customizing Mac login screen

I found the following web site has hints on how to customize all kinds of things on my Mac:

# http://www.macyourself.com/2009/03/11/mac-login-window-tricks-part-4-change-default-background-image/
# DEFAULT - sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture /Users/javaswinger/nepal.jpg

# http://www.macyourself.com/2009/03/06/mac-login-window-tricks-part-2-add-a-custom-welcome-message/
# DEFAULT - sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow LoginwindowText "Welcome to Dharma & MacBook world"

# http://www.macyourself.com/2009/03/05/mac-login-window-tricks-part-1-unleash-hidden-system-information/
# use any of the following:
# HostName, SystemVersion, SystemBuild, SerialNumber, IPAddress, DSStatus, Time
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo Time

How RubyOnRails go onto my Mac laptop

I must say that I feel like I went back in time as I watch RubyOnRails being installed on my Mac laptop. Everything was installed by looking up the public web sites and then the installers were mostly run from the command line. The first thing I needed was Xcode to get a compiler. Then DarwinPorts (or known as OpenDarwin or MacPorts) which helped us load all of ruby. Once we had ruby, then I needed ruby gems and rake (which is ruby-make). Of course where would I be without subversion for version control. To access mySQL I now have CocoaMySQL. Lastly, in order to edit ruby code I was forced to use TextMate. When I thought I was really done I was told I cannot live with QuickSilver to locate all of the programs put on my Mac today.

Mac and RubyOnRails

I must say the best way to learn RubyOnRails is to work with young guns. I was starting to learn Rails on my own and was struggling so the RoleModelSoftware fellows I was working with helped me install everything and now I have mySQL and RoR working on my old Titanium G4 MacBook. Then to work with these great people on the latest technology and all on Macs was a thing of beauty for me.