess it ok to start sharing some of the issues we came up against and how we solved them.

Oh and Nothing is doing quite well, 627 installs in 27 countries in 8 days. I know its not exactly explosive growth. But, its not in the directory and lets face it it does actually do nothing.

Ben Smith who I work with over at Cominded has put up a good article on getting your site to work with the iPhone. Definitely worth a read (as is much of his blog), now all I need to do is find a way to get one – I knew I shouldn’t of been tempted by the N95 (its spent more time being fixed than anything else)!!!!