Google scores a point. Well not really, but I did find this kind of funny when trying to download Google Maps to my Windows Mobile device:

As a spare time project I’ve been working on rewriting Jamie’s shopping cart using Ruby on Rails. One reason is that her current x-cart system is just too difficult to configure and tweak from a display standpoint. There’s a lot we’d like to do with data presentation and while the x-cart software is very customizable, it’s a huge hassle to tweak.

I have a decent amount of experience writing shopping cart software using ColdFusion and decided to take a shot with Rails. We wrote a CF version when I was working for Eternal Media and you can see it in action at Labrador Apparel. I wrote a very basic version over six years ago that’s still running at Bob Ellis Shoes. I’m hoping to see how Rails speeds up the development cycle and allows me to build something that is easily configurable. I plan on posting the source when it’s available so stay tuned.

I spent a little time this evening working on a screen for the Windows Mobile version of BlueGPS. I have a few bugs to work out and should be releasing it within the next week. Here’s a sample screen:

I plan on getting the compass to display the appropriate direction. I had a compass in the Symbian version that didn’t really do anything functional. Windows Mobile appears to make image handling 100 times easier than Symbian so integrating the compass should be pretty straightforward. I’ll post a download and feature list when it’s ready.

Ruby has a very elegant syntax when it comes to several things. A good example is how I was checking for the existence of a session variable in my Rails app:

if(session[:my_variable) == nil)
// Do something here
end

I don't really have a problem with the syntax above, but was suprised to find the following syntax that does the exact same thing:

unless session[:my_variable]
// Do something here
end

Ah yes, much better. I find it much more readible and human-like, less machine-like.

I’ve done several posts about extracting JPG and PNG frames using FFmpeg. I’ve received quite a few comments about users having problems with the following command:

ffmpeg -i swing.avi -s 320×240 -vframes 1 -f singlejpeg swing.jpg

This has worked for me time and time again, but possibly it’s not supported in newer versions. Right now I’m running version 4.9-pre1. For all the users having problems with the command above I’ve been shown the following that substitutes mjpeg for singlejpeg. So the command looks like this:

ffmpeg -i swing.avi -s 320×240 -vframes 1 -f mjpeg swing.jpg

I was able to run this command successfully with the same version of FFmpeg. The image looks identical and is the same file size. If you’re having problems extracting frames then I would recommend trying both commands and seeing what works for you. If neither of them do then you should consider upgrading to the latest version of FFmpeg.