This is nothing new or monumental, but I thought I'd post it anyway.  I recently picked up a new Macbook Pro, and while setting it up for Rails development, I ran into a little issue while installing the mysql gem.  I'm sure this little tid-bit is probably posted a million other places on the intarwebs, but one more can't hurt.

So here's the problem.  You attempt to run a rake db task, and you get this...

!!! The bundled mysql.rb driver has been removed from Rails 2.2. Please install the mysql gem and try again: gem install mysql.
rake aborted!
no such file to load -- mysql

So you do as it says and attempt to install the gem...

Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing mysql:
    ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby extconf.rb install mysql
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lm... yes
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lz... yes
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lsocket... no
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lnsl... no
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
*** extconf.rb failed ***
Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of
necessary libraries and/or headers.  Check the mkmf.log file for more
details.  You may need configuration options.

Provided configuration options:
    --with-opt-dir
    --without-opt-dir
    --with-opt-include
    --without-opt-include=${opt-dir}/include
    --with-opt-lib
    --without-opt-lib=${opt-dir}/lib
    --with-make-prog
    --without-make-prog
    --srcdir=.
    --curdir
    --ruby=/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby
    --with-mysql-config
    --without-mysql-config
    --with-mysql-dir
    --without-mysql-dir
    --with-mysql-include
    --without-mysql-include=${mysql-dir}/include
    --with-mysql-lib
    --without-mysql-lib=${mysql-dir}/lib
    --with-mysqlclientlib
    --without-mysqlclientlib
    --with-mlib
    --without-mlib
    --with-mysqlclientlib
    --without-mysqlclientlib
    --with-zlib
    --without-zlib
    --with-mysqlclientlib
    --without-mysqlclientlib
    --with-socketlib
    --without-socketlib
    --with-mysqlclientlib
    --without-mysqlclientlib
    --with-nsllib
    --without-nsllib
    --with-mysqlclientlib
    --without-mysqlclientlib


Gem files will remain installed in /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.7 for inspection.
Results logged to /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.7/gem_make.out

Well shit.  That didn't work.  So here's what you need to do...

sudo gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

which should yield...

Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
Successfully installed mysql-2.7
1 gem installed

Yay.

So I've got a problem...

I've got a wordpress blog, this rails blog, a tumble log, a twitter feed, and probably a few other blog/feed/things that I'm forgetting.   Aside from this blog, I post to the others fairly regularly.  Granted, it's typically only an iphone photo with some blurb of text, but still...

Here's the issue.  There's only a handful of people following this stuff (it's a shocker, I know) on a regular basis, so I can't really expect them to his 4 or 5 urls every time they want to see what's up with me.  My "followers" consist primarily of family, friends, and coworkers.  The family only checks the wordpress blog (and occassionally the tumble log) for pictures of the kids and my super-witty anecdotes.  The friends and coworkers mostly follow my tumble log and more recently, my twitter feed, which I've had for a while but didn't start using much till now.

Here's my solution.  I want to bring it all together.  Put it all in one place.  When someone gets bored enough to look me up, I want them to get the whole picture with having to play a game of musical websites.  This inspiration for this came from a blog that I've been loosely following for several months now.  The blog combines both life and tech posts, but all the while maintaining the separation of the two.

Notice also that he includes a link to his tumble log in the header nav.  I'd like to find a better way to incorporate Tumblr, but at this point, I'm not sure how.  The same goes for my Twitter feed.

Not only will this allow people to see everything in one place, but hopefully it will also encourage me to post tech content more often in order to keep up with the steady flow of family/life stuff.

So that's my plan.  We'll see how long it takes me to get any of it done.  For anyone interested in following the build, I've already setup a Github repo here.