The OpenLaszlo documentation isn’t specific about how to install syntax highlighting for vim on mac. So we thought we would write up a little blurb about how to do it!

Copy the lzx.vim syntax file to dot vim directory in your home directory
cp openlaszlo/trunk/tools/lzx.vim ~/.vim/syntax/

Create a file called .vimrc.local for your custom vim modifications also in your home directory
mvim ~/.vimrc.local

Finally, add an autocommand that will auto detect the file type
au BufRead,BufNewFile *.lzx set ft=lzx

Reference:
For more information about vim file types you might want to check out http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/filetype.html

OpenLaszlo documentation on how to install Vim Syntax highlighting on linux based systems
http://wiki.openlaszlo.org/Editing_LZX#Installing_VIM_Syntax_Highlighting

After some google searching I arrived at the decision to use Devise over Authlogic for my brand spanking new rails 3 app. I haven’t really had that much experience with authlogic in the past, besides using it in my previous rails 3 app. It was a little tricky to get it working with rails 3 and I wasn’t the biggest fan of the documentation (I felt it could have been a little more granular). That being said I have never used Devise but the yammering on the internet suggests it is a cleaner solution and works out of the box with rails 3. (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4136121/rails-3-authentication-authlogic-vs-devise) I also liked some of the out of the box features it came with:

• Database Authenticatable: encrypts and stores a password in the database to validate the authenticity of an user while signing in. The authentication can be done both through POST requests or HTTP Basic Authentication.
• Token Authenticatable: signs in a user based on an authentication token (also known as “single access token”). The token can be given both through query string or HTTP Basic Authentication.
• Confirmable: sends emails with confirmation instructions and verifies whether an account is already confirmed during sign in.
• Recoverable: resets the user password and sends reset instructions.
• Registerable: handles signing up users through a registration process, also allowing them to edit and destroy their account.
• Rememberable: manages generating and clearing a token for remembering the user from a saved cookie.
• Trackable: tracks sign in count, timestamps and IP address.
• Timeoutable: expires sessions that have no activity in a specified period of time.
• Validatable: provides validations of email and password. It’s optional and can be customized, so you’re able to define your own validations.
• Lockable: locks an account after a specified number of failed sign-in attempts. Can unlock via email or after a specified time period.
• Encryptable: adds support of other authentication mechanisms besides the built-in Bcrypt (the default).

The Exploration

First things first, add “devise” to your rails Gemfile in the root directory of your application.
Note: this example assumes knowledge of the bundler gem

bundle install

Running bundle install will set you up with:

Installing bcrypt-ruby (3.0.1) with native extensions
Installing warden (1.1.1)
Installing devise (2.0.4)

Following the install docs on the Devise project page..

rails generate devise:install
      create  config/initializers/devise.rb
      create  config/locales/devise.en.yml

===============================================================================

Some setup you must do manually if you haven't yet:

  1. Setup default url options for your specific environment. Here is an
     example of development environment:

       config.action_mailer.default_url_options = { :host => 'localhost:3000' }

     This is a required Rails configuration. In production it must be the
     actual host of your application

  2. Ensure you have defined root_url to *something* in your config/routes.rb.
     For example:

       root :to => "home#index"

  3. Ensure you have flash messages in app/views/layouts/application.html.erb.
     For example:

       <p class="notice"><%= notice %></p>
       <p class="alert"><%= alert %></p>

===============================================================================

Alright, based on the install output it looks like we need to do a little setup work… However, I will leave that to the reader since they may be using a pre-existing rails application…

After you are finished configuring the application its time to create your user model.

rails generate devise User
      invoke  active_record
      create    app/models/user.rb
      invoke    test_unit
      create      test/unit/user_test.rb
      create      test/fixtures/users.yml
      create    db/migrate/20110108192129_devise_create_users.rb
      insert    app/models/user.rb
       route  devise_for :users

Great, lets take a look at what the generator created starting with the migration.

class DeviseCreateUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration
 def change
  create_table(:users) do |t|
   ## Database authenticatable
   t.string :email, :null => false, :default => ""
   t.string :encrypted_password, :null => false, :default => ""

   ## Recoverable
   t.string :reset_password_token
   t.datetime :reset_password_sent_at

   ## Rememberable
   t.datetime :remember_created_at

   ## Trackable
   t.integer :sign_in_count, :default => 0
   t.datetime :current_sign_in_at
   t.datetime :last_sign_in_at
   t.string :current_sign_in_ip
   t.string :last_sign_in_ip

   ## Encryptable
   # t.string :password_salt

   ## Confirmable
   t.string :confirmation_token
   t.datetime :confirmed_at
   t.datetime :confirmation_sent_at
   t.string :unconfirmed_email # Only if using reconfirmable

   ## Lockable
   t.integer :failed_attempts, :default => 0 # Only if lock strategy is :failed_attempts
   t.string :unlock_token # Only if unlock strategy is :email or :both
   t.datetime :locked_at

   ## Token authenticatable
   # t.string :authentication_token

   t.timestamps
  end

  add_index :users, :email, :unique => true
  add_index :users, :reset_password_token, :unique => true
  # add_index :users, :confirmation_token, :unique => true
  # add_index :users, :unlock_token, :unique => true
  # add_index :users, :authentication_token, :unique => true
 end
end

It looks like Devise gives you password encryption/storing, password recovery, session tokens, and login attempts by default. For my application I will also uncomment the lines for Confirmable, Lockable and Token authenticatable since I find these registration options useful out of the box and will save me time from writing those components later.

The only thing I needed to investigate of these options was the Lockable option since I wanted to understand the lock and unlock strategies.

:unlock_strategy - The strategy used for unlock. Can be :time, :email, :both (default), :none.
If :email or :both, creates a unlock_token field.

:lock_strategy - The strategy used for locking. Can be :failed_attempts (default) or :none.

Alright, now that we understand what they mean here is what my final migration looks like:

class DeviseCreateUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration
 def change
  create_table(:users) do |t|
   ## Database authenticatable
   t.string :email, :null => false, :default => ""
   t.string :encrypted_password, :null => false, :default => ""

   ## Recoverable
   t.string :reset_password_token
   t.datetime :reset_password_sent_at

   ## Rememberable
   t.datetime :remember_created_at

   ## Trackable
   t.integer :sign_in_count, :default => 0
   t.datetime :current_sign_in_at
   t.datetime :last_sign_in_at
   t.string :current_sign_in_ip
   t.string :last_sign_in_ip

   ## Encryptable
   # t.string :password_salt

   ## Confirmable
   t.string :confirmation_token
   t.datetime :confirmed_at
   t.datetime :confirmation_sent_at
   t.string :unconfirmed_email # Only if using reconfirmable

   ## Lockable
   t.integer :failed_attempts, :default => 0 # Only if lock strategy is :failed_attempts
   t.string :unlock_token # Only if unlock strategy is :email or :both
   t.datetime :locked_at

   ## Token authenticatable
   t.string :authentication_token

   t.timestamps
  end

  add_index :users, :email, :unique => true
  add_index :users, :reset_password_token, :unique => true
  add_index :users, :confirmation_token, :unique => true
  add_index :users, :unlock_token, :unique => true
  add_index :users, :authentication_token, :unique => true
 end
end

Now let’s take a look at our User model.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  # Include default devise modules. Others available are:
  # :token_authenticatable, :confirmable, :lockable and :timeoutable
  devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable,
         :recoverable, :rememberable, :trackable, :validatable
  # Setup accessible (or protected) attributes for your model
  attr_accessible :email, :password, :password_confirmation, :remember_me
end

It looks like based on our migration options that we will also have to uncomment token_authenticatable, :confirmable, :lockable and :timeoutable and add it to the devise option.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  # Include default devise modules. Others available are:
  devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable,
         :recoverable, :rememberable, :trackable, :validatable,
         :token_authenticatable, :confirmable, :lockable, :timeoutable

  # Setup accessible (or protected) attributes for your model
  attr_accessible :email, :password, :password_confirmation, :remember_me
end

We don’t need to setup our routes for user because devise has already added devise_for :users to our config/routes.rb for us. If we then run rake routes from the command line we get:

      new_user_session GET    /users/sign_in(.:format)          {:action=>"new", :controller=>"devise/sessions"}
          user_session POST   /users/sign_in(.:format)          {:action=>"create", :controller=>"devise/sessions"}
  destroy_user_session GET    /users/sign_out(.:format)         {:action=>"destroy", :controller=>"devise/sessions"}
         user_password POST   /users/password(.:format)         {:action=>"create", :controller=>"devise/passwords"}
     new_user_password GET    /users/password/new(.:format)     {:action=>"new", :controller=>"devise/passwords"}
    edit_user_password GET    /users/password/edit(.:format)    {:action=>"edit", :controller=>"devise/passwords"}
         user_password PUT    /users/password(.:format)         {:action=>"update", :controller=>"devise/passwords"}
     user_registration POST   /users(.:format)                  {:action=>"create", :controller=>"devise/registrations"}
 new_user_registration GET    /users/sign_up(.:format)          {:action=>"new", :controller=>"devise/registrations"}
edit_user_registration GET    /users/edit(.:format)             {:action=>"edit", :controller=>"devise/registrations"}
     user_registration PUT    /users(.:format)                  {:action=>"update", :controller=>"devise/registrations"}
     user_registration DELETE /users(.:format)                  {:action=>"destroy", :controller=>"devise/registrations"}
     user_confirmation POST   /users/confirmation(.:format)     {:action=>"create", :controller=>"devise/confirmations"}
 new_user_confirmation GET    /users/confirmation/new(.:format) {:action=>"new", :controller=>"devise/confirmations"}
     user_confirmation GET    /users/confirmation(.:format)     {:action=>"show", :controller=>"devise/confirmations"}
           user_unlock POST   /users/unlock(.:format)           {:action=>"create", :controller=>"devise/unlocks"}
       new_user_unlock GET    /users/unlock/new(.:format)       {:action=>"new", :controller=>"devise/unlocks"}
           user_unlock GET    /users/unlock(.:format)           {:action=>"show", :controller=>"devise/unlocks"}
                  root        /(.:format)                       {:controller=>"home", :action=>"index"}

Finally it’s time to migrate our database and create our user model.

rake db:migrate

==  DeviseCreateUsers: migrating ==============================================
-- create_table(:users)
NOTICE:  CREATE TABLE will create implicit sequence "users_id_seq" for serial column "users.id"
NOTICE:  CREATE TABLE / PRIMARY KEY will create implicit index "users_pkey" for table "users"
   -> 0.0553s
-- add_index(:users, :email, {:unique=>true})
   -> 0.0020s
-- add_index(:users, :reset_password_token, {:unique=>true})
   -> 0.0021s
-- add_index(:users, :confirmation_token, {:unique=>true})
   -> 0.0115s
-- add_index(:users, :unlock_token, {:unique=>true})
   -> 0.0028s
==  DeviseCreateUsers: migrated (0.0740s) =====================================

Now it’s time to start our rails server and see what devise has given us. Run rails server from the command line and lets travel to “localhost:3000/users/sign_up” and see whats going on.

My first thoughts are “Wow, that’s kind of ugly”. haha. Looks like down the line I will have to override those views and build custom ones (by overriding the routes!). I then attempt to sign up by filling out the form. The page reloads and tells me “You have signed up successfully. If enabled, a confirmation was sent to your e-mail.”. Yay, alright now I realize immediatly that I haven’t yet setup an smtp server on my local machine however if we check the server output or logs we will see a generated message:

Sent mail to lee@blazingcloud.net (58ms)
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2011 12:04:04 -0800
From: please-change-me@config-initializers-devise.com
To: lee@blazingcloud.net
Message-ID: <4d28c334b84a5_7cb680e634b492756@Atum.local.mail>
Subject: Confirmation instructions
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html;
charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
<p>Welcome lee@blazingcloud.net!</p>
<p>You can confirm your account through the link below:</p>
<p><a href="http://localhost:3000/users/confirmation?confirmation_token=wYQlv1D1lbB9InFq8dVZ">Confirm my account</a></p>
Sent mail to lee@blazingcloud.net (58ms)Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2011 12:04:04 -0800From: please-change-me@config-initializers-devise.comTo: lee@blazingcloud.netMessage-ID: <4d28c334b84a5_7cb680e634b492756@Atum.local.mail>Subject: Confirmation instructionsMime-Version: 1.0Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
<p>Welcome lee@blazingcloud.net!</p>
<p>You can confirm your account through the link below:</p>
<p><a href="http://localhost:3000/users/confirmation?confirmation_token=wYQlv1D1lbB9InFq8dVZ">Confirm my account</a></p>

Fantastic if we go to the confirmation address http://localhost:3000/users/confirmation?confirmation_token=wYQlv1D1lbB9InFq8dVZ we should be able to active our new account and sure enough the confirm works and sends us to the homepage with the message ‘Your account was successfully confirmed. You are now signed in.’

Conclusion

Devise is easy to setup and install using Rails 3. It give me the flexibility and features I need to fulfill the authentication requirements of my application. Good documentation and setup instructions go a long way. We will see with time if I regret my decision. If anyone out there in the internets know of any helpful information that would be beneficial to this blog post please comment below!

Update

To update your Devise views run this from the command line:

rails generate devise:views

This will pull the views from the gem and allow you to modify them.

Here at Blazing Cloud we are happy to announce the launch of our first official product, BieberFy! BieberFy was inspired by Justin Bieber and the overwhelming response to his floppy teenage hair cut. So we thought, what would be better then to make an app that could give anyone Justin Bieber’s hair du? I mean, haven’t you always wondered what you would look like with Justin Bieber’s hair? Okay, maybe thats a stretch, wondering what you would look like with Justin Biebers likeness and all, but if  your curiosity gets the better of you there IS an app for that now.

BieberFy is an application that runs on iOS 4 for the iPhone and iPod touch. BieberFy takes advantage of the devices built in camera by displaying an overlay that gives you three Justin Bieber hair styles to choose from.  The initial version of the app allows you to take a photo with one of the hair styles, preview it and if you choose to accept, it will save it to the device’s built in photo album.

BieberFy is available for sale world wide via the iTunes app store for $0.99.

We hope you have just as much fun with this app as we do!

[1, 2, 3, 4].each do |i|
    puts i
end

((lambda (a b) (+ b a)) 1 2)

var foo = function () {
   var j = 42;
}

^BOOL(num1,num2){
   return [num1 isEqualToNumber:num2];
}

Now there are other block structured languages out there but the few listed here are used to provide a basis for understanding if you’re coming from another language where you may have experienced this concept.

Objective-C inherited blocks from the C language, which it is a superset of. Apple has created an extension of the C language implementing blocks. Syntactically, blocks start with the carrot symbol, followed by its return type followed by arguments (enclosed by parenthesis) and finishing off with the code body defined between curly braces.

^Return Type (Arguments) {Code Body}

The blocks return type and arguments are both optional parameters, leaving them off will not effect the block.

^{Code Body}

You can pass blocks to a function:

Repeat(12, ^{
   [str appendFormat:@"rand: %d", rand()];
});

Scoped variables (by default) are immutable in blocks. To make these mutable you prefix the keyword __block.

For example

__block int count = 0; //mutable thanks to the __block keyword
int specialValue = 50;  //immutable inside the block

^{
  // do some calculation
   int newValue = someCalculatedValue + specialValue;
   count++; //increment the count every time we do this calculation
}

A good example of when you might want to use a block may be a callback. Since callbacks are generally a grouping of code that will run after an operation.

iBooks

In the first 65 days users have download over 5 million books

Enhancement to iBooks

Highlight sections
Make notes
Bookmark the page in the corner
View and read PDFs

AppStore

Apple supports two platforms, HTML5 and AppStore (225,000 apps)
15,000 apps submitted every week supporting up to 30 languages
95% of apps are approved in 7 days
5% of apps get rejected

Reason why apps are rejected from the AppStore

Use of private Apple APIs
App doesn’t work like developer says it works
The app crashes

Downloads from the AppStore total 5 billion
$1 billion dollars have been paid out to developers thus far

iPhone stats

Us smartphone market share Q1 of 2010

RIM 35%
iPhone 28%
Winmo 19%
Android 9%
Other 9%

US mobile browsers share Q1 of 2010

iPhone 58.2%
Android 22.7%
Rim 12.7%
Other 6.4%

iPhone 4

1st new feature

All new design
9.3 mm thick
“Thinnest smartphone on the planet”
Camera and LED flash
2nd mic for noise cancellation
Integrated Antennas in the structure of the phone
Stainless steel body
Glass on front and back

2nd new feature

Retina display
4 times as many pixels in the same area
326 pixels per inch
300 pixels per inch is the limit of the human retina to differentiate pixels
3.5 inches 960×640
800:1 contrast ratio
IPS technology
78% of the pixels on the iPad on the iPhone

3rd new featured

Powered by the A4 processor
3G talk time equals 7 hours
3G browsing time equals 6 hours
WIFI browsing time equals 10hours
32G and 16G storage options

4th new feature

3 Axis Gyroscope
Pitch, roll and yaw
Rotation about gravity
Gyro plus accelerometer provides 6 axis

5th new feature

New camera system
5megapixel sensor
Backside illuminated sensor
5x digital zoom
LED flash built in
HD video recording 720p at 30 frames per sec
Built in video editing (iMovie application)
LED flash will stay on for video

6th new feature

Renaming iPhone OS to iOS 4
1500 new developer APIs
100 new user features
Multitasking
Folders
Added bing as a search option (with google and yahoo)

Golden master candidate released June 7th

100th million iOS device (iPhone + ipads + iPods) sold

7th new feature

iBooks coming to iPhone
Same features as the iPad
Wireless sync between iPhone, iPad and iPod touch
Same books for all devices at no extra charge

150 million accounts with credit cards (iBook store, AppStore and iTunes Store)
Over 16 billion downloads from all three stores

8th new feature

iADs
Ads keep you in your app which gives a better user experience
Built right into iOS4
Brands so far to sign up (within the last 8 weeks): Nissan, Citi, unilever, AT&T, Chenel, GE, liberty mutual, State Farm, Gieco, Cambell, Sears, JCPennys, Target, Best Buy, DirecTV, tbs, and Disney

These companies committed 60 million dollars towards iAds

9th new feature

FaceTime video calling
Uses wifi, no setup required
Use front or rear camera
Wifi only in 2010 have to work with the cellular companies to get their networks ready for video calling

Price and availability

2 colors white or black
$299 for 32 gig $199 for 16 gig
On sale June 24th
Pre-sale June 15th

iOS 4 upgrades are free for everyone (iPhone + iPod Touch)!!!