I have played around with attachment_fu using Rmagick in the past, but for some strange reason I was running into all these issues. So I migrated to Image Science, but after dealing with pains on my Ruby on Rails VPS, I pushed this “problem” off and decided to continue coding and deal with server issues later.

Well today, I was tired of coding and figured its time to suck it up and deal with the pain. Well, I “sovled” the problem, but is not the perfered method for the long right. Right now I got Image Science working great on my mac mini (development machine) I have been resizing, croping, and creating thumbnails all day, but knew that I had to get it working on my VPS for it to be useful.

Well, I finally “solved” or rather changed my plan and am running Rmagick on my VPS and Image Science (for now) on my mac mini. I KNOW I have had Rmagick working great on my mac mini before, just not after this recent install. Anyway, heres some tips/tricks that have helped me with my VPS (Slicehost) and my mac mini.

Setup and Install Image Science:

SSH onto your VPS(Slicehost) running Ubuntu

Run the commands:

• sudo apt-get install imagemagick
• sudo apt-get install libmagick9-dev
• sudo gem install rmagick

Bam, Change the :processor in has_attachments from :processor => ‘rmagick’ to :processor => ‘ImageScience’
and you should be good to go!

This worked for others who ARE running Image Science, but it did NOT work for me Anyway, maybe this will help you!

Installing Image Scinence requires FreeImage and RubyInline.

• sudo wget http://ftp.cica.es/ubuntu/ubuntu/pool/universe/f/freeimage/freeimage_3.9.3.orig.tar.gz
• sudo tar -xvf freeimage_3.9.3.orig.tar.gz
• cd freeimage-3.9.3.repacked/FreeImage
• sudo make
• sudo make install
• sudo gem install -y rubyinline
• sudo gem install -y image_science

I hope that helps some Ruby N00bies that have been pulling out their hair with attachment_fu. Please let me know what image processor you are using for your photo resizing/croping/etc.

Oh, and just in case you missed it…
Have an idea for an iPhone case, maybe even an application? Check out mophie’s latest release of the iPhone illuminator. You can go to the web version mophie.com on your iphone and we will redirect you.

We are hoping to use the iPhone illuminator to service the need of people who CAN NOT make this event and provide ideas for iPhone applications as well as future case ideas to mophie in hope get ideas out of heads and on to shelves. As part of the team of illuminator I want to stress that we have some great ideas in the pipe, but couldn’t help and get the juices flowing with illuminator, so we launched the iphone version here at iPhoneDevCamp.

The event was liveblogged by Bryan Helmkamp; JP Reardon also wrote an overview of the GoRuCo. The event also had a nice list of sponsors including Engine Yard. Engine Yard is a full ruby on rails hosting company that focuses on the hosting for you, so you don’t have to. Many of the larger known ruby on rails hosting companies like slicehost, just give you a VPS (Virtual Private Server) and expect you to maintain/update/fix it. Engine Yard takes care of that for you, so you can focus on coding. I got a chance to meet the founder, Tom and hear all that they are doing to host/support rails developers.

I also got a chance to meet some great people like Geoffrey Grosenbach of Topfunky who is the man behind peepcode. Peepcode is a website that sells screencasts (Video of your monitor with a voice over explaining what their doing) focused for ruby on rails developers. I know I have watched many peepcodes and it was almost funny because he is the voice in them (So weird cause when I was hearing him talk and was like OMG he is the voice behind the magic screencast.) I also meet Jay Phillips from codemecca who is the project manager be hind Adhearsion. Adhearsion combines Ruby with Astrisk the open source PBX system. Both of these guys were really cool and wicked smart, Jay is only 19 years old!

GoRuCo was awesome event, the only thing that I thought was odd was they had a paper survey? Isnt it 2007AD and not 2007BC? Why not post up a link to a survey online? You could password protect it from the outside and just announce the password. (Just my 2 cents.) I hope to see this happen again next year and continue to attend!

If you didn’t get tickets, stop by the music box (219 Avenue B between 13th and 14th street) for the after hours party between 9pm and 4am Saturday night. There should also be video up sometime after the event, maybe trotter will post it on motionbox who knows.
For more Goruco information check out the wiki. Anyway, I am excited about this event and hope to meet a variety of Ruby on Rails developers.