Posts on Miro's World

Catching up: Taming the Online Storages

Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0200

In July 2023 I sat down to list every place my files lived. The list had eight entries - seven online storages and one line for “external volumes” - and at the bottom a checkbox: “Finish this list”. It stayed unchecked for three years, which tells you everything about the problem.

In the earlier post about reorganizing my digital life I described the big picture: the Data Map, the disk catalog, the new NAS. This one zooms in on the clouds, one by one.

Catching up: Offsite Backups That Let Me Sleep

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Consolidating a digital life onto one NAS has an ugly side effect: everything now burns in the same fire. In the previous posts I described how I moved decades of files, photos and documents onto a single Synology box at home. This post is about the second half of that story - getting a copy of it out of the house, encrypted, in a way that lets me sleep.

Picking the provider
#

The first lesson was that where a company keeps its servers and where it is registered are two different things. Backblaze has European data centers, but it is a Californian company, and the US CLOUD Act follows the company, not the building. For a family archive I wanted a European company in a European data center.

Catching up: Tailscale Everywhere

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Seven devices, two of them NAS boxes, and a laptop that travels with me. For years, reaching any of them from outside the house was a small project every time. In July 2026 I put all of them on one private network, and the day every machine got one name that works from anywhere, half of my runbooks got shorter.

Why a mesh VPN
#

My home fleet is not big, but it is spread out: two MacBooks, an iPhone, an iPad, a Mac mini that is always on and serves as a small home hub, and two Synology NAS boxes, an old one and a new one.

A Wiki Wiki Wikend

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Last weekend 25th to 27th of September, members of Wikimedia Slovensko met in Dubnica nad Váhom. It was great to meet the fellow Wikipedians in the flesh again (Matej, Patrik and Filip), and to meet Kormi in 3D for the first time.

It was mainly a planning, coordination and brainstorming meeting, but part of the programme happened outdoors, with cameras. By Sunday the town’s 18th-century Calvary had its own photos on Wikimedia Commons, a record on Wikidata and the start of a Slovak Wikipedia article. The local Jewish cemetery gained a set of new photographs too. That weekend is a good small example of what this whole thing is about.

Catching up: Reorganizing My Digital Life

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

I have always been a pack rat when it came to digital assets. I didn’t like the idea of deleting files. What if I want to come back to them later? After all, they don’t really take almost any physical space compared to paper books (certainly not now, in the age of multi-terabyte hard drives and the cloud). So what I did - I kept archiving them.

It started in the late ’80s and the ’90s with floppy disks, eventually migrated to external hard drives, CDs, DVDs and with the ascent of the cloud they ended up in a variety of various storage solutions.

Catching up: Obsidian + Claude

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

Plain markdown files turned out to be the best possible interface between a decade of notes and a language model. No API, no export, no connector, no sync service in the middle: the agent opens the folder and reads it, the same way I do. This post is what happened once I let it.

The setup
#

There is a CLAUDE.md file at the root of my vault. It is twenty-nine lines long, and the last three of them say this:

Catching up: Riding the LLM Wave

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

This is a history of three years - from bookmarking ChatGPT articles to an AI-managed knowledge base; with a certification in the middle and one embarrassing self-assessment along the way.

Spectator to User (2023)
#

I still remember my first interactions with ChatGPT (via the web, using the free version) sometime in early 2023. I wanted to have an episode guide of an excellent HBO series called Patria, a story of a Basque family during the ETA years. So I asked for it, and what ChatGPT produced was completely, utterly, unbelievably hallucinated: 12 episodes (the series has 8), a made-up story, randomly assigned actors, two thirds of them non-existent. One huge hallucination. I did not keep the transcript, but I remember it clearly. It was very disappointing, and my conclusion was: well, this is fun, but useless.

Catching up: Why Obsidian Won

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

The pitch I once wrote for a conference talk still says it best: Obsidian has a cult following “not because it’s clever software, but because of what it isn’t: your notes are just plain markdown files in a folder on your computer. No database, no cloud lock-in, no proprietary format. Just files.”

Nothing ages as well as plain text; it has been the same since, well, files were invented. Markdown is just a very thin layer that gives the plain text some structure, and allows it to be rendered and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing way.

Catching up: My Note-Taking Odyssey

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

I have always taken notes. At first on paper - there are still many handwritten notebooks somewhere in the archives - but for the last thirty years or so most of them, if not all, have been digital. And digital always means an application and a format. I have tried a lot of them.

While doing so I made pretty much every mistake one can make when it comes to choosing an application and settling on a workflow. What follows is a tour of the graveyard: a long line of tools, most of them now dead, and the lesson each one charged me on the way out.

How klassify.com went live: one static page, GitHub Pages and Route 53

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 15:30:00 +0200

My company, Klassify s.r.o., has had a domain for a long time before it was even registered (I registered klassify.com way back in early 2000 in Canada, but never actually did anything with it) - and a web page since this afternoon. For all that time klassify.com carried only my email - there was no A record at all, nothing was served, and whoever looked up the company from an invoice or a contract got a browser error and, I suppose, some doubts about whether the company exists. So here is how it got fixed in one afternoon, in the order it happened and with the reasoning. Nothing here is clever or sophisticated or the only/the best way. The point is the sequence of creation: there are two places in it where it is quite easy to break something that matters more than a web page.

Catching up: From Spain to Bratislava (Again)

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0200

We always had this dream back in Canada: retire to Europe, “ideally somewhere south”. This post is about how that plan half-worked, twenty years early, and how it landed us in Bratislava instead.

How Valencia actually happened (it was never a plan)
#

In 2012 we did our first ever trip to Spain (Madrid → Valencia → Barcelona), triggered by our daughter’s stay in Madrid. It was part of the student exchange where Silvia spent 3 months with a Spanish family in Madrid and we had a Spanish girl from that family with us in Ottawa. We loved the experience - it was different than Italy we knew, but intriguing. So we started to consider Spain as a possible retirement destination.

The Five-Year Intermission

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 11:15:00 +0200

The last post here is dated February 18, 2021. It was a perfectly ordinary how-to about Bitbucket permissions, and nothing about it suggested it would be the last one for five and a half years. There was no farewell post, no “taking a break” announcement. The blog just — stopped.

This post is the missing announcement, written from the other side.

What happened
#

The short version: life kept running, and the writing habit didn’t.

How to monitor Bitbucket user and group permissions with API

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 13:00:00 +0800

How to manage users and groups in Bitbucket
#

Use case:

I want to maintain users and groups and their access to repositories in an organization in Bitbucket. To make sure I do not miss newly changed admin access, I want to use the Bitbucket API to retrieve the list of permissions on repository basis and on user/group bases.

How to mirror Github and Bitbucket repositories

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 13:00:00 +0800

Mirroring large number of GitHub or Bitbucket repositories
#

Use case:

I want to create local clone of a large number of repositories from an organization in GitHub / Bitbucket.

Assumptions
#

user has SSH key registered with the GH / BB - can clone using ssh protocol
user has successfully cloned at least one repo from command line before (the /etc/hosts contains host entries for BB and GH)
user has modern version of Python 3 installed (3.6 or better)
user has local installation of a reasonably modern Git

Steps
#

First I use the ./bb-repo-links.sh and ./gh-repo-links.sh to generate list of repositories. See these blog articles: How to list repositories in Bitbucket and How to list repositories in github

How to list Github repositories and users

Tue, 16 Feb 2021 13:00:00 +0800

How to list repositories in GitHub
#

Use Case:

I want to maintain repositories in an organization in GitHub. To make sure I do not miss newly added ones, I want to use API access to retrieve the list of repositories in the organization.

Setup
#

GitHub requires a token to access the API. This token is stored in an environment variable github_token and can be generated in the user profile section - settings - developer settings.

How to list Bitbucket repositories and users

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 13:00:00 +0800

How to list repositories in Bitbucket
#

Use case:

I want to maintain repositories in an organization in Bitbucket. To make sure I do not miss newly added ones, I want to use API access to retrieve the list of all repositories in the organization.

Setup
#

Bitbucket requires a username and password to access the API. This information is stored in the environment variables BBUSER and BBPASSWORD. The BBPASSWORD should be an access token / app password defined in the App passwords section of the user settings:

Documenting multi-repository projects

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 13:00:00 +0800

This blog post is a de-powerpointized version of a brownbag session in Pivotree. The goal was to increase awareness of tools and techniques for information / knowledge capture in the projects, specifically focusing on producing quality documentation so that everybody in project can access it and contribute to it, not only developers. We wanted to look at the tools that would allow engineers keep using their tools of trade (without impact on developer’s productivity) and at the same time make the information available without duplication of work to increase re-findability of information.

Reference Architecture as a Code

Mon, 10 Aug 2020 13:00:00 +0800

Many shapes of Architecture
#

According to the wise people, an architecture is the shared understanding that the expert developers/system builders/maintainers have of the system design. It’s purpose is to maximize the probability that the decisions you have to make early in a project are the right ones. It is sort of a blueprint for the future system and captures parts, relations, boundaries, constraints.

DockerCon 2020

Sat, 30 May 2020 11:22:48 +0800

I had an opportunity to attend DockerCon 2018 in person - it was great experience in wonderful city - Barcelona. My notes from it are here. I missed previous year (for variety of reasons), but DockerCon this year (as many other tech events) was purely virtual so I was able to see some part of it.

Compared to 2018, the general tone and content of this DockerCon was quite different. In 2018 it felt like all the attention is focused on big enterprise (mainly Microsoft related) and what Docker as a company is looking for best way how to hook big firms with deep pockets.

Accessing Terraform cloud Module registry programatically

Thu, 14 May 2020 21:22:48 +0800

First step is to get your personal token. Log on to Terraform Cloud, go to https://app.terraform.io/app/settings/tokens and generate new token.

Note: it is important to save the token to safe place - this is only time you will see it.

Export the token:

export TFE_TOKEN=<THE-TOKEN-VALUE>

The documentation for Terraform API is here

It is OK documentation but not the greatest one, however. There are two versions of the API - v1 and v2 and this is not clearly described. It could also used better examples.

Using SSH keys with multiple Bitbucket accounts

Tue, 12 May 2020 22:34:38 +0800

I have been using Bitbucket since 2012, long before my company moved from in-house hosted server running Gitolite and in-house instances of FishEye and Crucible to cloud based source control on Bitbucket Cloud. As legacy I was using my personal login with my gmail account as my Bitbucket identity.

With merge of 3 companies in 2018 and rebranding as Pivotree, we are in process of streamlining the identity management and using SSO for identification. Time has come to split my personal identity and work identity.

History of Faith

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 11:24:48 +0800

The beginnings
#

Once upon a time - actually, in late 2017-early 2018 - there was a QA/DevOps engineer named José who liked containers, Docker and worked for a company named Thinkwrap (that soon would become Pivotree) in Valencia, Spain.

José was responsible (among other things) for setting up integration and QA environments for multiple Hybris projects. Such environment, when being built in traditional way (from physical servers or VMs), normally requires quite a few pieces:

Kubectl client and server version mismatch

Sun, 19 Jan 2020 11:12:38 +0800

Accessing Rancher cluster
#

I was doing update on Kubernetes cluster I had not touch in a while when I noticed weird behaviour:

the output of get command was incomplete
the -o wide option had no effect on the command output

(IP addresses are masked)

➜  .kube git:(master) ✗ kubectl --kubeconfig dropship-dev-uat get nodes
NAME                                             AGE
ip-172-xx-xx-xx.ca-central-1.compute.internal    613d
ip-172-xx-xx-xx.ca-central-1.compute.internal    628d
ip-172-xx-xx-xx.ca-central-1.compute.internal    558d

and

Rancher CLI vs kubectl

Sat, 18 Jan 2020 11:22:48 +0800

Accessing Rancher cluster
#

After creation, you can access the K8s cluster running Rancher by saving the config file available from the console and using standard kubectl command

kubectl --kubeconfig ./quickstart.kubeconfig get pods --all-namespaces
NAMESPACE       NAME                                      READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
cattle-system   cattle-cluster-agent-5c98cb979f-bbhxf     1/1     Running     0          5d23h
cattle-system   cattle-node-agent-dwnxk                   1/1     Running     0          5d23h
cattle-system   kube-api-auth-d4zgq                       1/1     Running     0          5d23h
ingress-nginx   default-http-backend-67cf578fc4-grmsw     1/1     Running     0          5d23h
ingress-nginx   nginx-ingress-controller-mpnmb            1/1     Running     0          5d23h
kube-system     canal-jw85q                               2/2     Running     0          5d23h
kube-system     coredns-5c59fd465f-47q5z                  1/1     Running     0          5d23h
kube-system     coredns-autoscaler-d765c8497-sm5xf        1/1     Running     0          5d23h
kube-system     metrics-server-64f6dffb84-bp864           1/1     Running     0          5d23h
kube-system     rke-coredns-addon-deploy-job-95qnk        0/1     Completed   0          5d23h
kube-system     rke-ingress-controller-deploy-job-brv7w   0/1     Completed   0          5d23h
kube-system     rke-metrics-addon-deploy-job-tvt89        0/1     Completed   0          5d23h
kube-system     rke-network-plugin-deploy-job-7rqcr       0/1     Completed   0          5d23h

The same information (and much more) is available using rancher CLI.

30 day commit challenge - Checkpoint 1

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 11:22:48 +0800

Time to make checkpoint number 1 - it is day 11 of 30.

So far - out of this 11 days I have 10 days with commits. The missing day was fully dedicated to working on presentation and documentation, that unfortunately ends up Confluence and Google Doc, not in some proper textual format (read: Markdown or RestructuredText) backed by a repository.

Stuff that I worked on:

some minor updates to resume (added AWS badges, fixed some typos)
notes from certification courses + code fragments
scripts for automation of documents / ebooks backup from iCloud to local drives

Most commits went to documentation / practice code for my project “Many ways to Kubernetes” where I play with building up K8s clusters using different approaches. So far I did the “Kubernetes the hard way” - following the course from Linux Academy (https://linuxacademy.com/cp/modules/view/id/221),

On harvesting credit card numbers and passwords

Wed, 11 Dec 2019 21:22:48 +0800

This is the scariest thing I have read since spring 2018:

https://hackernoon.com/im-harvesting-credit-card-numbers-and-passwords-from-your-site-here-s-how-9a8cb347c5b5

written by @david.gilbertson.

It pretty sure what he describes is actually happening, has been happening before he described it and will be happening going on - just obviously not in the named module. The ecosystem of Node modules is so vast and so unstable that considerable number of project do not do enough to catch behaviour like this.

30 day commit challenge

Fri, 06 Dec 2019 11:22:48 +0800

My work in last few years took my away from practical coding towards DevOps. Despite the increased role of IaaC in our DevOps, this often means living in iTerm and AWS console with interaction not being captured in any form.

On writing side, lots of my output shifted from code towards writing text in Wiki’s, GoogleDocs and more and more in Slack messages. The code I write are short one-liners or small scripts with very short life span. This makes me a bit sad as there is no sense of accomplishment at the end of the day or week. The git log does not work over Wiki, AWS console, iTerm, Slack and GoogleDrive.

BOTD - Blog of the Day

Thu, 05 Dec 2019 11:22:48 +0800

Today’s blog of the day is a special one. It does not deal with cloud, DevOps or distributed systems. The theme of the blog is travel, life of digital nomad and observations on life from a perspective of a smart young woman, working as Online English teacher and travelling a lot while doing so - https://bookandtravel.blog/

What makes this blog dear and interesting to me is that it’s author is my daughter Silvia. What could make the blog interesting and valuable for other audience (especially those learning English who are interested in personal development) is the format of the entries - as they combine reading and language teaching. Each post contains 10-20 emphasized words or expressions that are explained in footnotes - check this one

Quote of the day

Tue, 26 Nov 2019 11:22:48 +0800

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.
Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

― Marcus Aurelius , Meditations

November in Valencia

Sun, 24 Nov 2019 11:22:48 +0800

Lovely November day in Valencia

Building Hugo as well on GitLab pages

Sat, 23 Nov 2019 22:22:48 +0800

Parallel building challenges
#

Unlike Github, Gitlab considers Hugo blogs first class citizens and does not impose any restrictions on repo naming.

I had 3 challenges to overcome related to co-existence of GH and GL versions:

I need to use same repo for both GH and GL
the submodule link for public does not work on GL
the site root is different - I have no custom domain forward for GitLab

Using same repo
#

To separate the GH and GL, I have added 2 remotes to repo and special branch gitlab-pages.

Current Hugo setup on Github Pages

Fri, 22 Nov 2019 11:22:48 +0800

How does the blog setup and publishing work
#

Before I forget, here is how the current configuration works.

There are two repositories at play:

source repo - https://github.com/miroadamy/miroadamy.com
github pages repo (== GHPR) - https://github.com/miroadamy/miroadamy.github.io

The blog source repo contains only source files (.md, static media etc). This repo has usual submodules under the /themes - e.g. /themes/even which is one currently used.

From Jekyll to Hugo

Wed, 20 Nov 2019 23:22:48 +0800

I have decided to consolidate all piecemeal versions of my blogpost uder one roof and at the same to do these four things

technology upgrade - from Jekyll to Hugo
visual refresh of the page
review tagging and categorization
merge hidden posts from Wikis to one place

Why Hugo replaced Jekyll
#

The version 3 of my blog (see below for a bit of history) has been hosted on Github pages and using the default static site generators - Jekyll.

Thought of the day

Thu, 14 Nov 2019 11:22:48 +0800

“The older you get, the more quiet you become.

Life humbles you so deeply as you age. You realize how much nonsense you’ve wasted time on.”
— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) November 14, 2019

Adding screenshot in case the account disappears

All Day DevOps 2019

Thu, 07 Nov 2019 11:22:48 +0800

All Day DevOps 2019 - Notes
#

I have attended the All Day Devops - https://www.alldaydevops.com/ on 06 Nov 2019 - an event that runs for 24 hours and has multiple tracks of content organized in 4 blocks.

The tracks:

Keynotes
Cultural Change
DevSecOps
SRE
CI/CD
Everything Cloud

The complete list is here: https://www.alldaydevops.com/2019-live-schedule - the play button points to the block video.

AWS Inspection

Thu, 03 Oct 2019 11:22:48 +0800

Bunch of one-liners for AWS
#

.. so that I find them faster next time

aws --output=json ec2 describe-instances | jq -r '.Reservations[].Instances[] | "\n" + .InstanceId + "  :  " + .KeyName + "  =>  " + .PublicIpAddress + " | " + .PublicDnsName,  .Tags[] as $tt | "  ... " + $tt.Key +":"+ $tt.Value'

aws ec2 describe-instances | jq '.Reservations[].Instances[] | .InstanceId + "  :  " + .Placement.AvailabilityZone + "  =>  " + .PublicIpAddress'

aws iam list-group-policies --group-name kops

aws ec2 describe-vpcs | jq '.Vpcs[] | .VpcId + " " + .CidrBlock'

aws iam list-users | jq '.Users[].UserName'

aws --output=json --region=ca-central-1 ec2 describe-vpcs | jq -r '.Vpcs[] | .VpcId + " " + .CidrBlock,.Tags[] as $tt | "  .. " + $tt.Key +":"+$tt.Value'


aws ec2 describe-vpcs | jq -e --raw-output '.Vpcs[] | "\n" + .VpcId + "  :  " + .CidrBlock,  .Tags[] as $tt | "  ... " + $tt.Key +":"+ $tt.Value'

aws ec2 describe-subnets | jq -e --raw-output '.Subnets[] | "\n" + .VpcId + "  :  " + .CidrBlock +" : " + .AvailabilityZone,  .Tags[] as $tt | "  ... " + $tt.Key +":"+ $tt.Value'

aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress --group-id sg-bfa45bd4 --protocol tcp --port 31672 --cidr 204.101.219.210/31

How many instances of each type do I have, and in what states?
#

Considering buying reserved instances or thinking about migrating to a newly introduced class?

aws ec2 describe-instances | jq -r "[[.Reservations[].Instances[]|{ state: .State.Name, type: .InstanceType }]|group_by(.state)|.[]|{state: .[0].state, types: [.[].type]|[group_by(.)|.[]|{type: .[0], count: ([.[]]|length)}] }]"

What CIDRs have Ingress Access to which Ports?
#

# This is helpful when you need to perform a survey or audit of your system boundaries. While such a task isn’t ever “easy”, it can go more smoothly with with a summary:

aws ec2 describe-security-groups | jq '[ .SecurityGroups[].IpPermissions[] as $a | { "ports": [($a.FromPort|tostring),($a.ToPort|tostring)]|unique, "cidr": $a.IpRanges[].CidrIp } ] | [group_by(.cidr)[] | { (.[0].cidr): [.[].ports|join("-")]|unique }] | add'

Which Services am I using?
#

aws ce get-cost-and-usage --time-period Start=2019-08-01,End=2019-08-31  --granularity MONTHLY --metrics UsageQuantity --group-by Type=DIMENSION,Key=SERVICE | jq '.ResultsByTime[].Groups[] | select(.Metrics.UsageQuantity.Amount > 0) | .Keys[0]'


# How much they cost
aws ce get-cost-and-usage --time-period Start=2019-08-01,End=2019-08-31  --granularity MONTHLY --metrics USAGE_QUANTITY BLENDED_COST  --group-by Type=DIMENSION,Key=SERVICE | jq '[ .ResultsByTime[].Groups[] | select(.Metrics.BlendedCost.Amount > "0") | { (.Keys[0]): .Metrics.BlendedCost } ] | sort_by(.Amount) | add'

# Instances running

aws ec2 describe-instances | jq -r "[[.Reservations[].Instances[]|{ state: .State.Name, type: .InstanceType }]|group_by(.state)|.[]|{state: .[0].state, types: [.[].type]|[group_by(.)|.[]|{type: .[0], count: ([.[]]|length)}] }]"

CIDR access to ports
#

aws ec2 describe-security-groups | jq '[ .SecurityGroups[].IpPermissions[] as $a | { "ports": [($a.FromPort|tostring),($a.ToPort|tostring)]|unique, "cidr": $a.IpRanges[].CidrIp } ] | [group_by(.cidr)[] | { (.[0].cidr): [.[].ports|join("-")]|unique }] | add'

Lambda runtimes
#

aws lambda list-functions | jq ".Functions | group_by(.Runtime)|[.[]|{ runtime:.[0].Runtime, functions:[.[]|.FunctionName] }
]"

Memory size
#

aws lambda list-functions | jq ".Functions | group_by(.Runtime)|[.[]|{ (.[0].Runtime): [.[]|{ name: .FunctionName, timeout: .Timeout, memory: .MemorySize }] }]"

Lambda Environment variables
#

aws lambda list-functions | jq -r '[.Functions[]|{name: .FunctionName, env: .Environment.Variables}]|.[]|select(.env|length > 0)'

Pyrenees

Sun, 29 Sep 2019 11:22:48 +0800

Finally, we got to visit the mountains in the North - Pyrenees.

Specifically this place: https://benasque.com/en

Short version
#

I liked it. Great hikes, very good food. Excellent hotel

Long version
#

Spanish and Catalan

Thu, 12 Sep 2019 11:22:48 +0800

The current weather in Valencia summed up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2VHUP7R2CY

Note for my friends who think Catalan is more or less same as Spanish: go for it and translate :-)

Welcome back present

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 11:22:48 +0800

Cafe Eleven

Thu, 29 Aug 2019 11:22:48 +0800

Cafe and books. ’nough said …

Favorite places

Sun, 25 Aug 2019 11:22:48 +0800

I discovered this place rather late - at the end of my vacations.

Maybe it was better so, otherwise I would my vacation here :-)

https://spectator.sme.sk/c/22160317/bookworms-get-a-sanctuary-in-the-slovak-national-gallery.html

I’ll be back !!!

Je me souviens

Wed, 21 Aug 2019 11:22:48 +0800

On 21 August 1968, the occupation army of Soviet Union with satelites invaded Czechoslovakia.

Family vacation

Sat, 03 Aug 2019 11:22:48 +0800

After long time both we and both our children are in the same place.

Precious family time.

Finland Män

Tue, 16 Jul 2019 11:22:48 +0800

Lost and then found again - here:https://angrytouristblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/rejoice-finland-man-is-back.html

Here is the copy, just in case

Rejoice! The Finland Män is back!
#

Source

Finland Män Not Like Smalltalk. Is Horror.

Finland Män not kän underständ smalltalk. When kuud silense, samwan open mouth, silense destroid, why do tis?

One time Finland Män ko tu bar. Finland Män sit ät kounter, entshoi trink, look onli mopile phone. Is kuud silense. Then kam womän nekst tu Finland Män. She äsk: “Do you kam hiör often?” Finland Män pärälised. Is horror. Why she äsk tis? Is häv tu reäkt samhau? Finland Män luuk onli mopile phone. Tsek emails. Kiip luuking mopile phone. Then änssör: “Why you äsk? Is you kondukting sam sörvey?” Womän not say enitink. She ko öwei. Is kuud silense.

Company picnic

Sat, 06 Jul 2019 11:22:48 +0800

with great paella.

Tim Hortons in Valencia

Sun, 23 Jun 2019 11:22:48 +0800

I have my doubts whether it will survive. It is next to Starbucks (one of several, albeit nothing like Toronto) so there is competition for tourists looking for the familiar logo.

As for locals, Spanish coffee culture is quite different, and if I am allowed to say so - Spanish coffee is both better AND less expensive as

So let’s hope Timbits will save the day. Who could resist deep fried sugary dough, eh ?

Visit in Canada

Sun, 26 May 2019 11:22:48 +0800

I did quick 2 week visit to Canada.

I spent some time with our son and daughter-in-law, visited many dear friends and places in the city and nature, worked for couple of days in the office and met new colleagues and even met current my boss for the first time in 3D. I must say, he is taller than in Zoom :-D

I also visited our ex-cat with her new human servants and as expected, Lucy duly ignored me. Oh, well - cats.

AWS Summit Madrid

Tue, 07 May 2019 11:22:48 +0800

One day round trip Valencia to Madrid and back.

It is 350 km, but AVE (high velocity train) makes it in 1.5 hr. Take that, Via Rail !!

Travelling at 300 km/h is unreal. It is actually quieter and more smooth than Canadian train at 80 - all that makes the speed believable is the velocity display and view out of the window when train goes around something closer to the rails.

Jupyter notebook with Bash kernel

Sat, 16 Mar 2019 11:22:48 +0800

Adding Bash to Tensorflow notebook
#

I commented out PHP and C++ stuff that I do not really need:

FROM jupyter/tensorflow-notebook

USER root
# install dependencies 
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -yq --no-install-recommends \
    php-cli php-dev php-pear \
    pkg-config \
    && apt-get clean
#    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

# install zeromq and zmq php extension 
#RUN wget https://github.com/zeromq/zeromq4-1/releases/download/v4.1.5/zeromq-4.1.5.tar.gz && \
#    tar -xvf zeromq-4.1.5.tar.gz && \
#    cd zeromq-* && \
#    ./configure && make && make install && \
#    printf "\n" | pecl install zmq-beta && \
#    echo "extension=zmq.so" > /etc/php/7.0/cli/conf.d/zmq.ini

# install PHP composer
#RUN wget https://getcomposer.org/installer -O composer-setup.php && \
#    wget https://litipk.github.io/Jupyter-PHP-Installer/dist/jupyter-php-installer.phar && \
#    php composer-setup.php && \
#    php ./jupyter-php-installer.phar -vvv install && \
#    mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer && \
#    rm -rf zeromq-* jupyter-php* && \
#    rm composer-setup.php

# install ijavascript
#RUN apt-get install -yq nodejs npm libzmq3-dev node-gyp && \
#    npm install -g ijavascript && \
#    ijs --ijs-install=global

#RUN cd .. && \
#    apt-get install -yq --no-install-recommends cmake && \
#    wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/root-mirror/cling/master/tools/packaging/cpt.py && \
#    chmod +x cpt.py && \
#    ./cpt.py --check-requirements && ./cpt.py --create-dev-env Debug --with-workdir=./cling/

#RUN cd .. && \
#    wget https://root.cern.ch/download/cling/cling_2017-09-15_ubuntu16.tar.bz2 && \
#    tar -xvjf cling_2017-09-15_ubuntu16.tar.bz2 && \
#    rm cling_*.tar.bz2 && \
#    mv cling_* cling

#RUN cd .. && \
#    ln -s $(pwd)/cling/bin/* /usr/bin/ && \
#    cd cling/share/cling/Jupyter/kernel && \
#    pip install -e . && \
#    jupyter-kernelspec install cling-cpp17 && \
#    jupyter-kernelspec install cling-cpp14 && \
#    jupyter-kernelspec install cling-cpp11

RUN chown -R $NB_USER /home/$NB_USER && \
    rm -rf /home/$NB_USER/.local/share/jupyter

# install java jre for h2o
RUN apt-get install -yq openjdk-8-jre

# Reset user from jupyter/base-notebook
USER $NB_USER

# install jupyter-bash
RUN /opt/conda/bin/pip install --no-cache-dir bash_kernel
RUN /opt/conda/bin/python -m bash_kernel.install

# install h2o
RUN /opt/conda/bin/pip install --no-cache-dir --upgrade h2o && \
    /opt/conda/bin/pip install --no-cache-dir --upgrade pandas

# disable authentication
RUN mkdir -p .jupyter
RUN echo "" >> ~/.jupyter/jupyter_notebook_config.py
RUN echo "c.NotebookApp.token = ''" >> ~/.jupyter/jupyter_notebook_config.py

Source: https://bitbucket.org/snippets/klassify/Ee9Myk/jupyter-notebook-with-bash-kernel

SSL Poke

Sun, 10 Feb 2019 11:22:48 +0800

Cybersource Testing Tool
#

Java utility that we used before when we were debugging the TLS 1.2 issues.

It needs to be compiled with JDK 1.8 - ideally the same one that runs in production and then run like:

java -Djavax.net.debug=ssl:handshake:verbose SSLPoke api.cybersource.com 443

replace api.cybersource.com with whatever the cybersource endpoint needs to be.

If the utility responds with ‘Successfully connected’, it was able to handshake with the SSL server and establish the secure connection.

Gitbits

Mon, 14 Jan 2019 11:22:48 +0800

Two small utilities I have places into ~/bin:

git-attic
#

Source: https://github.com/maximeh/dotfiles/blob/master/common/.bin/git-attic

#!/bin/sh
# git-attic [-M] [PATH] - list deleted files of Git repositories
#
# Use -M to not show renamed files, and other git-log options as you like.

git log --raw --no-renames --date=short --format="%h %cd" "$@" |
  awk '/^[0-9a-f]/ { commit=$1; date=$2 }
       /^:/ && $5 == "D" { print date, commit "^:" $6 }' |
  less

Example
#

➜  kubernetes-the-hard-way git:(master) ✗ git log --raw --no-renames --date=short --format="%h %cd" "$@" |
  awk '/^[0-9a-f]/ { commit=$1; date=$2 }
       /^:/ && $5 == "D" { print date, commit "^:" $6 }'
2019-11-20 374e8d9^:docs/using-rst/pdp-template-rst.rst
2019-11-17 7911114^:src/certificates/admin-csr.json
2019-11-17 7911114^:src/certificates/admin-key.pem
2019-11-17 7911114^:src/certificates/admin.csr
2019-11-17 7911114^:src/certificates/admin.pem
2019-11-17 7911114^:src/certificates/ca-config.json
2019-11-17 7911114^:src/certificates/ca-csr.json
2019-11-17 7911114^:src/certificates/ca-key.pem
2019-11-17 7911114^:src/certificates/ca.csr
2019-11-17 7911114^:src/certificates/ca.pem
2019-11-17 7911114^:src/certificates/copy-certificates-to-servers.sh

git trail
#

I cannot remember where is this one from :-(

DockerCon 2018 - great event (with a small fly in the ointment)

Fri, 07 Dec 2018 12:57:35 -0500

I have just returned from DockerCon Europe 2018 and I’d like to share my impressions while they are fresh in my mind. It was my first DockerCon so I was not quite sure what to expect. As the title says, it was great experience and barring the scaling issue (more below) could have been really awesome experience.

But let’s take things in order. First location - Barcelona. Hard to pick better place in December than Spain. I am sure the Northerners greatly appreciated the break from cold and enjoyed the balmy 15 to 20 degrees. The venue Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona - CCIB - though not located in the centre, is at the shore and one can walk to the beach in 2-3 minutes. There were three of us going from Valencia office (which is 3 hours train ride down the coast from Barcelona) and we had also great hotel experience. I can highly recommend Hotel Princess Barcelona. What can be better than starting your day with watching sunrise over Mediterranean Sea. Thanks David - because you did such a great job, you are now in charge of travel and hotel booking going forward :-D

AWS Certified Developer - Associate

Sun, 28 Oct 2018 11:22:48 +0800

Got the second certification today

https://www.certmetrics.com/amazon/public/badge.aspx?i=2&t=c&d=2018-11-28&ci=AWS00261816

Happy birthday Czechoslovakia

Sun, 28 Oct 2018 11:22:48 +0800

Czechoslovakia would be 100 today
#

1918-10-28 - 1992-12-31
#

We (both nations) we lucky to separate paths the peaceful way and at the end of the day, both countries are in the EU, NATO and relations between Czechs and Slovak are probably the best ever because the quarrels over budget and transfers ended.

Useful tool for Dockerhub

Wed, 24 Oct 2018 11:22:48 +0800

Skopeo
#

I have stumbled upon this tool: https://github.com/containers/skopeo - command line tools for manipulation with Docker images and Docker image registries.

It can work with OCI images as well as the original Docker v2 images.

Installation
#

brew install skopeo

Usage
#

➜  deploy-2018-10-24 skopeo --override-os=linux inspect docker://docker.io/fedora
{
    "Name": "docker.io/library/fedora",
    "Digest": "sha256:b41cd083421dd7aa46d619e958b75a026a5d5733f08f14ba6d53943d6106ea6d",
    "RepoTags": [
        "20",
        "21",
        "22",
        "23",
        "24",
        "25",
        "26-modular",
        "26",
        "27",
        "28",
        "29",
        "branched",
        "heisenbug",
        "latest",
        "modular",
        "rawhide"
    ],
    "Created": "2018-09-07T19:20:02.809176076Z",
    "DockerVersion": "17.06.2-ce",
    "Labels": null,
    "Architecture": "amd64",
    "Os": "linux",
    "Layers": [
        "sha256:565884f490d9ec697e519c57d55d09e268542ef2c1340fd63262751fa308f047"
    ]
}

It works with protected repos as well - as long as creds are provided

Google Wifi

Tue, 23 Oct 2018 11:22:48 +0800

Installed Google Wifi - three access points. Finally I have good coverage on both floors of the appartment including the upper terrace and will be able to work at night outside during hot summer nights when temperature does not drop under 25.

The setup was supereasy and iOS app is very well made and gives interesting insights.

Happy.

Mission (almost) accomplished

Tue, 02 Oct 2018 11:22:48 +0800

It’s been five years since I started toying with idea to learn first romance language in my collection - despite living in Canada for over 18 years, I never picked up French.

The learning was slow during 2014 and 2015 (just summer school in Spain and Duolingo) - but it accelerated a lot in last 2 years.

Fast forward to now: on Sunday while watching Prime (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_(film)) we have decided to switch from English to Spanish (with Spanish subtitles) to enjoy the movie better than in original.

Road Trip

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 11:22:48 +0800

I took 3 days off and decided to explore the North of Spain, namely Cantabria and Asturias.

It was awesome and beautiful. Asturias reminded me of Switzerland, with beautiful alpine style nature, great food, very friendly locals speaking language one can understand :-) (I kinda do understand certain versions of Schwyzzertütsch when spoken slowly - but it is a challenge).

Unlike Switzerland, it is not überexpensive.

Here are the pictures.

Simonyi Karoly in Valencia

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 11:22:48 +0800

One of the Microsoft old-timer bilionaries, Charles Simonyi, Hungarian born software engineer, famous for his Hungarian naming notation - who would not remember lpstrzDescription or wFlag - is visiting Valencia on his yacht Skat.

Those who do not write code (or better said - did not write code 20 years ago) may be familiar with his other contribution - Microsoft Word, something I feel much less positive about than lpstrzDescription.

This made my day

Tue, 31 Jul 2018 11:22:48 +0800

Per core licensing

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 11:22:48 +0800

If one uses Oracle per core licensing strategy in cloud:

AWS Certified Solution Architect - Associate

Thu, 07 Jun 2018 11:22:48 +0800

Step 1 done.

https://www.certmetrics.com/amazon/public/badge.aspx?i=1&t=c&d=2018-06-06&ci=AWS00261816&fbclid=IwAR2K8B4FyKWVstBZXCXn5GhYX9iRyB4U2q8l2ROrM_16m-rlclioalnp0O4

And now dilemma: go deeper into AWS or look around what Google and Azure have to offer ?

So many clouds, so little time …

Blog of the day - Tapas Forever

Thu, 07 Jun 2018 11:22:48 +0800

Fellow Canadian describes his path to Spain

https://tapasforever.com/

Creating Kubernetes Cluster in AWS from scratch with kops

Mon, 07 May 2018 11:22:48 +0800

This describes creation of K8s cluster in AWS environment from scratch as done for microservices based eCommerce project.

Pre-requisites
#

AWS account access - IAM with Admin privileges
AWS CLI installed - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-install-macos.html
CLI credentials (secret key + api Key) - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/iam/index.html
Kubectl and Kops local install ** see https://github.com/kubernetes/kops and https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl/

Test of access
#

➜  etc git:(feature/kubernetes) aws --version
aws-cli/1.11.180 Python/3.6.4 Darwin/17.5.0 botocore/1.7.38
 
➜  etc git:(feature/kubernetes) kubectl version
Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"10", GitVersion:"v1.10.1", GitCommit:"d4ab47518836c750f9949b9e0d387f20fb92260b", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2018-04-13T22:27:55Z", GoVersion:"go1.9.5", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"darwin/amd64"}
Server Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"9", GitVersion:"v1.9.3", GitCommit:"d2835416544f298c919e2ead3be3d0864b52323b", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2018-02-07T11:55:20Z", GoVersion:"go1.9.2", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}
 
➜  etc git:(feature/kubernetes) kops version
Version 1.9.0
 
➜  etc git:(feature/kubernetes) aws --profile twfulfill-miro iam list-users | jq '.Users[].UserName'
.. DELETED ...
"twfulfillment.prod.miro.adamy"
....

Set the environment variables
#

These will be used by subsequent kops / aws commands

Remembering Karel Kryl

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 11:22:48 +0800

He would be 74 today.

Poet, singer, master of Czech language and symbol of resistance during dark years 1968-1989.

Europanto

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 11:22:48 +0800

This is how my mind often works, triggered by using 4 languages every day and 5-6 every week

Spring is in the air

Mon, 26 Feb 2018 11:22:48 +0800

Hiking trip - El Barranc de L’Infern. (Ruta de los 6000 escalones) - https://es.wikiloc.com/rutas-senderismo/vall-de-laguar-la-catedral-del-senderismo-pr-v-147-el-barranc-de-linfern-ruta-de-los-6000-escalones-11632646

Seeing almods in bloom was added benefit.

ATG Module Diagram Generator

Sat, 10 Feb 2018 11:22:48 +0800

I have found local clone of this repo while cleaning up the disk. The source was originally residing in private repo on Bitbucket which I moved to GitHub: https://github.com/miroadamy/atgdiagram

What it does
#

Groovy scripts:

that scan local ATG installation, discover modules and generate the PlantUML file representing it, for example - https://github.com/miroadamy/atgdiagram/blob/master/uml/test2.uml

Using ATG_ROOT from environment variable $ATG_ROOT: /opt/ATG/ATG10.0.2
Using /opt/ATG/ATG10.0.2 installation
Dependants of module TWeStore.eStore => [DCS.Search.Query, B2CCommerce, DAF.Search.Query, DAF.Search.Base, DCS.Search.common, DPS.Search.Index, DAF.Search.common, DAS-UI, DCS.Search.Index, DPS, DCS, DCS.Search.CustomCatalogs, DCS.Search.CustomCatalogs.Query, DCS.Search.CustomCatalogs.Index, DAF.Search.Routing, DCS.Search.CustomCatalogs.common, DAF.Search.Index, DSS, DCS.CustomCatalogs, DAS]
@startuml
Object TWeStore_eStore
Object DCS
Object B2CCommerce
Object DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs
Object DAF_Search_Routing
Object DCS_CustomCatalogs
Object DPS
Object DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Query
Object DAF_Search_Base
Object DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Index
Object DSS
Object DAS_UI
Object DCS_Search_Query
Object DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_common
Object DAS
Object DCS_Search_Index
Object DAF_Search_Query
Object DCS_Search_common
Object DPS_Search_Index
Object DAF_Search_Index
Object DAF_Search_common
TWeStore_eStore <|-- DCS
TWeStore_eStore <|-- DCS_CustomCatalogs
TWeStore_eStore <|-- B2CCommerce
TWeStore_eStore <|-- DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs
TWeStore_eStore <|-- DAF_Search_Routing
DCS <|-- DPS
DCS <|-- DSS
B2CCommerce <|-- DCS
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs <|-- DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Index
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs <|-- DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Query
DAF_Search_Routing <|-- DAS_UI
DAF_Search_Routing <|-- DAF_Search_Base
DCS_CustomCatalogs <|-- DCS
DPS <|-- DAS
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Query <|-- DCS_Search_Query
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Query <|-- DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_common
DAF_Search_Base <|-- DAS_UI
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Index <|-- DCS_Search_Index
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Index <|-- DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_common
DSS <|-- DPS
DAS_UI <|-- DAS
DCS_Search_Query <|-- DAF_Search_Query
DCS_Search_Query <|-- DCS_Search_common
DCS_Search_Query <|-- DCS
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_common <|-- DCS_Search_common
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_common <|-- DCS_CustomCatalogs
DCS_Search_Index <|-- DPS_Search_Index
DCS_Search_Index <|-- DCS_Search_common
DCS_Search_Index <|-- DCS
DAF_Search_Query <|-- DAF_Search_common
DCS_Search_common <|-- DAF_Search_common
DCS_Search_common <|-- DCS
DPS_Search_Index <|-- DPS
DPS_Search_Index <|-- DAF_Search_Index
DAF_Search_Index <|-- DAS_UI
DAF_Search_Index <|-- DAF_Search_Base
DAF_Search_common <|-- DAS_UI
DAF_Search_common <|-- DAF_Search_Base
DAF_Search_common <|-- DAF_Search_Routing
@enduml

This UML file is the processed by PlantUML

Christmas in Canada

Fri, 26 Jan 2018 11:22:48 +0800

We have visited Canada for the winter season.

It was very nice to see old friends and family.

VisualVM inside Docker container

Thu, 23 Nov 2017 11:22:48 +0800

The idea / motivation
#

In order to run VisualVM from predefined configuration you need to point the app to the user directory. This directory takes about 20MB, but 90% of the the content is actually generated or repeated.

➜  4devops-visualvm git:(master) du -sh tw-sl/*
244K    tw-sl/config
7.3M    tw-sl/modules
 52K    tw-sl/repository
4.0K    tw-sl/update
104K    tw-sl/update_tracking
 11M    tw-sl/var

➜  4devops-visualvm git:(master) du -sh tw-wool/*
248K    tw-wool/config
7.2M    tw-wool/modules
 60K    tw-wool/repository
4.0K    tw-wool/update
104K    tw-wool/update_tracking
 11M    tw-wool/var

➜  4devops-visualvm git:(master) du -sh tw-wool
 19M    tw-wool

The only part that is specific and worthy of maintaining in the Git repo is repository

Install AWS CLI on Mac

Tue, 14 Nov 2017 14:22:48 +0800

Install AWS CLI on Mac
#

The Mac comes with Python 2.7 and no pip

This guide recommends upgrade to Python 3 which I want to avoid: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-install-macos.html

Unsuccesfull path - keep the Python 2.7
#

➜  ~ pip --version
zsh: command not found: pip

➜  ~ sudo easy_install pip
Password:
Searching for pip
Reading https://pypi.python.org/simple/pip/
Best match: pip 9.0.1
Downloading https://pypi.python.org/packages/11/b6/abcb525026a4be042b486df43905d6893fb04f05aac21c32c638e939e447/pip-9.0.1.tar.gz#md5=35f01da33009719497f01a4ba69d63c9
Processing pip-9.0.1.tar.gz
Writing /tmp/easy_install-QnLLJp/pip-9.0.1/setup.cfg
Running pip-9.0.1/setup.py -q bdist_egg --dist-dir /tmp/easy_install-QnLLJp/pip-9.0.1/egg-dist-tmp-03hMh7
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/distutils/dist.py:267: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'python_requires'
  warnings.warn(msg)
warning: no previously-included files found matching '.coveragerc'
warning: no previously-included files found matching '.mailmap'
warning: no previously-included files found matching '.travis.yml'
warning: no previously-included files found matching '.landscape.yml'
warning: no previously-included files found matching 'pip/_vendor/Makefile'
warning: no previously-included files found matching 'tox.ini'
warning: no previously-included files found matching 'dev-requirements.txt'
warning: no previously-included files found matching 'appveyor.yml'
no previously-included directories found matching '.github'
no previously-included directories found matching '.travis'
no previously-included directories found matching 'docs/_build'
no previously-included directories found matching 'contrib'
no previously-included directories found matching 'tasks'
no previously-included directories found matching 'tests'
creating /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-9.0.1-py2.7.egg
Extracting pip-9.0.1-py2.7.egg to /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages
Adding pip 9.0.1 to easy-install.pth file
Installing pip script to /usr/local/bin
Installing pip2.7 script to /usr/local/bin
Installing pip2 script to /usr/local/bin

Installed /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-9.0.1-py2.7.egg
Processing dependencies for pip
Finished processing dependencies for pip

➜  ~ pip --version
pip 9.0.1 from /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/pip-9.0.1-py2.7.egg (python 2.7)

➜  ~ pip install awscli --upgrade --user
Collecting awscli
  Downloading awscli-1.11.185-py2.py3-none-any.whl (1.2MB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 1.2MB 1.1MB/s
Collecting colorama<=0.3.7,>=0.2.5 (from awscli)
  Downloading colorama-0.3.7-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting s3transfer<0.2.0,>=0.1.9 (from awscli)
  Downloading s3transfer-0.1.11-py2.py3-none-any.whl (54kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 61kB 6.2MB/s
Collecting botocore==1.7.43 (from awscli)
  Downloading botocore-1.7.43-py2.py3-none-any.whl (3.7MB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 3.7MB 363kB/s
Collecting docutils>=0.10 (from awscli)
  Downloading docutils-0.14-py2-none-any.whl (543kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 552kB 2.4MB/s
Collecting rsa<=3.5.0,>=3.1.2 (from awscli)
  Downloading rsa-3.4.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl (46kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 51kB 5.9MB/s
Collecting PyYAML<=3.12,>=3.10 (from awscli)
  Downloading PyYAML-3.12.tar.gz (253kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 256kB 3.5MB/s
Collecting futures<4.0.0,>=2.2.0; python_version == "2.6" or python_version == "2.7" (from s3transfer<0.2.0,>=0.1.9->awscli)
  Downloading futures-3.1.1-py2-none-any.whl
Collecting jmespath<1.0.0,>=0.7.1 (from botocore==1.7.43->awscli)
  Downloading jmespath-0.9.3-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting python-dateutil<3.0.0,>=2.1 (from botocore==1.7.43->awscli)
  Downloading python_dateutil-2.6.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (194kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 194kB 4.5MB/s
Collecting pyasn1>=0.1.3 (from rsa<=3.5.0,>=3.1.2->awscli)
  Downloading pyasn1-0.3.7-py2.py3-none-any.whl (63kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 71kB 7.8MB/s
Collecting six>=1.5 (from python-dateutil<3.0.0,>=2.1->botocore==1.7.43->awscli)
  Downloading six-1.11.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: colorama, futures, jmespath, docutils, six, python-dateutil, botocore, s3transfer, pyasn1, rsa, PyYAML, awscli
  Running setup.py install for PyYAML ... done
Successfully installed PyYAML-3.12 awscli-1.11.185 botocore-1.7.43 colorama-0.3.7 docutils-0.14 futures-3.1.1 jmespath-0.9.3 pyasn1-0.3.7 python-dateutil-2.6.1 rsa-3.4.2 s3transfer-0.1.11 six-1.11.0

➜  ~ aws --version
zsh: command not found: aws

➜  ~ sw_vers
ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.13.1
BuildVersion:   17B48

This does not work.

Storing sensitive information in Git

Wed, 17 May 2017 11:22:48 +0800

The purpose of this is to evaluate options and suggest possible approaches for handling the sensitive information in Git repositories such as database credentials, API credentials, passwords, keys, certificates etc. Joel asked this question a few weeks ago - this is part of Milos’s security awareness program.

The issue
#

Git repos store in cleartext all credentials, that may also be including PROD credentials.

Managing code in remote SVN repo

Wed, 10 May 2017 11:22:48 +0800

This is based on J.’s’ question in Slack:

Do we have some customer where we are moving a git repo to svn in an automated fashion I just need to move the git repo into svn periodically nightly

The setup (as I understand it):

on client side we have a worktree that is Git repository
the files needs to be copied to SVN regularly

Options
#

Use git-svn bridge
#

Git client allows to “pretend” it is SVN and pull/push against remote SVN repo

Process for transferring Git repo from Gitolite to Bitbucket

Wed, 02 Nov 2016 11:22:48 +0800

Task
#

Transfer full Git history (all branches, tags, etc) to Bitbucket so that development can continue from there

User setup
#

List all keys in Gitolite
must have access to Gitolite admin interface

cd $ADMIN_HOME/pensieve/PRJ-admin/gitolite-admin
 
 
➜  gitolite-admin git:(master) ll keydir
total 144K
-rw-r--r-- 1 miro 401 Jun 29  2015 alter.pub
-rw-r--r-- 1 miro 397 Jun 29  2015 codereview.pub
-rw-r--r-- 1 miro 400 Apr 18  2016 hybris.pub
-rw-r--r-- 1 miro 400 Apr 19  2016 hybris2.pub
-rw-r----- 1 miro 398 Mar 30  2016 irae.pub
... DELETED ...
-rw-r--r-- 1 miro 401 Jun 29  2015 miro.pub
-rw-r--r-- 1 miro 411 Jun 29  2015 tkuser.jenkins0.pub
-rw-r--r-- 1 miro 411 Jun 29  2015 tkuser.jenkins2.pub

These will be split to 5 usergroups

Update all local branches in Git repo

Mon, 05 Sep 2016 11:22:48 +0800

Update all local branches in Git repo
#

Issue: The git pull updates just one current branch.

In DevOps I am following many Git repos and need to keep up to date for all local branches.

git ffwd-update command
#

Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4318161/can-git-pull-all-update-all-my-local-branches

Create file named git-ffwd-update somewhere on the path (in my case ~/bin)

Learning resources for Linux and Command line

Mon, 30 May 2016 11:22:48 +0800

This quick summary to answer Megha Maiya’s question - I am adding to the Wiki in case it can be expanded later useful for somebody else:

expanded later
useful for somebody else

Free resources
#

There is HUGE amount of resources available for Linux and Unix out there. The issue is select those reasonably good

List of lists: https://github.com/learnbyexample/scripting_course/blob/master/Linux_curated_resources.md
http://ryanstutorials.net/, specially http://ryanstutorials.net/linuxtutorial/ and http://ryanstutorials.net/linuxtutorial/
http://www.tutorialspoint.com/unix/unix-getting-started.htm
(bash scripting) - https://bash.cyberciti.biz/guide/Main_Page
free book - http://unixmages.com/ufbm.pdf - very beginner friendly
list of free books: http://www.dailyartisan.com/news/open-source-e-books-for-linux/
Eli The computer guy - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD6B6473ACF32C59D (I like this one)
YouTube channel - ultimate Linux tutorials - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn58SGUDUnUHRYKyNffHQrQ (from a generous Indian guy sharing his experience with the world for free. Not ideal audio quality, could use some editing - bot has lots of content)
EDX courses - https://www.edx.org/school/linuxfoundationx
http://www.tutorialspoint.com/listtutorials/linux/basic-concepts/1
Wikibooks - https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LPI_Linux_Certification

Hands On
#

Reading books and watching videos will have very little impact without trying things out.

Native OS-X Docker (Beta) - not quite there yet

Tue, 17 May 2016 11:22:48 +0800

I was intrigued by convenience of using Docker natively on Mac, without dealing with differences localhost != dockerhost, so I subscribed for Beta and installed it.

Good news 1
#

It can coexist with previous Docker installation (mostly) - see the note at the end. As long as you do not try to run native Docker and docker-machine at the same time, things coexist.

Starting ACC (ATG Control Centre) on OS-X

Thu, 24 Mar 2016 12:57:35 -0500

Copy the installation of ACC for respective version from a Linux VM:

The startup script in bin/startClient will fail, because it cannot determine which Java to use to run the app.

It is trying to determine Unix flavour, failing that defaults to Solaris and ends up with invalid settings.

Fix
#

Set the variable JAVA_VM to path to executable command on your system.

Git bits 2

Wed, 23 Mar 2016 12:57:35 -0500

Using the Scala source repo to demonstrate - see Github

Show merged and unmerged branches
#

This command allows you to show all local branches merged / unmerged to current branch

➜  scala git:(2.12.x) git branch -a --merged
* 2.12.x
  remotes/origin/2.11.x
  remotes/origin/2.12.x
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/2.12.x

➜  scala git:(2.12.x) git branch -a --no-merged
  remotes/origin/2.10.x
  remotes/origin/2.8.x
  remotes/origin/2.9.x
  remotes/origin/DarkDimius-patch-1
  remotes/origin/gh-pages
  remotes/origin/legacy/msil

This shows you all local branches merged into named branch:

Git - find unmerged commits

Tue, 22 Mar 2016 12:57:35 -0500

This is Ruby script I found way back and was using it since.

The credits for creation goes to Zach Dennis. The script is decribed in his blog post

The source is here

Example
#

This is beginning of very long output from Groovy source

The code
#

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'rubygems'

gem 'term-ansicolor', '>=1.0.5'
require 'term/ansicolor'

class GitCommit
  attr_reader :content

  def initialize(content)
    @content = content
  end

  def sha
    @content.split[1]
  end

  def to_s
    `git log --pretty=format:"%h %ad %an - %s" #{sha}~1..#{sha}`
  end

  def unmerged?
    content =~ /^\+/
  end

  def equivalent?
    content =~ /^\-/
  end
end

class GitBranch
  attr_reader :name, :commits

  def initialize(name, commits)
    @name = name
    @commits = commits
  end

  # Returns origin from origin/some/branch/here
  def repository
    name.split("/", 2).first
  end

  # Returns some/branch/here from origin/some/branch/here
  def branch_name
    name.split("/", 2).last
  end

  def unmerged_commits
    commits.select{ |commit| commit.unmerged? }
  end

  def equivalent_commits
    commits.select{ |commit| commit.equivalent? }
  end

end

class GitBranches < Array
  def self.clean_branch_output(str)
    str.split(/\n/).map{ |e| e.strip.gsub(/\*\s+/, '') }.reject{ |branch| branch =~ /\b#{Regexp.escape(UPSTREAM)}\b/ }.sort
  end

  def self.local_branches
    clean_branch_output `git branch`
  end

  def self.remote_branches
    clean_branch_output `git branch -r`
  end

  def self.load(options)
    git_branches = new
    branches = if options[:local]
      local_branches
    elsif options[:remote]
      remote_branches
    end

    branches.each do |branch|
      raw_commits = `git cherry -v #{UPSTREAM} #{branch}`.split(/\n/).map{ |c| GitCommit.new(c) }
      git_branches << GitBranch.new(branch, raw_commits)
    end
    git_branches
  end

  def unmerged
    reject{ |branch| branch.commits.empty? }.sort_by{ |branch| branch.name }
  end

  def any_missing_commits?
    select{ |branch| branch.commits.any? }.any?
  end
end

class GitUnmerged
  VERSION = "1.1"

  include Term::ANSIColor

  attr_reader :branches

  def initialize(args)
    @options = {}
    @branches_to_prune = []
    extract_options_from_args(args)
  end

  def load
    @branches ||= GitBranches.load(:local => local?, :remote => remote?)
    @branches.reject!{|b| @options[:exclude].include?(b.name)} if @options[:exclude].is_a?(Array)
    @branches.select!{|b| @options[:only].include?(b.name)} if @options[:only].is_a?(Array)
  end

  def print_overview
    load
    if @options[:exclude] && @options[:exclude].length > 0
      puts "The following branches have been excluded"
      @options[:exclude].each do |branch_name|
        puts "  #{branch_name}"
      end
      puts
    end

    if @options[:only] && @options[:only].length > 0
      puts "The following branches will be compared against:"
      @options[:only].each do |branch_name|
        puts "  #{branch_name}"
      end
      puts
    end

    if branches.any_missing_commits?
      puts "The following branches possibly have commits not merged to #{upstream}:"
      branches.each do |branch|
        num_unmerged = yellow(branch.unmerged_commits.size.to_s)
        num_equivalent = green(branch.equivalent_commits.size.to_s)
        puts %|  #{branch.name} (#{num_unmerged}/#{num_equivalent} commits)|
      end
    end
  end

  def print_help
    puts <<-EOT.gsub(/^\s+\|/, '')
      |Usage: #{$0} [-a] [--upstream <branch>] [--remote] [--prune]
      |
      |This script wraps the "git cherry" command. It reports the commits from all local
      |branches which have not been merged into an upstream branch.
      |
      |  #{yellow("yellow")} commits have not been merged
      |  #{green("green")} commits have equivalent changes in <upstream> but different SHAs
      |
      |The default upstream is 'master' (or 'origin/master' if running with --remote)
      |
      |OPTIONS:
      |  -a   display all unmerged commits (verbose)
      |  --remote (-r)  compare remote branches instead of local branches
      |  --upstream <branch>   specify a specific upstream branch (defaults to master)
      |  --exclude <branch>[,<branch>,...]   specify a comma-separated list of branches to exclude
      |  --only <branch>[,<branch>,...]   specify a comma-separated list of branches to include
      |  --prune  prompts user to delete branches which have no differences with the upstream
      |
      |EXAMPLE: check for all unmerged commits
      |  #{$0}
      |
      |EXAMPLE: check for all unmerged commits and merged commits (but with a different SHA)
      |  #{$0} -a
      |
      |EXAMPLE: use a different upstream than master
      |  #{$0} --upstream otherbranch
      |
      |EXAMPLE: compare remote branches against origin/master
      |  #{$0} --remote (-r)
      |
      |EXAMPLE: delete branches without unmerged commits
      |  #{$0} --prune
      |
      |EXAMPLE: delete remote branches without unmerged commits
      |  #{$0} --remote --prune
      |
      |GITCONFIG:
      |  If you name this file git-unmerged and place it somewhere in your PATH
      |  you will be able to type "git unmerged" to use it. If you'd like to name
      |  it something else and still refer to it with "git unmerged" then you'll
      |  need to set up an alias:
      |      git config --global alias.unmerged \\!#{$0}
      |
      |Version: #{VERSION}
      |Author: Zach Dennis <zdennis@mutuallyhuman.com>
    EOT
    exit
  end

  def print_version
    puts "#{VERSION}"
  end

  def branch_description
    local? ? "local" : "remote"
  end

  def print_specifics
    load

    if branches.any_missing_commits?
      print_breakdown
    else
      puts "There are no #{branch_description} branches out of sync with #{upstream}"
    end
  end

  def print_breakdown
    puts "Below is a breakdown for each branch. Here's a legend:"
    puts
    print_legend
    branches.each do |branch|
      puts
      print "#{branch.name}:"
      if branch.unmerged_commits.empty? && !show_equivalent_commits?
        print "(no unmerged commits"
        if prune?
          print ",", red(" this will be pruned")
          @branches_to_prune << branch
        end
        print ")\n"
      else
        puts
      end
      branch.unmerged_commits.each { |commit| puts yellow(commit.to_s) }

      if show_equivalent_commits?
        branch.equivalent_commits.each do |commit|
          puts green(commit.to_s)
        end
      end
    end
  end

  def print_legend
    load
    puts "  " + yellow("yellow") + " commits have not been merged"
    puts "  " + green("green") + " commits have equivalent changes in #{UPSTREAM} but different SHAs" if show_equivalent_commits?
  end

  def prune
    return unless prune?
    if @branches_to_prune.empty?
      puts "", "There are no branches to prune."
    else
      # Protects Heroku repo's
      rejected_master_branches = @branches_to_prune.reject!{|branch| branch.branch_name =~ /master/}
      puts "", "Are you sure you want to prune the following #{@branches_to_prune.size} branches?", ""
      puts red("(Keep in mind this will remove these branches from the remote repository)") if @remote
      @branches_to_prune.each do |branch|
        puts red(" #{branch.name}")
      end
      puts "(omitting branches named master)" if rejected_master_branches
      puts
      print "y or n: "
      if STDIN.gets=~/y/i
        @branches_to_prune.each do |branch|
          if local?
            `git branch -D #{branch.name}`
          elsif remote?
            puts "pruning: #{branch.branch_name} with 'git push #{branch.repository} :#{branch.branch_name}'"
            `git push #{branch.repository} :#{branch.branch_name}`
          end
        end
        puts "", "Pruned #{@branches_to_prune.size} branches."
      else
        puts "", "Pruning aborted. All branches were left unharmed."
      end
    end
  end

  def prune? ; @options[:prune ] ; end
  def show_help? ; @options[:show_help] ; end
  def show_equivalent_commits? ; @options[:show_equivalent_commits] ; end
  def show_version? ; @options[:show_version] ; end

  def upstream
    if @options[:upstream]
      @options[:upstream]
    elsif local?
      "master"
    elsif remote?
      "origin/master"
    end
  end

  private

  def extract_options_from_args(args)
    if args.include?("--remote") || args.include?("-r")
      @options[:remote] = true
    else
      @options[:local] = true
    end

    @options[:prune] = true if args.include?("--prune")
    @options[:show_help] = true if args.include?("-h") || args.include?("--help")
    @options[:show_equivalent_commits] = true if args.include?("-a")
    @options[:show_version] = true if args.include?("-v") || args.include?("--version")

    if index=args.index("--upstream")
      @options[:upstream] = args[index+1]
    end

    if index=args.index("--exclude")
      @options[:exclude] = args[index+1].split(',')
    end

    if index=args.index("--only")
      @options[:only] = args[index+1].split(',')
    end
  end

  def local? ; @options[:local] ; end
  def remote? ; @options[:remote] ; end
end


unmerged = GitUnmerged.new ARGV
UPSTREAM = unmerged.upstream
if unmerged.show_help?
  unmerged.print_help
  exit
elsif unmerged.show_version?
  unmerged.print_version
  exit
else
  unmerged.print_overview
  puts
  unmerged.print_specifics
  unmerged.prune
end

Git committer activity

Mon, 21 Mar 2016 12:57:35 -0500

Git command git shortlog is very handy to see what is team activity.

Show committer activity - whole project
#

(output shortened to first 20 lines)

git shortlog -sn | head -20
  2991	Paul King
  1757	Cedric Champeau
  1615	Jochen Theodorou
  1031	James Strachan
   749	Guillaume Laforge
   312	Roshan Dawrani
   306	Jason Dillon
   301	Danno Ferrin
   284	Alex Tkachman
   273	PascalSchumacher
   230	John Wilson
   217	Pascal Schumacher
   204	pascalschumacher
   160	Thibault Kruse
   158	Jeremy Rayner
   134	Russel Winder
   123	Cédric Champeau
   122	Hamlet D'Arcy
   116	Dierk Koenig
   104	Pilho Kim

variant (without n) has different ordering:

Git project statistic tool

Sun, 20 Mar 2016 12:57:35 -0500

Git project statistic tool
#

Python based, requires Python 2.6+

Works OOTB on Mac

Installation
#

Download TAR from Github
unzipped to /opt

➜  ll /opt/gitinspector-0.3.2
total 52K
-rw-r--r--  1 miro  999 Jul 29  2013 DESCRIPTION.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 miro  32K Jun 14  2013 LICENSE.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 miro   78 Jul  2  2013 MANIFEST.in
-rw-r--r--  1 miro  681 Jan 13  2014 README.txt
drwxr-xr-x 45 miro 1.5K Mar 20  2015 gitinspector
-rw-r--r--  1 miro 1.9K Jan 14  2014 setup.py
-rw-r--r--  1 miro  110 Jul 27  2013 stdeb.cfg

create symlink from ~/bin (or from whatever directory on $PATH)

ln -s /opt/gitinspector-0.3.2/gitinspector/gitinspector.py ~/bin/gitinspector.py
  
➜  ~  ll ~/bin | grep gitin
lrwxr-xr-x 1 miro   52 Mar 20 16:06 gitinspector.py -> /opt/gitinspector-0.3.2/gitinspector/gitinspector.py

Example
#

Look at scala sources - git@github.com:scala/scala.git

Fixing docker-machine error after upgrade

Wed, 16 Mar 2016 12:57:35 -0500

I had to upgrade docker toolbox on Yosemite to get latest docker-compose additions.

After installing the new package, I was not able to connect to docker machine:

➜  ~ docker-machine status
Stopped
➜  ~ docker-machine start default
Starting "default"...
(default) Check network to re-create if needed...
(default) Waiting for an IP...
Machine "default" was started.
Waiting for SSH to be available...
Detecting the provisioner...
Started machines may have new IP addresses. You may need to re-run the `docker-machine env` command.
➜  ~ docker-machine env default
Error checking TLS connection: Error checking and/or regenerating the certs: There was an error validating certificates for host "192.168.99.100:2376": tls: DialWithDialer timed out
You can attempt to regenerate them using 'docker-machine regenerate-certs [name]'.
Be advised that this will trigger a Docker daemon restart which will stop running containers.

Regenerating the certificates did not solve the problem. Neither did reboot.

Accessing internal AWS servers directly from Mac

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 00:57:35 -0500

Motivation for this hack is my unwillingness to suffer the pain of using Windows UI just to access BCC, ACC or other ATG tools requiring non command-line interface.

The credit for finding out about approach is blog post by James McOrmond - VPN over SSH - who is using this neat trick from Linux for quite some time.

The software mentioned https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle supposedly works on OS-X, however, it has not been updated for 4-5 years and would not function for me (OS-X Yosemite).

p4merge as default file compare for PathFinder

Tue, 22 Dec 2015 12:57:35 -0500

p4merge as default file compare for PathFinder
#

Set the tool in File Comparison

How to use it
#

Select 2 files, right click, compare from context menu
In dual mode, select one file on each side, compare

Docker - getting started

Fri, 11 Dec 2015 11:22:48 +0800

After the reboot
#

docker version
Client:
 Version:      1.9.1
 API version:  1.21
 Go version:   go1.4.3
 Git commit:   a34a1d5
 Built:        Fri Nov 20 17:56:04 UTC 2015
 OS/Arch:      darwin/amd64
Cannot connect to the Docker daemon. Is the docker daemon running on this host?
  
➜  gitolite-admin git:(master) docker-machine active
No active host found
 
 
➜  gitolite-admin git:(master) docker-machine env default
Error checking TLS connection: default is not running. Please start it in order to use the connection settings
 
 
➜  gitolite-admin git:(master) docker-machine start
Error: Expected to get one or more machine names as arguments
 
 
➜  gitolite-admin git:(master) docker-machine start default
(default) Starting VM...
Started machines may have new IP addresses. You may need to re-run the `docker-machine env` command.
 
 
  
➜  gitolite-admin git:(master) docker-machine env default
export DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY="1"
export DOCKER_HOST="tcp://192.168.99.100:2376"
export DOCKER_CERT_PATH="/Users/miro/.docker/machine/machines/default"
export DOCKER_MACHINE_NAME="default"
# Run this command to configure your shell:
# eval "$(docker-machine env default)"
 
 
➜  gitolite-admin git:(master) eval "$(docker-machine env default)"
  
➜  gitolite-admin git:(master) docker version
Client:
 Version:      1.9.1
 API version:  1.21
 Go version:   go1.4.3
 Git commit:   a34a1d5
 Built:        Fri Nov 20 17:56:04 UTC 2015
 OS/Arch:      darwin/amd64
Server:
 Version:      1.9.1
 API version:  1.21
 Go version:   go1.4.3
 Git commit:   a34a1d5
 Built:        Fri Nov 20 17:56:04 UTC 2015
 OS/Arch:      linux/amd64

Useful guide
#

See https://viget.com/extend/how-to-use-docker-on-os-x-the-missing-guide

Starting ACC in VM

Wed, 15 Jul 2015 11:22:48 +0800

The ACC is installed in default location: ~/ATG/ACC11.1

This does not work OOTB. You must set 2 additional ENV properties

cd ~/ATG/ACC11.0
export ACC_HOME=`pwd`
export JAVA_VM=/usr/java/jdk1.7.0_51//bin/java
bin/startClient &

Starting from dyn/admin
#

The start in separate VM works OK.

Start in server VM brings errors message very often complaining of malformed Help URL.

The issue is documented here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20868244/how-to-fix-malformed-help-url-while-opening-acc-atg - for JBOSS.

How to truncate Git history

Tue, 14 Jul 2015 11:22:48 +0800

The general idea
#

#!/bin/bash
# Parameter: tag or sha1
git checkout --orphan temp $1
git commit -m "Truncated history"
git rebase --onto temp $1 master
git branch -D temp

Requires Git 1.8+

Works well for mostly linear history (aka Git used for diff-ing of the catalog feeds).

How it works
#

Starting repo (training):

How to get information about all ATG components

Sun, 12 Jul 2015 11:22:48 +0800

How to get information about all ATG Nucleus components
#

Dyn Admin has useful feature - Configuration reporter: http://localhost:8080/dyn/admin/atg/dynamo/admin/en/config-reporter-property-representation1.jhtml

There are two variations of the report: Property representation report - PRR (shorter version) and Bean representation report (BRR). The PRR does not report properties that have default values, while BRR is reporting current values of all properties. Compare the sizes

Accessing Keepass information from command line

Wed, 08 Jul 2015 11:22:48 +0800

This is mainly for Linux and Mac as they do not have good client.

It requires relatively modern Perl - 5.1x should work. I have

➜  ~  perl --version
This is perl 5, version 18, subversion 2 (v5.18.2) built for darwin-thread-multi-2level
(with 2 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)

Get the kpcli distribution Download from Sourceforge - http://sourceforge.net/projects/kpcli/ or get the attached script kpcli-3.0.pl

Make it executable and put it on the path:

Setting up a local web server on a Mac

Tue, 07 Jul 2015 21:44:00 +0800

See

Meta-List

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3083

How to fix Jenkins build issues related to Git connectivity

Thu, 18 Jun 2015 11:22:48 +0800

Symptoms:
#

build fails
cannot checkout / connect to GIT

Validate this is the case
#

ssh to jenkins2
assume identity of jenkins user (VERY IMPORTANT)
go to /home/projects/workspace/PROJECTNAME directory

This directory is repository clone. Try ‘git status’ in that directory. If you see something like

How to solve 'Agent admitted failure to sign using the key'

Fri, 22 May 2015 11:22:48 +0800

After re-creating the SSH key, I got the above error from Gitolite.

Full trace:

➜  TWC  ssh -v thinkwrap@pensieve.thinkwrap.com
OpenSSH_5.3p1, OpenSSL 1.0.1e-fips 11 Feb 2013
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to pensieve.thinkwrap.com [24.137.198.18] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file /home/thinkwrap/.ssh/identity type -1
debug1: identity file /home/thinkwrap/.ssh/identity-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/thinkwrap/.ssh/id_rsa type 1
debug1: identity file /home/thinkwrap/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/thinkwrap/.ssh/id_dsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/thinkwrap/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1
debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_5.3
debug1: match: OpenSSH_5.3 pat OpenSSH*
debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.3
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received
debug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none
debug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<1024<8192) sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY
debug1: Host 'pensieve.thinkwrap.com' is known and matches the RSA host key.
debug1: Found key in /home/thinkwrap/.ssh/known_hosts:2
debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with-mic,password
debug1: Next authentication method: gssapi-keyex
debug1: No valid Key exchange context
debug1: Next authentication method: gssapi-with-mic
debug1: Unspecified GSS failure.  Minor code may provide more information
Credentials cache file '/tmp/krb5cc_500' not found
debug1: Unspecified GSS failure.  Minor code may provide more information
Credentials cache file '/tmp/krb5cc_500' not found
debug1: Unspecified GSS failure.  Minor code may provide more information
 
debug1: Unspecified GSS failure.  Minor code may provide more information
Credentials cache file '/tmp/krb5cc_500' not found
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering public key: /home/thinkwrap/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: Remote: Forced command: /home/thinkwrap/gitolite/src/gitolite-shell miro.adamy+ATG11-TrainingVM
debug1: Remote: Port forwarding disabled.
debug1: Remote: X11 forwarding disabled.
debug1: Remote: Agent forwarding disabled.
debug1: Remote: Pty allocation disabled.
debug1: Server accepts key: pkalg ssh-rsa blen 277
Agent admitted failure to sign using the key.
debug1: Trying private key: /home/thinkwrap/.ssh/identity
debug1: Trying private key: /home/thinkwrap/.ssh/id_dsa
debug1: Next authentication method: password
thinkwrap@pensieve.thinkwrap.com's password:

Solution
#

log-out, log on

Fixing the shutdown problem with JBoss

Sat, 11 Apr 2015 11:22:48 +0800

Observed at QA environment. During automated shutdown sequence, the exception was thrown:

$ bin/gdi-qa-com1.sh stop
JBOSS_CMD_STOP = java -classpath /opt/jboss/jboss-as/bin/shutdown.jar:/opt/jboss/jboss-as/client/jnet.jar org.jboss.Shutdown --shutdown --user=admin --password=admin -s jnp://0.0.0.0:1099
Exception in thread "main" javax.naming.CommunicationException: Could not obtain connection to any of these urls: 0.0.0.0:1099 [Root exception is javax.naming.CommunicationException: Failed to connect to server /0.0.0.0:1099 [Root exception is javax.naming.ServiceUnavailableException: Failed to connect to server /0.0.0.0:1099 [Root exception is java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused]]]
    at org.jnp.interfaces.NamingContext.checkRef(NamingContext.java:1763)
    at org.jnp.interfaces.NamingContext.lookup(NamingContext.java:693)
    at org.jnp.interfaces.NamingContext.lookup(NamingContext.java:686)
    at javax.naming.InitialContext.lookup(InitialContext.java:392)
    at org.jboss.Shutdown.main(Shutdown.java:219)
Caused by: javax.naming.CommunicationException: Failed to connect to server /0.0.0.0:1099 [Root exception is javax.naming.ServiceUnavailableException: Failed to connect to server /0.0.0.0:1099 [Root exception is java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused]]
    at org.jnp.interfaces.NamingContext.getServer(NamingContext.java:335)
    at org.jnp.interfaces.NamingContext.checkRef(NamingContext.java:1734)
    ... 4 more
Caused by: javax.naming.ServiceUnavailableException: Failed to connect to server /0.0.0.0:1099 [Root exception is java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused]
    at org.jnp.interfaces.NamingContext.getServer(NamingContext.java:305)
    ... 5 more
Caused by: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused
    at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketConnect(Native Method)
    at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.doConnect(PlainSocketImpl.java:351)
    at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(PlainSocketImpl.java:211)
    at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connect(PlainSocketImpl.java:200)
    at java.net.SocksSocketImpl.connect(SocksSocketImpl.java:366)
    at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:529)
    at org.jnp.interfaces.TimedSocketFactory.createSocket(TimedSocketFactory.java:97)
    at org.jnp.interfaces.TimedSocketFactory.createSocket(TimedSocketFactory.java:82)
    at org.jnp.interfaces.NamingContext.getServer(NamingContext.java:301)
    ... 5 more
To watch the log: tail -f /var/log/atg/gdi-qa-com1.log

The conflict of 1099 between Endeca and ATG was resolved according Fixing port conflict on 1099 between out-of-the-box Endeca and JBOSS - the actual port was 11199

Git project statistic tool

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 11:22:48 +0800

Git Inspector
#

Python based, requires Python 2.6+

Works OOTB on Mac

Installation
#

Download TAR from https://code.google.com/p/gitinspector/
unzipped to

/opt/gitinspector-0.3.2:
total 52K
-rw-r--r--  1 miro  999 Jul 29  2013 DESCRIPTION.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 miro  32K Jun 14  2013 LICENSE.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 miro   78 Jul  2  2013 MANIFEST.in
-rw-r--r--  1 miro  681 Jan 13  2014 README.txt
drwxr-xr-x 45 miro 1.5K Mar 20 16:06 gitinspector
-rw-r--r--  1 miro 1.9K Jan 14  2014 setup.py
-rw-r--r--  1 miro  110 Jul 27  2013 stdeb.cfg

create symlink to it from ~/bin (is on path)

ln -s /opt/gitinspector-0.3.2/gitinspector/gitinspector.py ~/bin/gitinspector.py
  
➜  ~  ll ~/bin | grep gitin
lrwxr-xr-x 1 miro   52 Mar 20 16:06 gitinspector.py -> /opt/gitinspector-0.3.2/gitinspector/gitinspector.py

Example
#

➜  gitinspector git:(master) ~/bin/gitinspector.py -Tlr --since=2014-01-01 --until=2015-05-05
Statistical information for the repository 'gitinspector' was gathered on 2019/11/27.
The following historical commit information, by author, was found in the repository:

Author                     Commits    Insertions      Deletions    % of changes
Adam Waldenberg                 41           569            249           95.34
Chris Barry                      1             3              3            0.70
Christian Kastner                2             9              5            1.63
Diomidis Spinellis               2             3              3            0.70
Dmitry Dzhus                     1             3              3            0.70
Jon Warghed                      1             1              0            0.12
Yannick Moy                      1             4              3            0.82

Below are the number of rows from each author that have survived and are still intact in the current revision:

Author                     Rows      Stability          Age       % in comments
Adam Waldenberg             468           82.2          8.7                6.84
Chris Barry                   3          100.0          4.5                0.00
Christian Kastner             8           88.9          3.3                0.00
Diomidis Spinellis            1           33.3          4.0              100.00
Dmitry Dzhus                  3          100.0          2.6                0.00
Jon Warghed                   1          100.0          3.2                0.00
Yannick Moy                   3           75.0          3.7                0.00

The following history timeline has been gathered from the repository:

Author                  2014-01    2014-02    2014-03    2014-11    2014-12    2015-02
Adam Waldenberg        -+++++++   --++++++   ---+++++  ----+++++  --+++++++   -+++++++
Chris Barry                                                    .
Christian Kastner                                              .
Diomidis Spinellis                                             .
Dmitry Dzhus                                                              .
Jon Warghed                                                    .
Yannick Moy                                                    .
Modified Rows:              170        387          7        223         64          7

The following responsibilities, by author, were found in the current revision of the repository (comments are excluded from the line count, if possible):

Adam Waldenberg is mostly responsible for:
   128 gitinspector/metrics.py
    97 gitinspector/blame.py
    30 gitinspector/localization.py
    29 gitinspector/clone.py
    26 gitinspector/terminal.py
    26 gitinspector/basedir.py
    19 gitinspector/changes.py
    17 gitinspector/filtering.py
    16 gitinspector/format.py
    15 gitinspector/gitinspector.py

Chris Barry is mostly responsible for:
     2 gitinspector/format.py
     1 gitinspector/gravatar.py

Christian Kastner is mostly responsible for:
     5 gitinspector/basedir.py
     3 gitinspector/format.py

Dmitry Dzhus is mostly responsible for:
     3 gitinspector/comment.py

Jon Warghed is mostly responsible for:
     1 gitinspector/changes.py

Yannick Moy is mostly responsible for:
     3 gitinspector/comment.py

The extensions below were found in the repository history (extensions used during statistical analysis are marked):
1 css header html po pot [py] txt

How to keep git log and less output on the screen

Tue, 10 Mar 2015 00:57:35 -0500

When git uses less as pager the output of commands like git log disappears from the console screen when you exit from less. This is not convenient in many cases so here is how to fix this.

Just for git commands:

git config --global --replace-all core.pager "less -iXFR"

For less globally (including git) - add to .bashrc / .zshrc / etc:

export LESS=-iXFR

The options we set for less are:

New image that expresses my new undefined job title

Mon, 16 Feb 2015 11:22:48 +0800

That is what I do - jump from project to project to topic to project. And back.

It is uncertain how good is all this - but as they say:

“If you cannot do something right, learn to enjoy doing it poorly”

Finding unmerged commits in all branches

Thu, 05 Feb 2015 11:22:48 +0800

This one goes beyond git, but is very useful. Ruby script that produces this:

Here is the script


#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'rubygems'
gem 'term-ansicolor', '=1.3.0'
require 'term/ansicolor'
class GitCommit
  attr_reader :content
   
  def initialize(content)
    @content = content
  end
   
  def sha
    @content.split[1]
  end
  def to_s
    `git log --pretty=format:"%h %ad %an - %s" #{sha}~1..#{sha}`
  end
   
  def unmerged?
    content =~ /^\+/
  end
   
  def equivalent?
    content =~ /^\-/
  end
end
class GitBranch
  attr_reader :name, :commits
   
  def initialize(name, commits)
    @name = name
    @commits = commits
  end
   
  def unmerged_commits
    commits.select{ |commit| commit.unmerged? }
  end
  def equivalent_commits
    commits.select{ |commit| commit.equivalent? }
  end
end
class GitBranches < Array
  def self.clean_branch_output(str)
    str.split(/\n/).map{ |e| e.strip.gsub(/\*\s+/, '') }.reject{ |branch| branch =~ /\b#{Regexp.escape(UPSTREAM)}\b/ }.sort
  end
   
  def self.local_branches
    clean_branch_output `git branch`
  end
   
  def self.remote_branches
    clean_branch_output `git branch -r`
  end
   
  def self.load(options)
    git_branches = new
    branches = if options[:local]
      local_branches
    elsif options[:remote]
      remote_branches
    end
     
    branches.each do |branch|
      raw_commits = `git cherry -v #{UPSTREAM} #{branch}`.split(/\n/).map{ |c| GitCommit.new(c) }
      git_branches << GitBranch.new(branch, raw_commits)
    end
    git_branches
  end
   
  def unmerged
    reject{ |branch| branch.commits.empty? }.sort_by{ |branch| branch.name }
  end
   
  def any_missing_commits?
    select{ |branch| branch.commits.any? }.any?
  end
end
class GitUnmerged
  VERSION = "1.0.1"
   
  include Term::ANSIColor
   
  attr_reader :branches
  def initialize(args)
    @options = {}
    extract_options_from_args(args)
  end
   
  def load
    @branches ||= GitBranches.load(:local => local?, :remote => remote?)
  end
   
  def print_overview
    load
    if branches.any_missing_commits?
      puts "The following branches possibly have commits not merged to #{upstream}:"
      branches.each do |branch|
        num_unmerged = yellow(branch.unmerged_commits.size.to_s)
        num_equivalent = green(branch.equivalent_commits.size.to_s)
        puts %|  #{branch.name} (#{num_unmerged}/#{num_equivalent} commits)|
      end
    end
  end
   
  def print_help
    puts <<-EOT.gsub(/^\s+\|/, '')
      |Usage: #{$0} [-a] [--upstream <branch>] [--remote]
      |
      |This script wraps the "git cherry" command. It reports the commits from all local
      |branches which have not been merged into an upstream branch.
      |
      |  #{yellow("yellow")} commits have not been merged
      |  #{green("green")} commits have equivalent changes in <upstream> but different SHAs
      |
      |The default upstream is 'master'.
      |
      |OPTIONS:
      |  -a   display all unmerged commits (verbose)
      |  --remote   compare remote branches instead of local branches
      |  --upstream <branch>   specify a specific upstream branch
      |
      |EXAMPLE: check for all unmerged commits
      |  #{$0}
      |
      |EXAMPLE: check for all unmerged commits and merged commits (but with a different SHA)
      |  #{$0} -a
      |
      |EXAMPLE: use a different upstream than master
      |  #{$0} --upstream otherbranch
      |
      |EXAMPLE: compare remote branches against origin/master
      |  #{$0} --remote
      |
      |GITCONFIG:
      |  If you name this file git-unmerged and place it somewhere in your PATH
      |  you will be able to type "git unmerged" to use it. If you'd like to name
      |  it something else and still refer to it with "git unmerged" then you'll
      |  need to set up an alias:
      |      git config --global alias.unmerged \\!#{$0}
      |
      |Version: #{VERSION}
      |Author: Zach Dennis <zdennis@mutuallyhuman.com>
    EOT
    exit
  end
   
  def print_version
    puts "#{VERSION}"
  end
     
  def branch_description
    local? ? "local" : "remote"
  end
   
  def print_specifics
    load
    if branches.any_missing_commits?
      print_breakdown
    else
      puts "There are no #{branch_description} branches out of sync with #{upstream}"
    end
  end
   
  def print_breakdown
    puts "Below is a breakdown for each branch. Here's a legend:"
    puts
    print_legend
    branches.each do |branch|
      puts
      print "#{branch.name}:"
      if branch.unmerged_commits.empty? && !show_equivalent_commits?
        print "(no umerged commits, must have merged commits with different SHAs)\n"
      else
        puts
      end
      branch.unmerged_commits.each { |commit| puts yellow(commit.to_s) }
      if show_equivalent_commits?
        branch.equivalent_commits.each do |commit|
          puts green(commit.to_s)
        end
      end
    end
  end
   
  def print_legend
    load
    puts "  " + yellow("yellow") + " commits have not been merged"
    puts "  " + green("green") + " commits have equivalent changes in #{UPSTREAM} but different SHAs" if show_equivalent_commits?
  end
   
  def show_help? ; @options[:show_help] ; end
  def show_equivalent_commits? ; @options[:show_equivalent_commits] ; end
  def show_version? ; @options[:show_version] ; end
  def upstream
    if @options[:upstream]
      @options[:upstream]
    elsif local?
      "master"
    elsif remote?
      "origin/master"
    end
  end
   
  private
   
  def extract_options_from_args(args)
    if args.include?("--remote")
      @options[:remote] = true
    else
      @options[:local] = true
    end
    @options[:show_help] = true if args.include?("-h") || args.include?("--help")
    @options[:show_equivalent_commits] = true if args.include?("-a")
    @options[:show_version] = true if args.include?("-v") || args.include?("--version")
    if index=args.index("--upstream")
      @options[:upstream] = args[index+1]
    end
  end
   
  def local? ; @options[:local] ; end
  def remote? ; @options[:remote] ; end
end
 
unmerged = GitUnmerged.new ARGV
UPSTREAM = unmerged.upstream
if unmerged.show_help?
  unmerged.print_help
  exit
elsif unmerged.show_version?
  unmerged.print_version
  exit
else
  unmerged.print_overview
  puts
  unmerged.print_specifics
end

ATG Repository structure visualizer

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 11:22:48 +0800

The groovy script does parse the XML files (scraped from dyn-admin, or output of the XML combine) and produces file in the syntax of Plant UML - http://plantuml.sourceforge.net

 if (args.size() == 0) {
    println "Usage: groovy extractItems.groovy XMLFILE-IN-GSA-FORMAT.xml"
    System.exit(1)
}
def gsaFile = new XmlSlurper().parseText(new File(args[0]).text)
def desc = gsaFile.'item-descriptor'
def processItemDescriptor(myDesc) {
    def info = [:]
    def tables = []
    def props = [:]
    def descriptors = [:]
    for (table in myDesc.table) {
        String tableName = table.@name.text()
        tables += tableName
        // collect table's properties
        for (prop in table.property) {
            String name = "${prop.@name.text()}(${tableName})".replaceAll(/[ -]/, '_')
            props[name] = [:]
            if ("${prop.@'required'.text()}" != "") {
                props[name]['required'] = "${prop.@'required'.text()}"
            }
            if ("${prop.@'hidden'.text()}" != "") {
                props[name]['hidden'] = "${prop.@'hidden'.text()}"
            }
 
            if ("${prop.@'item-type'.text()}" != "") {
                props[name]['item-type'] = "${prop.@'item-type'.text()}"
                descriptors["${prop.@name.text()}"] = "${prop.@'item-type'.text().replaceAll(/[ -]/, '_')}"
            }
        }
    }
    info['tables'] = tables
    // scan for properties outside of tables
    for (prop in myDesc.property) {
        String name = "${prop.@name.text()}".replaceAll(/[ -]/, '_')
        props[name] = [:]
        if ("${prop.@'item-type'.text()}" != "") {
            props[name]['item-type'] = "${prop.@'item-type'.text()}"
        }      
        }
    info['properties'] = props
    info['descriptors'] = descriptors
    return info
}
 
println "Got ${desc.size()} item-descriptors"
 
println "@startuml"
for (idesc in desc) {
    def info = processItemDescriptor(idesc)
    def name = "${idesc.@name.text().replaceAll(/[ -]/, '_')}"
    println "\nclass  ${name} {"
    for (p in info.tables)
        println "\t"+p
    println ".."   
    for (p in info.properties)
        println "\t"+p
    println "}"
    for (p in info.descriptors?.keySet())
        println "\t ${name} *-- ${info.descriptors[p]} : ${p}"
}
println "@enduml"

The generation (requires installed dot tools)

Replace BSD grep with GNU grep

Sun, 02 Nov 2014 11:22:48 +0800

If annoyed with:
#

➜  ~  echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n'
/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin
/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_55.jdk/Contents/Home/bin
/opt/ant/bin
/opt/groovy/bin
/opt/gradle/bin
/Users/miro/bin
/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin
/usr/local/bin
/opt/X11/bin
/usr/texbin
  
# YEs I am using GNU core utils but grep is not there
  
# The issue
➜  ~  grep --version
grep (BSD grep) 2.5.1-FreeBSD

Here is the receipt

Dealing with 'Java Runtime SE 6' required error

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 11:22:48 +0800

When trying to start DBeaver (http://dbeaver.jkiss.org) I got this

I do have Java 7 installed:

➜  Contents  java -version
java version "1.7.0_55"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_55-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.55-b03, mixed mode)
 
➜  Contents  which java
java is /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_55.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/java
java is /usr/bin/java

which should be a superset. But it is not.

Solution
#

Oracle seems to screw up the PLIST capabilities in JAva7 install

Keepass-Node install

Fri, 03 Oct 2014 11:22:48 +0800

See https://github.com/gesellix/keepass-node

➜  keepass-node git:(master) pwd
/Users/miro/src/PLG/keepass-node

Install
#

➜  keepass-node git:(master) ✗ sudo npm install
Password:
> dejavu@0.4.4 postinstall /Users/miro/src/PLG/keepass-node/node_modules/keepass.io/node_modules/dejavu
> node bin/post_install.js
Saving runtime configuration in /Users/miro/src/PLG/keepass-node/node_modules/keepass.io/.dejavurc
> keepass.io@1.0.5 install /Users/miro/src/PLG/keepass-node/node_modules/keepass.io
> (node-gyp rebuild 2>&1) || (echo 'DO NOT WORRY ABOUT THESE MESSAGES. KEEPASS.IO WILL FALLBACK TO SLOWER NODE.JS METHODS, SO THERE ARE NO LIMITATIONS EXCEPT SLOWER PERFORMANCE.'; exit 0)
\
Agreeing to the Xcode/iOS license requires admin privileges, please re-run as root via sudo.
Agreeing to the Xcode/iOS license requires admin privileges, please re-run as root via sudo.
 
gyp ERR! build error
gyp ERR! stack Error: `make` failed with exit code: 69
gyp ERR! stack     at ChildProcess.onExit (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/lib/build.js:267:23)
gyp ERR! stack     at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:98:17)
gyp ERR! stack     at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:810:12)
gyp ERR! System Darwin 13.4.0
gyp ERR! command "node" "/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/bin/node-gyp.js" "rebuild"
gyp ERR! cwd /Users/miro/src/PLG/keepass-node/node_modules/keepass.io
gyp ERR! node -v v0.10.31
gyp ERR! node-gyp -v v1.0.1
gyp ERR! not ok
DO NOT WORRY ABOUT THESE MESSAGES. KEEPASS.IO WILL FALLBACK TO SLOWER NODE.JS METHODS, SO THERE ARE NO LIMITATIONS EXCEPT SLOWER PERFORMANCE.
chai-as-promised@4.1.1 node_modules/chai-as-promised
underscore@1.7.0 node_modules/underscore
q@1.0.1 node_modules/q
compression@1.1.0 node_modules/compression
├── bytes@1.0.0
├── on-headers@1.0.0
├── vary@1.0.0
├── debug@2.0.0 (ms@0.6.2)
├── compressible@2.0.0 (mime-db@1.0.3)
└── accepts@1.1.1 (negotiator@0.4.8, mime-types@2.0.2)
chai@1.9.2 node_modules/chai
├── assertion-error@1.0.0
└── deep-eql@0.1.3 (type-detect@0.1.1)
express@4.9.5 node_modules/express
├── merge-descriptors@0.0.2
├── utils-merge@1.0.0
├── fresh@0.2.4
├── cookie@0.1.2
├── escape-html@1.0.1
├── range-parser@1.0.2
├── cookie-signature@1.0.5
├── media-typer@0.3.0
├── vary@1.0.0
├── finalhandler@0.2.0
├── parseurl@1.3.0
├── methods@1.1.0
├── serve-static@1.6.3
├── path-to-regexp@0.1.3
├── depd@0.4.5
├── qs@2.2.4
├── debug@2.0.0 (ms@0.6.2)
├── on-finished@2.1.0 (ee-first@1.0.5)
├── etag@1.4.0 (crc@3.0.0)
├── proxy-addr@1.0.3 (forwarded@0.1.0, ipaddr.js@0.1.3)
├── send@0.9.3 (destroy@1.0.3, ms@0.6.2, mime@1.2.11)
├── type-is@1.5.2 (mime-types@2.0.2)
└── accepts@1.1.1 (negotiator@0.4.8, mime-types@2.0.2)
mocha@1.21.4 node_modules/mocha
├── diff@1.0.7
├── growl@1.8.1
├── commander@2.0.0
├── mkdirp@0.3.5
├── debug@2.0.0 (ms@0.6.2)
├── jade@0.26.3 (commander@0.6.1, mkdirp@0.3.0)
└── glob@3.2.3 (inherits@2.0.1, graceful-fs@2.0.3, minimatch@0.2.14)
body-parser@1.9.0 node_modules/body-parser
├── bytes@1.0.0
├── media-typer@0.3.0
├── raw-body@1.3.0
├── depd@1.0.0
├── qs@2.2.4
├── iconv-lite@0.4.4
├── on-finished@2.1.0 (ee-first@1.0.5)
└── type-is@1.5.2 (mime-types@2.0.2)
coveralls@2.11.2 node_modules/coveralls
├── lcov-parse@0.0.6
├── log-driver@1.2.4
├── request@2.40.0 (json-stringify-safe@5.0.0, forever-agent@0.5.2, aws-sign2@0.5.0, oauth-sign@0.3.0, stringstream@0.0.4, tunnel-agent@0.4.0, qs@1.0.2, node-uuid@1.4.1, mime-types@1.0.2, tough-cookie@0.12.1, form-data@0.1.4, http-signature@0.10.0, hawk@1.1.1)
└── js-yaml@3.0.1 (esprima@1.0.4, argparse@0.1.15)
istanbul@0.3.2 node_modules/istanbul
├── abbrev@1.0.5
├── which@1.0.5
├── nopt@3.0.1
├── wordwrap@0.0.2
├── once@1.3.1 (wrappy@1.0.1)
├── async@0.9.0
├── resolve@0.7.4
├── mkdirp@0.5.0 (minimist@0.0.8)
├── fileset@0.1.5 (minimatch@0.4.0, glob@3.2.11)
├── esprima@1.2.2
├── escodegen@1.3.3 (estraverse@1.5.1, esutils@1.0.0, source-map@0.1.40, esprima@1.1.1)
├── handlebars@1.3.0 (optimist@0.3.7, uglify-js@2.3.6)
└── js-yaml@3.2.2 (esprima@1.0.4, argparse@0.1.15)
googleapis@1.0.14 node_modules/googleapis
├── async@0.9.0
├── multipart-stream@1.0.0 (inherits@2.0.1, sandwich-stream@0.0.4)
├── request@2.40.0 (json-stringify-safe@5.0.0, aws-sign2@0.5.0, forever-agent@0.5.2, oauth-sign@0.3.0, stringstream@0.0.4, tunnel-agent@0.4.0, qs@1.0.2, node-uuid@1.4.1, mime-types@1.0.2, form-data@0.1.4, tough-cookie@0.12.1, http-signature@0.10.0, hawk@1.1.1)
└── gapitoken@0.1.3 (jws@0.0.2)
keepass.io@1.0.5 node_modules/keepass.io
├── async@0.9.0
├── nan@1.2.0
├── xml2js@0.4.4 (sax@0.6.0, xmlbuilder@2.4.4)
└── dejavu@0.4.4 (amdefine@0.0.8, mout@0.4.0)
➜  keepass-node git:(master)

Kinda weird to ignore errors, but anyway …

Gitbits - Get committer lists

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 11:22:48 +0800

With emails (Unix only)
#

➜  dev1 git:(miro-ui) ✗ git log --raw | grep "^Author: " | sort | uniq -c
 
      9 Author: Brendan Smith <Brendan.Smith@thinkwrap.com>
     22 Author: Kai Cheng <kai.cheng@thinkwrap.com>
     97 Author: Miro Adamy <miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com>
     49 Author: Training VM <training-vm@thinkwrap.com>
     24 Author: Your Name <your.name@thinkwrap.com>

Pure git
#

➜  dev1 git:(miro-ui) ✗ git shortlog -sen
  
    97  Miro Adamy <miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com>
    49  Training VM <training-vm@thinkwrap.com>
    24  Your Name <your.name@thinkwrap.com>
    22  Kai Cheng <kai.cheng@thinkwrap.com>
     9  Brendan Smith <Brendan.Smith@thinkwrap.com>

Mailmap option to consolidate the variety of authors
#

Before (no mailmap)
#

...
 609  milos hanzel <milos.hanzel@thinkwrap.com>
 361  brant maahs <brant.maahs@thinkwrap.com>
  69  Sullivan Tseng <sullivantseng@gmail.com>
  42  sullivan tseng <sullivan.tseng@thinkwrap.com>
  17  milos.hanzel <milos.hanzel@thinkwrap.com>
   2  Miro Adamy <miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com>
...

Generating the mailman start

How to access shared folder in Linux guest in VirtualBox

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 11:22:48 +0800

Make sure the VBOx extensions are installed.

Go here for details:

Add share
#

In VirtualBox, Device add transient shared folder:

This one has made available path /Users/Shared/ATG-11 under the name ATG-11

Mount it
#

sudo mount -t vboxsf ATG-11 /media
 
 
$ ll /media/Unix/
total 19M
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root  408 Sep 12 16:02 ATG11-1
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root  272 Sep 12 16:02 ATG11-docs
-rw-rw-r--. 1 root  675 May 13 23:46 atg-platform-mac.userlibraries
-rw-rw-r--. 1 root  787 May 13 23:17 atg-platform-vm.userlibraries
-rwxr--r--. 1 root  19M Feb 15  2013 jrebel-5.1.3-nosetup.zip
-rw-r--r--. 1 root 1020 May 15 15:36 jrebel.lic
-rw-r--r--. 1 root  582 May 15 14:58 rebel.xml
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root  272 Apr  6 01:33 security
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root  306 Jun  9 22:34 servers
-rwxr--r--. 1 root  349 Dec 17  2013 users.txt
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root  340 Sep  3 16:10 xrebel

Git bit of the day

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 11:22:48 +0800

Question from email:
#

how do I merge 1 file from master -> LIVE

Answer
#

You cannot. Merge operation creates new commit that has 2 or more parents and will always join full histories of the branches.

You can however:

replicate all changes done in single commit to different branch - this is “cherry pick”
take state of single file from different branch into current branch

How to replicate all changes done in single commit to different branch - “cherry pick”
#

Say you have latest commit in master that contains change to two files you need.

logstash - known error

Tue, 16 Sep 2014 11:22:48 +0800

I have been trying to make this work for about 1.5 hr. Looks like there is open bug - https://logstash.jira.com/browse/LOGSTASH-703

Helpful link: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/logstash-users/sZM03po7HJE

What should work:

grok {
   match => ["message", "regex to parse severity"],
   match => ["message", "regex to parse server IP"],
   match => ["message", "regex to parse user"]
}

What needs to be done instead

You _should_ be able to do exactly what you listed at the bottom of your email, 
except that you'd need `break_on_match => false` so that it would parse each snippet for each message 
instead of just parsing the first one that matches. 
Unfortunately, due to a bug (https://logstash.jira.com/browse/LOGSTASH-703), 
this doesn't work when you're matching against the same field in each match expression ("message" in your case). 
I was hoping to take a stab at fixing this bug (as several others have mentioned an interest in doing), 
but got distracted and haven't done it yet. It shouldn't be terribly hard to fix, just needs some time.
 
As a work-around, the following should work, but unfortunately the way that your tag_on_failure 
will end up working will be different 
because you have multiple Grok filters that could fail independently. 
It's probably slightly less efficient to do it this way because the event has to pass 
from one filter to the next through the pipeline, 
but my guess (based on absolutely no empirical data) is that it isn't significantly slower 
because the same work would need to be done by Regex either way, 

there's just more LogStash in the mix this way.
 
 
grok {
   match => ["message", "regex to parse severity"]
 
}
grok {
   match => ["message", "regex to parse server IP"]
}
grok {
   match => ["message", "regex to parse user"]
}
 
 
 
~Greg Mefford

Recreate txt base graph generator

Tue, 09 Sep 2014 11:22:48 +0800

Graphviz
#

This time using brew

➜  DPS  brew install graphviz
==> Downloading https://downloads.sf.net/project/machomebrew/Bottles/graphviz-2.38.0.mavericks.bottle.tar.gz
######################################################################## 100.0%
==> Pouring graphviz-2.38.0.mavericks.bottle.tar.gz
🍺  /usr/local/Cellar/graphviz/2.38.0: 469 files, 68M
➜  DPS  dot -V
dot - graphviz version 2.38.0 (20140413.2041)
➜  DPS

Schema Spy
#

From http://sourceforge.net/projects/schemaspy/files/schemaspy/SchemaSpy%205.0.0/

To /opt/diagram

Run:

diagram java -jar ./schemaSpy_5.0.0.jar -cp .:/Users/miro/lib/jdbc/mysql-connector-java-5.1.26-bin.jar -t mysql -o library -host localhost -u training -db training_dev01 -p training

Better dynadmin

Thu, 04 Sep 2014 11:22:48 +0800

Source of the fix is https://github.com/jc7447/BetterDynAdmin. This is to capture the installation process and provide backup in case the tool disappears.

The pages generated by DynAdmin are actually not coming from a JSP or JHTML pages. The HTML you see is generated by hardcoded servlets. Each Nucleus component has assigned Admin servet, which is called when DynAdmin is trying to render the page.

The improvent here are user scripts - running inside Firefox or Chrome, utilizing infrastructure provided by Greasemonkey extension (FF) or Tampermonkey (Chrome).

ATG + JBoss rant

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 11:22:48 +0800

Symptoms
#

restarting after kill -9 of CSC instance does not succeed. The server never starts, the WAR files are not deployed properly, socket 8080 is open but nobody answers (not even with wget on localhost).

The exception:
#

"main" prio=10 tid=0x0000000051a39000 nid=0x30fb in Object.wait() [0x00002b5df9d6c000]
   java.lang.Thread.State: TIMED_WAITING (on object monitor)
    at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method)
    - waiting on <0x00000007e36ae9d0> (a atg.service.lockmanager.ClientLockEntry)
    at atg.service.lockmanager.ClientLockEntry.acquireWriteLock(ClientLockEntry.java:399)
    - locked <0x00000007e36ae9d0> (a atg.service.lockmanager.ClientLockEntry)
    at atg.service.lockmanager.ClientLockManager.acquireWriteLock(ClientLockManager.java:1137)
    at atg.repository.search.indexing.ConfigStatePersister.acquireLock(ConfigStatePersister.java:1844)
    at atg.repository.search.indexing.ConfigStatePersister$IndexingReadLockedTransactionAction.doWithTransaction(ConfigStatePersister.java:2083)
    at atg.repository.search.indexing.ConfigStatePersister.releaseAllConfigurations(ConfigStatePersister.java:1545)
    at atg.repository.search.indexing.ConfigStatePersister.performAction(ConfigStatePersister.java:1775)
    at atg.nucleus.Nucleus.performPostStartupActions(Nucleus.java:4336)
    at atg.nucleus.Nucleus.performPostStartupActions(Nucleus.java:4323)
    at atg.nucleus.Nucleus.<init>(Nucleus.java:954)
    at atg.nucleus.Nucleus.<init>(Nucleus.java:717)
    at atg.nucleus.Nucleus.startNucleusCheckLicense(Nucleus.java:4144)
    at atg.nucleus.servlet.NucleusServlet.initBigEarNucleus(NucleusServlet.java:1234)
    at atg.nucleus.servlet.NucleusServlet.init(NucleusServlet.java:443)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.loadServlet(StandardWrapper.java:1048)
    - locked <0x0000000781734f48> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.load(StandardWrapper.java:950)
    - locked <0x0000000781734f48> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.loadOnStartup(StandardContext.java:4122)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4417)
    - locked <0x0000000781733e18> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext)
    at org.jboss.web.tomcat.service.deployers.TomcatDeployment.performDeployInternal(TomcatDeployment.java:321)
    at org.jboss.web.tomcat.service.deployers.TomcatDeployment.performDeploy(TomcatDeployment.java:145)
    at org.jboss.web.deployers.AbstractWarDeployment.start(AbstractWarDeployment.java:461)
    - locked <0x0000000780878058> (a org.jboss.web.tomcat.service.deployers.TomcatDeployment)
    at org.jboss.web.deployers.WebModule.startModule(WebModule.java:118)
    - locked <0x0000000780878038> (a org.jboss.web.deployers.WebModule)
    at org.jboss.web.deployers.WebModule.start(WebModule.java:97)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
    at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ReflectedDispatcher.invoke(ReflectedDispatcher.java:157)
    at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.dispatch(Invocation.java:96)
    at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:88)
    at org.jboss.mx.server.AbstractMBeanInvoker.invoke(AbstractMBeanInvoker.java:264)
    at org.jboss.mx.server.MBeanServerImpl.invoke(MBeanServerImpl.java:668)
    at org.jboss.system.microcontainer.ServiceProxy.invoke(ServiceProxy.java:206)
    at $Proxy38.start(Unknown Source)
    at org.jboss.system.microcontainer.StartStopLifecycleAction.installAction(StartStopLifecycleAction.java:42)
    at org.jboss.system.microcontainer.StartStopLifecycleAction.installAction(StartStopLifecycleAction.java:37)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.action.SimpleControllerContextAction.simpleInstallAction(SimpleControllerContextAction.java:62)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.action.AccessControllerContextAction.install(AccessControllerContextAction.java:71)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractControllerContextActions.install(AbstractControllerContextActions.java:51)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractControllerContext.install(AbstractControllerContext.java:348)
    at org.jboss.system.microcontainer.ServiceControllerContext.install(ServiceControllerContext.java:297)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.install(AbstractController.java:1652)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.incrementState(AbstractController.java:938)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.resolveContexts(AbstractController.java:1082)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.resolveContexts(AbstractController.java:988)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.change(AbstractController.java:826)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.change(AbstractController.java:556)
    at org.jboss.system.ServiceController.doChange(ServiceController.java:688)
    at org.jboss.system.ServiceController.start(ServiceController.java:460)
    at org.jboss.system.deployers.ServiceDeployer.start(ServiceDeployer.java:163)
    at org.jboss.system.deployers.ServiceDeployer.deploy(ServiceDeployer.java:99)
    at org.jboss.system.deployers.ServiceDeployer.deploy(ServiceDeployer.java:46)
    at org.jboss.deployers.spi.deployer.helpers.AbstractSimpleRealDeployer.internalDeploy(AbstractSimpleRealDeployer.java:62)
    at org.jboss.deployers.spi.deployer.helpers.AbstractRealDeployer.deploy(AbstractRealDeployer.java:55)
    at org.jboss.deployers.plugins.deployers.DeployerWrapper.deploy(DeployerWrapper.java:179)
    at org.jboss.deployers.plugins.deployers.DeployersImpl.doDeploy(DeployersImpl.java:1454)
    at org.jboss.deployers.plugins.deployers.DeployersImpl.doInstallParentFirst(DeployersImpl.java:1172)
    at org.jboss.deployers.plugins.deployers.DeployersImpl.doInstallParentFirst(DeployersImpl.java:1193)
    at org.jboss.deployers.plugins.deployers.DeployersImpl.doInstallParentFirst(DeployersImpl.java:1225)
    at org.jboss.deployers.plugins.deployers.DeployersImpl.install(DeployersImpl.java:1113)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractControllerContext.install(AbstractControllerContext.java:348)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.install(AbstractController.java:1652)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.incrementState(AbstractController.java:938)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.resolveContexts(AbstractController.java:1082)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.resolveContexts(AbstractController.java:988)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.change(AbstractController.java:826)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.change(AbstractController.java:556)
    at org.jboss.deployers.plugins.deployers.DeployersImpl.process(DeployersImpl.java:789)
    at org.jboss.deployers.plugins.main.MainDeployerImpl.process(MainDeployerImpl.java:699)
    at org.jboss.system.server.profileservice.repository.MainDeployerAdapter.process(MainDeployerAdapter.java:117)
    at org.jboss.system.server.profileservice.repository.ProfileDeployAction.install(ProfileDeployAction.java:70)
    at org.jboss.system.server.profileservice.repository.AbstractProfileAction.install(AbstractProfileAction.java:53)
    at org.jboss.system.server.profileservice.repository.AbstractProfileService.install(AbstractProfileService.java:403)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractControllerContext.install(AbstractControllerContext.java:348)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.install(AbstractController.java:1652)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.incrementState(AbstractController.java:938)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.resolveContexts(AbstractController.java:1082)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.resolveContexts(AbstractController.java:988)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.install(AbstractController.java:778)
    at org.jboss.dependency.plugins.AbstractController.install(AbstractController.java:543)
    at org.jboss.system.server.profileservice.repository.AbstractProfileService.registerProfile(AbstractProfileService.java:308)
    at org.jboss.system.server.profileservice.ProfileServiceBootstrap.start(ProfileServiceBootstrap.java:256)
    at org.jboss.bootstrap.AbstractServerImpl.start(AbstractServerImpl.java:461)
    at org.jboss.Main.boot(Main.java:221)
    at org.jboss.Main$1.run(Main.java:556)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662)

What is going on:
#

In the run of deployment, JBoss is starting context, hands over control to NucleusServlet init. Nucleus is trying to get write access lock and hangs there forever, while WAR deployment and all subsequent deployment never completes.

Few gitbits

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 11:22:48 +0800

Show branches and tags in log
#

git log –oneline –decorate

Even better - all branches with graph
#

git log –oneline –decorate –all –graph

Highlight words instead of lines
#

git diff –word-diff HEAD~~~ HEAD~~

Tutorial on Elastic

Thu, 28 Aug 2014 11:22:48 +0800

Running elastic
#

(see Elastic search and Kibana - getting started)

Use case: building a employee directory for Megacorp

each document - type of ’employee'
everything in megacorp index

Populating
#

# Delete the `megacorp` index in case it already exists
DELETE /megacorp
# Index document 1, type "employee", in the
# "megacorp" index
PUT /megacorp/employee/1
{
    "first_name" : "John",
    "last_name" :  "Smith",
    "age" :        25,
    "about" :      "I love to go rock climbing",
    "interests": [ "sports", "music" ]
}
# Index two more documents
PUT /megacorp/employee/2
{
    "first_name" :  "Jane",
    "last_name" :   "Smith",
    "age" :         32,
    "about" :       "I like to collect rock albums",
    "interests":  [ "music" ]
}
PUT /megacorp/employee/3
{
    "first_name" :  "Douglas",
    "last_name" :   "Fir",
    "age" :         35,
    "about":        "I like to build cabinets",
    "interests":  [ "forestry" ]
}

In server

Elastic search and Kibana - getting started

Wed, 27 Aug 2014 11:22:48 +0800

#Installation:

See

curl -L -O http://download.elasticsearch.org/PATH/TO/VERSION.zip
unzip elasticsearch-$VERSION.zip
cd  elasticsearch-$VERSION

Marvel is management plugin - console about cluster. Install:

./bin/plugin -i elasticsearch/marvel/latest
# disable data collection for local cluster

echo 'marvel.agent.enabled: false' >> ./config/elasticsearch.yml

Test
#

Startup log:

➜  elasticsearch-1.3.2  bin/elasticsearch
[2014-08-27 11:17:08,325][INFO ][node                     ] [Joe Fixit] version[1.3.2], pid[59610], build[dee175d/2014-08-13T14:29:30Z]
[2014-08-27 11:17:08,325][INFO ][node                     ] [Joe Fixit] initializing ...
[2014-08-27 11:17:08,338][INFO ][plugins                  ] [Joe Fixit] loaded [marvel], sites [marvel, kopf]
[2014-08-27 11:17:10,905][INFO ][marvel.agent             ] [Joe Fixit] collecting disabled by settings
[2014-08-27 11:17:11,020][INFO ][node                     ] [Joe Fixit] initialized
[2014-08-27 11:17:11,021][INFO ][node                     ] [Joe Fixit] starting ...
[2014-08-27 11:17:11,131][INFO ][transport                ] [Joe Fixit] bound_address {inet[/0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:9300]}, publish_address {inet[/192.168.179.121:9300]}
[2014-08-27 11:17:11,148][INFO ][discovery                ] [Joe Fixit] elasticsearch/nNgRXlHARHCPutTq7dZXWg
[2014-08-27 11:17:14,160][INFO ][cluster.service          ] [Joe Fixit] new_master [Joe Fixit][nNgRXlHARHCPutTq7dZXWg][Miros-MacBook-Pro-2.local][inet[/192.168.179.121:9300]], reason: zen-disco-join (elected_as_master)
[2014-08-27 11:17:14,181][INFO ][http                     ] [Joe Fixit] bound_address {inet[/0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:9200]}, publish_address {inet[/192.168.179.121:9200]}
[2014-08-27 11:17:14,181][INFO ][node                     ] [Joe Fixit] started
[2014-08-27 11:17:14,726][INFO ][gateway                  ] [Joe Fixit] recovered [4] indices into cluster_state
[2014-08-27 11:18:00,491][INFO ][cluster.service          ] [Joe Fixit] added {[logstash-Miros-MacBook-Pro-2.local-59618-4086][Eh5YjUFxSIWIn4xK45xu0w][Miros-MacBook-Pro-2.local][inet[/192.168.179.121:9301]]{client=true, data=false},}, reason: zen-disco-receive(join from node[[logstash-Miros-MacBook-Pro-2.local-59618-4086][Eh5YjUFxSIWIn4xK45xu0w][Miros-MacBook-Pro-2.local][inet[/192.168.179.121:9301]]{client=true, data=false}])
Installed some pluggins - marvel, kopf ...

 

➜  ~  curl 'http://localhost:9200/?pretty'
{
  "status" : 200,
  "name" : "Sea Urchin",
  "version" : {
    "number" : "1.3.2",
    "build_hash" : "dee175dbe2f254f3f26992f5d7591939aaefd12f",
    "build_timestamp" : "2014-08-13T14:29:30Z",
    "build_snapshot" : false,
    "lucene_version" : "4.9"
  },
  "tagline" : "You Know, for Search"
}

The sense console allows to avoid using curl and do it from browser: - <http://localhost:9200/_plugin/marvel/sense/ >

Finding out the class in ATG installation

Tue, 26 Aug 2014 11:22:48 +0800

Java approach
#

Use the real time search with this JAR - https://jarscan.com/

➜  scripts git:(authoring) ✗ java -jar ~/bin/jarscan.jar
=========================
JarScan
written by Geoff Yaworski
gyaworski@hotmail.com
Version 2.0
=========================
Usage: java -jar jarscan.jar [-help | /?]
                    [-dir directory name]
                    [-zip]
                    [-showProgress]
                    <-files | -class | -package>
                    <search string 1> [search string 2]
                    [search string n]
Help:
  -help or /?           Displays this message.
  -dir                  The directory to start searching
                        from default is "."
  -zip                  Also search Zip files
  -showProgress         Show a running count of files read in
  -files or -class      Search for a file or Java class
                        contained in some library.
                        i.e. HttpServlet
  -package              Search for a Java package
                        contained in some library.
                        i.e. javax.servlet.http
  search string         The file or package to
                        search for.
                        i.e. see examples above

example

Third time is a charm

Fri, 22 Aug 2014 16:25:06 -0700

As part of “back to basics” software minimalism movement, I have exported the old Wordpress blog and loaded it into Jekyll with intention to publish it on my Github

This contains almost 10 years worth of history of my posts, plus few not yet previously unpublished posts.

It is based on Jekyll Clean theme, created by Scott Emmons - see it / get it from github.

If you are interested in the Jekyll Clean theme:

ATG Groovy TDD

Fri, 16 May 2014 11:22:48 +0800

Got it working. It is a bit rough around the edges, but functional.

The two components

The are not started via Initial, but that is not a problem.

The script tested:

class ThatsGroovyDude implements com.thinkwrap.twatg.script.RunnableScript {
    atg.nucleus.Nucleus nuc = atg.nucleus.Nucleus.getGlobalNucleus();
    public String run() {
  
       String s = "";
       nuc.configPathNames.each { s += "${it}\n" }
       return "Hello World!\n\n" + s;
   }
}

Folder action to autorename screenshots

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 11:22:48 +0800

Move the location of the screenshots
#

I do not want to have ~/Desktop polluted with files. Thus

mkdir -p ~/Documents/Screenshots
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Documents/Screenshots
killall SystemUIServer

Test the screenshot - it does it

Automator based auto-rename
#

Create Folder action for ~/Documents/Screenshots

How to install Chrome in Centos 6.5

Fri, 04 Apr 2014 11:22:48 +0800

How to install Chrome in Centos 6.5
#

Step 1. Add Google Yum Repository
#

Create a new yum repository using below instructions.

sudo vim /etc/yum.repos.d/google.repo

Add following content to this file

[google]
name=Google
baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub

Step 2: Install/Update Google Chrome
#

Richard Lloid provided an shell script to grab libraries from a more recent Linux distro, put them in a tree (/opt/google/chrome/lib) exclusively picked up by Google Chrome and then you can indeed run Google Chrome on CentOS 6.4 or later. Read More

Gitolite permissions setup

Wed, 02 Apr 2014 11:22:48 +0800

This documents how to enforce the Gitolite permission to make LIVE branch writeable only by team leads

How gitolite works
#

Repository permission structure
#

This is general format of repo definition

REPO NAME
   rule line
   rule line

for example

@staff          =   dilbert alice wally bob
 
repo foo
    RW+         =   dilbert     # line 1
    RW+ dev     =   alice       # line 2
    -           =   wally       # line 3
    RW  temp/   =   @staff      # line 4
    R           =   ashok       # line 5

The Rule line has format:

Installation of sshfs in the new VM

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 11:22:48 +0800

Installation of sshfs in the new VM
#

On Centos 6, the fuse-sshfs is not part of default YUM repos.

Get the ’epel’ repos
#

wget http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
wget http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-6.rpm
sudo rpm -Uvh remi-release-6*.rpm epel-release-6*.rpm

Validate

$ ls -1 /etc/yum.repos.d/epel* /etc/yum.repos.d/remi.repo
/etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo
/etc/yum.repos.d/epel-testing.repo
/etc/yum.repos.d/remi.repo

It if good idea to enable the remi by default

Difference between matching and simple Git push

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 16:41:38 -0500

I started to see this message in some of my Git environments

Git 2.0 from 'matching' to 'simple'. To squelch this message
and maintain the current behavior after the default changes, use:
 
git config --global push.default matching
 
 
To squelch this message and adopt the new behavior now, use:
 
 
git config --global push.default simple

This is collection of information gathered from Stackoverflow, Git docs and various internet sources. Putting it together so that I do not have to google it again.

Binding DashDoc with editors and Eclipse

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 00:57:35 -0500

If you use DashDoc (see http://kapeli.com/dash), it can be integrated with editor or Eclipse to allow automatically find selected text in Dash documentation sets:

Sublime Text
#

This is easy - there is DashDoc plugin - https://sublime.wbond.net/packages/DashDoc
The plugin is OS-X specific, because the DashDoc is

Start Package Control (Cmd-Shift-P)
select Install Package (type Install)
select DashDoc

The Ctrl-H does the search

Miro's World 2.0

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 00:54:46 -0500

The continuation of the old Wordpress blog with more agreeable tools: Github Wiki + Gollum, Markdown and Git.

My old blog at Miro’s World has been kinda neglected in last two years. I have written several entries and published them only internally. I have decided now to pull those of the entries that do not contain customer references, code or customer IP out.

Endeca start scripts - Oracle way

Wed, 16 Oct 2013 11:22:48 +0800

I have ported the Oracle VM style management scripts into the Loyalty VM.

The scripts are in the loyalty-endeca Git repo, originally in eVoucher branch but also merged into edc

[tkuser@vm-lo1-hpr-ma endeca]$ ls -1
total 28
dev-check-environment.sh*
dev-deploy-endeca-app.sh*
dev-endeca-environmet.ini*
dev-remove-endeca-app.sh*
endeca-control*
endeca-vars.txt*
README.md*
RewardsEndc/

dev-endeca-environmet.ini
#

This is environment setting script.

### MUST BE SOURCED IN

source dev-endeca-environmet.ini

## or

. dev-endeca-environmet.ini

## NEVER

./dev-endeca-environmet.ini

endeca-control
#

Main script that manages three components of the system named:

Difference between matching and simple - Git push

Thu, 26 Sep 2013 21:02:48 +0800

Git message

Git 2.0 from 'matching' to 'simple'. To squelch this message
and maintain the current behavior after the default changes, use:
 
git config --global push.default matching
 
 
To squelch this message and adopt the new behavior now, use:
 
 
git config --global push.default simple

Options for push.default

nothing - do not push anything.
matching - push all matching branches. All branches having the same name in both ends are considered to be matching. This is the default.
upstream - push the current branch to its upstream branch.
tracking - deprecated synonym for upstream.
current - push the current branch to a branch of the same name.

From SOF:

Sublime text macro to insert timestamp

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 16:12:48 +0800

Sublime text macro to insert timestamp
#

platform-edc $ cat ~/Library/Application\ Support/Sublime\ Text\ 2/Packages/User/time_stamp.py
 
import sublime_plugin
from datetime import datetime
class TimeStampCommand(sublime_plugin.TextCommand):
    def run(self, edit):
        # formatting options at http://docs.python.org/2/library/datetime.html#strftime-strptime-behavior
        stamp = datetime.now().strftime("%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S")  # 2013-07-18 14:54:23
        for r in self.view.sel():
            if r.empty():
                self.view.insert(edit, r.a, stamp)
            else:
                self.view.replace(edit, r,   stamp)

platform-edc $

Documentation - see

How to make screenshot from command line

Tue, 24 Sep 2013 11:22:48 +0800

How to make screenshot from command line
#

platform-edc $ screencapture -i ~/Desktop/$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S).png
libpng warning: zero length keyword
libpng warning: Empty language field in iTXt chunk
 
platform-edc $ screencapture  ~/Desktop/A$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S).png
libpng warning: zero length keyword
libpng warning: Empty language field in iTXt chunk

First one is “interactive” - Cmd-Shift-3 with selection tool, second is full screen

Case sensitivity and VirtualBox shared folder

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 11:22:48 +0800

Case sensitivity and VirtualBox shared folder
#

Weird but true behaviour:

I have the case sensitive encrypted disk (sparse bundle with HFSX type) mounted in VBox shared folders. All works fine, after VM starts:

touch zz zZ

creates two files, both “inside VM” ~/development/ATG/platform-edc as well as in OS-X.

If the VM is suspended and resumed, it looses the case sensitivity inside the VM.

Usable mc color scheme

Thu, 05 Sep 2013 21:32:48 +0800

Usable mc color scheme
#

Edit

~/.mc/ini

insert

[Colors]
base_color=lightgray,blue:normal=blue,default:selected=white,brightblue:marked=yellow,default:markselect=yellow,gray:directory=brightblue,default:executable=brightgreen,default:link=cyan,default:device=brightmagenta,default:special=lightgray,default:errors=red,default:reverse=green,default:gauge=green,default:input=white,gray:dnormal=green,gray:dfocus=brightgreen,gray:dhotnormal=cyan,gray:dhotfocus=brightcyan,gray:menu=green,default:menuhot=cyan,default:menusel=green,gray:menuhotsel=cyan,default:helpnormal=cyan,default:editnormal=green,default:editbold=blue,default:editmarked=gray,blue:stalelink=red,default

Show lock screen indicator in OS-X menu

Tue, 03 Sep 2013 12:57:35 -0500

Show lock screen indicator in OS-X menu
#

After HDD reinstall I lost most of my customizations (by choice decided NOT to restore from TM).

The Lock in menu is provided by KeyChain Access, not by System Preferences.

Open ‘KeyChain Access’ -> Preferences, select ‘Show keychain status’

and it is back:

ATG Development using 'hidden' VM

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:22:48 +0800

Brief description of my latest setup I use for CPL and LCH - in case I forget it or somebody wants to replicate it.

Inspiration for the setup came from https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cPt_1Vga-Nk

Motivation - issues with VMs
#

VMs are great - they allow “packaged” dev environment and quick start for the new member of the team. Start a VM on local or remote host, connect with VNC or Remote Desktop and you are in business.

Merge conflict with deleted file

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 11:22:48 +0800

I was merging the branch that removed / consolidated bunch of duplicate JSP files (corporate-ui-cleanup).

In the meantime in master, some minor UI changes were made to these files whose content was now elsewhere.

Quick trick how to resolve it fast:

Show branch
#

CineplexB2B $ git show-branch
! [bb-database-cleanup] Loading data with XML only: no constraints and tax_id (unused field) nullable
 ! [bb-gradle-build] Merge branch 'master' into bb-gradle-build
  * [bb-master] Merged in the last 5 days changes
   ! [corporate-ui-cleanup] Merged in the last 5 days changes
    ! [master] Merged in the last 5 days changes
-----
 -    [bb-gradle-build] Merge branch 'master' into bb-gradle-build
 ---- [bb-master] Merged in the last 5 days changes
 +*++ [bb-master^2] CPLXB2B-562, usageInfo/internalUsageInfo mapping in CFI
 +*++ [bb-master^2^] return order goes all the way to NEW: replaced SetPaymentGroupAmount, added ReturnFee calculator, added reusable jsp fragments for sales order pages
 +*++ [bb-master^2~2] Styling change to avoid disappearing links inside Terms and Conditions
 +*++ [bb-master^2~3] Dealing with consequences if INTERNAL split to INTERNAL_TRANSFER and INTERNAL_PURCHASE
 ---- [bb-master^2~4] Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master' into uat2-deploy
 ---- [bb-master^2~4^2] Merge branch 'master' of luke:cineplex-b2b
 +*++ [bb-master^2~4^2^] merged changes - fixed conflict
 +*++ [bb-master^2~4^2~2] CPLXBTOB-557 - fixed amount column to show proper currency
 ---- [bb-master^2~4^2~3] Merge branch 'master' of twgit@luke:cineplex-b2b.git
 +*++ [bb-master^2~4^2~4] CPLXBTOB-484 - fixed the spacing and comma issues
 +*++ [bb-master^2~5] Reverted 4d512ed - issue with recalculate. Must be solved selectively via Javascript
 +*++ [bb-master^2~6] Spacing in header

Pattern for test sourcing the script

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 11:22:48 +0800

# Test if it is sourced or not
if [[ $0 != .*bash ]]; then
    echo Please source it: . $0
    exit 1
fi
res=`gradle --version >/dev/null 2>&1; echo $? `        
if [[ $res == "0" ]]; then
    echo Have gradle: `which gradle`
    gradle --version
else
    export GRADLE_HOME=~/opt/gradle
    export PATH=$PATH:$GRADLE_HOME/bin
    echo No Gradle, adding - `which gradle`   
    gradle --version
fi

ATG Repository item linking and versioned repos

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 11:22:48 +0800

We have versioned repository ClientProvinceRepository that defines discount types based on account category pricelist and accounts - discountTypePriceList

=> (let’s not start discussion why this is not part of the pricelists).

The item definition:

<item-descriptor name="discountTypePriceList" display-name="Discount Type Price List" item-cache-size="1000" query-cache-size="1000" display-property="discountType">
    <table name="CPLXB2B_DISCOUNT_PRICE_LIST" type="primary" id-column-name="DISCOUNT_PRICELIST_ID" >
        <property name="discountType" data-type="enumerated" column-name="DISCOUNT_TYPE" default="Base" queryable="true" category="Discount Price List" display-name="Discount Type" >
              <attribute name="useCodeForValue" value="false"/>
                  <option value="Base" code="0"/>
                <option value="Silver" code="1"/>
                <option value="Gold" code="2"/>
                <option value="Platinum" code="3"/>
        </property>
        <property name="priceListId" column-name="PRICE_LIST_ID"  repository="/atg/commerce/pricing/priceLists/PriceLists" item-type="priceList" display-name="List Price List" required="true" category="Discount Price List"/>
        <property name="salePriceListId" column-name="SALE_PRICE_LIST_ID"  repository="/atg/commerce/pricing/priceLists/PriceLists" item-type="priceList" display-name="Sale Price List" category="Discount Price List"/>
        <property name="startDate" column-name="START_DATE" data-type="timestamp" display-name="Start Date" category="Discount Price List"/>
        <property name="endDate" column-name="END_DATE" data-type="timestamp" display-name="End Date" category="Discount Price List"/>
    </table>
     
</item-descriptor>

When I tried deployment with this, I got error

German attack

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 11:22:48 +0800

Suddenly I started to see all apps auf Deutsch:

The cause was by mistake selecting additional language in Properties -> Internationalization (Österreichisches Deutsch) and the system added it to the list as language #1.

Those programs that are localized, picked it up ….

Here is how that list looks like after reorder :-) I care only for the first 11 languages anyway ;-)

Dot-vimming new machine

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 11:22:48 +0800

New MacMini
#

MacMini:~ mediaserver$ mkdir .vim
MacMini:~ mediaserver$ git clone git@github.com:radegast/dotvim.git .vim
Cloning into '.vim'...
The authenticity of host 'github.com (207.97.227.239)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 16:27:ac:a5:76:28:2d:36:63:1b:56:4d:eb:df:a6:48.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'github.com,207.97.227.239' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
remote: Counting objects: 367, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (309/309), done.
remote: Total 367 (delta 58), reused 335 (delta 26)
Receiving objects: 100% (367/367), 512.73 KiB, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (58/58), done.
 
 
MacMini:~ mediaserver$ cd .vim
MacMini:.vim mediaserver$ pwd
/Users/mediaserver/.vim
 
 
MacMini:.vim mediaserver$ ln -s ~/.vim/_vimrc ~/.vim
.vim/     .viminfo 
 
 
MacMini:.vim mediaserver$ ln -s ~/.vim/_vimrc ~/.vimrc
MacMini:.vim mediaserver$ ln -s ~/.vim/_gvimrc ~/.gvimrc
 
 
MacMini:.vim mediaserver$ pwd
/Users/mediaserver/.vim
MacMini:.vim mediaserver$ git submodule init
Submodule 'bundle/tlib_vim' (git://github.com/tomtom/tlib_vim.git) registered for path 'bundle/tlib_vim'
Submodule 'bundle/vim-fugitive' (git://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive.git) registered for path 'bundle/vim-fugitive'
Submodule 'bundle/vim-pathogen' (git://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen.git) registered for path 'bundle/vim-pathogen'
Submodule 'bundle/vim-unimpaired' (git://github.com/tpope/vim-unimpaired.git) registered for path 'bundle/vim-unimpaired'
MacMini:.vim mediaserver$ git submodule update
Cloning into 'bundle/tlib_vim'...
remote: Counting objects: 992, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (372/372), done.
remote: Total 992 (delta 594), reused 946 (delta 549)
Receiving objects: 100% (992/992), 210.90 KiB, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (594/594), done.
Submodule path 'bundle/tlib_vim': checked out 'd66948917ce7153e4a961aa5d57e1b0918e20495'
Cloning into 'bundle/vim-fugitive'...
remote: Counting objects: 1481, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (525/525), done.
remote: Total 1481 (delta 637), reused 1405 (delta 579)
Receiving objects: 100% (1481/1481), 190.02 KiB, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (637/637), done.
Submodule path 'bundle/vim-fugitive': checked out '1b7e4070f5f7b7522422f5b00a75b323cc314daf'
Cloning into 'bundle/vim-pathogen'...
remote: Counting objects: 395, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (215/215), done.
remote: Total 395 (delta 108), reused 372 (delta 90)
Receiving objects: 100% (395/395), 47.73 KiB, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (108/108), done.
Submodule path 'bundle/vim-pathogen': checked out 'ab64b4ddd0c184a528780b498a0b0a5b40248f7c'
Cloning into 'bundle/vim-unimpaired'...
remote: Counting objects: 260, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (118/118), done.
remote: Total 260 (delta 84), reused 250 (delta 76)
Receiving objects: 100% (260/260), 33.89 KiB, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (84/84), done.
Submodule path 'bundle/vim-unimpaired': checked out '440629adb4051e5f9920704570d1ff0e88356dc2'

Adding terminal shortcut ‘mvim’
#

It is packed in the tbz file. Move it to /usr/bin

Performance issues with Quicklook in OS-X Lion

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 11:22:48 +0800

I have been experiencing issues with Quicklook (press Space on file in Finder or Pathfinder) for some time: it took several second, sometimes 10-15 to show content of simple 1K large property file.

It turned out that on of the QuickLook plugins, installed originally way back in Leopard and brought ahead with TimeMachine restores could have been the reason: the QLStephen.

For more on that plugin see:

To remove the plugin, go to ~/Library/QuickLook and delete the file (it is the bundle) QLStephen.qlgenerator.

GVM

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 11:22:48 +0800

Installed GVM from:

http://gvmtool.net

~ $ curl -s get.gvmtool.net | bash
Thanks for using                                                    
 
_____/\\\\\\\\\\\\__/\\\________/\\\__/\\\\____________/\\\\_       
 ___/\\\//////////__\/\\\_______\/\\\_\/\\\\\\________/\\\\\\_      
  __/\\\_____________\//\\\______/\\\__\/\\\//\\\____/\\\//\\\_     
   _\/\\\____/\\\\\\\__\//\\\____/\\\___\/\\\\///\\\/\\\/_\/\\\_    
    _\/\\\___\/////\\\___\//\\\__/\\\____\/\\\__\///\\\/___\/\\\_   
     _\/\\\_______\/\\\____\//\\\/\\\_____\/\\\____\///_____\/\\\_  
      _\/\\\_______\/\\\_____\//\\\\\______\/\\\_____________\/\\\_ 
       _\//\\\\\\\\\\\\/_______\//\\\_______\/\\\_____________\/\\\_
        __\////////////__________\///________\///______________\///__
                                                                      
                                       Will now attempt installing...
                                                                      
Looking for a previous installation of GVM...
Looking for JAVA_HOME...
Validating JAVA_HOME...
Looking for unzip...
Looking for curl...
Installing gvm scripts...
Create distribution directories...
Create candidate directories...
Download script archive...
Extract script archive...
Install scripts...
Make init script executable...
Prime config file...
Attempt update of bash profiles...
Updated existing /Users/miro/.bash_profile
Updated existing /Users/miro/.profile
Updated existing /Users/miro/.bashrc
Attempt update of zsh profiles...
Created and initialised /Users/miro/.zshrc
Clean up local variables...
 
All done!
Please open a new terminal, or run the following in the existing one:
 
    source "/Users/miro/.gvm/bin/gvm-init.sh"
 
Then issue the following command:
 
   gvm help
 
Enjoy!!!

Using
#

binsh $ gvm current
Using:
groovy: 2.0.6
grails: 2.2.0
griffon: 1.1.0
gradle: 1.3
vertx: 1.3.0.final

Fix for zsh
#

http://blog.andresteingress.com/2012/12/14/gvm-the-groovy-environment-manager/

Discovered Trello

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 11:22:48 +0800

Finally a todo/task/project management system that is very good fit.

Here is why:

is pretty visually
modern and dynamic UI
has Web back-end (usable from Linux VM)
has decent iPhone app
allows checklists (multiple)
allows color coding
Markdown support
ecosystem

There is Gmello that allows create card from GMail, plus few others that seem to bridge the gap between Evernote, System XYZ and Trello

http://trello.com

Courtesy of Fog Creek / Joel Spolsky’s company

Custom build of MacVim with file drawer - pure bliss

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 11:22:48 +0800

OK, NERDTree plugin IS great, but this is awesome.

Alloy made custom version of MacVim with file drawer: see https://github.com/alloy/macvim/wiki/Building

It is available in source - so you have to compile it yourselves. But if you do not want to, I did it and the binary is attached, built with these features:

./configure –with-feature=huge –enable-rubyinterp –enable-pythoninterp –enable-perlinterp –enable-cscope

Archive is attached: MacVim.zip

If you want to get my set of plugins and customizations, it is on GitHub: - https://github.com/radegast/dotvim,

Fixing Git plugin for Sublime Text 2

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 11:22:48 +0800

After update, the ST2 started to complain about missing git command.

Finding out Git on MBP:

platform $ which git
git is /usr/bin/git
git is /usr/local/bin/git
 
 
platform $ git --version
git version 1.7.7.5 (Apple Git-26)
  
platform $ /usr/bin/git --version
git version 1.7.7.5 (Apple Git-26)
 
 
platform $ /usr/local/bin/git --version
git version 1.7.3.2

Fix the the Package file in /Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 2/Packages/Git - Git.sublime-settings (it is JSON file)

Installing and running 'naked' hybris platform

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:22:48 +0800

Installing and running “naked” hybris platform
#

Log of an exercise to install and start the Hybris without all those fancy modules

Starting point: hybris-platform-4.7.1.zip

Install point: /opt/hybris-platform/hybris-platform-4.7.1

Start (with HSQLdb)
#

~ $ cd /opt/hybris-platform/hybris-platform-4.7.1
hybris-platform-4.7.1 $ cd bin/platform/
platform $ pwd
/opt/hybris-platform/hybris-platform-4.7.1/bin/platform
 
 
platform $ . ./setantenv.sh
Setting ant home to: /opt/hybris-platform/hybris-platform-4.7.1/bin/platform/apache-ant-1.8.2
Apache Ant(TM) version 1.8.2 compiled on April 21 2011
platform $ ant clean all | tee ant-clean-all.log

=> Select develop

Gitolite Administration Guide

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:22:48 +0800

How to setup new client
#

You need to be pensieve admin to do this. You will have to login as service user (non-host account) and su to root.

create new Linux user on pensieve
setup gitolite:
- git clone <git://github.com/sitaramc/gitolite>
- mkdir bin; export PATH=$PATH:~/bin
- gitolite/install -ln
add own public key to gitolite to get access to gilotile-admin repo (note the naming restrictions!!)
- gitolite setup -pk miro.pub
get public key for the client account admin and add it (there can be multiple admins)
clone the gitolite-admin repo from workstation whose pub key was added
- git clone <client@pensieve.thinkwrap>.[com:gitolite-admin.git](http://comgitolite-admin.git/)
- add the key to the repo
  - cd gitolite-admin
  - cp ~/mykey.pub keydir
  - vim conf/gitolite conf
  - add the newly added account admit to repos, create new repos if required

All gitolite installs are independent so modification in one hosting user have zero impact on others.

Using Gitolite for code sharing setup

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 11:22:48 +0800

General setup of code sharing host
#

The code sharing host (Pensieve) is dedicated Linux server in DMZ, accessible from external locations as well as from internal network (dual homed) - for the build server access.

Main features
#

multiple users
each user represent a client:
- e.g. users client1

Users are separated by Unix permissions:
#

access rights to /home/USER are 0700 - no access except the dedicated user
only ThinkWrap has root access or sudo access
the access via ssh for the user is blocked - the user client1 cannot log in using ssh and get shell, only use git to pull or push changes

Inside each user, there are multiple projects.
#

These projects will have multiple repositiories and will follow the naming convention:

Admin tool goodies

Tue, 29 May 2012 11:22:48 +0800

tmutil
#

The tmutil - everything to know about Time machine backups. For example, why is the MBP backing up 4.3 GB … again.

Lion only. See http://www.macgurulounge.com/see-which-files-time-machine-backed-up/ for Snow Leopard and before.

547  tmutil
548  tmutil help
549  tmutil help listbackups
550  tmutil listbackups
551  tmutil uniquesize /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449
552  tmutil uniquesize /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-171551/
553  tmutil uniquesize /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/
554  tmutil uniquesize /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-130159/
555  tmutil uniquesize /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/ /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449
556  tmutil compare /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/ /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449

here is why:
#

~ $ tmutil uniquesize /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-13
2012-05-27-130159/ 2012-05-27-131532/
~ $ tmutil compare /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/ /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449
! 5.4K    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/CrashPlan/conf/service.model
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/CrashReporter
! 18.6K   (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/CrashReporter/DiagnosticMessagesHistory.plist
! 7.2K    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/CrashReporter/SubmitDiagInfo.domains
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences
! 713B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
! 503B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/com.apple.applepushserviced.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Desktop
+ 55.2K                         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Desktop/Screen Shot 2012-05-27 at 1.36.29 PM.png
! 102.0K  (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Desktop/.DS_Store
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 AutoRecovery
- 15.8M                         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2011 AutoRecovery/PowerPoint Temp
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Downloads
- 271.5K                        /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Downloads/Introduction To GIT.ppt
- 1.0M                          /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Downloads/egit1-0-110705134610-phpapp02.odp
- 1.3M                          /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Downloads/git-100618212852-phpapp01.zip
- 719.5K                        /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Downloads/git-1212761677968831-9.pdf
- 2.7M                          /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Downloads/git-presentation.pdf
- 709.5K                        /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Downloads/gitandeclipsejena-100617100628-phpapp02.ppt
- 885.9K                        /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Downloads/gitstartedwithgit-nhruby-090501133113-phpapp02 (1).pdf
- 885.9K                        /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Downloads/gitstartedwithgit-nhruby-090501133113-phpapp02.pdf
- 645.7K                        /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Downloads/introtogit-090518104200-phpapp02.pdf
- 5.4M                          /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Downloads/progit.en.pdf
+ 330.3M                        /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Downloads/ECKHART TOLLE - Moc pritomnÇho okamziku - audiokniha.1
+ 122.2M                        /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Downloads/Eckhart Tolle - Stille spricht Hîrbuch
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/AddressBook
! 10B     (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/.database.lockN
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/CalendarBar
! 2.3M    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/CalendarBar/GoogleCalendar.sqlite
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/CoRD/Servers
! 459B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/CoRD/Servers/192.168.16.248.rdp
! 462B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/CoRD/Servers/ATGHome - home en0.rdp
! 462B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/CoRD/Servers/ATGMobile - 16.52.rdp
! 466B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/CoRD/Servers/ATGMobile - Bonjour.rdp
! 462B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/CoRD/Servers/ATGMobile - Rocket.rdp
! 455B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/CoRD/Servers/Chewbaca.rdp
! 454B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/CoRD/Servers/Chewbacca.rdp
! 452B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/CoRD/Servers/Igor.rdp
! 437B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/CoRD/Servers/New Server.rdp
! 453B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/CoRD/Servers/TW_ATG.rdp
! 461B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/CoRD/Servers/XP Pro VM Luke.rdp
! 13.3K   (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/CrashReporter/Intervals_5DE3241B-6882-529D-B8D6-404D684BE551.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Evernote/accounts/Evernote/miroadamy/promos
! 42B     (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Evernote/accounts/Evernote/miroadamy/promos/stats.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Evernote/skus
! 469B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Evernote/skus/www.evernote.com
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default
! 1.0M    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Cookies
! 16.0K   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Cookies-journal
! 1010.0K (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Current Session
! 906.8K  (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Current Tabs
! 16.2M   (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/History Index 2012-05
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Local Storage
! 16.0K   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Local Storage/http_mediacdn.disqus.com_0.localstorage
! 3.0K    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Local Storage/https_www.icloud.com_0.localstorage
! 58.0K   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Login Data
! 4.5K    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Login Data-journal
! 2.8M    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Network Action Predictor
! 16.0K   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Network Action Predictor-journal
! 94.2K   (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Preferences
! 200.0K  (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Shortcuts
! 16.0K   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Shortcuts-journal
! 8.0M    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Sync Data/SyncData.sqlite3
! 16.0K   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Sync Data/SyncData.sqlite3-journal
! 400.0K  (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Top Sites
! 16.0K   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Top Sites-journal
! 3.4K    (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/TransportSecurity
! 511.9K  (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Visited Links
! 1.1M    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Web Data
! 16.0K   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Web Data-journal
! 12.3K   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Local State
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Path Finder/Settings/Data Store
! 1.2M    (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Path Finder/Settings/Data Store/directoryAttributes.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/Accounts/miro.adamy@gmail.com
! 27.2K   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/Accounts/miro.adamy@gmail.com/avatar.tiff
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/LocalDrafts
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/camry2002ottawa@gmail.com.sparrowdb
! 1023.5K (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/camry2002ottawa@gmail.com.sparrowdb/messages.db-wal
! 899B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/camry2002ottawa@gmail.com.sparrowdb/syncdates.plist
! 775.7K  (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/email.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@gmail.com.sparrowdb
! 1.0M    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@gmail.com.sparrowdb/messages.db-wal
! 4.3K    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@gmail.com.sparrowdb/syncdates.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/%5BGmail%5D%2FAll%20Mail
! 442B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/%5BGmail%5D%2FAll%20Mail/uids
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/%5BGmail%5D%2FDrafts
! 440B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/%5BGmail%5D%2FDrafts/uids
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/%5BGmail%5D%2FImportant
! 440B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/%5BGmail%5D%2FImportant/uids
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/%5BGmail%5D%2FSent%20Mail
! 440B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/%5BGmail%5D%2FSent%20Mail/uids
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/%5BGmail%5D%2FSpam
! 440B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/%5BGmail%5D%2FSpam/uids
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/%5BGmail%5D%2FTrash
! 442B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/%5BGmail%5D%2FTrash/uids
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/INBOX
! 440B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/INBOX/uids
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/spam-ish
! 440B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Cache/spam-ish/uids
! 68.6M   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Indexes/contents.index
! 11.4M   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Indexes/from.index
! 11.8M   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Indexes/recipient.index
! 11.6M   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/Indexes/subject.index
! 397.7M  (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/contents-cache.db/data.tch
! 127.4M  (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/conversations-cache.db/data.tch
! 310.6M  (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/messages-cache.db/data.tch
! 54.3M   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/messages.db
! 1.2M    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/messages.db-wal
! 125.7M  (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/preview-cache.db/data.tch
! 51.7M   (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/search-metadata.db/data.tch
! 2.2K    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/miro.adamy@thinkwrap.com.sparrowdb/syncdates.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/radegast4@gmail.com.sparrowdb
! 1023.5K (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/radegast4@gmail.com.sparrowdb/messages.db-wal
! 834B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/radegast4@gmail.com.sparrowdb/syncdates.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/tmp
! 6.3K    (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/uistate.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/Actives
- 0B                            /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-131532/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/Actives/com.google.GoogleDrive
! 0B      (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/Actives/com.google.Chrome
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/Stats
! 181B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/Stats/Keystone.stats
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Keychains
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences
! 2.2K    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/ByHost
! 1.5K    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/ByHost/.GlobalPreferences.5DE3241B-6882-529D-B8D6-404D684BE551.plist
! 434B    (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.CrashReporter.5DE3241B-6882-529D-B8D6-404D684BE551.plist
! 526B    (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.HIToolbox.5DE3241B-6882-529D-B8D6-404D684BE551.plist
! 190B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.SubmitDiagInfo.5DE3241B-6882-529D-B8D6-404D684BE551.plist
! 1.3K    (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.loginwindow.5DE3241B-6882-529D-B8D6-404D684BE551.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/#SharedObjects/CA7U5XUM
+ 0B                            /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/#SharedObjects/CA7U5XUM/media.miamiherald.com
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/#SharedObjects/CA7U5XUM/www.wimp.com
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys
+ 91B                           /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys/#media.miamiherald.com
! 2.6K    (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys/settings.sol
! 124B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ATS.plist
! 623B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/com.apple.PreferenceSync.plist
! 443B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/com.apple.internetconfigpriv.plist
! 446B    (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist
! 24.3K   (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/com.apple.recentitems.plist
! 1.3K    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/com.cleancutcode.CalendarBar.plist
! 76.7K   (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/com.cocoatech.PathFinder.plist
! 886B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/com.google.Keystone.Agent.plist
! 6.3K    (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Powerpoint.plist
! 254B    (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.error_reporting.plist
! 258.8K  (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.plist
! 18.9K   (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/com.sparrowmailapp.sparrow.plist
! 17.4K   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/com.torusknot.SourceTree.plist
! 12.9K   (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/de.jinx.JollysFastVNC.Pro.plist
! 2.4K    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/net.sf.cord.plist
! 2.0K    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Preferences/org.vim.MacVim.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Safari
! 225.3K  (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Safari/History.plist
! 14.4K   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Safari/LastSession.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Safari/LocalStorage
! 10.0K   (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Safari/LocalStorage/safari-extension_com.divx.wpa-kzyj7hj34p_0.localstorage
! 1.3K    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Safari/TopSites.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Spelling
! 3.0K    (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/Spelling/dynamic-text.dat
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/SyncedPreferences
! 993B    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Library/SyncedPreferences/com.apple.syncedpreferences.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Projects/Training/Git
+ 5.8M                          /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Projects/Training/Git/Git-2a.pptx
+ 271.5K                        /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Projects/Training/Git/Introduction To GIT.ppt
+ 1.0M                          /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Projects/Training/Git/egit1-0-110705134610-phpapp02.odp
+ 1.3M                          /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Projects/Training/Git/git-100618212852-phpapp01.zip
+ 719.5K                        /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Projects/Training/Git/git-1212761677968831-9.pdf
+ 2.7M                          /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Projects/Training/Git/git-presentation.pdf
+ 709.5K                        /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Projects/Training/Git/gitandeclipsejena-100617100628-phpapp02.ppt
+ 2.4M                          /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Projects/Training/Git/gitintro-110722021214-phpapp02.ppt
+ 885.9K                        /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Projects/Training/Git/gitstartedwithgit-nhruby-090501133113-phpapp02 (1).pdf
+ 885.9K                        /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Projects/Training/Git/gitstartedwithgit-nhruby-090501133113-phpapp02.pdf
+ 645.7K                        /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Projects/Training/Git/introtogit-090518104200-phpapp02.pdf
+ 5.4M                          /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Projects/Training/Git/progit.en.pdf
! 10.3M   (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/Users/miro/Projects/Training/Git/Git-1.pptx
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/private/etc/cups/certs
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/private/tmp
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/private/var/db
! 1.1K    (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/private/var/db/.TimeMachine.Results.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/private/var/db/BootCaches/FCD06070-6268-466A-A3D6-C697CA300BAC
+ 19.0K                         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/private/var/db/BootCaches/FCD06070-6268-466A-A3D6-C697CA300BAC/app.com.microsoft.error_reporting.playlist
! 21.2K   (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/private/var/db/BootCaches/FCD06070-6268-466A-A3D6-C697CA300BAC/app.com.microsoft.Powerpoint.playlist
! 20B     (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/private/var/db/SystemEntropyCache
! 616B    (size, mtime)         /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/private/var/db/com.apple.TimeMachine.SnapshotDates.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/private/var/db/crls
! 3.2K    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/private/var/db/crls/AC99EBF7D89822D3A424E7768D107BCD60A9A0F5.pem
! 3.2K    (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/private/var/db/crls/FE2FDB1DABD01758E9B204075DBB026D1D3E6B3B.pem
! 320.9K  (size)                /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/private/var/db/crls/crlcache.db
! 13.3K   (size)                /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/private/var/db/crls/ocspcache.db
!         (mtime)               /Volumes/Radegast2-TM/Backups.backupdb/Radegast/2012-05-27-162449/Macintosh HD/private/var/vm
-------------------------------------
Added:         475.1M
Removed:       30.1M
Changed:       1.2G

Diff
#

Which libs are in that Ant81 and not in Ant71 ?

Homelessness is over, moved in

Sun, 13 May 2012 11:22:48 +0800

Being two weeks without “permanent computer home” and living among old Helios, MacMini, temp repair and Web was interesting experience. I certainly remember most of my Web passwords (again).

Got my new MacBook Pro replacement yesterday. Pretty sweet upgrade: quad-core i7 @ 2.4, 8 GB RAM, 750 GB HDD 7200 RPM, Thunderbolt. Noticeably faster but also a bit louder - runs fans more often, maybe it is just while Spotlight does index everything ?

GitHub identity mixup

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 11:22:48 +0800

After I created the ThinkWrap GitHub account and uploaded the public key, this key got somehow bound to GitHub identity ‘madamy’

I had to add user madamy to my public GitHub repo - where I keep the dot-files - https://github.com/radegast/dotvim

This may be an issue for people that have their own private accounts - the key management is the key.

This article is useful:

Alternative
#

Use https for forking , instead read/write ssh. No keys involved there

Using MacVim as git editor

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 11:22:48 +0800

Add this to .bashrc
#

export GIT_EDITOR=’/Applications/MacVim.app/Contents/MacOS/Vim -g -f '

The key is -f, without it git will abort because of empty commit message.

How to make unregistered files work in Quick View on OS-X

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 11:22:48 +0800

Out of the box Quick View (press Space in Finder) behaviour on unregistered files is not very useful: it shows huge Unix icon instead of content of file.

This is default for files like Makefile or build.gradle

This plugin makes it go away and show text file for all UTIs that are plain text: http://whomwah.github.com/qlstephen/

Installation:

open the DMG file
copy QLStephen.qlgenerator to /Users/<<USERNAME>>/Library/QuickLook/QLStephen.qlgenerator

That’s it.

Now it looks like this:

GitHub + Gollum vs BitBucket Wiki

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 11:22:48 +0800

both Wikis are backed by Git repo
both allow local edit

Gollum
#

See https://github.com/github/gollum#readme

Installation: http://alblue.bandlem.com/2011/05/git-tip-of-week-gollum.html

sudo gem install gollum

Running
#

git init TestWiki
gollum --page-file-dir wiki TestWiki
openurl http://localhost:4567

Parsers - separate install
#

gem install rdiscount
gem install wikicloth

Get Wiki for repo
#

git clone URL
  
URL:
- git@github.com:radegast/dotvim.wiki.git R+W
- https://radegast@github.com/radegast/dotvim.wiki.git R+W
- git://github.com/radegast/dotvim.wiki.git R

Pros
#

multiple markups
supports Markdown
List of all pages

Questions
#

How to link to page in subdir

ATG module graph

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 11:22:48 +0800

Notes from weekend hack:
#

Project is in Bitbucket - https://bitbucket.org/miroadamy/atgdiagram/overview

Run
#

in Diagrams/ATGDiagram

Radegast:ATGDiagram miro$ groovy -cp src src/listATGModules.groovy -e -m TWeStore.eStore >uml/test2.uml
Radegast:ATGDiagram miro$ ./processUml.sh uml/test2.uml
Radegast:ATGDiagram miro$ open uml/test2.png
Radegast:ATGDiagram miro$

=> Output test2.uml

the ‘.’ in names is converted to ‘_’ - GraphViz does not like it
the ‘-’ in names detto

Using ATG_ROOT from environment variable $ATG_ROOT: /opt/ATG/ATG10.0.2
Using /opt/ATG/ATG10.0.2 installation
Dependants of module TWeStore.eStore => [DCS.Search.Query, B2CCommerce, DAF.Search.Query, DAF.Search.Base, DCS.Search.common, DPS.Search.Index, DAF.Search.common, DAS-UI, DCS.Search.Index, DPS, DCS, DCS.Search.CustomCatalogs, DCS.Search.CustomCatalogs.Query, DCS.Search.CustomCatalogs.Index, DAF.Search.Routing, DCS.Search.CustomCatalogs.common, DAF.Search.Index, DSS, DCS.CustomCatalogs, DAS]
@startuml
Object TWeStore_eStore
Object DCS
Object B2CCommerce
Object DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs
Object DAF_Search_Routing
Object DCS_CustomCatalogs
Object DPS
Object DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Query
Object DAF_Search_Base
Object DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Index
Object DSS
Object DAS_UI
Object DCS_Search_Query
Object DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_common
Object DAS
Object DCS_Search_Index
Object DAF_Search_Query
Object DCS_Search_common
Object DPS_Search_Index
Object DAF_Search_Index
Object DAF_Search_common
TWeStore_eStore <|-- DCS
TWeStore_eStore <|-- DCS_CustomCatalogs
TWeStore_eStore <|-- B2CCommerce
TWeStore_eStore <|-- DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs
TWeStore_eStore <|-- DAF_Search_Routing
DCS <|-- DPS
DCS <|-- DSS
B2CCommerce <|-- DCS
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs <|-- DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Index
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs <|-- DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Query
DAF_Search_Routing <|-- DAS_UI
DAF_Search_Routing <|-- DAF_Search_Base
DCS_CustomCatalogs <|-- DCS
DPS <|-- DAS
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Query <|-- DCS_Search_Query
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Query <|-- DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_common
DAF_Search_Base <|-- DAS_UI
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Index <|-- DCS_Search_Index
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_Index <|-- DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_common
DSS <|-- DPS
DAS_UI <|-- DAS
DCS_Search_Query <|-- DAF_Search_Query
DCS_Search_Query <|-- DCS_Search_common
DCS_Search_Query <|-- DCS
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_common <|-- DCS_Search_common
DCS_Search_CustomCatalogs_common <|-- DCS_CustomCatalogs
DCS_Search_Index <|-- DPS_Search_Index
DCS_Search_Index <|-- DCS_Search_common
DCS_Search_Index <|-- DCS
DAF_Search_Query <|-- DAF_Search_common
DCS_Search_common <|-- DAF_Search_common
DCS_Search_common <|-- DCS
DPS_Search_Index <|-- DPS
DPS_Search_Index <|-- DAF_Search_Index
DAF_Search_Index <|-- DAS_UI
DAF_Search_Index <|-- DAF_Search_Base
DAF_Search_common <|-- DAS_UI
DAF_Search_common <|-- DAF_Search_Base
DAF_Search_common <|-- DAF_Search_Routing
@enduml

Visualization (uml/test2.png)
#

Diagram generation - plain text approach

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:22:48 +0800

GraphViz
#

installed from package
See http://www.graphviz.org/

Radegast:diagrams miro$ dot -V
dot - graphviz version 2.28.0 (20110509.1545)
 
 
Radegast:diagrams miro$ which dot
dot is /usr/local/bin/dot

SchemaSpy
#

installed in /opt/diagrams
see http://schemaspy.sourceforge.net/

Radegast:schemaSpy miro$ java -jar ./schemaSpy_5.0.0.jar -cp .:/Users/miro/lib/java/jdbc/mysql-connector-java-5.1.7-bin.jar -t mysql -o library -host localhost -u twt_dX_core -db twt_dX_core -p twt_dX_core
Using database properties:
  [./schemaSpy_5.0.0.jar]/net/sourceforge/schemaspy/dbTypes/mysql.properties
Gathering schema details....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................(36sec)
Writing/graphing summary.....
.......(353sec)
Writing/diagramming details.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................(104sec)
Wrote relationship details of 337 tables/views to directory 'library' in 494 seconds.
View the results by opening library/index.html
Radegast:schemaSpy miro$
Radegast:schemaSpy miro$ ll
total 904

PlantUML
#

installed in /opt/diagrams
manual is attached: PlantUML Language Reference Guide.pdf
See http://plantuml.sourceforge.net/classes.html
in /opt/plantUML-DEMO/ there are sample files

@startuml img/sequence_img009.png   
  
Alice -> Bob: Authentication Request
alt successful case
    Bob -> Alice: Authentication Accepted
     
else some kind of failure
    Bob -> Alice: Authentication Failure
 
    group My own label
    Alice -> Log : Log attack start
        loop 1000       times
            Alice -> Bob: DNS Attack
        end
    Alice -> Log : Log attack end
    end
     
else Another type of failure
   Bob -> Alice: Please repeat
    
end
@enduml

Few gitbits to remember

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 15:43:48 +0800

Few gitbits to remember
#

Pushing new local branch to remote repo:
#

Find a ref that matches experimental in the source repository (most likely, it would findrefs/heads/experimental), and update the same ref (e.g. refs/heads/experimental) in origin repository with it.

If experimental did not exist remotely, it would be created.

How to fix the remote origin from read only

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 11:22:48 +0800

Issue
#

In dotvim repo, I used readonly URL for cloning the repository. Now I have created local branch ( linux-vm ) to track Linux specific font settings and need them to push up.

After creating new SSH pair and adding to GitHub, does not work

[tkuser@cplx-dev-vf .vim]$ git status
# On branch linux-vm
nothing to commit (working directory clean)[tkuser@cplx-dev-vf .vim]$ git push origin linux-vm
fatal: remote error:
 You can't push to git://github.com/radegast/dotvim.git
 Use git@github.com:radegast/dotvim.git
 
[tkuser@cplx-dev-vf .vim]$ git remote show origin
* remote origin
 Fetch URL: git://github.com/radegast/dotvim.git
 Push URL: git://github.com/radegast/dotvim.git
 HEAD branch: master
 Remote branch:
 master tracked
 Local branch configured for 'git pull':
 master merges with remote master
 Local ref configured for 'git push':
 master pushes to master (up to date)
 
[tkuser@cplx-dev-vf .vim]$ git remote set-url --push origin git@github.com:radegast/dotvim.git
 
[tkuser@cplx-dev-vf .vim]$ git remote show origin
* remote origin
 Fetch URL: git://github.com/radegast/dotvim.git
 Push URL: git@github.com:radegast/dotvim.git
 HEAD branch: master
 Remote branch:
 master tracked
 Local branch configured for 'git pull':
 master merges with remote master
 Local ref configured for 'git push':
 master pushes to master (up to date)
 
[tkuser@cplx-dev-vf .vim]$ git push origin linux-vm
Enter passphrase for key '/home/tkuser/.ssh/id_rsa':
Counting objects: 5, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 306 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
To git@github.com:radegast/dotvim.git
 * [new branch] linux-vm -> linux-vm

The important line is

Miro Manifesto

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:22:48 +0800

Miro Manifesto
#

Original text of the memo, written in February 2012 and shared with limited audience, until it surfaced up as main them of the planning meeting in December 2012.

This is an attempt to come up with better answers to the following questions:

what issues and challenges I see on our way ahead from the technology point of view and what needs to be done to address them
where do I see my professional and personal career go over next 12 to 18 months and in long run
how to best align those two streams

In the spirit of my latest “back to the basics” obsession, it was written in Markdown format and in Vi, copied and pasted into Google Doc, btw.

Tomcat 5 not reloading changes in JSP

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 17:33:34 -0400

Part of the beauty of JSP development is the easy of trying out the change. All you have to do is edit the JSP file, save it and reload the page. Yesterday I got caught by surprise by not being able to do exactly that. I saw some strange behaviour in an EL expression used JSP tag. As it was nothing ATG specific, I decided to try it out in plain old Tomcat rather than full ATG application. So I located the instance of Tomcat 5.5 (I always have couple of Tomcats lying around) and being lazy, I decided to inject the change into out-of the box jsp-examples Web application that comes with it.

Google+ is superset of both Facebook and Twitter

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 22:49:41 -0400

It may be too early to express opinions about something so new as Google+, but in the short few days I was playing with it, I started to like it a lot. Many bloggers consider it to be a Facebook killer - and it (unlike two previous Google attempts on social networking) eventually may become that. Conceptually, however it is much closer to Twitter than Facebook.

The biggest difference is that in G+ there is no peer relation - "friendship" that needs to be confirmed by both parties. Both ends are disconnected in Google+ - set of people whose updates you see in your stream and set of people that see your updates is not the same and can be in extreme case disjunct.

Back to Twitter

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 23:16:10 -0400

After being away for over 4 months, I am back on Twitter. No, I did not miss the stream of 160 character mixture of news, trivia, white noise and occasional nuggets. Three main reasons:

1) Twitter seems to to become unavoidable - more and more services assume that one has twitter account. Many cyberevents rules start with "retweet this" or "tweet that" which of course one cannot do without Twitter account

Dear Cultured Code, you are history ...

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 23:16:36 -0400

I have been Cultured Code customer for over 2 years and used multiple their products: Things on OS-X, Things for iPad and iPhone on daily basis.

Not any more.

I am definitely giving up on Things and Cultured Code products.

The reason why is sheer frustration from long wait on usable synchronization between Things on Mac, iPad and iPhone. Something that have been discussed, promised, chewed over 2 years and that still does not work.

Facebook or LinkedIn - that's the question

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 22:51:48 -0400

Few weeks ago, I canceled my Twitter account and stopped using Twitter altogether. I do not miss it at all.

The next vector of distraction to be brought under control is Facebook. This is a tougher nut to crack - because of wide variety of people in my circle of friends, Facebook plays many different roles.

It is a connection to old friends and colleagues from the old continent and old country.
It is a family connection.
It is a connection to people that are not on FB through their friends or relatives that are.
It is a link to people I worked with and wanted to keep in touch.
It is a link to people I share common interest with

This variety creates a problem of itself (which is multiplied by English/non English division). Tool that does too many things, does not do them very well.

Better GMail than GMail

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 23:38:05 -0500

Since 2005 when I switched to GMail, I was living in browser. For better or worse, I learn to put up with issues like speed, lack of hotkeys, UI that is not as responsive as it should be, drag and drop that works most of the time. To be fair, in these five years browsers and GMail UI improved tremendously. It was rational decision to trade all these for simplicity of the UI.

Configuring permanent time updates for Linux

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 11:22:48 +0800

1) make sure the DNS works
#

sudo vi /etc/resolv.conf
cat /etc/resolv.conf

nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220
nameserver 192.168.16.1

2) check that you have ntpd installed
#

cat /etc/ntp.conf

3) make it work in all
#

/sbin/chkconfig --list | grep ntpd
sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 2345 ntpd on

4) Initial sync
#

sudo /usr/sbin/ntpdate pool.ntp.org

Bye bye Twitter

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 18:12:29 -0500

I have came to a conclusion that I do have too much stuff in my life.

Too much and too little and the same time.

Too much information. Too many interruptions and distractions. Too little time to think.

Too much consumption of information and not enough time to process it and do anything meaningful with it - learn from it or create something new.

The only way how to get out of the self-digged hole is to start cutting.

Podcast recommendation

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:13:10 -0500

I have find new podcast that I want to share with you. It is called "This Developer's Life" and is produced by well known digerati Scott Hanselman and Rob Conery.

I listen to a lot of podcasts, about 50 % of them produced by Leo Laporte's TWIT Network (This Week in Tech, Macbreak, This Week in Google, FLOSS Weekly and occasional Security Now).

What I like about Leo's network is professionalism of audio production, usually good and interesting panel with topics that are worth listening to. Few other podcasts come even close to the TWIT level of perfection.

JSP compiler configuration in JBoss 4.2.x for ATG

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:33:44 -0500

The post is on corporate blog - http://blog.thinkwrap.com/blog/2010/2/24/jsp-compiler-configuration-in-jboss-42x-for-atg.html

Thanks for all the adds

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 02:57:31 -0500

As regular listener to multiple TWIT Network podcasts (This Week In tech, Macbreak Weekly, This Week in Google, Free Libre Opensource Software, Security Now, Windows Weekly) I am very much aware of all the advertisers that keep Leo and the gang in business and make the podcast's stream going. I have even acted upon several of the ads: we are customer of SquareSpace.com (the corporate blog runs on that platform), GoToMeeting is regular part of day-to-day business - we have several accounts and use it regularly for meetings. I would use GoToMyPC if I had any need to go to a PC :-). I bought Spinrite, although I used it only once over last 3 years.

One month with Windows 7

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:33:35 -0500

It has been one month now that I started to use Windows 7 based Dell Vostro 1320 notebook on daily basis. The hardware parameters of this little thing are: Core 2 Duo 2.26, 500 GB HDD, 8 GB of RAM, 13" screen, Windows 7 Professional (64 bit of course, how else with all that RAM). All this with 3 year next business day warranty for about $1400 CAD - not bad deal at all.

Unintended coincidence

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 10:50:14 -0500

To be fair, the book is to appear in March 2010, so most likely the cover image is not ready yet. But I found lack of images for book whose main point is to make explanation illustrated quite ironical :-).

Cure for crashing FourSquare and RunKeeper on iPhone

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:29:18 -0500

Few weeks ago, first Foursquare application and then my favorite RunKeeper app started to fail. The symptoms were simple:

1) attempt to start

2) wait for for 2-10 seconds

3) exit

Analysis of the crash logs did not reveal anything obvious (see ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/NAME:

Process:         foursquare [374]
Path:            /var/mobile/Applications/7F37347B-......1663AA5/foursquare.app/foursquare
Identifier:      foursquare
Version:         ??? (???)
Code Type:       ARM (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [1]
Date/Time:       2009-12-22 12:39:11.260 -0500
OS Version:      iPhone OS 3.1.2 (7D11)
Report Version:  104
Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x20294628
Crashed Thread:  0<
Thread 0 Crashed:
0   libobjc.A.dylib                   0x32668ecc 0x32665000 + 16076
1   CoreFoundation                    0x32d83d6a 0x32d4d000 + 224618
2   CoreFoundation                    0x32d4fc28 0x32d4d000 + 11304</p>

What helped was to delete both applications from the phone, including data and let the iTunes install it back. No data is lost, because both services are cloud based - only minor inconvenience was to re-enter login information.

Attention is new currency

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 01:02:09 -0500

Some companies just do not get it.

It starts with an email, like this one:

By coincidence, you are on project that has the CRM component so you decide to check it out and click on link. After all, it is free, right, so why wouldn't you ?

The catch is that it is not free at all. Without realizing it, you have already made your first payment, by doing the sender a favor: as we know, clicking on a link in email is definitely not a good idea and recommended behaviour, unless you know the sender and trust the sender. Which - in this case - you have absolutely no reason to.

Here we go again

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:56:40 -0500

This is reloaded version of my previous blog - or continuation of the fork.

First thing to start is to explain why did I do something quite contra-productive as relocate the blog and loose all the audience - however small it could have been.

It would seem that I like restarts and things reloaded. I did pick a new country to become new home for me and my family (if emigration is not a restart, what else is ?). Back in 2004 we have started Thinknostic to be "Montage Reloaded" - a new incarnation of the company I worked for before and liked it a lot. The same story repeats with blogging.

Facebook domain type-in hack

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:00:56 -0400

You know the drill: open browser, new tab, type 'www.facebook.com' and in moment you can see who of your online buddies is up to something interesting. This is exactly what I did. Only I did not end up in well known Facebook page, but on something really fishy:

This is definitely NOT facebook. How come I ended up on 'quiz.us' site when I typed in www.facebook.com. Or did I ? Let's do it again:

Forget me not, Web2.0 edition

Sat, 23 May 2009 16:07:13 -0400

I stumbled upon this pretty nice little application or service - depends how you see it. It is called reQall (obviously would have been recall, but recall.com as every good domain is taken.

What it does is that allows you to set a reminder in the future to do something - at given time and date: buy X, call Y, do Z. Nothing to earth-shattering about that.

What is neat is the way how you do it. Actually, many ways:

Book recommendation: Outliers by Malcolm Caldwell

Wed, 20 May 2009 22:24:39 -0400

From the author that wrote Tipping point (on my reading list) as well as Blink - which I listened to but found rather controversial. I was very curious what will this one be about.

The book is about success and people that managed to achieve extraordinary results. It touches several topics, I will pick three of them that I found most interesting. It starts with interesting observation - if you look at the MONTH of the birth of junior NHL hockey players, you'll discover that over 50% of them was born between January and April. Certainly not anything like normal distribution. The point is that cutoff-date for signing up children into hockey training in Canada is January 1st. At the age when this happens (5-6 years), kid born in January has significant physical and mental advantage against kid born in November or December. As result, the early born children perform better in their category, and as result they are more likely to make the selection between the talented and perspective. Those selected get much more opportunities to play and practice, which causes them being really better players than late born ones - a kind of self fulfilling prophecy. As result - if your kids are born after August, better reconsider the NHL dreams. If you believe what M.G. is saying, I mean.

Lost in the social networks

Sun, 17 May 2009 23:09:35 -0400

This is public answer to all who were asking why is my blog so badly neglected. Short answer is: It is because I am pretty active elsewhere and did not really find any additional time to allocate. If you are busy person, now you know, see ya later. If you are curious what elsewhere means, read on.

Last year and before, blogosphere and this blog was *only* part of the social networking space I was paying attention to. Since about 3-4 months I started to really pay attention to Facebook. I originally joined to find out what my son and couple of friends are up to and somehow I started to see value in this channel of communication. Recently, even my nephews and children of a very good friend that moved from Ottawa to Europe. So Facebook became the "generation bridge" and channel for stuff out of workspace.

Microsoft Office 2008 vs NeoOffice vs iWorks'08

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:58:10 -0400

I was happy user of the iWork Suite 08 since I moved to OS-X. It somehow better matches the way I am thinking and does much better job than Office to get me from idea to acceptable looking rendering of that idea in the form of document, spreadsheet or presentation.

In past two month I was involved much more interaction with the requirements, business analysis and project management part of the process. Which inevitably means much higher exposure to documents creation, collaboration and exchange. iWork gives you reasonably good compatibility with Office document formats, which means that you can easily import almost every Office document modify it and export it back so that Windows user will see almost all of your changes. Almost everything will be just fine. Unfortunately, almost is not the same as everything: it often breaks fine details of formatting, reviewer comments and does not really work for more complicated Excel spreadsheets. Especially those spreadsheets which project manager-ish people so love to create.

Almost perfect backup backup solution

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:19:36 -0400

The double backup word in the title is not an oversight. If I would be talking about "almost perfect backup solution", it would be Time Machine - which has proven, despite it's minor annoyances (see this) to be very unobtrusive and functional. As long as you have Mac and Leopard, of course.

What I am talking about here is second level - an offsite backup, that you may need in case you house burns down, gets flooded or your computer with time machine disk gets stolen. I do not live in tornado valley, earthquake zone and crime rate around Westboro is fairly low even compared to low Canadian levels, but anyway.

Evernote Firefox plugin version 3.0.0.45382 - do NOT update

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 18:35:07 -0400

Since few months I have slowly switched all my online notebooks to Evernote. In case you are not familiar with it, it is a great service. You can clip pieces of Web pages, type in notes, attach documents and multimedia files (pictures, sounds) and store them online to be always available through nicely done Ajaxian Web interface. The notes can be tagged, organized into notebooks and full text searched. One of the killer features is that for uploaded pictures, Evernote will do OCR and include the photographed tex into full text search

Bye bye Ruby, hello Groovy

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:08:35 -0400

I first time discovered Ruby back in 2006 (yes, I know, I was late to the game), and immediately fell in love with it. The dynamic nature of the language, the consistency, pure esthaetics and practicality certainly changed the way how I saw software development and programming languages.

Since that time, I made several attempts to integrate Ruby into my professional life and make it part of the toolbox. It was cool to play with Ruby in my spare time, but I wanted to use it on projects whose main development language/platform was mainly Java. Use it as scripting, glue language. Use it as toolkit language to e.g. generate test data, access databases, convert files, build projects and maybe even build a piece of Web applications (admin apps for example).

The aftermath of mainboard change

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 01:01:04 -0500

In theory, exchanging mainboard on Macbook has no impact because all your data is stored on your harddisk that is untouched. In real life, there are few minor surprises.

First, your MAC address of the network card had changed. This is something you will not notice, unless Murphy's law plays funny game with you, as it did with me. When arriving back to the office, I was able to connect to WiFi network, but the ethernet was stubbornly getting the "internal IP" - 169.254.x.x address, which is pretty much useless from connectivity point of view. We are running two separate networks - both NAT-ed, one on WiFi - mainly for guests, other internal. Not getting an IP address did not make any sense: the cable was OK, because other machine worked just fine with same drop/cable. The Ethernet connection was OK, because it worked when assigned IP address manually.

The myth of premium hardware or why Ottawa needs Apple Store

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:46:44 -0500

Back in November 2007, when I was buying Macbook Pro, I did order the AppleCare option, which added several hundred dollars to already pretty expensive notebook price. For moment I was tempted to go without it - after all, Apple makes top grade, high quality hardware and considering pretty low failure rate I have seen with my Windows based notebooks between 1998-2006, why to pay more ? Little did I know how much mileage will I get from the extra cost :-(.

It's alive !

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:26:22 -0500

I was aching to blog about this since December 18th, when our system quietly and gently slipped into public visibility. Marked as Beta (thanks, Google for making this a legitimate way how to go live) it comfortably made it through Christmas shopping season into 2009.

Now when the site has been announced and mentioned few times in the media, I guess it's OK to mention it here too.

What is "it" ? A new, fresh eCommerce site selling music. A lots of really good music. Without any DRM or any other nonsense, as plain good high quality (mostly 320 kps) MP3's. The selection is actually very good - starting from several hundred thousands in December to several few million songs when full catalog is loaded. More great music being added every week.

How to un-stuck unsuccessful OS-X upgrade

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 11:19:49 -0500

Here is the context: in order to upgrade iLife 08 to iLife'09 (which is very nice, btw), I had to install 10.5.6 upgrade. And according Murphy's law, one of the 2 GB DIMM's in my MacBook Pro went bad exactly during the OS-X upgrade process.

It had two rather unpleasant consequences:

some of the patch files got downloaded and saved in corrupted state

The machine did not boot back after restart

The second problem was fixed by replacing the bad DIMM, but the first caused that upgrade to 10.5.6 was impossible: the files were downloaded, verification failed, after restart I was back to square one. There was no obvious way how to "undownload" the files.

VMWare and slow clocks - take 2

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:37:46 -0500

The centos 4.x we are using as platform for the VMWare VMs (yes, I know there is version 5, but we need to be compliant with RHEL 4.x because of the ATG requirements) installs by default the NTP client.

Here is sequence of steps that needs to be performed to enable automatic synchronization of the clocks.

make sure the DNS works

cat /etc/resolv.conf
sudo vi /etc/resolv.conf

and check that nameservers point to something meaningfull, e.g:

VMWare and slow clocks

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:51:35 -0500

I have noticed recently that most of our VMWare instances (and we are running decent fleet of them for the ATG Lab as well as internal system) if left without time synchronization, will loose get late quite a bit: some of them as much as hour or more a week.

Unix date command unfortunately belongs to those commands that I am having troubles to remember and everytime I have to use it with parameters, I end up googling for examples ...

Weird Rogers 3G network error - fixed ?

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:34:20 -0500

Just tried out to switch the iPhone to automatic Date and Time setting with 3G on. The time jumped from 11:31 to 11:30 (my iPhone was about 1 minute too fast) and STAYED THERE.

This could mean that the issue is finally fixed. Can anybody confirm that ?

Excellent free Git tutorial

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:29:21 -0500

Two screencasts, about 80 and 40 minutes long are available at:

http://excess.org/article/2008/07/ogre-git-tutorial/

Courtesy by fellow Ottawan Bert Trojanowski. Really nice job of providing deep enough technical understanding with good illustrative examples.

If you want to get into distributed version control (which is IMHO way to go), check this out.

Weird Rogers 3G network error

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:19:51 -0500

Since about Sunday, Dec 7th (I remember exactly because I noticed it when leaving the regular ByMUG meeting at Patty Bolands) my iPhone for no particular reason decided to translocate itself to GMT+1 time zone. It was not visible immediately, only emails received at 16:20 were shown as received 6 hour in the future.

All this without any changes or installing anything on my end ...

The Clock application showed what was wrong (this snapshot was taken on Sunday, 16:02 Ottawa time):

Chapters goes Mac

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:22:48 -0500

I have noticed few of this beauties in Kanata Chapters. Nice replacement for the beaten up CRT terminals that used to be around. They somehow looked right and familiar from the distance.

Beautiful screen, with touch capability.

Nice presentation and user interface.

The keyboard with unique personality.

And after looking closer, it was very obvious why:

Proper keyboard simply must have Command key ;-)

Fix for 'Sender address is invalid' error on iPhone 3G

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:08:20 -0500

I started to have this error about week ago, out of the blue. I was not aware of making any changes, but suddenly could not reply to an email, send new email or even forward existing email in the iPhone default Mail application. I am using GMail account and because other clients on different platforms worked OK, I suspected either Rogers or Apple. I was trying several possible fixes (and used Safari and Gmail web access - which is not much fun).

How to save local copy of YouTube video

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:37:25 -0500

If you want to watch YouTube video on the plane (and Google TechChannel has some amazing collection of videos), here is how to save it to disk, without any tools or third party program, using just your Mac and Safari out of the box.

Go to YouTube page and select video you are interested in in Safari. While playing, press Option-Command-A which opens Activity window. Locate the video stream - it will be the largest item in the list. Double click it, which causes Safari to download it.

Sane version of Twitter

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:17:26 -0500

Since few weeks we have started internally use an interesting microblogging tool named Yammer. It works very similarly to Twitter, which means that you are posting very short posts, focusing on the stuff you are doing or working on. Unlike with Twitter, Yammer is company oriented and your posts will be visible ONLY to the recipients that share your company's email address.

Yammer is free service with interesting business model: everybody can join your company's network (if that person has proper email address), but to gain administrative rights, you have to pay dollar a month per user. I actually like this approach because it gives hope that the service will be around and available next year :-)

About time to break the silence

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:32:03 -0500

Several people asked what is going on with me: no blog posts for almost a month, litlle presence on Gtalk / MSN. It is simpler to answer this way that write same email over and over.

Unfortunately the reason for being quiet is not that I am taking time off and enjoying myself somewhere in Caribbean on a secluded island without internet connection. Those who know me well also know that I would never go somewhere without access to Web for longer period of time than week - and even that would cause serious withdrawal issues. I am in Ottawa or Montreal or somewhere in between - physically or virtually.

VMWare Converter error P2VError UNABLE_TO_DETERMINE_GUEST_OS

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:34:26 -0400

This was error I have received while trying to convert physical machine running Windows 2003 SP1 into VMWare image.

After some googling around and experimenting (this link was most helpful to point me in correct direction) I found solution that worked for me.

All I had to do was to disable Floppy Drive in the System applet of Control panel. After this, the conversion continued and right now is squeezing 100 GB disk into 50 2 GB files on external USB disk.

Dewey's Classification can be funny

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:08:20 -0400

Yes, I mean *that* dry, boring Deweys Decimal Classification used by libraries around the world.

Here is what I noticed in Ottawa Public Library:

Can you imagine two subjects so far apart from each other - and sometimes sooo close ;-)

Project Management - in a Nutshell

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:56:55 -0400

A wonderful gem I found here:

I remember telling a friend
that being a project manager
is a little like being a bouncer:
where there's a problem *here*
and a door *there*
and it's your job to get the problem out the door.

So
For some a gentle gesture will do
while others need a push
and still others need to be picked up by their pants and carried

Free eBook on ALT.NET

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:04:01 -0400

It is always a nice surprise to find something that is free and actually useful on the Net :-). Like this one: a fellow Ottawan Karl Sequin wrote and generously made available as free download "Foundations of programming" eBook.

He touches many topics of various levels from high level design concepts (dependency injection) to low level "Back to Basics" - how memory allocation and pointers work. Especially the later is often neglected and overlooked (and consequently misunderstood) by younger developers who started their education with a garbage collected language such as Java or C# and never were exposed to beauty and horrors of C ;-)

After the Spring Storm

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:58:54 -0400

Few days ago, I have received an email asking to attend the SpringSource conference and offering $300 discount if I decide to buy before end of month. The timining was pretty ironical, considering the recent contraversy about SpringSource Entreprise Maintenance policy change. The was a heated discussion on TheServerside.com and even FAQ was compiled by Rod Johnson to explain the whole thing.

So what is the issue: SpringSource, commercial entity behind community driven Spring Framework decided to capitalize on the investment and push the community toward paid service suport contract. Whether or not it was related to funding round and VC's entering the game, is not important. Unfortunately, the terms were not really well explained and SpringSource did initially very poor job explaining and communicating the actual change. The community overreacted and lot of people started to call for code fork, project Summer or similar - or switching to different framework.

Three great Git resources

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 22:10:41 -0400

Before I forget :-)

1) The Git Magic

2) Two git books Pragmatic Git Book and Git internals - nice complement each other

3) Linus Torvalds slightly offensive and very funny talk at Google

in addition to great, precise but not necessarily most digestable manual ...

iPhone firmware 2.1 - first impressions

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:35:42 -0400

I was brave and updated right away last Friday, as soon as the update appeared, both the iTunes and the iPhone firmware. And so far, so good. Initial observations are quite positive - at least so far, from using it during last few days.

I never had any issues with the dropped calls, so I cannot report any improvement. What seems to work better is browsing: I get much less (if any) connection errors. It is hard to say whether it was the firmware, or Rogers fixed something - or the fixed firmware causes less issues to network - it looks like improvement.

Too good to be true ?

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:39:20 -0400

If this thing is real, I am buying one. Regardless that I really, really do not need another Mac :-). Form factor of thin screen of size 9-12 inch, with reasonable subset of touch gestures would be EXACTLY what I need from a internet terminal / reader. Plus the option to tether it with iPhone for ubiquitous connectivity ...

Calendar synchronization between iPhone, Google calendars and iCal

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 02:08:08 -0400

Here is my situation: I am using three different Macs (Macbook Pro and two iMacs - one at home and occasionally second one at work) and need to keep the contacts and calendars synchronized at least between two of them (MBP and home iMac). I use iPhone which also has calendar and contacts. And in the cloud, there is Google calendar. Actually, more than one: my own calendar and company shared calendar of my colleagues from Thinknostic. Quite a challenge to keep it all in sync.

Good read - not only for software architects

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:22:08 -0400

The 97 things that every software architect should know:

http://97-things.near-time.net/wiki

Actually, it's 87 but new are still coming. You may add your piece if it is not yet there ...

Milos - thanks for the link.

Proper shellspace above all :-)

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 21:25:49 -0400

Here is a snapshot I took during today's trip to Chapters @ Rideau. While walking out, the placement of some books caught my eye:

Note the "headlines" in the background of the Vista books: "Ailments and diseases". Certainly unintended and a bit childish, but I found it hilariously funny :-)

Chrome is interesting, but I'll stick with Firefox ...

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:21:34 -0400

Everybody seems to be crazy about Chrome, the new superfast Google browser. The odes on speed sounded quite exaggerated, so I had to try it. I opened up again my old battered Fujitsu Lifebook and after 3 reboots (it was not used for about 2 months and Windows update had to have its patching done) I downloaded and installed it.

The rumors were not unsubstantiated ... it IS considerably speedier than anything else, including Opera. I have not seen any issues on the few sites I have tried - everything seems to work just fine.

Objective C: I really miss namespaces

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:33:30 -0400

One feature that I strongly miss from Objective C are namespaces. Inability to avoid name clash between your classes sometimes really stands in your way.

I am reading S. Kochan's book "Programming in Objective C" and in one of the examples he creates the class Point. Unfortunately, there already is struct Point defined in mactypes.h.

The solution is easy - rename the darn Point to something like TKPoint ... at least that is what Cocoa naming guide recommends. It is probably matter of getting used to it - but I still find the solution suggested by Kevin Hoffman much more elegant - too bad it is only theoretical. Much nicer than NSHack ;-)

XCode annoyances

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 22:34:57 -0400

I have started to seriously play with Objective C and XCode about week ago. So far it was very pleasant experience. I really like the language - feels like Ruby (or Smalltalk if you want) with rocket launcher: very powerful, blastingly fast and dangerous like hell. No array boundary checks as in Java :-).

The XCode was not bad experience either. Here my very long Eclipse and Visual Studio history is going a bit in the way, as the things often works quite different. Not necessarily worse, but different. It would be too early to judge it - not before I get more proficient in both Objective-C and XCode and learn more Cocoa goodness.

More on kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork Error 302

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:38:19 -0400

A friend made me aware of this (thanks, Peter):

The Inside Deets on iPhone 2.0.2 and Dropped Calls
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/08/28/the-inside-deets-on-iphone-202-and-dropped-calls/

Sounds like plausible explanation.

It is not the network that is fault but the interaction of the bad
power control algorithm in 2.0 and 2.0.1 software and the network that
is at fault. The sooner everybody is running 2.0.2 software the better
things will be. Having seen the graphs the 2.0.2 software has already
started to make difference.

We are hiring

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:12:00 -0400

After everything-but-quiet summer, things got even busier and we need to add more great people to our teams.

At the moment we're looking for

* Junior Java developers

* Intermediate Java developers

* Intermediate .Net developers

* Senior .Net developers

* Junior Graphics/UI/Multimedia Designer

Sorry - no teleworking, you must be local to apply. If you feel like fitting in - or know somebody in Ottawa that would fit, email Miro at thinknostic dot com ...

Easy access to log files

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:04:04 -0400

Here is the scoop: I need to provide access to multiple log files spread across multiple directories of multiple machines. For example - the JBoss log files and nohup.out, ATG log files, and so on - so that the testers can see what happened on server side when something looks fishy on front end.

One option would be to write a document that contails IP’s of the machines, create user accounts, make sure that they have just enough access rights to see the files but not disturb anything else …

The Things bliss

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 23:08:37 -0400

Finally - the new version of Things on iPhone can synchronize with Things on Mac desktop.

It actually works - no strings attached. Assumed that:

1) the WiFi on iPhone is on

2) iPhone and Mac are on same network (so that Bonjour magic can work)

3) the Mac Things is running when you start Things on iPhone

the synchronization happens automatically and is VERY fast (few seconds max).

Finally a portable GTD application that works for me :-).

Rogers, iPhone and the dreaded kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork Error 302

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 22:57:15 -0400

Many people recently (including myself) had experiences difficulties with Web access on the iPhone. Quite often the following error message pops up:

Usually repeating the web page access helps. Sometimes you have to try third time or wait few minutes.

This has nothing to do with signal strenght - as you can see, there are 4 bars and 3G is on. I saw it happen on Edge as well. Reseting the phone sometimes helps, but it is hard to say whether because of the reset or time delay ..

Linux vs Windows - great comparison

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 23:35:47 -0400

I have been "living in a command line" for last few weeks. Pretty refreshing experience. As result, I had to google a lot, especially when it comes to e.g. subtle differences between tar options on Ubuntu Linux and Open Solaris ... While doing that, I somehow stumbled upon this great writeup on cultural differences between Linux and Windows. Nicely written, no flamewars - obviously pro-Linux, but no Microsoft or Windows bashing and lots of insight. Higly recommended.

iPhone 3G first impressions: Applications

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 02:09:00 -0400

Having used Touch 2.0, I managed not to install everything I found in AppStore. Majority of which is crap anyway - people are still learning how to use the platform properly. Pretty soon though, all those flashlights, tip calculators and similar pointless-ware will be replaced by apps that make sense. I hope.

Just for the reference: here is my iTunes snapshot as of today:

Some applications are pure time killers (when waiting in line and there is signal to read news online) but some are actually very useful. Few comments to those I actually use are below - actually, first three of the apps are below - I will get back to few more in subsequent posts:

iTunes AppStore update chaos

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 03:08:51 -0400

I just noticed strange thing: it is most likely unrelated, but it happened right after installing 2.0.2 firmware.

The count of updates for AppStore applications is pretty chaotic. You can see different number of updates when looking into different parts of iTunes. I have noticed this cycle repeating for 9 updates, then 8 and so on - here is how it looked when I got down to 3 un-updated apps after few rounds.

How to make screenshot of running application on iPhone 3G

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:04:37 -0400

It is sooo simple:

1) Run the app you want to get screenshot of

2) Press the home button at the same time as On button. Screen will flash white for a sec

3) Find the picture saved in your photos.

This is second amazing thing I have found out about iPhone in last few days. First was hidden button on the headphone mike that can start/stop running iPod music, pick up the ringing phone or (doubleclick) advance to next song. Very useful while walking ...

Good hard shell case for iPhone 3G

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 03:35:12 -0400

After carrying in my pocket for 3 days, I have decided to get something to prevent my smallest Mac from scratches and breaking when drops (I did drop the iPod touch and it was close call: one of the edges was scratched and slightly damaged).

It took some time to decide, but at the end I settled for this one:

In white, of course. It is a bit tricky to put it on, but it feels very solid and does not slip.

How to kill iPhone battery in less than 2 hours

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 11:58:44 -0400

This may be a random event, but here is what happened:

1) Switch on camera and and take couple of pictures

2) While camera still on in taking pictures mode, switch off the phone (by the switch on top).

After doing that, about 1.5 hour later I took out the phone to check the emails. Phone was very warm - not the kind of unpleasantly hot you get from Macbook Pro battery when rendering movie on batery power , but still much warmer than ever. Camera was still on. The battery that was two hours ago fully charged was on less than 10%. Strange.

Create own ringtones for iPhone 3G

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 23:48:00 -0400

One of the many things that I never did before was actually customizing the phone. Neither of the songs that I really liked for ringtone (and were unique enough) were available of course. I found this website: http://audiko.net/en.html that allows to take an MP3 (one that you legally own, of course) and convert it to ringtone.

Here is how it works:

1) Find a suitable MP3

2) Go to above website, upload MP3

It arrived

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:00:49 -0400

Mac #3 in our household (after Macbook and Macbook Pro):

The beautiful 20", 4GB RAM, 750 GB HDD, about to replace the old tablet my wife was using and as school computer.

PS: In the excitement of the event I forgot to publish this so it was sitting in Drafts until Saturday. Publishing with original date of the event - for the record. Funny enough, it is almost precisely the 10 birthday of the original iMac.

Test of the Wordpress and Smugshot applications for iPhone

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:50:57 -0400

Does it work ?

We'll see - blogging from the train

All the above - including the picture was created and posted on iPhone, using the Wordpress Application (thanks to Peter K. to make me aware of it). I have not used it much, but the first impressions are certainly positive: it works and allows to compose reasonable blog entry, including images on the go. As long as you are fast typist on the miniature keyboard - which I am not, so I will still prefer for longer text the great comfort of Macbook Pro keyboard (probably the best keyboard I have ever used so far). But it can be handy for short posts so I am going to keep it. Price - zero Alexes ((C) Macbreak weekly) == $0. Free. Not Libre, not opensource - thanks anyway ...

Gmail is down - Sky is falling ....

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:26:51 -0400

This is what I get for last hour or so:

It is so frustrasting when something taken for granted suddenly disappears ... and at the same time quite scary how dependent we became on it.

Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope for GMails early return

Irony of anti-spam site: selling spam tools

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:34:13 -0400

There is great site 10 minute mail - which does exactly what it says. Provides you an email address that lives for 10 minutes and then evaporates. For this 10 minutes, you can read any email sent to it on the web page - and eventually renew it for another 10 minutes. Great way how to beat spammers and other email address collecting sites ...

Here is how it looks like.

Example of useless error message

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 04:53:23 -0400

This is what I got trying to track my recent purchase from Apple Store ...

That may not be the most useless error message ever seen on Web but it comes pretty close ... One would expect a bit more professional treatment from such big company ...

Why does a company that puts so much emphasis on user experience and perception (like Apple) pick business partners (such as this one - or one certain Canadian wireless provider company running the GSM network) that suck so much that it ruins this perception ? Are the other companies even worse ? Hard to imagine ...

Quote of the day

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:13:27 -0400

A gem from Merlin's twitter feed. I found it being both hilariously funny as well as wildly applicable :D

There's nothing wrong with me that couldn't be fixed by a little exercise, some discipline, and a weekend at the Dog Psychology Center.

Merlin Mann

iPhone 3G first impressions: Phone, Battery Life

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:02:56 -0400

Phone

The sound of the iPhone is much clearer and generally better than my old RAZR.

What I really like is a built-in microphone in headphones that allows making and answering calls without holding phone next to your ear. Second is handling of the incoming call while listening to podcast or music: it fades aways and after finishing the call, it slowly fades back in. Very nicely done.

But the best phone feature is seamless integration with my address book, which thanks to synchronization that works very well always the same as address book on my Mac. It offers classic "wheel search", list of recent calls, list of favorites and dial keyboard. What is really awesome is the easy to add or update information: for example, you receive a call from a friend that just got a new phone. After hanging up, with single click on the recent entry you can assign the just received number to an existing contact. And it is always that single address card you use - with address (that you can show in Google map with another click) or email addresses that you can fire up with single click..

ByMUG meeting - August

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:30:04 -0400

This Sunday, as every first Sunday in month we had regular Bytown Mac User Group meeting at usual place - Patty Bolands Pub at the Market. It was great meeting because we had many newcomers - both to the group as well as to the platform, including very fresh Mac switch - a happy owner of 24 hours old Macbook Pro.

The presentations were very suited for the audience of newcomers, especially Katheryne's demo on customizing the Mac. She was kind enough to send the links to the talk (the mailing list). I think that the links are very useful for wider audience than just the ByMUG folks, so I will repost them here ... withour her permission, but in here very own words :-)

iPhone 3G first impressions: Email, Web, Camera, GPS, Data Plan

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:01:48 -0400

continued from here

Email
My email information was transferred from Touch as part of the activation process and started to work right away. Very good and functional user interface.

I also found the mobile Google page (http://www.google.com/m) to be very useful - it adds easy access to small screen optimized versions of the Calendar and Reader. I use Reader a lot, the best feature being that articles I read on ANY device (MBP, Linux desktop, iPhone or even some of the many VM's I am using)
will be marked as read ...

iPhone 3G first impressions: Activation

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 23:28:21 -0400

There more than enough reviews and opinions on the coolest gadget in the telephony space so what is point o adding another one ? I was originally quite anti-iPhone anti-Rogers for - IMHO - pretty strong reasons, so it is interesting to review them and see how they survived the reality check.

That maybe not be the strongest reason ... but am going to do that anyway.

Activation

I have ordered the phone by calling the 1-888-ROGERS1 and as I mentioned, the shopping experience was for a change a great one ... That was Tuesday morning and to my big surprise, the phone was delivered n Thursday afternoon.

Great technical screencasts

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 21:03:48 -0400

The http://www.techscreencast.com/ - lots of great content about operating systems, tools, technologies, languages and generally "stuff that matters"(TM).

Recommended ...

iPhone 3G - I surrender

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 23:51:12 -0400

I was holding off for over two weeks, decided not go with that outrageous iPhone voice/data racket. Even trying to encourage people to wait in a hope the demand will be weak and Rogers will bend and lower the rates.

Only, it was not. I mean demand. iPhones seems to be selling better than beaver tales on Dow's Lake during sub minus twenty sunny skating Saturday. Especially the 16 GB ones.

Rogers, iPhone and Conspiracy Theory

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:34:50 -0400

It was very interesting to observe during last few weeks - since WWDC announcement - the wave of expectations building up here in Canada. After all, we will finally officially have the iPhone and will be allowed to join the family of first-category nations, legally iPhonized, blessed by his Steveness himself. Selection of Rogers as carrier was no surprise. Rogers is only company that (IMHO) actually can run 3G iPhone - at least around here in Ontario / Quebec. You see, here in True North, we do not really have anything remotly resembling true competition in telecom space. Nor we have a reasonably good telecoms selling the phone service - only bad, really bad and terrible.

The (most ?) underappreciated Java pioneers

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:53:38 -0400

I still remember back in 2003/2004 when Rod Johnson wrote his books "J2EE Design and Development" and "J2EE programming without EJB" and presented his POJO based inversion of control framework - at that time, still packaged as com.interface21.* - that eventually evolved to Spring Framework.

Idea of composing J2EE application from basic Java Beans, that were instantiated by the core container that managed their lifetime and resolved references was for most people really an eye opening experience, true Aha! moment and completely new world discovery. Everybody I knew was happy and excited about it. I was also happy and excited - not as much because of the novelty, but because of seeing a great design ideas I saw before in closed source implementation to re-appear in open source world.

On positives of negative experience

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:08:41 -0400

A comment got to me via friend mentioning why am I suddenly so negative about Apple and Macs, which quite surprised me. True, I have had some serious hardware issues in first two weeks of June, but this negative event was about as much positive experience as hard disk crash can be.

Thinking back what I have learned and discovered from this:

- Time Machine actually works
- it pays to plug in the firewire disk with Time Machine backups every day - the two second operation saves a lot of time in long run
- Carbon Copy Cloner is fantastic tool that makes creating bootable copy of your system disk as easy as possible
- I can easily use multiple bootable disks with various versions of OS-X, not only for backing up but also for trying out new things / installs - a kind of "VM on a disk"

No words necessary. No DRM either ...

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 18:49:21 -0400

Back to normal

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 23:13:45 -0400

So, after few days working diskless, I am back to normal operation mode. About time, we are late with last episode of screencast ...

The copying of external disk went error free and took almost 5 hours (210 GB). Fortunately, the MBP was usable - I did not want to modify too many files, but it was perfect for Web research and writing in Google Docs.

After reboot, the TimeMachine decided that 85 GB needs to be backed up again. This seems like bug in TimeMachine, because I have not really changed much more than few gigs - 4-5 max during the few days.

Diskless Macbook Pro

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:45:20 -0400

So, I have positive proof that the file system crash of last week was not a software problem in Leopard, but indeed caused by hardware failure. After restoring system from Time Machine, things looked pretty good - everything seemed to work. I was able to re-render the screencasts I have lost - I mean I have lost converted AVI files and MP4 files, not the "source" MOV files. I worked on Mac over Saturday and Sunday. Because my Time machine does not backup virtual machine images, I had even whopping 65 GB of free space :-). I saw a bit more of beachballs, but I thought (wishful thinking) it is because Spotlight is busy rebuilding index ...

OS-X near-death experience

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 02:08:27 -0400

It happened on Wednesday afternoon. I knew something is wrong with my MacBook Pro immediately - when I saw semi-dark screen, unresponsive machine - even mouse cursor was frozen - and heard fans blowing full speed, making the strange, clicking noise coming from inside almost disappear ...

OS-X does not freeze too often, but it can happen and as a matter of fact, I have seen it happen before during my almost two years with Mac, so I did not panic. As expected, the Alt-Option trick did not work, so all I could do was to force power off.

DMCA for Canada ? Act now !

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:33:21 -0400

I have got a letter from Online Rights Canada. I believe that what is about to hapen, may have pretty deep implications down the stream. Minimum thing I can do is try to help spreading the word.

Here is the message:

Dear Online Rights Canada Supporter,

We understand that the government will imminently introduce legislation to amend the Copyright Act - and it intends to push it through quickly. We at Online Rights Canada wanted to let you know what was ahead in the next few weeks, and what you can do to protect Canada from a new DMCA.

Mac Gems: VisualHub

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:49:53 -0400

I had this discussion with a friend where we both found out that there is surprising amount of very useful little apps and tools in Mac's software world that people use on daily basis and which are worth of spreading word about. Here is first of the programs I did not know about few months ago - and today I barely can imagine working without them.

VisualHUB is simple but very powerful video convertor for Mac. It is simple in the user interface:

Quote of the day

Wed, 21 May 2008 23:24:47 -0400

I've been writing a lot of code for the past 6 months. I have to admit, it is a welcome change from Word documents and PowerPoint presentations. Java, unlike text and graphics has a clearer definition of correct and finished.

From Software Is A Craft by Dan Pritchett

Unit testing debt

Mon, 19 May 2008 23:44:17 -0400

I had the pleasure to listen very interesting podcast where Scott Hanselman and Quetzal Bradley discussed unit testing named "Testing after Unit Tests". To increase the Google Karma of the information discussed I have decided to rehash and sum up few main ideas of this discussion.

Quetzal introduced the idea of "negative coverage" - meaning that if you have 88 % test coverage, you should not see this as something positive you have achieved, but as something missing (you miss 12 % of completion) - thus the title of this post.

Fix for iDVD 08 crash after the start

Thu, 15 May 2008 00:57:37 -0400

Today I tried for the first time the iDVD 08 with intention to create DVD version of the screencast - just to find out that the application dies right after the start. From the error report (thanks for that) the problem was in missing dependency Oxygene framework - a module similar to Windows DLL. Here is the error message:

[sourcecode language='xml']

Link (dyld) error:

Library not loaded: @executable_path/../Frameworks/Oxygene.framework/Versions/A/Oxygene
Referenced from: /Applications/iDVD.app/Contents/MacOS/iDVD
Reason: image not found

iMovie 08 and mystery of disappearing Project Library

Tue, 13 May 2008 01:12:49 -0400

As if the yesterday's Firmware update issue was not enough, I had very strange experience with iMovie 08. Suddenly, for no obvious particular reason the user interface became very unresponsive, I was not able to select project in project library. Switching Event library and Project windows on or off stopped working. Windows were not redrawn properly. Creating new project had no visible effect. I could not click on project to select it (well, technically I *could* click, but nothing happened). The time sliders in Events and Projects were either disabled or invisible ...

Mac firmware update

Mon, 12 May 2008 22:10:43 -0400

Today I (finally) found out that Apple pushed the long expected Java update with Java 6 for OS-X. Together with this update was another one - Firmware update. I installed both, but on next login, the same firmware update showed up again and checking the firmware version with System Profiler has shown that it was not updated.

So I installed firmware update again, and rebooted. But nothing happened again.

After some googling, I found out that the Firmware update - unlike all other updates does NOT really install itself. What it does is to download the Firmware update program. After you start this program (you can locate it by Spotlight), it will display instructions and asks for initiating shutdown. When machine reboots, you need to press and hold power button while it boots - until hearing long beep sound or seeing the sleep light rapidly flashing. After this, system shows update progress bar under grey apple and on finishing the update reboots again. Having done this, firmware is finally updated.

Catching up with Hanselminutes

Thu, 08 May 2008 22:31:29 -0400

Thanks to great weather, the walking season is in full progress :-) and that means I was able to add some more listening material to my podcast collection. I still keep track with all part of TWIT network - This week in tech, Security Now!, MacBreak Weekly and Windows Weekly - but that is nowhere close enough for both walking and driving ...

I have returned back to listening to Scott Hanselman blog (Hanselminutes) - mostly out of curiosity how did working for Microsoft change is very balanced and realistic view of technologies.

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, Third Edition is out

Sun, 04 May 2008 10:53:06 -0400

as long as you are Safari Books online subscriber - see it here.

Completely updated with XCode 3.x and Objective C 2.0. The screenshots even show the iPhone project templates, indicating the XCode 3.1 in some places. So far the only difference against reality I have found is not covering the XIB resource format (which is generated by default) and sticking with NIB. This blog entry has good explanation of the difference.

Rogers, Bell and Net neutrality

Sat, 03 May 2008 20:09:14 -0400

I do not blog on political issues, but this one is kind of different.

Couple of weeks ago I received a letter from my ISP provider (Rogers Cable), stating that days of unlimited downloads are over. More or less. Rogers capped the monthly transfer depending on your subscription plan, which in my case means maximum 95 GB / month for sum of upload and download.

They started to monitor the traffic in December and will start charging for the transfer exceeding the cap in June.

Easy way how to transfer really big files

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:42:32 -0400

What does really big mean ? In my case few hundred megabytes, up to 1 GB. Clearly, too much for email attachments - most providers caps them at around 5-15 MB.

Since we started doing screencasts, I need quite often to transfer work in progress - screen recordings, rendered MOV files between me and my co-host of the screencasts. I tried to upload the file to the company servers using VPN, but the speed of the secure uploads is nowhere close to being practical.

Quick online diagramming tool

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:28:22 -0400

I am using OmniGraffle for most of my diagrams. OmniGraffle is an OS-X platform replacement for Visio - only easier to use and better looking (in my opinion). On rare occasions I do not work on my notebook, it is quite useful to have free alternative that allows to create a diagram that does not look too awful, without going through the hoops of downloading and installing software. The bubl.us is exactly that tool.

A false "hang" of Finder

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:19:22 -0400

Yesterday, I have noticed interesting thing related to Finder and "beach ball of the death". Suddenly, for no obvious reason, the top menu became unavailable and cursor changed to beachball every time I moved it there. The Bluetooth mouse stopped responding. Finder stopped responding. All symptoms as if Finder would hanging ...

The cause of the issue was crash of unrelated application (iShowU, if you are curious), which brought up the crash report window. For some reason - maybe because it happened while changing spaces - the window was not visible. After closing the window, everything came back to life and even mouse reconnected (after disabling and re-enabling Bluetooth).

Agile development team member mantra

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:24:41 -0400

Introducing code review and pair programming has often an impact on relationships in the team - especially when a critique needs to be delivered. It takes great degree of experience on both sides to communicate defects in the code for both the reviewer as well as for the code author to get something useful out of it.

I found this at http://www.finetix.com/blogs/finetixblogs.html which can be helpful (page is 404-ing now, but I luckily saved it in Google Docs way back) :

Weird kind of spam that passes through Akismet

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:24:19 -0400

Spam has always been a big problem for all blogs. Fortunately, worpress.com provides wonderfull Akismet spam filter which is works amazingly well. I do have switched on moderation for all comments, to make sure no spam gets through, but without Akismet it would be impossible to manage it because of the spam volume. Since I started this blog (August 2006), it caught over 17'000 (yes, seventeen thousands) spam posts. In other words, about 30 spam comments a day or almost 60 spam comments per published post.

Heroes Happened ... here

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:50:06 -0400

Last week I attended one day event organized by Microsoft named Heroes Happens Here. It is series of introduction targeting new products: Windows Server 2008 (not out yet) SQL Server 2008 (not out yet) and Visual Studio 2008 (out and well).

I do not do much Microsoft development these days - my world is currently rather unevenly divided between Java (about 70 %), Web-ish technologies (XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, some Ruby) and OS-X (Objective C) which I am trying to squeeze in and get finally started. But Microsoft is such important platform that one must pay attention what is going on.

The dark screen club

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:19:44 -0400

It happened few days ago for the first time: after opening the lid on my MacBook Pro, the machine woke up, but the screen stayed dark. Whatever I did, I just could see cursor and nothing underneath. I had to resort to unthinkable - reboot :-(

Some research showed this is known problem - which is from certain point of view good, because many people found hopefully many workarounds. The more information can be found here, here and here. Very helpfull was also this page.

Quote of the day

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:02:02 -0400

Program managers want an infinite number of features in zero time, testers and service operations staff want zero features over infinite time, and developers just want to be left alone to code cool stuff.

From I. M. Wright's "Hard Code"
by Eric Brechner

Trying out Groovy with Oracle database

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:44:17 -0400

There is a saying that necessity is the mother of invention. Such necessity happened last week and forced me to try out the Groovy language.

The trigger was need for creating good data set for testing changes in a full text search. I had to locate few hundred of obsolete technical documents to be used as test data, dump the metadata as well as the BLOB data to disc, create INSERT sql scripts and loader that would from Ant pre-load the database with the test set and insert the BLOB's. It is fairly simple task, the issue were boundary conditions:

Couple of new podcasts

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 23:48:40 -0400

With the walking season almost upon us (so far only walks by streets, for the Ottawa River Pathway one still needs a snowshoes), it is time to replenish the stock of listening material. Here are some of the about 10 new podcasts that I tried out recently and decided to keep:

1) Pragmatic Programmers podcast. That was a pleasant find (thanks Milos). The topics covered are very wide - as are topics covered by the books. Average lengths is about half hour and the podcasts appear about 1-2 per month. I really liked the interviews with Michael Nygard and Johanna Rothman. The disadvantage of these podcasts is fairly miserable audio quality - the discussions are done by phone or something is wrong with the recording. Maybe I am spoiled by great professional audio of most of the TWIT network podcasts - but after Leo and the gang, this audio is really hard on ears.

Blue screen of the death on a Mac

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 22:29:51 -0400

Here it comes, first occurence: one of my VM's BSOD-ed on me yesterday.

To be completely fair, I did have experienced an occurrence of something similar twice in last moths: after wake up from sleep, the screen was collection of the color pixels, completely unreadable. After reboot, everything was normal.

I found out that the issue may be related to the "safesleep" mode. For now, I disabled the mode by

Finally over 16 :-)

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:32:36 -0400

I did not even notice that the visit counter left the 16 bit domain sometimes during last few days. Now it shows about 67 000 visits. Honestly, I am pleasantly surprised how many people found this blog worthy their time :-). Thanks to you all ...

Next boundary is of course 128K, 256K, 512K hits and finally a "Megahit". But that's far far away.

Rails 2 - really good tutorial

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:09:55 -0400

Akita published two part tutorial that leads you through building the famous 15 minute blog application in Rails 2.0. Read the parts one and two - or follow the screencast by the same author.

Thanks a lot, Akita - very nicely done !

The meaning of ORA-29907 error and the fix

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:17:52 -0400

I have first time encountered the error:

ORA-29907: found duplicate labels in primary invocations

after testing the change request we have implemented recently. The error message was not very helpful - I was not exactly sure which labels and which invocations ;-) - and as Oracle guru who actually does understand fine details of Oracle Text was visiting sunny India, I was on my own.

The change addressed an issue in repository search: users were asking for more flexible processing of full text search phrases: instead of e.g. searching for "unit test" search for document that contains both unit AND test. The text was parsed in Java and the SQL generator produced instead of something like

Starting Ruby on Rails 2 with Netbeans and AWDWR book

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 20:11:08 -0400

After some break, I got back to Rails land. The return is not as smooth as I hoped: since Rails 2.0, many things work differently and quite a few steps learned from "The Book" do not work any more. The issues are more often than not quite easy to fix, but there is quite a few of them.

All the following is related to NetbeansRuby build 6327 from Jan 26th with JRuby 1.1RC1

Showstopper issue with JRuby ?

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:36:26 -0400

After some break, I dusted off the Ruby to try out one interesting idea Peter presented yesterday that literally ASKS for Rails. So I grabbed the latest and greatest RubyNetBeans from Ruby Hudson. For some reason it stopped updates on January 26th so the latest version I have got was build 6327. It is bundled with JRuby 1.1RC1 and the Rails version that comes preinstalled is 1.2.6. Using the menu Tools -> Ruby Gems, they can be easily upgraded to latest and greatest 2.0.2.

On White Stuff and Other Disasters

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:29:13 -0400

Guess what are three most useful tools without which no proper Ottawa household can exist ? Snow shovel, snow pusher and car window ice scratcher. If the number was 4, the next would be snowblower. Up to yesterday, our family was in safe position being equipped with several shovels, four or five scratchers and one pusher.

Then disaster stroke: my son broke the pusher while moving away few cube meters of snow we removed from the roof. In case you do not understand - removing snow from roof is another favorite winter leisure time activity in Ottawa: almost everybody is doing it. Not that it would be so much fun, but because of the dreadful consequences - avoid it and you may end up like this guy.

Couple of Objective-C and Cocoa links

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:25:46 -0400

Lured by the iPhone platform, this is what I read in the evenings. Feels kind of funny: after 10+ years of Java/C# and almost as many years of C++ beforehand, I mostly lost my C instincts and C habits. Fortunately, I have also mostly lost my C++ bad habits as well.

The Apple site is definitive starting point - put the http://developer.apple.com/referencelibrary/index.html into your bookmarks. From non-Apple sources, very bookmarking-worthy is the Cocoa Literature and Cocoa Devcentral.

Versioning with Spring and Ant

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:11:33 -0400

This is post is NOT about version control in the sense of source code control. It addresses the issue how to easily tell which version of the Web application is running as well make sure that the same version is reflected in the snapshots performed by Ant. We have used this approach on several applications and found it quite useful.

The version I talk about is not the automatically generated version from VCS system (such as SVN revision). The version number is set manually.

iBatis, Date null values and Oracle

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:36:09 -0500

I better blog this before I forget what was the issue :-).

During daily run of unit tests, I started to receive this (very well explained) exception:

[sourcecode language='xml']
org.springframework.jdbc.UncategorizedSQLException: SqlMapClient operation; uncategorized SQLException for SQL []; SQL state [null]; error code [17004];
--- The error occurred while applying a parameter map.
--- Check the APPROVAL_TASK.insert-InlineParameterMap.
--- Check the parameter mapping for the 'scheduledDate' property.
--- Cause: java.sql.SQLException: Invalid column type; nested exception is com.ibatis.common.jdbc.exception.NestedSQLException:
--- The error occurred while applying a parameter map.
--- Check the APPROVAL_TASK.insert-InlineParameterMap.
--- Check the parameter mapping for the 'scheduledDate' property.
--- Cause: java.sql.SQLException: Invalid column type
at org.springframework.jdbc.support.SQLStateSQLExceptionTranslator.translate(SQLStateSQLExceptionTranslator.java:121)
at org.springframework.jdbc.support.SQLErrorCodeSQLExceptionTranslator.translate(SQLErrorCodeSQLExceptionTranslator.java:322)
at org.springframework.orm.ibatis.SqlMapClientTemplate.execute(SqlMapClientTemplate.java:212)
at org.springframework.orm.ibatis.SqlMapClientTemplate.insert(SqlMapClientTemplate.java:397)
... [/sourcecode]
Now the problem was that scheduledDate was null. Here is partial SQL map used:
[sourcecode language='xml']

How to generate and send emails using Spring and Velocity

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 23:29:38 -0500

Testing applications that communicate using email is more challenging than e.g. testing database access. Thanks to GMail and Spring, it can be done pretty easily.

Here is the scoop: I need to generate email notifying users about business events and after sending the email, store the content in the database. In real environment you will use corporate SMTP server and real email addresses of real people.
For development we can avoid bothering and spamming our customers by few simple tricks.

Spring PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer with Velocity

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 23:24:11 -0500

Part of the configuration magic is (one of several) Spring post-processors, that allows load the property file or files and refer to the values in these files inside XML configuration files. The rationale behind these is that property files are much easier to edit that possibly huge XML config file and using property values prevents repeating same value over and over again. With this approach, the following configuration:

[sourcecode language='xml']

Oracle SQLDeveloper and mystery of the missing host

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 09:48:07 -0500

If you work with Oracle database, a very good tool you should not ignore is the Oracle SQL Developer. It gives you much more power when it comes to manipulating data or managing database. I use most of the time MyEclipseIDE plugins, but when I need e.g. export data, the SQLDeveloper is way to go.

Today I tried it for first time on the Mac. I started to configure and database connection and was completely confused by the error message "Port must contain numerical value". Here was the dialog box:

Why so quiet

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:47:29 -0500

I have been sick for last two weeks, most of the time offline, listening to podcasts and audiobooks and doing more or less nothing. I have caught up with the backlog of episodes, saw lots of videos from Macworld.

Among the audiobooks I was listening two, some recommendations:

The Company is good parody of the corporate life. Starting with missing donut, it tells the story of a new hire in large corporation, governed by strange rules. It soon has an interesting twist - find for yourself. The book is available as MP3 CD, so you can save time ripping it to iPod.

Leopard 10.5.2 update

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:55:10 -0500

Apple released today the 10.5.2 update. After over a year and half with Mac platform (and over 2 months on Mac only work environment) I become fearless and installed update without too much worries :-). Year ago, I guess I would be quite concerned whether the Service Pack will or will not render my work notebook useless with unreparable registry ... I still remember the fun after SP2 got installed ...

Book recommendation: Java Concurrency in Practice

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 23:01:35 -0500

After long time, I stumbled upon something that is both educational and practical. Since Doug Lea's classic, this is very readworthy work on concurrency in Java world. It focuses on Java 5 features and addresses both Web applications as well as GUI apps - each group having their own share of concurrency related problems

Here is the Amazon page for the book - check the reviews. There is also a sample chapter available on the book's website. If you have Safari subscription, you can read it there as well.

Spring Framework - the biggest missing piece

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:04:18 -0500

I am having the pleasure working with Spring 2.x since about October last year. It is my return back to Spring, after first encounter in 2005 (counting only larger projects). Same as in previous project, it has been so much fun :-). So much fun in fact, that I was spending my evening playing with code and reading up what is new in 2.5, rather that blogging ;-)

I am still amazed about how nice is the whole thing designed and how many ways it can be used. It's flexibility is simply breathtaking. The price for the flexibility is complexity - sometimes it is not obvious what of many options should be chosen and what are all these options anyway :-).

Spring 2 MVC and ResourceBundleViewResolver problem

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:12:57 -0500

This one took some time to figure out - it is one of those problems that are obvious after you know the solution but hard to see beforehand.

I had the ResourceBundleViewResolver configured with Tiles 2, like this:

[code language='xml']

[/code]

and the view.properties was:

[code language='xml']
parent-view.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView
parent-view.(abstract)=true

about.url=https://miroadamy.com/WEB-INF/jsp/about.jsp
form.url=https://miroadamy.com/WEB-INF/jsp/form.jsp
list.url=https://miroadamy.com/WEB-INF/jsp/list.jsp

[/code]

It kept givin exception saying that /WEB-INF/jsp/list.jsp does not exist. Which it did. I tried couple of things, no result.

Using iBatis with Abator

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:02:44 -0500

I am back to Java and on mission of re-discovering Spring coolness - and in awe how much was added since 1.2 to current 2.5.1. Thanks, SpringSource and hundreds of contributors.

Data layer of the current project is based on iBatis and Spring DAO. We have decided to try out the Abator tool from Apache (part of the iBatis suite) to generate initial version of data mapping (as we inherited the database schema).

Only necessary part is abator.jar (there are no other dependencies).

Steve's latest ...

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:55:41 -0500

Of course, I mean the other Steve, Steve Jobs. My world is revolving around few Steves. Steve Jobs is usually Steve Nr. 2 - and no, Joel - the Steve #1 is definitely not Ballmer :-). But every year, for two brief occasions - Macworld and WWDC - Steve Jobs becomes Steve #1 for very large amount of people.

I was waiting with this post full day to allow the new-ity of the keynote sink in and reality distortion field to evaporate .... This is my take on the latest from Appleverse - and an answer to all who were asking whether I did already (pre)ordered and what :-). The answer is - nothing so far. I even have mixed feelings about the four Macworld news and here is why:

The best GTD tool is still a Wiki - part II

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:52:01 -0500

Continuation of this post.

As every TiddlyWiki, the main building block of the MGTDTW (MonkeyGTD TiddlyWiki, if you are wondering what kind of monstrous acronym is that) is a tiddler. And the only one building block because everything is a tiddler. How does this map to the GTD approach ?

The GTD workflow works with projects, contexts and actions. Action (or task or todo) is smallest building stone. The actions in GTD are really small actions. Every goal that requires multiple steps is a project - thus project has multiple actions. Context is an environment for executing the actions - e.g. Office, On-Line, Errands. Action can be in of the the state: "next" - ready to be started, waiting-for (something else needs to happen before you can start), future (something you may want to do later but not really a task right now) or done. OK, this is slightly oversimplified - for real explanation check the resources in Part I.

Safari Books Online and Lynda.com on iPod Touch

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 23:03:52 -0500

Last few weeks I have been using one application on iTouch much more than before: YouTube. Within my how wireless network, I can have an access to the videos on YouTube without sitting behind the computer - for example while walking on treadmill (I recommend walking slowly) or on a sofa :-).

Very interesting videos and actually worth the time spent on them are Google technical talks from Google channel. Few examples of videos I watched and liked:

Sony eReader format (LRF) viewer for the Mac, Linux and Windows

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 23:29:44 -0500

Thanks to Kovid Goyal, the Sony Reader's very own terrible software (iTunes wannabe) can very soon be decommissioned from my software collection. The libprs500 project, multi-platform solution written in Python works very well and allows to move data between Sony and your Mac / Linux / Windows. The UI is actually pretty decent, considering that it is not native Cocoa app:

You can also edit metadata, which is very important because of the limited screen space on PRS500. As added benefit, the application gives you a reader for LRF file format that allows reading unprotected LRF books on the Mac/Linux as well in addition to Windows. Here is a snapshot:

The best GTD tool is still a Wiki - part I

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 23:55:52 -0500

Did you notice that there are seasons for software as well ? Similarly as with other merchandise, there are times during the year when many more people suddenly decide they need that one application X. Luckily, this trend is not as extreme as with e.g. Santa hats or carved pumpkins, which are impossible to find in stores outside of the narrow window around Christmas and Halloween (I am grateful for that :-)). In software world, the most seasonal category is tax preparation software, for obvious reasons. Taxes, like the dentist checkup are not something you will be crazy even thinking about, unless it is that time of year ....

JRuby - keeping your database.yml really DRY

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:15:26 -0500

I am experimenting in JRuby and use database in virtual machine (VMWare Fusion). This is great because you can have multiple versions of multiple databases ready without polluting the notebook. One downsize though is that IP address of the database will change between the VM restarts.

First important setting in Fusion is to use the 'NAT' option rather than 'Bridged'. With NAT, you database host IP address will not follow the network. It was quite annoying to change it from 192.168.X to 192.168.Y everytime I reconnected at home from work or vice versa.

Free Microsoft Press E-Books !

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:44:27 -0500

Microsoft Press is handing out 3 books:

- Introducing Microsoft LINQ by Paolo Pialorsi and Marco Russo

- Introducing ASP.NET Ajax by Dino Esposito

- Introducing Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 by Laurence Moroney

Silverlinght 1.0 is probably a bit outdated (with 1.1/2.0 close), but the others should be good, judging by the authors. Dino Esposito wrote couple of very good books on ASP.NET and .NET.

See this blog for more details and download links.

Face(book) time

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 23:42:49 -0500

It is a tradition to do crazy and wild things on New Year's Eve. Some people play with fireworks and other noise making devices, other tend to celebrate the end of year by partying and drinking. I am not big fan of explosives and to sacrifice too many neurons to honor randomly chosen point on Sun's orbit sounds like a pretty silly idea. But still, I wanted to do something out-of-line on December 31st.

JRuby trunk - issues with JDBC connectivity

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 22:24:37 -0500

Following the book on JRuby I am discovering small differences when trying the examples. After installing activerecord-jdbc gem which is available in version 0.5, the shoplet application fails with Rails 2.0, as soon as you click on the 'About your application environment' link.

    => Booting Mongrel (use 'script/server webrick' to force WEBrick)
    => Rails application starting on http://0.0.0.0:3000
    => Call with -d to detach
    => Ctrl-C to shutdown server
    ** Starting Mongrel listening at 0.0.0.0:3000
    ** Starting Rails with development environment...
    ** Rails loaded.
    ** Loading any Rails specific GemPlugins
    ** Signals ready.  TERM => stop.  USR2 => restart.  INT => stop (no restart).
    ** Rails signals registered.  HUP => reload (without restart).  It might not work well.
    ** Mongrel 1.1.2 available at 0.0.0.0:3000
    ** Use CTRL-C to stop.

    Processing InfoController#properties (for 127.0.0.1 at 2007-12-23 23:13:25) [GET]
    Session ID: BAh7BiIKZmxhc2hJQzonQWN0aW9uQ29udHJvbGxlcjo6Rmxhc2g6OkZsYXNo%0ASGFzaHsABjoKQHVzZWR7AA%3D%3D--9791be23205677745e457b5bf62c50eba6e3813f
    Parameters: {"controller"=>"rails/info", "action"=>"properties"}
    Exception in thread "Ruby Thread11043409" java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.jruby.runtime.builtin.IRubyObject.setInstanceVariable(Ljava/lang/String;Lorg/jruby/runtime/builtin/IRubyObject;)Lorg/jruby/runtime/builtin/IRubyObject;
    at JdbcAdapterInternalService.set_connection(JdbcAdapterInternalService.java:122)
    at JdbcAdapterInternalServiceInvoker$set_connection_FS1.call(Unknown Source)
    at org.jruby.runtime.callback.FastInvocationCallback.execute(FastInvocationCallback.java:55)
    at org.jruby.internal.runtime.methods.SimpleCallbackMethod.call(SimpleCallbackMethod.java:70)
    at org.jruby.runtime.CallSite$InlineCachingCallSite.call(CallSite.java:158)
    at org.jruby.runtime.CallSite$ArgumentBoxingCallSite.call(CallSite.java:103)
    at org.jruby.evaluator.ASTInterpreter.fCallNode(ASTInterpreter.java:1092)
    at org.jruby.evaluator.ASTInterpreter.evalInternal(ASTInterpreter.java:345)
    at org.jruby.evaluator.ASTInterpreter.blockNode(ASTInterpreter.java:626)
    at org.jruby.evaluator.ASTInterpreter.evalInternal(ASTInterpreter.java:293)
    at org.jruby.evaluator.ASTInterpreter.eval(ASTInterpreter.java:168)
    at org.jruby.internal.runtime.methods.DefaultMethod.call(DefaultMethod.java:147)
    at org.jruby.runtime.CallSite$InlineCachingCallSite.call(CallSite.java:158)
    at org.jruby.runtime.CallSite$ArgumentBoxingCallSite.call(CallSite.java:76)
    at org.jruby.evaluator.ASTInterpreter.vcallNode(ASTInterpreter.java:1734)
    at org.jruby.evaluator.ASTInterpreter.evalInternal(ASTInterpreter.java:474)
    at org.jruby.evaluator.ASTInterpreter.blockNode(ASTInterpreter.java:626)
    at org.jruby.evaluator.ASTInterpreter.evalInternal(ASTInterpreter.java:293)
    at org.jruby.evaluator.ASTInterpreter.rescueNode(ASTInterpreter.java:1499)
    at org.jruby.evaluator.ASTInterpreter.evalInternal(ASTInterpreter.java:442)
    at org.jruby.evaluator.ASTInterpreter.eval(ASTInterpreter.java:168)

I found out that there is newer version of activerecord-jdbc, which is also renamed to activerecord-jdbc-adapter. It is important to uninstall the old gem as well as install the new one, otherwise the application will not work.

iPod Touch: which to choose - 8GB or 16GB ?

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 22:46:47 -0500

A friend asked me this question today - and here is my take on it (slightly expanded) answer to his email :-):

Hi Shane
I have purchased the 8 GB because I had no choice - the 16 GB versions were sold out at the Futureshop at the time, and I was too impatient to wait for two more weeks until delivered from Apple Online store :-).

From usage perspective - whether 8 GB is enough really depends how much video you plan to put on. I am not watching too much video content other than YouTube via WiFi (which is streamed and does not take any space on the device), so for me 8 GB is enough. Main reason why I am not watching video is that I usually listen while walking or driving and one cannot walk very far while concentrating on the screen without bumping into something (I tried that). With driving it is even worse (I did NOT try this one ...). If you are willing to sit while watching, the image quality of the device is surprisingly good.

Installation of Mongrel gem on JRuby

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 20:22:50 -0500

I bought the Ola Bini's eBook on JRuby and started to work through the examples. The installation of the Mongrel gem in JRuby (trunk revision 5341 fails with the following error code:

``` $ jruby -S gem install -y mongrel> INFO: `gem install -y` is now default and will be removed> INFO: use --ignore-dependencies to install only the gems you list> Building native extensions. This could take a while...> extconf.rb:1:in `require': no such file to load -- mkmf (LoadError)> ERROR: Error installing mongrel:> ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.[/sourcecode]> This error is logged in JIRA with id JRUBY-1771Workaround (possibly applicable for other gems is to explicitly specify the plaform:> [sourcecode language='ruby']> $ jruby -S gem install -y mongrel --platform jruby> INFO: `gem install -y` is now default and will be removed> INFO: use --ignore-dependencies to install only the gems you list> Successfully installed mongrel-1.1.2> 1 gem installed> Installing ri documentation for mongrel-1.1.2...> Installing RDoc documentation for mongrel-1.1.2... ```

Fix for the stalled downloads in Leopard

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 23:12:18 -0500

I was experiencing the occasional weird behaviour on downloading large files in Leopard: the download would stall, but after stopping/restarting (which can be done in Safari and iTunes), the download would continue. It was not very consistent, and I suspected the NAT router or even Rogers - some sites were occasionally having this problem, while other sites would not.

While playing with JRuby over the weekend, this happened again and pretty much prevented the gem installation - because the multi-megabyte gem index would not download from http://gems.rubyforge.org/. Strangely enough, same download would work on Tiger, on Linux and on Windows using same router - which pretty much excluded router as a cause.

Joel's gems

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 01:51:31 -0500

One of the most readable, original blogers out there, writing on software development practice and techniques - Joel Spolsky - published an excellent 3 part Talk at Yale: Part1, Part2 and Part3.

You will find out:

- what two computer science courses were most useful in his university studies
(one that was not really a comp-sci and one he decided to drop)
- why is it tough to be an in-house programmer
- why is the quality of many in-house systems so bad
- what is this "quality thing" anyway
- why is specification futile

Great Spring blog

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:42:54 -0500

in case you have not noticed - Interface21 aka SpringSource (great name change, btw) runs a blog with lots of hidden treasures inside.

Recent article describes new addition to Spring portfolio which is territory within my "watched space": enterprise integration. See the blog entry for more.

If you are in corporate space that is keen on "standards", the comparison of Spring vs EJB3 is very good article as well. Not that EJB would matter too much these days (IMHO) - but a nice read nevertheless.

An advice to a fellow developer - 2

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 00:21:35 -0500

The part 1 of the post is here

--- continuing ---

So back again - different coffee shop (Starbucks at Carling), freshly charged battery, Grande Latte and no internet connection (which means no distractions from emails and the Web) - here we go again, part 2.

If I should single out one or two technologies that I think I have neglected and should have paid much more attention to it would be the Web trio of HTML/JavaScript/CSS as one and the SQL as second.

An advice to a fellow developer - 1

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 23:55:20 -0500

We are recently interviewing quite a lot in anticipation of the great things coming. It is sort of similar task as we did year and something ago, but I enjoy this round much better. This time, rather than "we have to assemble the project team ASAP", we have the luxury of longer term view and focus more on hiring the people that will be great match to the company culture, will be with us for longer period and will grow with the company.

Absurdity of the DMCA

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:50:14 -0500

If the world of physical objects would governed with the same rules as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act does impose on all things digital, scissors would be illegal and you could end up in jail for manufacturing, and maybe even owning or using them. Crazy ? Well, see this presentation and judge for yourself.

This "law" is currently impacting our friends south of the border only, but it is very real that it will soon become a law in Canada as well.

How to show preview for CHM file in Leopard

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 01:02:32 -0500

The CHM files (Microsoft compiled HTML help files) are often used for eBooks. They are readable on OS-X using excellent open source CHMOX application. If you want to get more useful preview in OuickView than the not very helpfull static icon, get this plugin.

Download here
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...group_id=211847

How to install it: Unzip it, take the proper package for your system (the ZIP file contains several architectures, on modern Intel-based Mac's you want to use x64), put it inside

Excellent comparison of C++ and Objective-C

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 13:56:03 -0500

One of the languages that I managed to completely ignore for almost 20 years was Objective-C. I always saw it as less developed, dead-end version of C++ that has little perspective - despite that GCC supported it since early days. I guess I was wrong on two of three counts - that of little perspective still holds as long as you want to stay outside of OS-X platform.

One of the issues I had was strange syntax and that from not too many books on subject, they were

Taking the pain off installation

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 19:31:52 -0500

I was trying to set up an Oracle appliance - install the Oracle Express XE into a virtual machine. What (in my mind) should be smooth and straightforward process was something very different. I should have been forewarned warned after seeing the discussion ... To make long story short, the installer failed on three different Linux VM's I had available - because of unavailable dependencies, too small swap space etc, etc.

Over $500 worth of software for $49.99

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 13:10:23 -0500

As long as you are using OS-X, this is something worthy looking at: the MuPromo is running the annual bundle offer with (currently) 8 applications, worth $534 for the mentioned $49.99. The sale is on for 4 more days. The way how it works is that at certain marks, additional applications will be added to the bundle (for the same price) and will be made available to everybody who purchased the bundle. Including me :-). Currently, the sales are at > 1600, the next app will be added at 2400 (pretty sure it will happen) and the last one at 5000 (fairly likely).

Movie theatre for us, geeks

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 23:17:44 -0500

Did you know that for the price of two movie tickets you can spend the full month watching interesting stuff that matters ? This is true, as long as

a) your definition of of "interesting stuff that matters" is a bit on the nerd site of a spectrum

b) you do not get full package with your movie ticket - I mean popcorn + soda - just the ticket.

If you do go for popcorn, we should say "for the price of 1.2 movie ticket", because the amount we talk here about is $25 USD, which still is almost the same amount in loonies. As for the case a), do you find that an example of interesting stuff that matters is video tutorials about development in Ruby on Rails (22 hours), advanced techniques in Photoshop or even Silverlight essentials ? If yes, look at the Lynda movie library. It is subscription based service that offers over 2'000 tutorials on wide variety of all things digital, covering both deeper, developer level areas as well as more general user topics.

Trying out the Time Machine

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:27:26 -0500

Today I got to trying out the major feature of Leopard: the Time Machine. I was postponing it because I did not have proper external storage. Although I do have several USB disks sized from 100 to 260 GB, they are not empty and to clean them would take too much time that I currently do not have. Backing up on network drive would be technically possible - with some tweaking - but copying over network is always slower than USB2 or FireWire. Besides, the drives are so cheap nowadays: I have picked the 500 GB "The Book", Western Digital in Costco (Kanata) for $149. You have to agree that one cannot resist this price and product with this name (I have a weak spot for anything Book ;-))

iPod Touch: the best PDA I ever had

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 23:52:20 -0500

Why did I arrive to this conclusion so sudden ? After all, I have the iPod for over a month and half now and never really used it for anything beyond podcasts/music/videocasts.

The answer is simple: 1.1.2. The Firmware update that appeared during last sync upgraded the iPod to latest version which (in addition to obligatory bug fixes) brought the long needed possibility of adding an event or modifying an event in calendar or adding/modifying an address card.

How to show ZIP file content in QuickView (Leopard)

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 23:15:52 -0500

As time passes, I am discovering more little features that either fill in the still existing gaps from my Windows toolchain or add new features. Today, at Apple presentation about Leopard Client and Leopard Server I have heard great tip.

The QuickView in Leopard is extensible with plugins. One very obvious and very useful plugin is ZIP View that gives you content of the ZIP file in preview without unzipping it. This is finally a workable replacement for Ctrl-PgDn of TotalCommander that allowed to "walk into" archive and treat ZIP file as part of the file system.

Why it is probably bad idea to have Skype always on

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 21:17:20 -0500

no, not because of the memory it takes or CPU cycles burned (does not really matter when you have 4 GB notebook with Core2Duo).

Few days ago, a good friend from old country (well, technically not anymore as he also moved within the EU) made me aware of this presentation "Silver Needle in the Skype" (link points to fairly large PDF file) by Philippe Biondi, & Fabrice Desclaux.

To fully digest and fully comprehend the content requires way more time than I am willing to invest - and to make meaningful arguments for or against conclusions does require much deeper special knowledge. It is interesting view into the deep internals of how Skype works and also provides very interesting references to tools available for this kind of exploration. I am not going to stop using Skype just because there is a chance that Skype could possibly be a backdoor or something not so innocent. There can be after all perfectly honest reason for all the obfuscation and anti-disassembling measures - to protect the IP against competition. Or it can be in order to hide something else ? We will probably never know.

Phaser 6120N rocks !

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 22:08:47 -0500

Today I picked the printer I have mentioned yesterday - Xerox Phaser 6120N. It is somehow more bulky than the ML-4500, but boy, does it work !! From all available connection options (parallel port, USB, ethernet) I have of course chosen ethernet. Printer after switch on spent about 5 minutes doing strange and weird noises, initializing itself and then spit out a page with its DHCP-acquired network address.

To assign different IP address (so that it does not change) was very easy: go to http://192.168.x.x/ - whatever is printed on the status page and follow the Web instructions under 'Network'. Set new IP, disable the automatic IP settings, wait for printer reset (and new status page) and you can go on setting the clients.

Little pains of switching

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 23:31:34 -0500

I have been running the Unix only workstations for over a week now. During this week, I have managed to clean up and convert two Windows boxes to VMWARE virtual machines, but actually had to resort to use the VM's only in two cases. Everything else worked just fine.

The first case was requirement to review an non-trivial Excel file. Normally, Numbers does very decent job when it comes to loading Excel files and for the most the remaining cases, the OpenOffice (in it's more polished Cocoa version NeoOffice) works just fine. Well - as long as you do not open spreadsheet with pivot tables. In my case, the spreadsheet contained pivot tables and charts based on these tables. Numbers warned during import that this feature is not supported and the converted spreadsheet was very good looking - nicer that in Excel, but not quite so functional :-). Strangely enough, the charts were imported OK but lost the drill-down capabilities. After trying out the NeoOffice, the imported spreadsheet had retained some pivot capabilities of the original, but lost charts completely. The only resort was falling back to Office 2003 in virtual machine and using Excel. Fortunately one of the two VM's created from old hardware had Office 2003 installed, so that worked out OK.

Crossing bit boundaries

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 23:41:31 -0500

Today is a special day for this blog as two bit boundaries were crossed. This is post number 256, which means that I have used all 8 bit numbers for numbering and jumped into nine bit space. The byte is not enough any more - vive la 0x100.

Another boundary crossed today is number of hits as tracked by Wordpress (which does not count my visits). In this case the number reached and crossed was 0x8000 or 32768 decimal, which brings us to upper half of the 16 bit address space. From today, full 16 bit counter must be used - and it must be even "unsigned short int" :-).

Book recommendation: Seth Godin - Small is the new big

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:25:50 -0500

On previous weekend I had great opportunity to spend a lot of time listening to books and podcasts. The opportunity was long drive to Quebec City and back, plus the two days spent walking around with camera, taking pictures, enjoying the differences in style and architecture and listening to Seth Godin's book - Small is the new big.

There is nothing in this book that would actually require to drive almost 500 km one way - you can comfortably get the same benefit out of it without moving out from your favorite sofa, walking around your neighborhood or on a treadmill (hi Joel). The real reason being in the capitol of La Belle Province was Skate Canada - Grand Prix competion in figure skating. And while my wife was watching Jeff Buttle, Joannie Rochette and many others - which is her favorite leisure time activity, I was walking, taking pictures and listening - which is mine.

Leopard in business environment - week 1

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:11:33 -0500

I have already worked through full week solely on Mac and Leopard platform with excellent results. The productivity in using Java is actually higher, thanks to faster machine and Spaces allowing to have opened few Firefox windows with Spring documentation, terminals for Ant builds, Tomcat, Eclipse and Spype/Adium to keep in touch. Spaces is about as good as having multiple monitors - the ability of switching between both with mouse and keyboard fits well in my working habits.

My Essential OS X toolset - part 1

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 23:23:53 -0500

Last year, when I got my first Mac, it was a wild ride of discoveries and trying out new software. As result I have ended up with many programs installed that I do not really need or use. Fortunately, the uninstall process is as simple as install and there is no registry that could get corrupted, so it was not really a big deal. With the new one, I am going to be much more selective what I put on the harddrive and what not.

Ragioni per fare il grande salto

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 23:51:28 -0500

During the vacation, we stopped in small bookstore in Verona which was selling computer software as well. At the entrance, there was a poster showing smiling Finder's face, Apple logo and announcing reasons why you would want to make the big jump - il grande salto - to Mac platform. That is to explain the title :-)

Grande Salto is exactly what I did. Without too much preparation or notice. Since Tuesday evening I am happy owner of the beautiful piece of hardware (17 inch 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro with 250 GB HDD and 4 GB of RAM) that is greatly complemented by the amazing software collection (OS X 10.5, iLife 08, iWork 08 and many others) running on it. I spent Wednesday playing with it and between 'Wows' and 'Ahhs' managed to setup the core applications I need for work: several configurations of Eclipse (with and without MyEclipseIDE), Netbeans with Ruby, couple of gems and of course THE editor. Then transferred the sources, installed Ant, Spring, Tomcat and couple of opensource packages (e.g. Jakarta Commons). And on Thursday, I jumped right into the field, to the client continuing in development of my current Java project in the place where I left it on Monday with Fujitsu N5100 running XP-ProSP2. As a plan B, I had my old notebook also with me - but did not have to resort to using it.

Installing ATG on Fedora Core

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 15:56:30 -0500

Trying to install ATG on the Linux platform turned out to be not completely hickup-free. The default installer died with the following message:

    $ ./ATG2007.1.bin>
    Preparing to install...>
    Extracting the installation resources from the installer archive...>
    Configuring the installer for this system's environment...>
    awk: error while loading shared libraries: libdl.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory>
    dirname: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory>
    /bin/ls: error while loading shared libraries: librt.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory>
    basename: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory>
    dirname: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory>
    basename: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory[/sourcecode]>
    Fortunately, the fix was easy after I found out what went wrong: incorrect assumption about kernel version. To make it work, this "hack" helped:>
    [sourcecode language='css']>
    $ mv ATG2007.1.bin ATG2007.1.bin.orig>
    $ cat ATG2007.1.bin.orig | sed "s/export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL/#xport LD_ASSUME_KERNEL/" &gt;ATG2007-1.bin

None of this of course happens on Windows - oh, yes - the joys of not swimming with the crowd :-). You will encounter issues otherwise unknown - but also learn something in the process.

Macbook Pro arrived

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 23:11:06 -0500

The combination of 17" screen with Leopard's visual appeal is pure beauty.

Unlike assumed, the Leopard does NOT (yet) come preinstalled on hard disk. There is a DVD which will install it. I have decided to erase everything and start from scratch. The install took about 45 minutes and had zero problems. The only confusing part was that after erasing harddrive you also erase iLife and need to reinstall it. On the Web site, Apple shows an image of two DVD's - Leopard and iLife'08. There is however no iLife install DVD in the package.

On hardwood floors and software engineering

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 22:57:12 -0500

I am in the middle of a non-computer related project. Last week we have decided to get rid of carpeting in my home office and library and to put in the hardwood floor. My wife picked the wood and color, I picked the contractor, with my son's help we moved out the furniture and the renovation started. The most painful thing was shutting down and disconnecting all the computers and servers - only the lonely router is hanging on the wall and suffering the dust and noise of the power tools. As result, my family is now server-less and until we finish and connect them back, we have to survive using the notebooks only. Fortunately, I have at least one notebook available for each household member, except the cat. Even more fortunately, she (the cat) does not mind.

Going (mostly) virtual

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 23:39:09 -0400

With my new Macbook Pro on the way from China, I have started the big consolidation of hardware and software platforms. The goal is to improve the change management of software development environments, increase mobility and increase stability of the environments.

The way how I am going to do that is moving all "fragile" environments to virtual machines. My most fragile environment is Windows XP (I am still resisting Vista). What I mean "fragile" is well known "software rot" of the developers machine, caused by frequent installs and uninstalls (or upgrades) of components, tools, etc. After some time (which varies by the kind and frequency of installs), the machine becomes more and more sluggish, registry bloated and occurrence of weird things more frequent - up to the point that developer decides to blow off the Windows install and start from scratch.

Missing Java 6 on Leopard - is sky really falling ?

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 00:00:08 -0400

Since the big meow on Friday, lot of unhappy people had been talking and blogging about how terrible and unacceptable is the absence of the Java 6 from the Leopard. Some post were sounding very dramatic "I would not buy Mac if I only knew ..." - which is a bit silly. The Leopard's 300 new features were posted and touted and hyped for two weeks. Some of the "great" improvements were actually fairly modest improvements - so it was OBVIOUS that Java 6 is not going to be included because it would definitely make the list. QED.

Ordered a Macbook Pro

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 15:07:11 -0400

I have to confess, I did it :-). But no, I did NOT do it right away after Friday 6PM when Leopard became publically available. I managed to wait for whole 5 hours... partly because I was not sure whether the 6PM is local time or Cupertino time - and partly because the Apple store was stubbornly saying that my MBPro would ship with Tiger. At about 10:30 there was a "sticker" saying that all new Macs will be shipped with Leopard ... and after that, you have to agree I had no choice ....

Great solution for offsite backup

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:06:35 -0400

I have been using it for over half year now and was very happy with it. After I did today hear Steve Gibson mentioning (and recommending) it on Security Now!, I want to share my experience and add my vote of confidence.

The solution is Amazon S3 service (Simple Storage Service), fantastically affordable system to store your data securely on-line. You pay as you go - the size is unlimited and you are charged only for what you store and bandwidth you consume. Fantastically affordable means 15 cents for gigabyte-month storage and 10 cents for gigabyte transfer in / 18 cents for transfer out which will drop to 13 cents if you use it more. This means that to store my approximately 30 GB collection of pictures I need to upload them first (for $3) and then pay $4.50 monthly for storage - plus the download traffic. But of course, I am not using it for the images because I really need and like the nice album user interface which SmugMug provides. But to archive documents - this is just the perfect solution.

Good way how to improve your English

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:27:32 -0400

Audiobooks and podcasts can be an excellent way how improve your vocabulary and improve your English. If you are suffering of "written English only" syndrome, this may be an excellent remedy.

What is that funny syndrome ? Many people from information technology (including myself) actually had to learn English twice. During the late teens and university we managed to get reasonable command of written English, so that we could (and did) read the books. Mostly about computers, of course. With that, we managed to build decent vocabulary of words which we knew ONLY in written form, and for many of them have absolutely no idea how this could be pronounced. This had two consequences: we had hard time to recognize the word when we heard for the first time pronounced the way how it should be pronounced - and - which is even worse - often our own audio rendering was be a big surprise to native anglophones :-) ...

Book review: The Dip

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:30:49 -0400

Subtitled "A little book that teaches you when to quit and when to stick" by Seth Godin.

So what is the dip ? It is the strange valley after you start with something, causing that after initial quick success you will get worse before you can get better. Obstacles that you either overcome - or you quit. Seth explains that these obstacles are there for a reason - they separate those who want something badly enough from those who do not. We know them in various forms. Back at the university, the first 2 years packed with math were the dip. Very little of the math we have had to learn was actually really necessary - other that learn you how to think, how to study and in addition to that, separate those who really wants to have that Computer Science degree strong enough.

Book mini-review: Breaking Windows

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 23:15:23 -0400

I've spent lot of time today reading. I am catching up with my reading stack. Between stuff I've finished was: Breaking Windows : How Bill Gates Fumbled the Future of Microsoft

The impression ? Mixed feelings. Maybe I've expected something different. Lot's of details on internal politics and inner fights, not too flattering portrait of Bill G as control obsessed person with very questionable interpersonal skills. From technology perspective, very little what was both interesting and new. I can hardly tell how close to reality are the facts presented, but I often disagreed with the conclusion and analytics. Overall, it was probably worth the time spent on the book - the more you are into politics and relations, the more you may like it. If you are (as I was) expecting a view from more technology side and other stuff that matters, get another book.

iPod Touch eBooks reader - problem solved

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:31:03 -0400

As I noticed on Apple Website, the SDK for developing 3rd party applications for iPhone/Touch will be available in February. This solves the biggest problem - offline reading - because with SDK, storing a downloaded copy will be trivial. It also will most likely fix the annoying lack of updatability of calendar and add few more interesting apps.

It is only matter of time until the other eBook formats will be be readable on iPod - such as CHM or PalmDoc (non-DRM-ed version).

BOTD: Raganwald by Reg Braithwaite

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:10:03 -0400

Many good posts about programming, coding, business, aesthetics, with nice touch of wisdom, If you are into programming languages, do not miss this one, this and this. If you are more into process and management, try this and this or this. There also deeper and lighter stuff :-)
As Reg says about popular bloposts

One model for popular writing is that it panders to the reader's prejudices. Plain and simple. People like writing that validates them and especially their ideas.

Reading source code considered harmful ?

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 00:15:14 -0400

Every software developer will tell you how frustrating it is to trace problem in your application up to the point of third party library call (jar file or .dll / .so - make your choice) - and then have to resort to trial and error exploration, because you have no source code for that particular library module. For this very reason, most developers always prefer working with libraries or toolkits that comes with source code attached - if they have a choice. As a side benefit, these libraries are often free as a beer as well - but being able to understand the module is much more important as whether you have to pay license fee ...

Book recomendations: Google Story, The Tipping Point

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:14:25 -0400

Thanks to sudden memory jump in my iPod (from 4GB Nano 2gen to 8 GB iPod touch) I have enough space to load some books in addition to podcasts. I normally do not like abridged versions, but the weather is getting worse so I do not get enough walking time for full versions. These two were both 3-4 disc long audio books.

The Google Story is interesting if you are into history of computing - because it describes the probably the largest transition in computing history - the evolution of World Wide Web to a platform and the evolution of the company that made the Web actually useful. I still remember how much time did it take in 1997/1998 to find anything relevant when the best way how to do this were directories (in early Yahoo! style) or AltaVista and hours and hours of paging through the irrelevant results. Then in early 1998 my friend Rajeeva (I was working in New Jersey at Merrill Lynch) made me aware of that company with funny empty looking page and strange name Google :). And now, 9 years later the shareprice of GOOG is well over $600 - just unbelievable.

The craziest requirement I've ever heard about

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:12:46 -0400

Can you imagine a database table with 25000 (twenty five thousands) columns ? No, not rows, COLUMNS ! Now if you can do that, can you imagine displaying these columns in a datagrid (spreadsheet) on a screen ?

This is exactly what this guy is describing to be his requirements. I hope he did misunderstood or misread the requirements, because displaying 25000 columns on a screen is not only impossible - it is absolutely useless. How would the user interaction look like ? As one of the guys in the discussion pointed out, the table would be few hundred meters wide (assuming 1 cm cell and 19 inch monitor) ....

iPod touch - finally !

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:23:42 -0400

So, I have finally got it. Only the 8 GB version as the 16 GB were sold out, but I just could not wait for another week :-). After playing with it for about 1.5 hour, I like it even more. The readability of Safari Web sites is excellent - I started to put together some links. Did not try too many sites yet, but the Dzone reads OK :-). Also the PDF book reading is very good - but that is no news. I guess I will have to put up some internal Apache access to my PDF eBooks from my bed :-).

iPod touch - first impressions

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:51:23 -0400

No, I have not bought it yet, to big disappointment of Gabo and Shane - sorry guys. I wanted to buy it but all FutureShop stores in Ottawa are hopelessly sold out and on-line delivery is 7-10 business days - which I hope I will beat if these guys get new shipment (maybe tomorrow ?).

I played with two demo pieces though for about 30 minutes, and here are the first impressions:

Free eBook and audiobook on media business and distribution control

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:05:37 -0400

Gerd Leonhard, co-author of the Future of Music book is making an experiment with his new book - The End of Control. He is publishing the chapters of the book as they appear in PDF format as well as MP3's on his website. First two chapters - "Attention is the new currency" and "Copyright in the Age of Uncontrolled distribution" are currently available for download / reading / listening.

The books tries to address very important questions on how will the new media business function in environment with little control over the distribution channel. Attempts to enforce control with technical tools were not very successful - just recall the Sony rootkit fiasco's, hacking the HD-DVD and others. Currently, there is strong movement away from DRM and towards non-~~crippled~~restricted content.

Great way how to deal with telemarketers

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 22:39:03 -0400

and similar plague (for some reason they were pretty active last few days):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un_PjRXV5l8

I wish I could pull similar stunt - but I am not really a good actor and my accent would make it hard to believe. But it is hilarious anyway (video is a recording of phone call and contains text transcription ...). Enjoy.

Thanks to Peter M. for the link. I would link his blog or home page, if he had one :-).

Who said government's Web pages are boring ?

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 16:47:06 -0400

Look how creatively did French government - more specifically Ministère de la culture et de la communication - approach even such mundane subject as the 404 page :-).

BOTD: Figuring out computer science

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 23:18:18 -0400

It is all about deep questions and problems computer science. Including the question whether such thing as computer science actually exists. I thing it does, but have occasional moments of doubts - mostly when I read something related to real science :-).

What does Andreas Zwinkau (it is read as ts-win-cow, my anglophone friends ;-)) think about it, can be found http://focs.wordpress.com/

His comments are amazingly deep for such a young guy. I wish when I was getting my comp-sci degree (1981-1986) we have had the same wonderful things these young fellas have now: ubiquitous internet and really world wide web with Google that actually makes it useful, Linux and many other wonderful open source projects (Apache, Jakarta, Firefox, Eclipse - you name it). Can you imagine studying computer science in a world where the Web does not exist (yet) ?

BOTD: Michael's Thoughts

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 21:34:56 -0400

Good selection of news, observations and comments on stuff that is happening around. There seems to be pretty good match between what Michael considers blogworthy and my areas of interest - as I found there lot of interesting pieces.

It is mostly news - but not only news. It is worth browsing through archive, just to discover small jewels - like this one:

If you had a top 7 tips list for managing the flood of digital information, what would it be?

Like Netmeeting - only much better

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 03:10:30 -0400

My current client is multi-national company, headquartered in Ottawa with offices in USA and Europe. With teams all over the globe, the conference calls and network meetings are part of the game. This usually means Microsoft Netmeeting to share the screen and teleconference bridge for voice. Netmeeting usually works quite OK - except when it does not - for no obvious reason :-).

Thanks to Yugma, there is now better alternative. Yugma is Sanskrit word meaning "the state of being in unified collaboration" and also a name of a startup, offering teleconferencing product that aspires to unify colaboration between platforms. And they mean it, because their product runs on Windows, Linux and Mac and integrates with Skype to take care of the voice portion.

Free PDF ebook 'Build your own Ruby on Rails Application'

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 23:09:17 -0400

For sixty more days (actually 59 days and 17 hours as of Time.now, or if you prefer to speak Javaish rather than Rubyish, new java.util.Date()) you will be able to download free PDF version of the book by Patrick Lenz Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications - courtesy of nice guys of Sitepoint.

The book download page is here, no strings attached - all it will cost you is disclosing an email address (book download link will be emailed to you) and bandwidth to get the 20 MB PDF. Mine is downloading right now, so I cannot tell anything about the book yet. It has 447 pages and from the table of content it looks like solid beginner's book.

Petstore for Ruby/JRuby

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:27:37 -0400

There is - after all - a Petstore implementation for Ruby. Somebody asked a question at the DZone and the response posted by Raphael Valyi was:

Re: Is there a Pet Store in Grails/Rails?

I'm speaking here for the Rails (JRuby) side:
there is actually a petstore, it can be found there:
http://viewvc.rubyforge.mmmultiworks.com/cgi/viewvc.cgi/?root=tw-commons

Some guys used it to compare C-Ruby vs JRuby performance:
http://www.nabble.com/JRuby-vs-MRI---Petstore-shootout-t4289470.html

Ruby is in top ten programming languages

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 23:04:14 -0400

According to the TIOBE Programming Community index (which gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages), Ruby jumped 3 places and made it to top ten. Congratulations !

If you look closely on the trends down on the page, the dynamically languages popularity has risen over 3.6% during year period. Which is A Good Thing (TM).

Should I make my personal Top Ten of the programming languages, ordering languages by my degree of comfort of using the language, the language beauty (which is, in the eye of the beholder ;-)). Factoring in also how much I do enjoy reading/writing code in that language and it's usefulness from both personal as well professional point of view, the index would look like this:

Microsoft will ship MVC for ASP.NET ?

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:00:05 -0400

From Scott Guthrie's interview on .NET futures

SG: We’ve seen demand for an MVC framework on two fronts. One is for even more testability, having the ability to completely mock-up a request. We’ve also always seen with ASP.NET that some people like having the server control, postback model; some people say, “I just want absolute control.”

The MVC framework we’re coming up with is a fairly simple MVC model, it’s very clean, it’s a front controller model, and it integrates very well into ASP.NET so you can use ASP.NET forms authentication, session state, security, personalisation, caching, all the standard features, but with an alternative to the postback model where you have a more traditional controller-view separation and have complete control over your HTML.

Adding week numbers to Google Calendar

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 11:57:25 -0400

If you live on week cycles, it is quite nice to see the week number in your calendar. It is not (yet) provided as standard feature in the user settings for my calendar solution of choice.

An obvious solution is to run user script in the browser that will decorate the calendar page - using the fabulous Grease Monkey. The user script to install (after installing the plugin) is here.

It works, but ... However I admire the power and possibilities of the user-scripts, it is fairly heavy tool for such simple thing. My Firefox install is pretty large thanks to variety of developer-oriented plugins, and I do not want to slow it down even more. Another issue with scripts is potential security implication - recently (as you will see on the script site) a malicious user started to upload scripts stealing cookies. What this means for ~~slightly paranoid~~ security-aware person like me, is to read and understand the source - and that is way too much trouble.

Quote of the day

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 00:02:18 -0400

Experience is what you get when you did not get what you wanted.

Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things.
They are there to stop the people who do not want it badly enough
They are there to stop "the other people"

Randy Pausch

If you want to watch and listen to a lecture by professor of CMU Computer Science that will teach you things way beyond realms of software engineering, check this video.

Oracle 10g XE - nice surprise

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 11:22:04 -0400

As part of current project I need to test some ORM frameworks and for that, you need a database. In this particular case, database equals Oracle. I need a local instance to be able to work outside of the customer's location.

On my notebook, I have already installation of MySQL (for all the Rails stuff) and SQLServer (for ASP.NET). Plus few lightweight databases (meaning that they do not really need a server) such as sqlite3, Derby and HSQLDB). I was very hesitant to add another instance and for some time tried to do the work with MySQL - but differences in SQL and most importantly the way how the CLOBs and BLOBs are handled convinced me this is a bad idea.

Book: Softwar - an intimate portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 21:54:31 -0400

This is blog entry I wrote over a two years ago - before this blog has even started. Now I found it on the disk during cleanups and found out it is still valid. The iPod mentioned was my first, now long dead first generation Shuffle.

Here it comes:

Spent most of Friday night and part of Saturday reading this book. I did not really expect to finish it, considering the size (~ 500 pages) and the fact that I am not such a great fan of Oracle products - especially not the Oracle Apps. But it turned up to be way better that expected. I mean the book, albeit I partially improved my opinion about the 11i. Technologywise, it is still kind a dinosaur, but now I can more appreciate the sheer size of the problem these guys were trying to address. But back to the book.

BOTD: The Reader

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 22:06:21 -0400

Today's Blog of the Day is "The Reader".

Everything about ebooks and readers - all the stuff I like. See at http://wowio.wordpress.com/

Here I discovered that Sony is assumably preparing new version of reader - PRS 505. From the changes that should be included, none is IMHO really so important. The memory capacity of the reader with SD cards (which are reaching 8GB these days) is much bigger than you ever will need. If I should pick some enhancements hat would make a huge difference, it would be:

Webbits 2007-06

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 23:12:09 -0400

Few nuggets from recent surfing and reading newsfeeds:

A very nice explanation of differences between Ruby Gem and Rails plugin in Arun Gupta's blog

The community seems to be still fairly divided on the "Is Vista good or bad" ? For the laters, read the story from the corporate IT point of view. I still have not found any good reason to upgrade :-).
Good story of how the experience of joining a project should not look like

Spring example Petclinic on Tomcat 6

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 23:07:37 -0400

If you try to deploy one of the Spring 2 samples included in the Spring framework source distribution - Petclinic on Tomcat 6 (6.0.14), the web application does not get loaded and fails with errror. The cause is the ClassNotFound exception for the class org.springframework.instrument.classloading.tomcat.TomcatInstrumentableClassLoader, more precisely:

SEVERE: LifecycleException java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.springframework.instrument.classloading.tomcat.TomcatInstrumentableClassLoader at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)

Experiment with Sony Reader battery life

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:00:42 -0400

After returning from holidays with completely drained PRS 500 (see field test blog entry), I have decided to test what is the battery life of the fully charged reader without any usage at all. It was easy as I was pretty busy after being away 3 weeks.

The reader was fully charged on 29th of August (24 hrs with wall charger). After that, I did not use it at all, only checked every 2-3 days the status (the reader was switched off except this brief check). As of Wednesday morning, September 19th the battery was drained and the reader switched itself off right away (it is being charged as I type this). This gives us about 3 weeks of available standby time, without any use from page turning, until the fully charged battery is completely drained.

Java Web tools: Eclipse WTP, Netbeans and MyEclipse

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 23:10:51 -0400

Part of the technology upgrade in the three Java based projects is also tool update. We have started with Eclipse version 1 and gradually moved up to the currently used Eclipse 3.0. The build and deployment process was based on custom written Ant build script, which compiled, created WAR, deployed, undeployed, run the tests, created source snapshot - you name it. The Eclipse was used mostly as editor and debugger - using JPDA talking to Tomcat started in debug mode.

Field test of Sony eReader

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 23:00:41 -0400

One of the many gadgets I have packed for the summer vacation was of course Sony Reader and SD card with nice selection of texts. It was fresh and fully charged, so I assumed that I will be well prepared for the gaps in program during the following three weeks ahead of us and for the long flights over Atlantic.

Obviously, the flight was first moment where Reader was used. During the 7 hours, I spent about 3-4 hours reading. We flew through the night, but the overhead spotlight in airplane was more than sufficient and the letters were very well readable. I also enjoyed the almost non-reflexive surface of the screen.

The price of anonymity

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:18:40 -0400

The combination of software allowing anonymous access to the Net, not too competent police officers and laws not quite 21st century ready can be a very dangerous combination. According this story, the operator of the Tor node was arrested by German police ...

I am quite curious how be would situation like this handled in Canada. First of all, would it happen ? Would the RCMP be more technically up to date than Deutsche Polizei ? What defines the responsibility of an operator of server, that moves encrypted content ? I am not crazy enough to try it out just to find out :-) - so no, I will not setup a TOR node (even if I do admire this cleverly designed piece of software).

Quote of the day

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 22:08:14 -0400

First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.

Leo Rosten

BOTD: Good Math, Bad Math

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 02:09:48 -0400

Today's BOTD (Blog of the Day) is "Good Math, Bad math".

What it is about is summarized in its subtitle:

Finding the fun in good math. Squashing the bad math and the fools who promote it.

There is no need to add anything to this.

Only maybe an URL: http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/

Images from vacation are on Smugmug

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 22:17:23 -0400

For those of you who asked: I started to put up some images from Europe 2007 trip on Smugmug. Small subset of course (total amount with NEFs is almost 20 GB).

I will upload more as I get to weeding them out :-).

Quote of the day

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 01:36:08 -0400

Software problems aren't like mathematical problems. They have no clear boundaries or axioms and the problem domain is always shifting and evolving and changing. This fundamental difference ensures that while mathematical knowledge has a long shelf life, technical knowledge seems to last little longer than most popstars. And the changes wrought in programming are not just shallow refinements or surface innovations but fundamental changes wrought by order-of-magnitude shifts in the virtual landscape.

Good book on Spring Framework version 2

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:36:00 -0400

During my recent return to Javaland, I have noticed many improvements in newer releases of well established frameworks and toolkits, as well as many new ones. One such new release is version 2 of Spring framework. It is not really a hot news, because the final version of 2.0 is out for almost a year (October 2006), but it is new to me, because I spend pretty much all of last 12 months in DotNet, C# and OLAP worlds, with only brief visits to older Struts based, Spring-free Java projects.

New iPod touch as ebook reader ?

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 00:23:53 -0400

As the September 28th is approaching (the day when the new iPod touch will be available in Canada), I have a real dilemma: do I go with the "iPhone without the phone" or not ? The price $329 for 8 GB iPod is pretty high - compared to $279 for 80GB classic - which would allow me to carry all my music, some movies and all podcasts with me. On the other hand, the Touch has WiFi and can be used as pretty decent Web browser on top of iPod functionality.

Great article on data visualization

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 22:23:50 -0400

"Data visualization: Modern approaches" - great read, highly recommended. Available here.

Fresh cup of Java

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:28:40 -0400

Hi, all Java gurus inside and outside of Thinknostic - I have a very interesting problem. Imagine the following situation: we have three existing Java Web applications, written back in 2000/2001, based on open source libraries of that time: Struts 0.9/1.0 and JSP 1.x (no JSTL) with Tiles for Web layer, Apache Torque for ORM, early version of Quartz for job scheduling, Jasper Reports for PDF reports and Freemarker as template engine for email creation. The application has been (and still is) in production for almost 7 years and works great. Now the customer is expanding the functionality and wants add several Ajax features - in short, version 2.0 is on the table.

Double negative

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 19:58:15 -0400

A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day. "In
English," he said, "A double negative forms a positive. In some
languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a
negative. However, there is no language wherein a double
positive can form a negative."

A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."

Found on the Net :-)

Back again

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:21:13 -0400

After three amazing weeks, I am back again on-line - reading through emails and trying to sort out and process over 15 GB images. Shooting RAW has consequences :-).

Some of the see-worthy places and stories from the trip will start appearing here as the time permits to process my notes from the road. Stay tuned ...

Europe 2007 - 1

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 11:22:48 +0800

Europe 2007 - 1: Switzerland, Lower Engadin
#

The flight went pretty quickly. It was less than 7 hours, anyway. We crossed the night and the Atlantic in a short time and landed at 6 AM in rainy, wet Zurich.

The car I have retrieved from Europa car was Spanish Volkswagen make – Seat Leon. According the specification, it was a “medium size car”. And it maybe was, for European circumstances. For me it felt fairly small – our luggage did barely fit into the trunk. If we had more than two normal size and one half size cases, we would be in trouble. One small piece had to fit behind my seat.

Europe 2007 - 2

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 11:22:48 +0800

Europe 2007 - 2: Südtirol and Verona
#

Welcome to Italy: Verona
#

After the breakfast, we took off from Scuol direction Martina, via brief drive through Austria to Italy. If I would not consult the map, I would barely noticed the border crossing, because there was no passport control on neither of the Switzerland-Austria or Austria-Italy border. You will not really notice that you have left Switzerland either, unless you notice the prices on gas stations being suddenly in Euro. And you will definitely not notice you are in Italy for quite a some time as the villages will still look very German (or Austrian, if you wish), with signs in German (and often in gothic Schwabach letters). This region – south Tirol aka Sud-Tirol aka Trentino – Alto Adige – is ethnically and historically part of Austrian empire and is part of Italy for less than 100 years.

Europe 2007 - 3

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 11:22:48 +0800

Europe 2007 - 3: Pisa, Tirrenia and Firenze
#

Pisa and Firenze
#

After wonderful evening in Verona, the next day after a very good breakfast (they even had whole-wheat breads), we spend few hours in the garden of the hotel and taking pictures of the peacocks and around 10:30 we left towards the coast, south and the leaning tower.

On vacation

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:13:48 -0400

In case you were wondering why the blog went silent - I am touring Europe (Switzerland and Italy). Will post some stories after return ... and pictures on Smugmug - promise !

Greetings from Rome (just made it here tonight)

Sony eReader - charging problem fixed ?

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 01:32:11 -0400

With the latest software update (I am now on 1.0.3), one of the issues to be fixed was the "charging indicator behaviour". Looks like it was indeed the software bug. After upgrade, the indicator jumped to full 4 bars and stayed there. Beforehand, I had usually only 3 bars regardless how long it was charged.

Time will tell - I am taking the reader with me to Italy to get some mileage out of it, during transatlantic flight ...

Sapkowski in English is out !

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:05:54 -0400

For all my fantasy-loving friends who consider reading in Czech or Polish too inconvenient: the first book of the grand master Andrzej Sapkowski in English is out. It is book of short stories about Geralt, the Hexer (or Witcher if you want), who is the main character of the 5-book saga with the same name.

You can get it on Amazon.

Web based task manager with offline mode - finally !

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 23:08:50 -0400

Yes, such nice tool really exists and it's name is Remember the Milk.

At first sight, RTM is not extremely visually appealing, but very nice and very usable Ajax application. After some time using it, you may better appreciate the "less is more" design. The offline access is thanks to Google Gears magic. Just flip the small green arrow (which will download your data to local cache) and voila - you can go offline, keep editing or adding tasks - your changes will be remembered. Later on, after going online the changes will be synced back.

Most important event of the year

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 23:30:15 -0400

I have been pretty quiet during last month. Few reasons why, none of them business related. The summer is not the season where people in our industry are incredibly busy - that's what winter is for ... and end of March, government fiscal year end ;-). We had family visit - my two nephews were staying with us for few weeks. So instead of blogging, I was spending evenings with them and weekends as a tour guide around Ottawa's attractions. I have even - finally, after 9 years in this country - overcome my dislike for really long car trips and visited Niagara Falls.

End of democracy - or how I turned into platform

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 23:20:32 -0400

Once upon a time, there was an application named Democracy Player. A really neat one, capable of downloading videos from internet and playing them in multiple formats. It even can download YouTube videos.

For some reason, the Democracy Player name was replaced with a new name. My name. The Democracy Player will be know as Miro. I have not discovered why this name was chosen, or if it means something. Maybe the guys responsible for it had similar thoughts as my parents over 40 years ago :-).

Limits of virtualization

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 23:14:54 -0400

It's been over 10 months since we have started to seriously use virtualization and run Windows inside virtual machine to ease installation and configuration pain. It starting first as convenient measure of isolation two different development environments (.NET 1.1 based and .NET 2.0 based) and avoid "crosspolination" in the data analytics project. At that time, my expectations what would be the limits of what you can or cannot do in virtual environment were mostly around performance, responsiveness and device support (USB especially). As it turned out, all of that actually worked much better than I have ever expected. With new versions of Parallels, the performance is very good and user experience (user means fellow developer) is barely noticeable difference against developing on host system. Assumed that you have decent dual-core system with 2 GB of RAM, of course. Using Parallels gives you the added benefit of moving the virtual environment between Windows, Mac and Linux hosts, which is very convenient.

Smugmug "processing image" - follow up

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 22:33:32 -0400

In the previous article I have mentioned the potential issue with some uploaded images hanging in state "Processing image" for surprisingly long time after upload and expressed hope that there is some background "catch it all" process that would take care of all these. As it turned out, there is. All uploaded images that were haging in the processing stage turned up to be fixed by next day or so (it was about 10-20 images out of about 3-4 thousand).

First week with SmugMug

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 22:44:14 -0400

Week ago, my SmugMug 14 day trial period expired and (as expected) I signed up for the 1 year service. Here are my first impressions after over week of use, with over 3000 uploaded photos and 6.8 GB disc space consumed :-).

Good news is - it really works as advertised and I still like it a lot. I have not really tried many of the features, but what I did try, worked as expected. The uploader (I am using the default, Java applet based drag-and-drop universal uploader) is very friendly - the small status windows shows not only status of the upload, but also the thumbnail of the uploaded image.

Total Comander version 7.01 final is out

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 22:48:37 -0400

go and get it - at http://www.ghisler.com/

It got nice visual upgrades - look and feel and icons are gently nicer and more XP-ish. Plus many other new features. Upgrade is still free for registered users.

If I should pick one single most useful program I ever used on any computer system, Total Commander would be clear winner. I do not remember when exactly I purchased the license - I guess sometimes around 1994-95, when it was named Windows Commander. Since that time, I was using it pretty much every day (except few short periods I was working exclusively on Unix). I still use it every working day (as I often spend weekends on Mac platforms).

Book review: Dreaming in Code

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 19:09:46 -0400

Thanks to long weekend and more quiet time in last couple of days (Happy 140th Birthday, Canada!), I managed to read something else than Ruby-ism/Rail-ism. Among others, I finished the Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg, a book promising to explain why software is hard.

It is pretty tough question to answer. The way this books tries to address it is following the story not very well known open source project named Chandler through it's beginning over period of 3 years. Chandler was - and still is - developed by the OSAF - Open Source Application's Foundation, founded (and financed) by Mitch Kapor, who was before the founder of Lotus Development Corporation and designer of the "Ur-spreadsheet" Lotus 1-2-3.

.NET on Linux faster than on Windows ? Hmm

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 22:28:29 -0400

An interesting article on JavaLobby caught my eye today: Do .NET Applications Run Better on Java?

Normally, knowing the not exactly impartial focus of the Java centric site such as JavaLobby or theserverside.com, one should be careful when reading how much Java outperforms .NET. The bias works the other way too - just look at the Theserverside.net or other .NET centric side how much is C# superior :-). With that in mind, I looked at the technical report.

Search for perfect online photo storage

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 23:46:19 -0400

One thing that is on my Someday/Maybe list for quite some time is to get some off-site storage for my digital images. They are reasonably safe on RAID-5 NAS with a copy on USB disk, but what is missing is off-site copy. At minimum, a remote backup, ideally with an UI resembling something like Aperture or Photoshop Elements or Shoebox: photo organizer with Web intefarce and remote storage. So that in addition to have offline backup I would have an option to work with images from any location.

Netbeans Ruby IDE - great tool getting even better !

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 23:08:11 -0400

I have spent last two days (and few evenings before) playing with Rails and using Netbeans Ruby IDE. What a great experience ! Unlike before, it is so much easier to have really good debugger that allows put breakpoints not only into the Ruby code in controllers and model - but even into the RHTML view files !

Netbeans team works hard on improving the tool. With latest build - 2434, I have noticed great addition - Rails console. The IDE had IRB window even before, but the environment did not load the Rails context and would not recognize e.g. ActiveRecord. Now with latest build, everything works like charm.

Quote of the day

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 22:25:19 -0400

The realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs.

-- Maurice Wilkes

What is so worthy mentioning on this obvious stament, describing fate likely shared by many thousand or milions of software developers worldwide ? Not much, only the date. According this book (which is a pretty good read btw),
Sir Maurice came to the sad realization mentioned above in the year 1949.

Adding image to link with CSS only

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 08:55:27 -0400

As seen in the video at http://sciencehack.com/videos/view/IDT2RMJNvSA#searchkeywords

The source code:

Very good explanation is in the video mentioned above. So far so good - unfortunately the technique, however cool it is, does seem to work in Firefox only. Or at least it does not work in the still most prevalent browser on the Net.

Here is how it renders (properly) in Firefox (tested with 1.5)

and here is how it looks in IE7:

BOTD: Railscast

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 22:06:03 -0400

Today's blog of the day is not really a blog, but a screencast. Dedicated to Ruby on Rails, the Railscast offers (as of today) 46 episodes of short, targeted practical advice on various aspects of Rails development.

Unlike some other screencasts who try to record the screen action as MPEG movie, this one is perfectly legible. In addition to the Rails enlightenment, you can also enjoy the speed and aesthetics of using TextMate - with many great Ruby editing shortcuts and beautiful OS-X typography.

MSDN Documentation - the follow up

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 20:01:02 -0400

Judging by the number of hits, Joel (and myself) are not the only people who would like to see nicer, better and faster MSDN documentation. As a very nice surprise, some of the feedback came directly from the people than actually can do something about it - like Darren Parker from Microsoft and Anand Raman from the Sandcastle project. Rob Relyea suggested and interesting looking tool based on XAML.

Thanks everybody - it is always nice to find out that even really big companies listen to the developers and want to address the problems. It almost feels like OpenSource experience where (it was few years back) we have encountered an issue in one of many Java templating libraries, posted to discussion group a question and few hours + several emails later had patch for the bug from the library creator :-). But back to the topic.

MSDN Documentation - the worst in class ?

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 22:41:36 -0400

Did it ever happened to you that you were using some tool day after day - and never realized it's pretty big deficiencies ? Until somebody, coming from different background pointed out what everything is wrong with the tool ? Before that moment of revelation, the issues were just inconvenience, but right after that they became real annoyance ?

Exactly this happened to me last week and the credit for pointing out what is wrong with MSDN documentation (and the "standard" .NET documentation format in general) goes to Joel :-)

BOTD: Strange Maps

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:39:44 -0400

Today's Blog Of The Day is named Strange Maps, which strangely accurate name. If you have are into maps, or information visualization - or combination of both, do NOT visit this link, because you risk sticking there for few hours :-).

Some ideas presented are quite original and wonderful: for example the map of the USA, having instead of names of the states name of the countries with same GDP as the state. You will find out that Canada == Texas, France == California and Hungary == New Mexico. Or a transposition of the map of Europe and map of Middle Earth - this places Rohan to southern Germany (not a bad match), Isengard is Hamburg. The Mordor ended up in Transylvania with Mount Doom in Romania, Minas Morgul in Hungary and Minas Tirith approximately in Austria.

Swing-ing back - to Netbeans

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 22:22:35 -0400

It has been quite some time since I used a Swing based Java application. Compared to beauty and close-to-native feeling of Eclipse based application, Swing just did not feel right - it looked differently and behaved a bit differently. For long time, my desktop was Swing-free (not counting the JDK demo). Not any more, though.

What made me to reconsider, is new release of the Netbeans v 6. In the latest milestone builds (M6 to M9), Netbeans team built amazing Ruby development environment. Compared to Ruby plugin in Eclipse, it has way more functionality, better debugging, really impressive editing support and very cool Rails extensions. The full description of new features is here.

Game over, back to business

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 20:34:51 -0400

The wild ride is over and the city gets back to normal. I wish we had won the Cup, but - Ducks were playing pretty good and found what worked on our team. Thanks, Alfie and the Sens - for all the great moments. You were fantastic. There will be another season in few months and another chance to bring the cup home.

On the positive side - it is good to have 2-3 more free evenings a week, now - when there is again nothing on the TV :-). Time to start catching up with neglected podcasts, blogs and feeds.

Strange charging behaviour of Sony Reader

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 22:41:12 -0400

Despite pretty impressive battery life - which is btw *nowhere* in the range of advertised 7500 page turns - over period of few months I have noted that the charging of the reader behaves kind of funny. Sometimes, even after being plugged-in for 24 hours, the battery indicator stubbornly stays on two squares out of four. Other times, right after connecting, it jumps right to full charge.

It is hard to really measure these things as the battery depletion is very slow on reading and I do not really listen to music on this device (that's what iPods are for). I am not the only person who noticed this behaviour - Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte, who enhanced my favorite podcast Security Now! to be an unofficial eBook Sony Reader news exchange :-) have seen the same thing (search for Sony). Btw, Steve and Leo - thanks for doing the eBooks plugs - I appreciate that a lot ...

Martin Fowler's article on Ruby and Microsoft

Sun, 03 Jun 2007 22:25:44 -0400

There has been lots of interesting news related to Microsof and Ruby recently, mostly about DLR's support of dynamic languages. One of my favorite tech authors stirred the waters once again last Friday with an article that goes beyond this and tries to paint larger picture of the uneasy relation between Ruby platform, Agile movement, OpenSource Community and Microsoft.

One quote from the article:

The attitude to open-source is a large part of this problem. When Java appeared there were yawning gaps in its portfolio, and worse some dreadful standard tools in its API (visions of Entity Beans spring to mind). Those gaps and bad ideas were fixed by the open-source community. Ant gave us a build tool, EJB was displaced by Spring and Hibernate. .NET has also got its gaps, and again the open source community has stepped up to fill them. Yet Microsoft refuses to collaborate with these efforts, even seems to go out of its way to undermine them. I was particularly sickened by Microsoft's reaction to NUnit - an excellent XUnit testing tool, elements of whose design were lauded by Anders Hejlsberg at OOPSLA. Microsoft ended not just bringing out a competitive library, but deliberately making it incompatible. That's not the kind of reaction that encourages people to invest their time in the platform.

Code in Ruby under ASP.NET: coming soon ?

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 22:33:27 -0400

The support for using dynamic languages such as Ruby or Python to code ASP.NET pages was announced for future versions of ASP.NET in the ASP.NET futures.

Unless I am mistaken, it means that we eventually will be able to write control event handlers in Python or even Ruby - which is certainly more fun than in VB.NET or even in C#, but is it really so important ?

What would be *really* cool if the whole ASP.NET become more agile and more "rail-ish". To make overall architecture more flexible - such as departure from not very flexible page-centric architecture towards MVC and routing. Maybe some version of ActiveRecord ? Or even multiple (and pluggable) template languages ? That would be really something.

iTunes U: Great beginning

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 22:16:42 -0400

With latest iTunes update, quite silently, a very nice new feature appeared. Apple started to offer for download lectures from many universities, with wide selection of topics: from environment through politics to mathematics and computer science. Most of the lectures are videos, but you will find also audio tracks - albeit for some topics, audio is quite problematic. Can you imagine doing e.g. differential equations in audio-only ?

The best feature - the lectures are free downloads. See more details here or on iTunes.

Why blogging is important

Thu, 31 May 2007 23:06:24 -0400

Joel Oleson is suffering if you do not blog ! Sounds strange ? Read the article Join the SharePoint Blogging Revolution!
at http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2007/05/25/you-don-t-blog-i-m-suffering-because-you-don-t-blog.aspx

He makes several very good points - which have very little to do with Sharepoint - but I think the best one is helping the "organic indexing" of the Web space and helping the search engines out there better rank content. I wrote about this while ago.

Reading blogs and feeds offline

Wed, 30 May 2007 19:30:18 -0400

It happened! After starting my preferred feed aggregator - Google Reader I have noticed the new feature that sounded so good that I almost could not believe it: offline reading. Using new plugin - Google Gears, the reader can cache 2000 items locally and allows you to go offline and read the news, blogs or whatever you have subscribed to absolutely anywhere.

The installation starts with this screen:

Quote of the day (Martin Fowler)

Tue, 29 May 2007 22:33:38 -0400

"Corporate IT is dominated by bloatware. Time and time again we have to deal with expensive software purchased on golf-courses that just get in our way while sucking funds and development hours. Technologies that make it harder for programmers to do what they like to do best - make a difference for the businesses they are supporting. "

-- Martin Fowler

BOTD (blog of the day): Frans Bouma's Blog

Mon, 28 May 2007 22:53:00 -0400

A brief look at my Google Reader subscription list made me aware that I have added to my reading list a loooot of blogs, newslist and so on. Unfortunately, they are not organized very well and should be properly placed into folders. In a process of doing that, I will put some of the interesting blogs here.

For today, it is Frans Bouma's blog - focusing on .NET and Microsoft technology platforms. From the most recent good articles, look at why API's should not be designed by scientists - discussing and comparing various ways how the database level paging is handled in various databases (MySQL, PostgreSql, DB2, Oracle, SS2005), or read Frans' comments on Entity Framework being cut from .NET 3.5 - which is sad, but IMHO fairly accurate summary of the recent development. See for yourself.

Online diagram drawing tool

Sun, 27 May 2007 22:33:00 -0400

Flash based, allowing create simple structures like graphs, org-charts, system diagrams. Diagrams can be exported to XML and saved locally - or converted to JPG or PNG on-line. Nice Web2-ish look and feel.

See bubbl.us for more.

New version of Del.icio.us extension for Firefox

Fri, 25 May 2007 22:14:12 -0400

Wonderful thing about Firefox extensions is the autoupdate feature. Go to Tools->Extensions, select Find update and for all installed extensions you get the latest and greatest .... usually.

One extension where the update did not work was the Del.icio.us button for Firefox. I was happily using version 1.2 of the plugin and would never found out about the update, if I had not set the new workstation. The latest version 1.5.29 did not show in the updates. Which is too bad, because it is so much better ...

DHH on RIA

Thu, 24 May 2007 20:46:02 -0400

DHH is (obviously) David Heinemeier Hansson (the creator of Rails) and RIA (in this context) means Rich Internet Applications. And here is the quote:

I think there's always room for new ideas, but I don't think that the whole fuss that's currently going on about RIA, rich Internet applications, is justified. I think we've been through this cycle so many times before that it in some ways amazes me how history seems to be ignored. We went through this with Java applets, they were going to rule the Web. Everything was going to be in a Java applet. HTML and CSS is history. And Flash came around, and Flash started focusing on applications. Now Flash is going to rule the Web and HTML and so on is yesterday. Now, Silverlight, Apollo, JavaFX, they're all bidding to take over the JavaScript, HTML and CSS [spaces], and I just don't buy it. I don't buy that developers by and large are going to jump into a proprietary technology and replace what HTML and CSS has given them.

Three amazing visualization projects

Wed, 23 May 2007 22:33:48 -0400

Found by accident - as usually - while searching for something completely different.

Visuwords - visual dictionary, showing semantic relations between words.

Universe by Jonathan Harris.

Wikisky - detailed online sky map, showing the positions & basic characteristics of space objects using a Google Maps like interface.

And two great videos: the 4 minutes video summary on what Web2 actually means and very funny presentation about PowerPoint presentations.

Unified ID's for legacy database

Tue, 22 May 2007 23:20:12 -0400

I found a handy T-SQL trick that helped to solve the following problem: during datawarehouse creation, we needed to consolidate multiple data sources from databases belonging to two generations of system: older one using int identity keys, the newer one, designed for replication and distributed data scenarios using GUID's as primary keys.

In the consolidated database, we needed to create single representation that would allow to store both new GUID based identities as well as old int-based keys. Direct conversion between UNIQUEIDENTIFIER type and int is not allowed. The following one liner will do the trick:

Using Wiki markup without a Wiki

Thu, 17 May 2007 22:10:44 -0400

Even with having Wiki as the main documentation repository, not all documentation ends up in a Wiki. Some documentation needs to be managed as part of the source tree - e.g. Readme's, compilation instructions and similar. This information is usually either plain text or in some form of text processor format, mostly Microsoft Word compatible. Both have their selection of problems. Word documents are large, bloated, harder to version controlled and not readable in shell environment (try to cat or tail Word document :-)). The plain text format lacks visual structure and without headlines, bold/italic, font sizes etc is harder read.

More programming quotes

Tue, 15 May 2007 10:15:54 -0400

"If it works, leave it alone — there's no need to understand it.
If it fails, try to fix it — there's no time to understand it."

"A one-question geek test. If you get the joke, you're a geek:
Seen on a California license plate on a VW Beetle: 'FEATURE'..."
— Joshua D. Wachs, Natural Intelligence Inc.

"Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live." — Martin Golding.

New kid on the block in race to be Flash killer

Sat, 12 May 2007 22:27:42 -0400

After Adobe's Apollo and Microsoft's Silverlight, Sun has addes own version of scriptable, interactive platform named JavaFX. Unlike the previous three (Flash included), this is going to be Open Sourced - under the Microsoft's most hated license - GPL.

Now the race to replace Flash really becomes really interesting ...

Differences between Visual Studio and SSMS

Fri, 11 May 2007 22:43:32 -0400

I am working on the BI modules for automotive data-analytics application these days. Which means that I am doing quite a bit coding and using T-SQL and in addition to Visual Studio 2005, I use quite often the Sql Server Management Studio for SQL Server 2005. In theory, both tools should be based on the Visual Studio IDE code base. Which is maybe true, but there are many quite annoying differences.

Rails' ideas everywhere

Wed, 09 May 2007 22:22:10 -0400

Since I got through "Rails immersion", I keep seeing the implementations of the same idea everywhere. Latest find is Subsonic, which implements Active Records in .NET space. Rather than writing more, see this screencast.

Best book for Ruby on Rails

Mon, 07 May 2007 20:41:16 -0400

During last two weeks I have been reading and playing a lot with Rails. Now I am in the state where I think I started to "get it" and understand how things work under the surface. Which means I am ready actually start using the framework for real work and become proficient as I get my hands dirty.

To get to this state, absolutely essential and by far the best book is the classic one - Agile Web development with Rails co-authored by the original Rails designer and one of the Pragmatic Programmers. Like other books, the first part is sort of step-by-step code tutorial, which leads you through creation of a Rails application, shows you how you access data, create UI, use scaffolding, etc etc. Unlike other books, this does not stop there and the second part of the book is an excellent coverage of Rails internals - ActiveRecord, ActiveView and templating system. Very well written and offering great balance between covering important features without becoming reference manual.

It's all about numbers

Sat, 05 May 2007 22:39:38 -0400

Imagine if somebody got copyright on a number 32. You could not say any more on a Web page that you use 32 bit OS because you were not allowed to use the number. You could not even write thirty two, or 0x20... Could not send a card for 32nd birthday. Sounds crazy, right ?

But exactly this is happening. Somebody is trying to claim exclusive ownership of one number and sending take-down letters, law threats to those you have it posted on their web sites or blogs.

Fixing broken ASP.NET development environment

Thu, 03 May 2007 22:18:19 -0400

I had again the not-so infrequent pleasure of setting up fresh copy of Windows development stack. We were moving few machines between projects and to make sure that no forgotten source files are left on the harddisk, we reformatted and reinstalled Windows from scratch. It is usually good idea anyway, because developers like to install strange tools and utilities and generally customize machines to their own taste, which tend to be unique and is seldom shared.

Microsoft is getting more dynamic

Tue, 01 May 2007 22:08:12 -0400

at least as the programming language languages are concerned. One of the things that will be presented on the MIX07 is Dynamic Language Runtime, a new platform suitable to host high level, dynamic languages such as Python and Ruby. For Python, there is already pretty decent .NET implementation - namely IronPython. What is coming now is IronPython 2.0 based on the DLR as well as - yesss - IronRuby.

It is great that this is happening. In Java world, JRuby is very close to being full implementation of the language. The speed of the JRuby is still not quite in the proximity of the C implementation, but the large selling point of JRuby is its capability of deploying Ruby application (or even a Rails application) inside Tomcat or any other Java Web container. This removes largest obstacle of using Ruby in enterprise environment - namely being "new" and not approved platform. When the .NET runtime will be able to host Ruby code, acceptance in enterprise space will be even higher.

Few interesting links

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 22:53:10 -0400

Repository of presentations - http://www.slideshare.net/ on variety of topics.

Specialize code-only search engine: http://www.krugle.com/

New Google product on vertical search - Google Co-op.

New great podcast

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 22:48:29 -0400

Running out of Security Now! and TWIT episodes, I have subscribed and started listening to few newly discovered podcasts.

I have started to listen to the .NET specific one from Scott Hanselman named Hanselminutes. There are couple of factors that makes it better that other geeky blogs out there. First reason is the content quality. There is very high signal-to-noise ratio, pretty much all content counts and both guys in addition to being smart are quite good at achieving right balance between keeping on topic and spontaneity.

Accessing SQL Server 2005 from Ruby

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 23:58:13 -0400

The natural gravity of our environment keeps pulling me out of scripting and Ruby world back to .Net zone :-). Out of curiosity, I looked into how easy or hard is it to access other database from Ruby, than the default MySQL which dominates all books, samples and tutorials.

I have found three ways (at least), one likely platform independent and two Windows only. The platform independent requires module ADO.rb and works with the DBI interface. This sounds very similar to the way how Perl used to access databases, so I put this at the end of the list (some details are here). First Windows only methods used ODBC - no, thanks. Configuring machine specific data sources is not the way I wanted.

In praise of the polyglot

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 23:55:34 -0400

If you've ever envied the ability of multilingual friends to bridge language gaps wherever they travel or gained new appreciation for your native language by learning a new one, then you can probably see the advantage of being a programming language polyglot. Developer polyglots travel the IT world more freely than do monolinguists (sure that they can apply their skills in any environment), and they also tend to better appreciate the programming language called home, because among other things they know the roots from which that home is sprung. Isn't it time you became a polyglot?

One more reason to like TWIT

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:42:58 -0400

As it happens, both my most favorite podcasters - Leo Laporte as well as Steve Gibson are passionate e-book readers. They have both purchased and are (mostly) happy users of the Sony PRS-500 aka Sony Reader in addition to several other platforms - (Palm, Pocket PC). In the latest podcasts - both in TWIT as well as Security Now!, the eBooks and eReader got quite some publicity :-).

Both had similar experience with PDF format on PRS-500 as myself - but Steve mentioned the PDF re-flowing the document to make it better suites for small screen - something I have looked into but did not get it working quite right. The preferred approach to using Reader is RTF format - which again, matches my impressions.

Four quadrants of uncertainty

Sat, 21 Apr 2007 22:54:58 -0400

(a followup to discussion last week)

In every outsourced software project you have four large areas: your customer, the business vertical you are writing software for, your implementation team and the technology foundation or platform you are using.

Two of these areas are on "internal" side of your organization (team and technology), two of them are on external - your customer side (business domain and customer organization). Two are more micro level in the sense that they have strong human interaction aspect (customer and team) and two are more macrolevel and less personal (business domain and technology). For that reason, you can represent these areas as quadrants using two axis micro/macro and internal/external: micro+internal = team, micro+external = customer, macro+internal = platform, macro+external = business domain.The degree of risk in the project is proportional to how many of these quadrants are actually unknown or new. Why is that ?

Unify Tour 2007 and Open Source

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:44:16 -0400

This week was full with attending the demos and workshops. On Tuesday, I spent half day on the Microsoft Unify Tour 2007. I planned to be there full day but an important business meeting made me change the plan. Fortunately, the sessions should be available recorded on the Web, so I will be able to check them later. The topic was bang-on - considering that we are in final phase of large project, using distributed network of SQL Server 2005 installations with replication and location was same as usual.

You should write blogs

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:00:05 -0400

YOU should write blogs.

Even if nobody reads them, you should write them. It's become pretty clear to me that blogging is a source of both innovation and clarity. I have many of my best ideas and insights while blogging. Struggling to express things that you're thinking or feeling helps you understand them better.

From http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/you-should-write-blogs.

Quote of the day

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 23:47:23 -0400

C++: an octopus made by nailing extra legs to a dog.
(Steve Taylor).

When C++ is your hammer, everything starts to look like your thumb.
(Unknown author).

I guess somebody got pretty fustrated with good ole C++ :-)

Time to leave CVS ?

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 23:49:00 -0400

A friend sent me link two days ago making me aware that Mozilla decided to change the source code control system (= SCCS) they use. When such large and important project as Mozilla moves ahead and changes something so basic and fundamental to development as the SCCS, there must be good reason behind it. What was even more interesting was the system selected: no, it was not Subversion, but something much less established - Mercurial. Actually, until they selected it I was barely aware of its existence.

Synchronizing GCalendar and Thunderbird

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 22:25:19 -0400

Another important step forward for all who are looking for alternatives to replace Outlook. With latest Thunderbird 2.0rc1 release it is now possible to add calendaring capability to Thunderbird (using the Lightning add-on) with Google calendar synchronization that works even with iCal invitations :-). Really nice.

The author's blog at http://bfish.xaedalus.net/?p=239 seems to be down, but cached version is available.

Credits and thanks to Joel for finding it.

Kurt Vonnegut - R.I.P.

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:39:47 -0400

It is a sad news - Kurt Vonnegut Jr., one of the great sci-fi writers, died at the age of 84.

Thanks for all the great hours spent reading many of great books he wrote over last 55 years. I guess that best way how to show respect is re-read something he wrote - like this one.

Quote of the day

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 22:34:59 -0400

Goal is a dream with a deadline.

Found on the Net - probably by Napoleon Hill

Gems and bookmarks

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:36:06 -0400

This was one great weekend ! Easter should be more often than once a year, I guess. Unlike Christmas, there was no shopping craziness before and much less overeating danger. Not counting overdose of chocolate, of course, but that's OK.

I managed do mostly nothing for about one day - up to Friday evening. Then I dived into the Ruby and Ruby on Rails world. After reading this and one third of this book, I like Ruby even more. I actually did write some code - not much, but rewrote some of my old Python scripts I use to manage files and repositories. The new Ruby version is shorter and IMHO more elegant (even with my limited command of Ruby idioms), much better readable - albeit a bit slower than Python version. But that does not change my very positive impression of new language. In addition to these (and btw, the mixin's are so great it is even scary), I learned to love the Rake and gem tools. Gem is pre-packaged Ruby component, managed as unit, that can be installed and updated remotely using the gem tool. It solves the problem of versioning - something I wished Java had from the beginning. It also provide similar functionality as the GAC in .NET: allows side-by-side existence of multiple versions of the same component and makes component available to other programs. Very clever, very convenient. Same story as with the language - gem is something similar that Perl did have with CPAN, but it is just cleaner, nicer and polished ...

Long weekend coming

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 22:30:41 -0400

I have decided to take weekend off. No catching up, no work, no stress. And it will be a proper weekend - 4 days long in total because both Friday and Monday are statutory holidays in Thinknostic. Great opportunity to relax, decompress, catch up on some reading and audio books and do something fun. And maybe gettogether with friends and celebrate Vlad's birthday. After all, the 28H is not every year :-)

Very useful data structure and algorithms library

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 22:28:52 -0400

.NET 2.0 offers very rich and nicely designed library of core data structures, collections and algorithms. Occasionaly, you run into situation when you need something not in there. Before starting to design you very own extension of LinkedList or HashTable, look into interesting open-source project NGenerics - chances are you will find it there.

It contains quite a few new data structures:

extensions of existing data structures to work with Visitor pattern

Couple of things I really like about Ruby

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 22:45:29 -0400

I guess it is too early to write any more systematic opinion about the language you know less than 10 days, but after reading the Programming Ruby 2nd edition (thank you, Safari Books) I have found out that I actually do like couple of Ruby features a lot. Your mileage may vary - what speaks here is my Java/C#/C++/C/Python/Perl background and bias. Here there are my favorite Ruby-isms (so far) in no particular order:

Walking season ... and SPAM

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 22:10:53 -0400

Today I have started the walking season 2007. I did some gentle preparation during the week - few short, 4-5 km strolls around the neighbourhood, but it was today when I really started. It was beautiful day in Ottawa - sunny, temperature around 8-10, so I took off and did 12 km loop through Westboro, down south and around Dow's Lake up to downtown. Just fantastic. The companion on the road were Security Now! - I was behind few episodes, but I managed to listen to almost full 3 episodes.

How to access GMail with multiple POP clients

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 20:39:35 -0400

Man lernt nie aus - as the German say - one never stops learning. Thanks to comment found on my blog I found out that there is very nice solution problem of disappearing emails (after you download it with one POP client, other POP client would not get it). It is even documented in GMail help:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=47948&topic=1556If you're accessing your Gmail using POP from multiple clients, Gmail's recent mode makes sure that all messages are made available to each client, rather than only to the first client to access new mail.

Upgrading Java and Open Source libraries

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 21:28:22 -0400

As Murphy said - you cannot do just one thing. Thanks to JDK 1.4 entering end-of-life support period (and 1.3 being unsupported for some time), we need to move few applications happily running on these antique Java platforms to at least Java 5 and gain few more years of uninterrupted Sun-supported life.

Upgrading the applications was as expected, piece of cake - as long as you have solid build environment with build scripts and everything - which we certainly do. Ant runs on Java5 exactly as well as on 1.4 (maybe faster, but I did not measure), Tomcat was the same no-brainer thing and switching the Eclipse required only selecting different JRE in preferences window. Codewise, the only change required inside the application code was renaming few identifiers to something else than enum, which happens to be keyword in Java 5.

Ode on Eclipse :-)

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 20:52:31 -0400

After almost two years of uninterrupted C# and .NET development, I have got back for few days to Java world. One of our old customers asked us to do few enhancements and changes in the application we wrote. And because we always stand behind our work, always do answer the call for help and do support our customers as long as they want to be supported, I have squeezed-in few days worth of work into pretty packed schedule. So here am I on a short detour into world of class files and jars ...

Managing knowledge portfolio

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 22:50:43 -0400

There are few technical books which you enjoy first time you read them, remember the experience and keep coming back. One of such classic books is The Pragmatic Programmer - from journeyman to master - by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt. If you have not read it, get it, it is worth every cent. Since the book was written - ages ago, back in 2000 - it did not loose anything of its freshness and value - which one cannot say about most of technical books written earlier than 2-3 years ago. Inspired by the success of their initial creation, Dave and Andrew started the website and continued writing whole Pragmatic Programmer series of books.

Thought of the day

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 22:05:59 -0400

" ... the main reason why most software is not open-sourced is pure embarrassment ..."

Leo Laporte in Twit episode #90

Converting eBooks to Sony Reader format

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 19:50:51 -0400

Since yesterday, I made nice progress in solving my issues with content creation for PRS500 and it's readability. There are several ways how to proceed:

The simplest is to download Book Designer. It is free for non-commercial use and current version 5.0 Alpha does the job very well. It allows you to load source in text, HTML, Lit, PDF, PalmDoc (prd/prc), rb and few other formats and process them into native LRF format - plus few others I do not really care about. The result is nice, readable LRF file with three sizes, nicely formatted, with metada. As added benefit, because the author is Russian, the program does not assume that English alphabet is the only one in existence and allows to select encoding. The result is quite good - most of the extended characters from Czech/Slovak are there, some are missing and displayed as space (namely ř,ě,ľ ...) but it is readable. What is maybe better option is that with English as language and default encoding, the software "downscales" the extended characters to closest English pairs: ř -> r,ě -> e - which results in familiar computer Czech/Slovak. I am very comfortable with option 2, and will work on getting correct font for #1.

Sony eBook Reader - software updated

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:28:26 -0400

After few weeks, I have got back to actually using my PRS500 again and I have finished the books loaded on the device. When I have connected the reader, first the CONNECT software as well as the PRS500 downloaded the updates. The firmware in reader is up to version 1.0.02.0130 from 1.0.00.21081 and should bring longer battery life and stability improvements. It better does, because so far the battery life is nowhere in the proclaimed range of 7000 page turns ... Time will show.

Avalon - reloaded ...

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 22:54:25 -0400

Now this is something really interesting: as found on Adobe Labs site, their technology codenamed Apollo is approaching Alpha status. What Apollo is - in a nutshell - is another virtual machine, similar to Java runtime or .Net framework, with few minor twists: it is multiplatform (as Java) as well as multi-language (as .Net) at the same time. Before flame wars start - I am aware that JVM is capable (more or less) to support multiple languages beyond Java and also that .Net is (more or less) capable running on non-Windows platforms (e.g. Mono project), but that is not the point. The point is what is different about the Apollo compared to JVM or CLR.

Quote of the day

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 19:29:00 -0400

Often, scientific "failure" teaches you more than success ... An experiment which gives you a clear answer is not a failure; it can surprise you, though. Failure comes only when an experiment answers no question -- usually because it's been done with ignorance or sloppiness. The true trick in science is to know what question your experiment is truly asking.

Gregory Benford
Ten Thousand Years of Solitude

Google Notebook - new feature

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 21:22:20 -0400

Actually, maybe not really new, but I have noticed it just two days ago while trying to to clean up the clips collected from the Web.

It is sort of hidden feature, but very useful one: In Actions you can find 'Export in Google Docs & Spreadsheet'. It takes the current notebook and makes it a new document in you Google Docs. All texts, including pictures are transferred. It does very good job in keeping meaningful structure of the newly created document: every note will become an URL heading in document, pointing to the original.

India Time Zone mystery solved

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 21:11:15 -0400

It happened few times in past few months: using Google to find out what is the time in Bombay or New Delhi, I used the search phrase "India time zone" and got two types of results. One was referring to the India Time zone as UTC+9hrs and the other was giving the correct answer - UTC+5:30. I know that whole India is in single time zone and this time zone is 5.5 hours before GMT. What did the UTC+9 mean ?
As I found out, the India in India time zone is not the India as a country, but military spelling of the time zone for letter I. The military uses letters to label time zone, starting with GMT or UTC being the Zero Meridian or Z time zone - spelled as Zulu time. Then going East, the zones go A, B, C - spelled as Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta - up to the letter I which is spelled as India. West from Zulu you start with N, O, P - or November, Oscar, Papa ... Up to March 11 we were living in Romeo time zone, now we moved to Quebec time zone (again, nothing to do with La belle province, just spelling of Q)

Webbits 2007-06

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:49:25 -0400

Time to clean up the link cache again. I did not surfed much during last two weekends, so there is less to clean than usual :-).

If your computers are still confused about the DST change, here are some links that may be useful dealing with the issues - for Windows as well as for Mac. Speaking of which, I just checked that my Fedora Core 6 Linux-based NAS did recognized the DST without any issues at all as well.

Times are a-changing

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:07:13 -0400

This year unusually early, we switched the Daylight Saving Time. The clocks did spring ahead one hour on Sunday morning. Btw, this is a good mnemonic how to remember which direction does the clock go: it Springs ahead and it Falls back ... Technically, it was decision of the US legislative to start DST early but because of the integration of the two economies, Canada had not much choice, just to follow. So, for next three weeks or so, we are one hour closer to Europe.

Computers Ltd.

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 20:25:32 -0400

Same as last few weeks, I have spent most of the weekend reading. Unlike the weekends before, this time I was actually reading a book, not source code. It was nice change ...

I have picked this small book with title Computers Ltd in Ottawa Public Library last Friday, while returning some books on CD. Written by David Harel of Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, the book is trying to explain what computers cannot do. It speaks about complexity, P / NP problem and other fundamental limitations of what we can and cannot do with our favorite toys. This book is nice proof that even on such complex and abstract problems it is possible to find very nice and readable presentation - without sacrificing the precision. It reads as novel and thanks to very short format, it is an excellent complement to quiet Sunday afternoon. Recommended.

Quote of the day

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 20:07:05 -0500

Data is zeroes and ones — software is zeroes and ones and hard work.

As seen on The Third Bit.

Useful hacks for TotalCommander

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 19:18:35 -0500

The following may interest you only if you are using my favorite file manager (IMHO, it is the best file manager ever created, but your mileage may vary ..)

List of selected files to Clipboard
One of the things that I am doing over and over is to search subtree - set of files for some content and then do something with the result. Let's say for example that I need all SQL files which refer to TESTDATABASE. On Unix, fastest way is to use find and pipe the result. On Windows, my workflow (using TotalCommander) is:

Epigrams on Programming

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 21:03:40 -0500

My favorite top ten epigrams, for more see http://www.cs.yale.edu/quotes.html

0. One man's constant is another man's variable

1. It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.

2. If you have a procedure with ten parameters, you probably missed some.

3. A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.

4. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

5. You can't communicate complexity, only an awareness of it.

Security of the browsers

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 23:00:27 -0500

I have just finished listening to the back-episodes of Security Now! # 38, where Steve Gibson describes his approach to securely browsing Web without antivirus and with Internet Explorer. The idea in a nutshell is - use properly locked down IE zones. Steve has modified the security settings of the default (Internet zone) to maximum: not allowing any scripting, cookies etc. Which makes many sites unusable, of course because increasing number of browsers does require Javascript enabled - or else game is over.

Project management using Wiki

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 22:50:04 -0500

It has been half a year in March since we have started to use Wiki as main project management, collaboration and content creation tool. I think this is period long enough to look back and summarize what we have discovered, what worked and what not. This was not the first attempt to use Wiki in this context - however, it was first case when the result can be considered full success. I have tried (both in at-home and project environments) several Wiki implementations, notably JSPWiki,MoinMoin, FlexWiki, Wiki module for DotNetNuke and MediaWiki over period of about 5 years. During this process I have discovered by trial and error, which features are important in software development project environment and what are the conditions/consequences of using Wiki as main information hub.

Ottawa Mac User's group meeting

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 17:02:54 -0500

Thanks to exploring the Google calendar (when playing with public calendars related to Ottawa) I found the Ottawa Mac User group's calendar and discovered that

a) they exist

b) they hold monthly meetings in nice Irish pub at the Market

The group is actually named Bytown Mac User's group, for the reasons explained on the Web site or here.

So I decided to go there. I thought - what the heck, worst thing that can happen that I will have a glass of Guinness at the pub I never visited before, which is not a bad thing at all. And besides, the Rideau Chapters store is very close (the plan B). It turned out pretty well, though - meeting was interesting. The group is fairly small (I believe somewhere about 10-15 people) but nice, friendly, dedicated and interesting. It sort of reflects the Mac representation in the market. Unlike when attending Microsoft users events, where almost everybody is by profession tied to the software development of IT business, here larger percentage of people did something non-primarily computer related for living - like creative writing, art, video processing. Again - it represents well the real world situation. Not too many people that actually do software development (other than Web design) but there was one guy who is exploring the same path as I am looking for: Objective C and Cocoa development.

Programmer's classification

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 22:00:04 -0500

Gabo sent me this link - it is some half-joke half serious knock-off of the Myers-Briggs personality classification. Same as in case of MB, it gives you four letters. Unlike in MB, the letters are different:

Instead of E/I - Extroversion or Introversion, N/S (iNtuitive / Sensing), T/F (Thinking/Feeling) and J/P (Judging/Perceiving),
it classifies you either as D/P - Doer or Planner, L/H - Low or High level programmer, S/T - Solo or Team programmer and C/B Conservative/liBeral.

What is wrong with GMail

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 22:57:17 -0500

Disclaimer first: I really like GMail. Since I started using it (about year ago), I learned to appreciate the beautiful simplicity and elegance of the Web interface. And since I switched completely to GMail as foundation of all my email systems (about November 2006), I have managed to simplify most of my email related chores. But let's face it - GMail is far from perfect. Here is list of the annoyances and missing features that I have collected:

Introduction to CSLA - lunch presentation at ODNC

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:21:31 -0500

The Ottawa .NET Community organized today interesting lunch-and-learn session: first of two sessions on introducing the Rocky Lhotka's CSLA Framework. Usual location - Glacier Room at downtown Microsoft Office. I decided to attend for two reasons: first was that I knew the presenter - David Campbell. David is a great guy - consultant with 20 years of history in the software development business, running his own company. Last year when we were looking for people with CSLA experience in Ottawa, David's name came out first.

Webbits 2007-05

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 21:52:10 -0500

It is not Friday today and I am obviously late with next link collection. Somehow I have completely missed the weekend - so much was happening at work that I had barely had time to notice what is going on on the Web. My Google Reader is overflowing with new links and there are lots of new links in delicious. Let's start.

Merlin Mann of 43folders started to do videopodcasts - have a look (in the second edition he interviews Jonathan Coulton, famous creator of the Code Monkey song). This little utility allows to synchronize contacts and tasts between Thunderbird and PocketPC. Interesting article on how to make Gmail you personal information centre.

Scripting, repeatability and GUI

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:15:53 -0500

Most programmers love GUI. It is so easy, so convenient, just point and click here, click there, drag and drop, repeat few times and problem solved. Who in sanemind would bother typing and writing code when can GUI do it all. The convenience rules. If you need to add or change something, it takes just few more clicks. Not a big deal, just add a few more easy steps. No problem - right ? Wrong !

Good book on coding and software development

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 23:23:54 -0500

I have picked it two days ago in Chapters - Code Craft by Pete Goodliffe. Somehow similar in topics covered as the Rapid Development or From Coder to Developer - but newer. Divided into 6 parts:

Part I - At the codeface - defensive programming techniques, naming, formatting, commenting, error handling

Part II - The secret life of code - code contruction tools, testing and debugging methods, building

Part III - The Shape of the code - code design, architecture, source code growth and decay over time

More great programming quotes

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 20:13:09 -0500

It has been said that the great scientific disciplines are examples of giants standing on the shoulders of other giants. It has also been said that the software industry is an example of midgets standing on the toes of other midgets. [Alan Cooper]

And the users exclaimed with a laugh and a taunt: "It's just what we asked for but not what we want."

For a sucessful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled. [Richard Feynman]

Quote of the day

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 23:50:38 -0500

We build software line by line, idea by idea, side by side. Our software is an expression of ourselves, our best moments, our toughest challenges, our greatest hopes.

This wonderful quote is from handcrafted copy of Vista, which was distributed to everybody who worked on a product. It is a Microsoft tradition that the people who worked on a project get a copy of the project when it ships.

Hiring programmers - or Degrees of Done

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 23:57:37 -0500

Back in old country, I once had a programmer working for me who made himself famous with the following quote:

"I have fixed that bug, do you want me to compile it too ?".

In his mind, he was done as soon as he identified the bug and put the fix in the code. All the rest was trivial and unimportant routine.

During last 20 years I have worked with many very different developers and learned the hard way, how very many different meanings the word "done" can have. For some, done means that coding just finished and he/she successfully compiled the projects and stepped through some of the code paths with debugger with negligible occurrences of major crash. Whether the code is in CVS, commented - who cares ?

DotNet Development Toolbox - II

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:51:00 -0500

Continuing from here.

Ch-7: Digging into the source code

In this chapter, Mike describes the tools that work with, around or towards source code: Idlasm, Reflector and FxCop. The book is written for Visual Studio 2003, so some references are slightly outdated - but there is one utility that stands out and is still more useful than ever: Lutz Roeder's Reflector. It is part of the Visual Studio 2005 (albeit in older version that you can get on the Web site).

Evolution of the math problem or dumbing down the recent grads

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 23:37:54 -0500

1960

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price. What is his profit?

1970 (Traditional)

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production
is 4/5 of this price, or in other words, $80. What is his profit?

1970 (New Math)

A logger exchanges a set L of lumber for a set M of money. The cardinality of set M is 100 and each element is worth a dollar. Make a square array of 100 dots to represent the elements of set M. The set C of the cost of production contains 20 fewer elements than set M. Represent set C as a subset of K and answer the following question:
What is the cardinality of set P of profits?

DotNet Development Toolbox

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 19:33:36 -0500

I have recently picked very interesting book that I have read about year ago, from Mike Gunderloy named Coder to Developer, with subtitle Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software. It is an excellent book and I highly recommend to give it a look if you are in software development business on Microsoft platform. Easy read, practical, useful.When I was reading it back in 2006, it was before we have set up own development lab and started the biometric project. With this recent experience, I was re-reading the book with quite different view: unlike before, I knew what we tried, what worked and what did not. Unlike before, I have now broader experience with what it means developing software and run large project inside the organization, creating and maintaining infrastructure for team of developers and leading the project design and implementation.

Programmers and programming in quotes

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 23:01:08 -0500

Few of my favorites:

Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves. [Alan Kay]

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. [Brian W. Kernighan]

Webbits 2007-04

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 23:56:40 -0500

It is Friday again, time to clean up the link cache. I'll try to make this a Friday affair and stick with weekly schedule.

The DRM is having hard time: after Steve Jobs article about how DRM is bad, EMI announcement of considering dropping the DRM, another of Net celebrities - cryptography legend Bruce Schneier (of Applied Crypography and Blowfish fame) wrote an article for Forbes Why Vista DRM Is Bad for you. He makes several good points, it is good read.

On Myers-Briggs, Spaghetti Sauce and Getting Things Done

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:33:21 -0500

Connie, our HR director came few weeks ago with interesting idea: give the team a chance to get better understanding of "implementation details" of their very own "inner software" - the personality type evaluation using Myers-Briggs approach. Connie holds certification for this type of classification.

The classification in a nutshell, assigns to everybody four letters, one from each pair: E or I, N or S, T or F, J or P. The first letter indicates preference for Extraversion or Introversion, the second characterizes the main source of information input: Sensation or iNtuition, the third the way how the information is processed - by Thinking or Feeling and the last one characterizes the degree of "structure" and organization in all the previous: more organized and structured (Judging) or less organized and more ad-hoc (Perceiving). Now all this is terrible oversimplification (sorry Connie), so if you really want to get more information try this - or if you are in Ottawa, call Connie Deschamps at Thinknostic dot com and schedule a session :-).

Handling concurrency in SQL Server applications

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 22:24:49 -0500

On Tuesday evening, the Ottawa Dotnet Users Group organized presentation of Adam Machanic from Boston with title "Designing Highly Concurrent SQL Server Database Applications". I was not sure whether I will make it, because because I did not feel really well, but I am very happy I went.

It was probably one of the best presentations I have seen in Microsoft Glacier Room on 100 Queen Street. I am not sure whether because it was indeed so great or because it touches closely what we are doing.

Many ways how to "Get a Mac"

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 23:45:52 -0500

I found out by accident that the famous Get a Mac ads exists in many versions:

Some nations have their own actors
http://www.apple.com/uk/getamac/ads/
http://www.apple.com/jp/getamac/ads/

Other have only just language version of Long && Hodgman act

http://www.apple.com/de/getamac/ads/
http://www.apple.com/fr/getamac/ads/
http://www.apple.com/it/getamac/ads/
http://www.apple.com/es/getamac/

The Austria and German speaking part of Switzerland are using German version of the ads (no surprise there) - http://www.apple.com/chde/getamac/ - and the francophone part of Switzerland uses the French version. As it looks like, Italian and Romansch speaking Swiss do not count :-(

NAS Odyssey: Up and running

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 23:31:55 -0500

After lots of attempts (see here, here and here), I have finally resolved my disk space problems and the RAID-5 NAS server is up and running since about two weeks now. I have stayed with Fedora 6, successfully installed Samba, configured the shares and copied all family JPEG's, videos, MP3's etc onto the huge 907 GB large RAID5 share. The old NSLU2 is still dead - I did not have any time to try to re-flash it, but all content of it's disk was without any issues readable by the new server (the NSLU2 was using ext3 filesystem) so I did not even have to try to use backups.

Who is the most successful programmer of the world ?

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 23:52:35 -0500

Depending on how you define success, you may get different answer to the question above.

If you choose for the success criteria:

- amount of money made by programming AND
- number of people using the product AND
- impact on the community at large

the answer is probably Charles (Karoly) Simonyi, Hungarian born ex-Microsoft employee, billionaire, astronaut and original author of Microsoft Word.

True, there certainly are people that made more money than him and their fortune is closely related to software - but unlike Simonyi none of them was actively programming for major part of their career. Take Bill Gates for example - most of his coding goes back to his teenage years and after creating Basic, his role was not related with active code writing. Also the number of people using Altair Basic (or any basic) today is likely nowhere in the Word league.

Math is fun

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:23:54 -0500

I've stumbled upon this page, full of math jokes. Many of them are IMHO really good and extremly funny (your mileage may vary, though).

My favorite few:

Two male mathematicians are in a bar. The first one says to the second that the average person knows very little about basic mathematics. The second one disagrees, and claims that most people can cope with a reasonable amount of math.

The first mathematician goes off to the washroom, and in his absence the second calls over the waitress. He tells her that in a few minutes, after his friend has returned, he will call her over and ask her a question. All she has to do is answer one third x cubed.

Blogs of the week (9-Feb)

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:51:46 -0500

1) Bruce Schneier

Bruce is author of several excellent books on cryptography, from very easy, thriller like read to a classic work Applied Cryptograhy (highly recommended). The blog goes back to 2004 and is fascinating read.

2) Paul Thurrott

Paul is the Windows guy from Windows Weekly podcast (recommended) who also runs the Winsupersite . He is one of the few people who focus on Microsoft technology and still keep balanced, fair view of the affairs. Paul is certainly not a Microsoft fanboy - and obviously not a Microsoft hater. He seems to share the same balanced approach in case of Apple and OS-X - he appreciates his strengths without being an Apple zealot.

Webbits - 2007-03

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:46:44 -0500

How to extend the life of the Vista trial period to 120 days: Technically, if you try to use Ultimate Edition (which is legally allowed to use in VM) nothing really can prevent an unscrupulous user to keep using Vista for free - for the price of re-installing the VM every 120 days ...

Few Mac goodies: Adium is out in version 1.0 - get it here - more details on http://adiumx.com/

Last build before Leopard is out - http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0702.html. Btw, did you know that Apple UK has their own Mac guy and PC guy ? I love their accent, but I still think that John Hodgman is the best :-)

Surf more in less time: Google Reader

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 23:33:33 -0500

Back in stone age when most information available was actually printed on paper in forms of magazines and books , people experiencing the information overload invented techniques of speed reading to deal with it.

It worked - mostly.

Nowadays, we have most of the content coming to you through the browser window. Even if you can still speed read the web page, you can get even more speed advantage and quickly sort out the interesting content from the fluff by using the magic of news feeds, RSS, Atom and wonderful free tool Google Reader.

Offline access to GMail and Google Docs coming ?

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:39:42 -0500

However I like the Web applications, the fact is that as soon as you do not have connectivity, they are of very little use. Well - maybe not for long. The Dojo Offline Toolkit makes promise that sounds almost too good to be true:

Imagine a version of GMail with a “Work Offline” button on the left-hand side of the screen. When pressed, GMail downloads 100 of your most recent emails into Dojo Offline, including pieces of it’s user-interface. A user can now close their browser and leave the network, stepping on an airplane for example. Once in the air, the user can then simply open their laptop and browser and type in mail.google.com. The GMail UI magically appears, along with their 100 most recent emails. A user can read these mails, compose new ones, or reply to existing ones. A flight attendant announces that the plane will land soon; the user closes their browser and laptop. Later, when they are back on the network, they can click the “Work Online” button, which will send all of their locally written emails to the GMail server.

Software Oscar Award

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 22:48:22 -0500

In software industry there are no annual awards and recognitions of achievements that would resemble the Annual Academy Awards of the movie industry. Various magazines, publishers and companies do present theirs yearly list of Best Products, but they are often biased and seldom representative. The one list that stands apart and that in my opinion comes closest the Oscar is Jolt Awards published by used-to-be one of the best magazines for professional programmers - Dr Dobbs Journal. It is still around and still a pretty good magazine, I guess - but the evolution of the Internet and shift of the money towards on-line advertisement changed the business landscape for most of the magazines, depending on revenue stream from ads. The list has various categories: for books (general and technical), project management, database systems and tools, IDE, design tools, development libraries and so on.

Webbits - 2007-02

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 23:38:11 -0500

Time to clean up the link cache once again.

Obviously, most of the news on Techsites are Vista related. Web Worker's daily gives you 10 reasons why to upgrade to Vista and 10 reasons why not. MacHouse comments on complicated upgrade paths and Brian Briggs offers decision chart for the updgradees.

General spirit - compared to the launch of Windows 95 - is fairly cynical. The italian Mac bloggers sums it up: Niente di nuovo in Vista. So does this one. This site shows some real innovation :-). Despite it is Vista launch, Steve Jobs and OS-X seems to get almost as much publicity as Vista and as few bloggers commented - Microsoft does not take it easy - see Bill Gates TV appearance.

Nice resource on TCP/IP and Networking

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 23:26:54 -0500

As of today, I am at podcast #26 of Security Now! and Steve with Leo are have started their "foundation series" on How Internet works. It is really great and enjoyable topic, nicely and very enjoyably presented. Given the delivery format limitation (voice without possibility of adding any drawing), there is of course limit on the amount of details that can be presented. Being a curious creature, I wanted to dig little bit deeper into "excruciating details" of TCP/IP and started to search for a good book.

NAS Odyssey: Almost there

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 19:36:04 -0500

As the tittle says, Fedora Core 6 is it. Everything is installed, everything works. The box is very fast, Samba network server is visible on all computers - I have not had time yet to do some tests on access and write speed. I have 930 GB shared space on RAID 5 which is in process of being subdivided into separate shares for video, images, music, and so on.

Installation was really nice and I was very pleasantly surprised how huge progress did Linux made since 2000 when I last time was really spending some time on it (I was always using Linux as file server and Webserver, but since year 2000 never actually was working in Linux environment). The only minor issue during configuration was that after installing suggested updates (one almost feels like with Windows when Linux box tells you that there newer versions for 200 something packages available), the mouse disappeared. It was there, I could drag and drop, click - but it was invisible. It took less then minute googling to find an answer. As usually in Linux, once you find what is wrong, fixing it is very easy. All I had to do was editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (which is of course text file) and adding: Option "HWCursor" "off" to the Videocard device section.

Using multiple GMail/GCalendar accounts

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 23:46:34 -0500

Since last week we have switched our corporate emails from our ISP to Google Apps for Domains. This gives everybody very easy way how to access and share the Calendar and Contacts, provides Web interface that really works - as well as capability to access your emails via POP3. So far I am very happy with it and the feedback I have got from other Thinknostickers was positive (or none, which means everything is likely OK).

Before you upgrade to Vista, you should read this

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:10:10 -0500

In order to provide HD Video capabilities and to appease content creators, Microsoft went very far in making sure the Vista is not seen as a tool for content piracy. Did they went too far ? What will be the real cost of this contraversial features ?

Listen (or read) the comments of people that understand the DRM topic better than me and make your own opinion:

* How and why Windows Vista has incorporated the most pervasive and invasive system for digital rights management ever created, AACS - as MP3 and PDF

NAS Odyssey: Fedora Core

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 01:23:08 -0500

As the title says, the Ubuntu is out. Not really because of some technical flaw or missing features (as the FreeNAS, NASLite+ and OpenFiler before), but because of lack of experience and patience on my side. Unlike other distribution which come pre-packed on DVD, Ubuntu installs from a single CD. There are 3 CD variations available: Desktop, which most of the people use and which is likely responsible for Ubuntu fame, Server and Alternative. I did not want to go with desktop - for obvious reasons, so I started to install Server. It installed OK, except it did not offered any option to create RAID. Technically, I still had the RAID created from experiments with OpenFiler, but as I was not sure in which state did I left it, I wanted to recreate it.

NAS Odyssey: OpenFiler is out, let's try Ubuntu

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 01:57:20 -0500

My love affair with OpenFiler did not last very long. After installation finished, I started browser, pointed to URL I was told by the installer and started to configure. The Web admin was OK, nothing really exciting, but functional. The bad surprise came when I was trying to define users - in order to define volumes later. And here came the screen saying:

Please note that Openfiler needs a central directory service
on the network to function, which it and the client machines can see and use.
You cannot use local users and groups with Openfiler.
Otherwise there is no means to implement authorisation
as one machine's information about users and groups can differ from another's.
You can configure the directory service below.

Joys of the Opensource NAS - Part 2: OpenFiler

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:54:31 -0500

After spending most Saturday and Sunday fixing, coding and logging bugs, I finally got to moving ahead. Very likely it is about time, because the NSLU2 keeps producing strange sounds

The box has now additional IDE 160 GB IDE disk, which will hold Linux installation as well as "temp" share, which will not be RAID-ed. Sort of staging area for the stuff in flux.

After contemplating for a while which distribution to use - and generally, whether to build more generic Linux server with Samba or more appliance-type box, I went on with trying OpenFiler first. The truth is that my old Linux box did 99% of his services as Samba fileserver and very little as Web server / Java application server. Most of the fancy GUI applications were barely used - including pretty loaded Gnome and KDE installation (one can never decide which one is actually better). So why to repeat same mistake twice ?

Mac is the way to enlightenment

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 11:55:46 -0500

Even Dalai-lama is using it. See the proof - http://flickr.com/photos/timsimpson/255420579/

Note for Gabo - it looks like Macbook Pro :-).

FEOTD: Google Notebook

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 23:57:24 -0500

Today's extension provides easy way how to access and add content to great free service from Google - Google Notebook. I am using it for over 3 months now and find it very useful and easy to use.

As other Google product, Google Notebooks is simple, has clean interface and not too many features. The extension available from Google tools for Firefox make using it even easier. It allows you to create notes - Web clippings, by selecting part of Web page and choosing "Note this (Google Notebook)" from context menu, selection is added to currently active notebook.

Evergreen Security Now!

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:07:26 -0500

I have started to listen the Security Now! podcasts from the very beginning - sometimes in summer 2005. Unlike some news-and-rumours podcasts that sound kind of weird if you listen them month later, this one did not loose a bit of it's freshness. Even listening the story of Sony Rootkit discovery again was very entertaining. I am now at first "mod-4" Q&A podcast, Number 16.

Every time I listen to Steve Gibson, one of two things happens. Either I learn something new, or I discover new, better way how to explain something I knew about in a very nice, accessible way. Steve's handling of differences between WEP and WPA, explanation why MAC address filtering gives no security and his VPN coverage was an excellent example of the later.

Webbits - 2007-01

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 19:38:26 -0500

Webbit is like timbit - it comes in 12, 20 or 40 pack, contains many small pieces of different taste and color, is generally unhealthy but good, can be addictive and is nice addition to your morning "extra large, double cream" from Tim Hortons. Unlike from timbits, from webbits you will not get fat, only distracted. Enjoy !

The Quizstop allows you to select how fast are you reflexes with the mouse. Something for those with competitive gene among us (I mean you Igor, of course ;-).

FEOTD: Clippings - GMail's best friend

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 19:43:51 -0500

Thanks to Lifehacker I have discovered this extension which add missing piece of GMail functionality:

This very simple extension allows you to enter multiple sets of text (such as e-mail signatures) and paste them into forms simply by right-clicking.

Why is this such a big deal ? I am using GMail for both my personal and work stuff. To make sure my work related email appear as coming from company email address, I set the proper From address when composing an email. GMail can be configured to stay with the recipient address when replying. The only problem is signature. In private emails, I want to have link to the blog, in work emails, to company site. And GMail offers only one signature. With this extension, I do not use any signature from GMail, just simply insert correct one from the Clippings buffer.

The joys of open source NAS

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 16:19:01 -0500

Well, as it looks like, I was prematurely ecstatic about the new open source based NAS server. While the hardware works great, I had not much luck so far with setting up the software on top of that.

My original idea was to use FreeNAS, let it boot and install into USB drive and use all 4 SATA disks in RAID 5 set up by BIOS. It did not work. FreeNAS does not see the RAID5 volume created by BIOS and keeps referring to 4 separate SATA drives. So does Openfiles and few other distributions. After the USB key was initialized, the system did not boot and stopped with error message 'No Ufs'.

Dealing with digital mess: Local (offline) File Storage

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 23:39:40 -0500

If you have digital camera or digital camcorder, you probably have a problem where to store the pictures and video so that they are readily available for viewing and protected against loss caused by hardware failure. How much storage you need depends on how many and how large pictures do you take and how heavy camcorder user you are. In my case, I have switched to shooting RAW on my D70, doing about 2000-4000 shots a year and the camcorder produces about 4-5 GB unprocessed video per hour of recording. After adding some free capacity for the document archives, some MP3 files, anything smaller than 500 GB will be probably too small. To have some space, I decided I better go for 1 Terrabyte of space.

Too good to be true ?

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 23:08:20 -0500

Since over 1 month I am using Web based tools for calendar, email, task management, bookmark management and note taking. One problem that these tools have is that as soon as your connection goes down, you are done. Game over. Few days ago I have discovered Scrybe, a tool which maybe can address this problem. Unfortunately, I cannot tell from my own experience, because the system is in private Beta and does allow you to register. But if you can believe the sneak peek video (linked from the site), it should combine calendar which is even better than Google Calendar, task manager and note taking program that would make Google Notes look like second class citizen.

Improve your English, use spellchecking !

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 23:06:27 -0500

For Jack, Manju and Michel: here is the poem we talked about.

Eye have a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

How to recover lost Win XP password

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 23:42:24 -0500

If it ever happens to you that you need to restart old computer which you have not logged on for 2-3 months and you find out you have no clue what the password could be, do not panick. Exactly this happened to me yesterday. Fortunately I have remembered reading something on lifehacker few days ago about bootable CD which contains live Linux distribution with password cracking open source software Ophcrack. It runs from CD only, does not touch your file system, only loads local SAM and tries cracking the hashes. And boy, it works !

Automating iTunes

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 23:15:28 -0500

With great horror I have discovered that from my 80 GB hardrive in Macbook already over 76 GB was full. Mostly because of the hidden activity of iTunes and silent downloading of new podcast episodes. Especially video podcasts - such as Mac break - are disk heavy, since they are produced in HD - and as result, look remarkably beautiful on the screen.

While cleaning up, I have decided to burn few of my very favorite podcasts to the MP3 CD and keep it in the car. Doing that is really easy in iTunes - all you have to do is to select MP3 CD in Preferences -> Advanced -> Burning, create a playlist that will contain all MP3's you want to burn, control-click it and select Burn. So far so good. There are some situations when yu want to have more control over the process: for example you want to put the files to subfolders or need to adjust / cleanup the names of files before burning.

Why Engineers Don't Write Cookbooks

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 23:44:52 -0500

Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

1.) 532.35 cm3 gluten
2.) 4.9 cm3 NaHCO3
3.) 4.9 cm3 refined halite
4.) 236 cm3 partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride
5.) 177.45 cm3 crystalline C12H22O11
6.) 177.45 cm3 unrefined C12H22O11
7.) 4.9 cm3 methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde
8.) Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avian albumen-coated protein ovoids
9.) 473.2 cm3 theobroma cacao
10.) 236 cm3 de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size #10)

The amazing free System Information utility for Windows

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 23:37:29 -0500

I found today something that (after long time) make me to say Wow! - and it had nothing to do with Apple or OS-X. Simple small system management utility for Windows modestly named System info, written by fellow Canadian Gabriel Topala (originally from Romania, but living in Toronto, as I found out from his resume on his web site).

So what is so fantastic about this program:

- it is small (single file, 1.3 MB)
- portable no installer required
- free (although author welcomes donations and encourages registration)
- amazing depth. It gives you more information than you expected, often more than you were aware you may get!
The main (and only) window of the program has three panes:

From latest podcasts

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 23:56:57 -0500

Lot's of things happening this week - Macworld and CES generated lots of activity in podcasts. Macbreak has interesting series of interviews done (mostly) by Leo Laporte and Merlin Mann with various people from Macworld. If you are interested how the author of Cocoalicious looks like in flesh, go and grab the few Macbreak episodes. There is also interesting interview with creators of the Modbook (Macbook based tablet), the Omni group, makers of the great OmniOutliner who recently release OmniPlan. It should be the first project management tool that does not suck. It is hard to believe that there can be a piece of software that contains Gantt diagram and is logical and usable <grin/> - it certainly does not apply to MS Project. I am really curious how the OmniFocus - the new GTD tool in preparation - will look like when it is done.

Repetition is the mother of ... the Web

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 21:39:50 -0500

I had a discussion few days ago with a friend of mine on blogging. The topic was that as soon as something happens on the Net, thousands and sometimes even more people are writing, posting, discussing and blogging about the very same topic. A sort of information tidal wave that spreads across the cyberspace. Which was according to my friend huge waste of time and energy. Generally, he meant, from a whole community perspective, it makes no sense to write about something unless there is reasonable chance you will be saying something very unique that nobody else will likely say - otherwise it adds no value, just clutters the content by repeating and rephrasing the already said. At first it sounded reasonably sound ;-), but the longer I was thinking about it, the more I was convinced it may be quite the opposite.

Vocabulary test

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:49:25 -0500

Just out of morbid curiosity I did the test, here is the result :-)

Your Vocabulary Score: B-

You have a zealous love for the English language, and many find your vocabulary edifying.

Don't fret that you didn't get every word right, your vocabulary can be easily ameliorated!

How's Your Vocabulary?

Quote of the day

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 23:37:59 -0500

From today's Steve Jobs' keynote at Macworld 2007:

"I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been. "
Wayne Gretzky

I guess everybody is going to write about iPhone - which is OK because it is indeed very interesting gadget and it stole the show. To bad it will be 6 more months until it will be available in the US and (my best hopes) 8-9 months to have it here in Canada.

Dealing with digital mess: Bookmarks

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 23:03:03 -0500

As I mentioned before, I am keeping all my bookmarks in del.icio.us account. Thanks to excellent Firefox extension and available bookmarklets, posting new URL's is very comfortable. After using the del.icio.us for some time, here is few tips how get best of it:

- use the post buttons - they are available for Firefox as well as IE
- post often and tag a lot. Tags are the only way how to search the non-public posts
- keep consistent approach to tag names. I use singular, replace the '.' with word dot (dotnet) and write all lowercase
- follow the crowd - consider using similar tags as others, it makes it easier to be part of community
- use wisdom of the crowd. Look what else did other people tagged with the same tag as you did. You will be surprised what you may discover.

Installophobia a Setupanxiety

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 22:40:16 -0500

I have to admit that I am suffering from severe case of installophobia. Every time I start installation program on Windows, I am very vividly imagining all the terrible things that may happen in next few minutes. Like overwriting some system DLL's with some old or wrong version which will break half dozen of other programs. Or messing up my registry so badly that I will have have to spend few days of backing up my system data and installing XP from scratch (and inevitably loose something very important in the process). The introduction of the system installer and MSI format few years ago helped a little for a while - up to the point when I wrote my first own installation program and fully understood what exactly can be done with it :-). Then it come back. I guess this may have contributed to two major shifts during last year - moving to Mac platform (which has no registry) and moving on-line (which has no install at all).

How to reset an iPod

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 23:58:31 -0500

when it hangs and does not react. I am posting it so that I do not have to google it out again :-). Key is Menu + Select combination.

Here comes the detailed version (saved from Google Notebook):

Toggle the Hold switch on and off to avoid "hold trap"
Press and hold the Menu and Select buttons until the Apple logo appears, about 6 to 10 seconds. You may need to repeat this step.

Tips:

Speaking to the Dragon

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 23:45:12 -0500

It was Rod who started this by saying how great it is to replace slow typing with faster speaking and mentioning some kind of magical software package (appropriately named Dragon Naturally Speaking) which does transform your voice to written properly spelled English text with amazing accuracy. I was pretty sceptical, after seeing few years ago similar software from IBM with not-so-great accuracy, and even more recently the famous Vista speech wreckognition. Then Peter bought the software as well and had similarly good results as Rod. Now I got really interested. Both Peter and Rod and native speakers of English and I was very curious how will the software deal with my very own version of English pronunciation and fairly thick Slovak accent. So we did try it today.

FEOTD: well hidden secret

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 23:27:54 -0500

Today's extension is one that most people do not know about - and still almost everybody has it installed. The explanation for both is that it is distributed with Firefox, and unless you specifically prevent it's installation, you will get it. It is DOM Inspector.

Why would you care about something like this ? Unless you make living by creating Web applications, you probably would not. But if you do, it can help you a lot !

Sony eReader - first impressions

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 23:12:07 -0500

I have got my eReader on 30th December, so after few days of playing with it, here are first impressions. I managed to read one book and played with it quite a bit, but I am still learning.

The quality of the display and "electronic paper" look and feel is great. It actually looks like paper, not like screen. The non-glossy texture surface has same visibility from every angle and it really reads like paper. I have no problem with the speed or lack of it - the page turn takes about 1-2 seconds, switching to full black and then redrawing is kind of cool when the page text "emerges" from the page. The picture is perfect, steady, does not strain the eyes, perfectly readable in sunlight. It is the best feature of the reader.

Looking back on 2006

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 21:46:33 -0500

The 2006 was truly amazing year. We have accomplished so much - we have created the West end development centre, brought in and started several projects, completed phase 1 of employee conversion, started benefits program, ESOP program, redefined the company visual presence, grew the business and the company size considerably and created foundation for future growth.

Most important achievemnt is the fun factor - I am again looking forward to go to work - and again since the Montage days the synergy is coming back. Thanks so much to all of you who helped it happen.

Dealing with digital mess - Part 2: Passwords

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 23:48:11 -0500

Today's topic is dealing with sensitive information - such as logins, passwords, PIN numbers, credit card numbers and so on.

Up to last week, I was using the SplashID software to keep everything worth securing secure. I started to use SplashID back in 2001 when I bought the Palm based Sony Clie SJ30 (as replacement for wonderful Palm IIIxe). The Palm based program came with desktop counterpart that allowed editing of entries. Later in 2004 when I switched to Pocket PC, I simply purchased Windows Mobile version of the same software.

How to get rid of Outlook: the plan

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 00:38:28 -0500

I have decided to stop using Microsoft Outlook. No, I did not have any major issues with it, no horror stories of crashed, unreadable emails or viruses. As long as you use decent anti-virus (for example this one), switch off automatic loading of images and never do anything stupid such as clicking on an attachment or a link in email, you are reasonably safe. What got me to switch was lack of interoperability between anything non-Windows and Outlook and headaches of synchronization with on-line information. Using Outlook-only everywhere is not an option for me, because I need to use Mac as well as Windows and buying license of Outlook for every notebook, PC and virtual machine would be prohibitively expensive.

Dealing with digital mess - Part 1

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 03:14:59 -0500

In certain sense, people and companies have one things in common. If have been around for few years, you collect, acquire or create very strange collection of tools, platforms, software and data formats. In short, you end up with lots of digital mess. I am planning to make major cleanup and streamlining in 2007 - consolidate the hardware, software, data formats and workflows both at home and at work.

I have read the GTD book and many interesting articles and blogs on how people implement it. I noticed that the best way how to succeed is try to follow and customize the GTD approach for own circumstances, and build set of tools and processes that would make dealing with stuff easier, faster and more efficient.

Sales as Con Art - or welcome to Direct Energy flat rate plan

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 21:59:16 -0500

During over 8 years living on this continent I've developed reasonably thick skin in dealing with business calls, unsolicited mailings and other annoyances of aggressive selling. I was pretty sure nothing can make me really upset. Up until yesterday. Thanks to amazing capability of the Direct Energy sales force who does not take No for an answer.

But let's start from the beginning. About 3 weeks ago I started to get frequent calls from Direct Energy about their flat rate plan. After avoiding them few times, I realized that they will not give up and answered the call. I have got myself into a discussion with guy who wanted me to lock up my price per kWh for next 5 years. Sort of protection plan. The idea is that you pay same amount - starting with higher than market price - and as the price goes up, you may end up to be better off over time.

Publish your own book - or Lulu.com rocks!

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 23:17:19 -0500

One of the most successful presents this Christmas was five copies of the same book. Not just some kind of a book. Our daughter got five copies of the book she authored as a surprise. How can this happen ?

I was toying with an idea to try out self-publishing on-demand printing company that would allow you to create and publish book without spending hundreds or thousands of dollars as investment - sort of "pay as go" plan. The only way how to do it is create the the printable book yourself and find publisher that can do print on demand. Most companies that I found were selling packages in price segment $800 to few thousands of dollars, which included professional assistance in book creation: proofreading, editing, graphics design etc. One company however, offered exactly what I needed: a service that allows you to upload content file, design the cover and order as little as single copy - or as many as you need. No setup fees, publishing packages or minimum orders. See www.lulu.com for more detail. So we have decided to give it a try. It was an easy decision because manually printing the color pages and paying for binding would cost about 3 times more as was the price on Lulu.

Vista security and Java

Tue, 26 Dec 2006 20:44:11 -0500

I had a brief MSN chat with friend of mine today, who tried to install and use Vista as development platform. I mean install on the real hardware, in order to use it as core operating system. I have no feedback yet on how Visual Studio works, but as he found out, his Ant build files he uses to compile and deploy Java programs stopped working - because Vista did not allow to copy Javascript files. I can understand why Javascript files are treated with caution - however, it should not be considered the same when a file is copied from a local file to a local file, rather then downloaded from the internet.

Got the Sony reader :-)

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 11:24:11 -0500

Despite Sony's attempt to ignore non-US markets and leave Canadians in the cold (pun intended, even if it is still above zero), I have become a proud owner of the wonderful gadget for all eBooks fans. I still do not have it physically, so I cannot put it under the tree. It is coming next week, when my friend who now enjoys the vacation down in the south returns. He was not only very kind to buy one for me too, but he also wrote a wonderfull review which he is going to post on the Net. I will add a link as soon at it happens. Until that time, here is the summary, in his very own words:

Statistics are fun

Sat, 23 Dec 2006 23:42:10 -0500

I have discovered recently the nice feature of Wordpress - Dashboard which shows number of visits, but also shows incoming links and search phrases the people used to land on my blog. Sometimes, they provide really interesting and surprising insights. Of course, I do not see who they are or where the visitors are coming from - so no privacy concerns.

Because of my first name (which is btw abreviated form of Miroslav), I am getting some visits from the people interested in the works of Joan Miró - spanish/catalan artist. Must be quite a disappointment for them, sorry. Nothing to do with visual arts here - unless you count art of coding ;-).

Few more podcasts

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 23:38:31 -0500

Unfortunately, as of previous Sunday I have run out of the backlog in Security Now! episodes, which means that with all three of my favorite podcasts (Twit, Windows Weekly and Security Now!), I am pretty much dependent on their weekly releases. This is a problem, because the sum of 5-7 weekly commutes to work and back (about 15 minutes one way) plus about 40 minutes in a gym every day equals to about 6 hours of required podcast quality content, and the new episodes of three podcasts above cover barely half of it.

Unlike Vista, this user interface is something new

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 23:09:25 -0500

Quite seldom I see something on the net that is elegant, beautiful, and simple - so simple that it becomes obvious. Last time I had this feeling was with iPod's wheel.

There was lots of excitement about new Vista user interface features. The users who never used / saw OS-X, must love Vista. It is huge improvement over XP - much nicer, cleaner, very good typography, comes very close to Tiger. Linux users have their own great looking desktop XGL. From human-machine interaction point of view, neither Vista, nor XGL did really bring anything new - just caught up with Apple and added few eye candies on top. All this 3D-turning, spongy shaking windows, transparencies and rotating planes look indeed nice, but add very little to the functionality of Expose (besides, no one except Apple has two finger trackpad scrolls). So what is so cool about the BumpTop ? Everything.

Surfmania

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 22:19:35 -0500

Few good links I've received from friends:

- Interesting satelite images of Earth;

- New way how to discover / browse music - http://www.musicovery.com/

- All Web 2.0 sites directory, implemented Web 2.0 way

- On-line media conversion tool. Great for converting MP3 to ringtones :-)

- If you fly often, the SeatGuru will help you choose good seats and avoid bad ones

- interesting slow motion videos - http://www.redlake.com/gallery/videos/RDT.aspx

- animated knots

- nicely done Web2 (laszlo based) tool for selection of matching colors

How to synchronize Pocket PC with Mac

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 22:06:18 -0500

Using PocketPC with Windows is very easy, assumed that you are using Outlook. Synchronization is straightforward, works out of the box. If you are keeping your contacts in other software than Outlook, you can often find 3rd party software that does the synchronization - or at least provides the plugin. The selection of the solutions is fairly large.

On Mac, you are in similar situation if you want to use Palm based PDA. With Pocket PC synchronization, selection is limited. For direct synchronization between Mac address book and iCal, you have basically 2 options (or more precisely, at least two options): PocketMac or The Missing Sync. Both will do the job, but the Missing Sync seems to be more modern: it supports Intel processors on Mac side and Windows Mobile 5. Also the Web site of the Missing sync has more professional, Mac-like look. I found the review of both, but little bit dated ...

Disappearing act of computer magazines

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 23:30:24 -0500

On my way home from the office (yes, I know, technically it was Sunday) I stopped at my favorite Chapters store just to check what is new. First stop is always magazines, partially because it is right next to the entrance, partially because it is on the shortest path to Starbucks counter inside Chapters. For many years, there used to be two shelves with computer magazines. Now there is only one. And half of the magazines are about Photoshop, iPods and digital gadgets. Not that there was anything wrong with Photoshop and iPods - I love my iPod and have deep respects for Photoshop capabilities (albeit I can hardly use the Elements). What I miss are good old fashioned developers mazines which have dimisnished almost completely.

Weekend special

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 18:47:37 -0500

Weekend time again. As few times before, here are few discoveries from the Web:

Google is pushing Internet Explorer 7. Their own version, using new Internet Explorer Administration Kit. It is not really different version - just configured with Google as default search engine and Google toolbar. Nothing that little more experienced user would not do himself. I am not sure how successfull this will be - but I am pretty sure that this was not what Microsoft had in mind how this tools should be used for.

Party time

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 23:55:50 -0500

It is this time of year - Christmas parties. It looks like the number of parties we go to every year increases - did not figure out yet which function it is, let's hope it is not exponential. This year, the number was four. First was traditional Christmas party at Peter's place. Second one - which I unfortunately missed - was a gettogether of Montage/Allstream alumni. I was sick and in bed - sorry I missed this one. Hope that there will be more opportunities for meeting during the long winter that is still ahead of us. Third party - "the party" - is Thinknostic Christmas Party, this year happening at Steve's place. And the party marathon will be closed by tomorrow's Tirestamp party at Sean's.

Quote of the day

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 20:49:18 -0500

Thought of the day:

... Too much to learn. Too much bandwidth crowding the channels of communication. We can’t listen fast enough. We’re left standing on our tiptoes all the time

Greg Bear, The Darwin's Radio

This does not sound very optimistic, which is quite representative. I am down with bad headache, cannot really think straight, spending time sleeping, reading a book (above) and surfing the Web.
I found out that I made it to Ottawa Blogger's list and learned a new word: splogger

Ready for a new day (continued)

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 22:05:28 -0500

As I mentioned yesterday, my expectations regarding Office 2007 were fairly low. I am not a big fan of office application suites and for most of my editing I am using either on-line tools (like Google docs or Writeboard) or Open Office. True, neither of them has the smoothness and fine polish of Microsoft Office 2003, neither has all of it's features, but - let's face it - I barely use maybe 10-20% of Word or Excel capabilities anyway. For which reason, I am not willing to pay premium just for improved user comfort.

Ready for a new day - or Vista-Office-Exchange launch

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 23:56:18 -0500

Today was a big day in Ottawa Microsoft community. The Congress Centre was hosting large event - simultaneous launch of Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange server 2007. Because I have almost registered about two months ago, I attended the event. The "almost" means that I tried to register right after receiving MSDN Flash email, but many people must have been faster - I was put on waiting list on two of the 3 tracks (Developers and IT Pros) and before I could even try to register for the third track (Business), everything crashed, Web site hang and I have never heard back from them, nor received any email. Until yesterday, when an automated voice reminder service managed to catch me by phone in underground garage under Brookstreet Hotel, and delivered first part of reminder - telling me that I was registered to attend something ... Too bad it did not tell me to what, when and where did I registered, before it broke off and I lost the signal. But I deducted that the only reason to call me would be a reminder of the Launch and after logging on to My Events, voila - the ticket was there. So I went. It was a tough decision, whether to sacrifice full work day and possibly evening ping-pong at Igor's - but - what the heck. Microsoft does not produce new releases that often so going away once in 5 years should be OK. And now I am glad I did go.

How to duplicate CD on a Mac

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 20:20:52 -0500

My daughter's music CD for her skating short program got badly scratched and because it was the last-but-one copy (as skater you need many copies, in case you loose/forget/scratch/misplace it), I was confronted with the task to create a new copy. Rather than starting Nero on Win-XP notebook, I have decided to learn (finally) how to do it on Mac. It must be simple, intuititive and much easier than on Windows. Right ? Wrong ! To my big surprise, there was no easy, idiot proof, very obvious way mac-ish drag and drop way how to acomplish it. It was not exactly hard either, but it actually took consulting the omniviscent Google to find it out. To save the search for the next time, I'll write it down. Here is what you have to do:

Unknown celebrity

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 13:50:12 -0500

Yes, I know, the title sounds like oxymoron and to certain degree, it is. What it should maybe say is Person who should have been celebrity ...

I am not going anywere close to movies or entertainment industry with this. There are more than enough sites, blogs and gossip channels out there that look at life of movie stars or singers. I will stay within the world of computers and technology, which has its own heros and celebrities, albeit known in smaller groups. In "real world", pretty much everybody knows Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Steve Wozniak. They have made the headlines many times. Fewer people know names like James Gosling, Anders Hejlsberg, Bill Joy, Dennis Ritchie, Guido van Rossum, Guy L. Steele, Richard Stallman....

Few new links from my del.icio.us collection

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 20:11:50 -0500

According Forrester reseach ".. the Web will fade. It will be replaced by a new software paradigm". Nobody knows what this new paradigm will be, but these guys are saying that it will be their platform. I found this link from this very interesting two part article Changing Climates for Microsoft and Google, Desktops and Webs making interesting analogy between Google and AOL business model, browser as a platform and possible return of thick client ("smart client" in Microsoft terms), why Google might want to buy Adobe and many other interesting observations. Worth reading.

Too many ebooks, too little time

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 23:11:21 -0500

http://manybooks.net/. 'nough said.

Reading code can be fun

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 22:51:49 -0500

I have switched away from using Outlook once again for variety of reasons - as part of my latest attempts to reduce complexity and increase security (more on that later) and went back to Thunderbird/Web based email systems on all Windows machines. Conversion of address books was piece of cake this time, thanks to Plaxo which I use to synchronize Mac and Windows based systems. Nonetheless, I got curious what format does Thunderbird use for address book and this way I have discovered the awkward Mork file format.

FEOTD: Stealther

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 22:14:17 -0500

Today's extension is from the area of - surprise surprise - security and privacy. I guess I am getting slightly paranoid from all the security related stuff I am listening to. But I promise I will switch back to "standard" TWIT, MacBreak and Windows Weekly to compensate the security heavy topics. But it certainly true that the more you are aware of what is technically possible, the more hostile Internet you will see ...

The problem with hard drives: too large and too cheap

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 23:36:51 -0500

I have worked through my listening to the Security Now! podcasts up to middle October now (more specifically up to here) and one remark from Steve Gibson forced me to think very hard: how today's hard drives encounter hundreds of read errors a day (actually Leo said "hundreds a minute"), but thanks to ECC process and dynamic reallocation of sectors, this is invisible to the user, because:

" .... if a file is damaged because of a bad sector, it can recover that data by recovering the data, either moving it or kind of reformatting the sector underneath it to make it readable again ... "

Will C# 3.0 become an uglier version of Python ?

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 22:54:43 -0500

It is now about 1 year since official release of C# 2.0 and .NET framework 2.0. The next version of C# language - the C# 3.0 seems to get more and more attention - in blogs, official channels and MSDN. There is lot of excitement and big expectations - but I have nagging feeling that the general direction of the C# development is not necessary an improvement.

The main new features of the C# 3.0 language are implicitly typed variables and anonymous types, extension methods, lambda expressions, and LINQ - possibility of using SQL-ish dialect inside the C#. With exception of the last, all of them must sound very familiar to every Python programmer. All variables in Python are implicitly typed, we can extend classes to much larger degree than extension methods and lambda expressions were always integral part of Python (inherited from Lisp and Scheme).

Software for new Mac users

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 20:32:18 -0500

It's been almost 5 months now since I started to use Mac OS-X. During these months, I became very comfortable in the new environment and albeit I do not consider being a power user, I can do all I need with my Macbook and use it daily.

Today I found out that yet another from my friends got a Mac. Great news, Thomas - hope you will enjoy your Macbook Pro as much as myself, Gabo and many others. Welcome in the club.

Security now

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 20:38:04 -0500

After listening for over week to Security Now! podcast (thanks, Steve, thanks Leo and happy birthday), I've decided to actually do something about the security on computers around. I started to scanning my home network using "Shields Up" and was happy to found that the only open port was SSH, exactly as I thought I configured it.

As next step, I followed the advice from this podcast and used my hosts file to block out ads servers and other internet vermins. You may also want to look at the podcast notes, read full transcript or listen to it.

FEOTD: Linky

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 22:29:44 -0500

Today's extension is yet another one that somehow works with URL's aka links. If you now have strange feeling that all extensions in last few days *were* about links, you are right. But realize that links are the most crucial feature of the Web, and therefore extensions dealing with links are really useful.

After you download Linky (the download is very small - only 32 kB), it adds few entries into your context menu. How many new menu entries are added can be configured in plugin option. On activation, Linky shows you number of links and image links (URL pointing to picture) on currently page displayed page and allows you to open links in new tabs or new windows or open image links in new tabs or windows. In both cases, Linky displays dialog window with all links and allows individual selection of which links will be included.

Vista security and starting from scratch ...

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 22:14:34 -0500

I have read somewhere that quotation is safe way how to say something potentially dangerous or controversial without being legally exposed :-). So today I am going to quote an authority in computer security - Steve Gibson on some very interesting Vista related security information.

Steve is doing (together with Leo Laporte) excellent weekly podcast "Security Now!". It is so great that I have decided to download as many back episodes as I could find on their site and started to listen to them in the chronological order, back from June 2006. It was worth of every minute. I am now somewhere in August 2006 and Steve Gibson (== SG) covered interesting tricks what to do with you hosts file, very nicely explained the usefulness of netstat program and started multi-episode sequence on virtualization and virtaul machines. Thanks to many years of experience, Steve always gives a historical perspective on every topic he covers.

FEOTD: Linkify

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 22:38:14 -0500

Linkification
Sometimes you see a Web page whose creator was lazy and did not wrapped displayed URL into <A href="..."></A> tags. In short, you see something like http://www.thinknostic.com/ instead of http://www.thinknostic.com/ (btw, if you have installed Linkify, you will see both as links). As result, you can see the link on the page, but you cannot really click on it. In order to follow the link, you must select the link text, copy and paste it into address bar and press Enter. With Linkify installed, you will always see all textual links as real links and can just click on URL as if the page would contain the proper <A> tags.

Podcast du jour

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 22:21:13 -0500

This is for Gabo, Derek, Steve and others who talked to me about podcasts and about which podcasts are worth listening to.

Since I bought Nano2, I spend lot's of time listening to podcasts. Pretty much all driving time, walking time and time in the gym is spend listening to wide selection of topics and to people producing them.

Here is my current list plus some additional recommendations:

1) TWIT and all around Leo Laporte.

FEOTD: Session Saver

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 22:22:52 -0500

Today's extension is about session management. Great news about Firefox is it's ability to use tabs and have opened many webpages at the same time. This impacts people's browsing habits - rather than following one path of the links and diving deep inside the Website, you explore many paths concurrently, jumping from one to another, adding more and more tabs at the virtual crossroads. As in real life, when you travel, bad things can happen - what in this case means that your browser may crash, leaving you in the middle of nowhere with no trace of how you have got there and what you have already visited. If you were using the Session Saver extension, this would be prevented - after Firefox restart you would end up with exact collection of open tabs as before the accident.

Weekend nuggets

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 21:27:43 -0500

Technically, it was Sunday so rather than working or reading some serious stuff, I have decided to take a long walk (to catch up with lot's of new podcasts downloaded yesterday) and to surf the net just for fun. Here is some of the interesting discoveries:

There was a rumor on the net that some Indian student in Kerala discovered a way how to store over 450 GB of data on a sheet of paper. They say

Are blogs the threat for professional journalists ?

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 23:28:32 -0500

Thanks to 6 hours difference, I usually read tomorrow edition of Slovak and Czech newspapers on the Net one day ahead. Most of them switches to new edition at midnight, which is 6PM our time. I am doing this for several years already. What is different between now and 2-3 years ago is what I read. While before it were mostly articles written by journalists and news industry professionals, now I read mostly blogs. On SME blog, there are few hundreds, maybe few thousands bloggers, and content they produce is usually much more interesting and readable that the content of official newspaper.

FEOTD: DownThemAll

Fri, 24 Nov 2006 19:25:29 -0500

In previous FEOTD entries I have mentioned excellent tools that help you maintain the URL's of the pages you want to remember (del.icio.us) , and in case the URL is not enough, save the content of the Web page for offline access or archive. But what if the web page is not really what you are interested in, you just want download all files files attached to the page - and there is a *lot* of them.

R.I.P. V.H.S.

Thu, 23 Nov 2006 21:27:58 -0500

I cannot help it, but it is awkward feeling when something that was part of your life, was so omnipresent is announced to be dead and disappear shortly. Exactly this is happening to video tapes and format VHS specifically. The news has been all around the net day or two ago: studio's stopped after 30 years production and distribution of the VHS media.

It does not seem to so many years ago when VHS was and new and struggling to survive against more technically advanced BetaMax (I still remember how great the BetaMax movies looked). Now the VHS is slowly disappearing and everything moves to digital format and DVD. One one side, it is better - higher quality, less compatibility issues (no more struggling with expensive VHS players that can play both NTSC and PAL tapes on NTSC TV (strangely enough, the other way is much easier and many players sold in Europe do play NTSC tapes OK, but require 220 Volt/ 50 Hz and PAL TV). Compared to this, the DVD "zones" create much smaller problem, especially since Linux folks gave us some very good tools :-). Even the DVD and medium seems to be approaching the beginning of the end of life - albeit it is very unclear who will win the BlueRay / HD-DVD war. Maybe nobody will prevail, consumers will wait until the live with live streaming and video on demand with PVR's will be practical alternative to physical distribution.

FEOTD: Live HTTP Headers

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 22:53:08 -0500

This was is out-of order extension (I mean there are several extensions that I use on daily basis and for that reason I planned to mention them before this one) - but it helped tremendously in my BI project, so here it goes.

Live Headers does one thing only and does it well - shows you HTTP headers of a communication between your browser and any Web site. As long as the browser is Firefox - but why would you want to use anything else, right ?.

Wiki's are everywhere ...

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 21:05:25 -0500

Since the beginning of the biometric security project, we are using an excellent enterprise-level Wiki Confluence as knowledge repository and main team communication tool. I was not sure at the beginning, how will the Wiki approach work for all the people on the team, mostly because once before I already tried it and had not much success of introducing the idea. It was few years ago and the Wiki engine I used were nowhere in the same league as Confluence, but main problem at that time was probably the users' mindset. I am happy to report that this time it worked really really well. I am not sure whether it was because of the fantastic user friendly features and capabilities of Confluence, or because the general awareness shifted thanks to sites like Wikipedia and people got used to the idea of user created content ... The truth is that Wiki's are mainstream now - inside or outside of the enterprise space.

FEOTD: Scrapbook

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 22:40:57 -0500

As mentioned before, thanks to del.icio.us bookmarking site and excellent Firefox plugin with the same name, I have almost perfect solution where to keep and how to organize my bookmarks. In theory, I will never loose anything interesting. Or will I ?

The good news and the bad news about bookmarks is that they are very dynamic. What you've stored in your favorites or del.icio.us may disappear without warning and never come back (actually, thank's to Google caching it is not so bad, but even Google cache will eventually expire). In situation like this, I always wish to have captured not only link but the whole copy of the page(s).

Apple makes me healthier :-)

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 23:47:11 -0500

Not only apple the fruit, but also Apple the company. How does it work ?

Step 1: Buy an iPod. Any model will do, I have got Nano 2Gen, 4 GB

Step 2: Subscribe to some good podcasts

Step 3: Listen to a podcasts while taking long walks - outdoors (preferred) or in a fittness studio.

That's it. It works great for me. During last four weeks I have digested lots of podcasts, inclusive TWIT (This Week In Tech) netcasts from August 2006 almost up to today. It is a great way how to stay informed and get more interesting news while spending less time in front of the computer. And on top of that, you can have fun along the way. Leo Laporte is great host and personalities like John C Dvorak add lot's of flavor to the discussion. Few items from latest edition:

New toy

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 21:25:30 -0500

Got a new gadget. Actually, not quite "got" - just borrowed from Mike. It the digital pen - amazing piece of machinery, that remembers all you write (up to 40 pages) and allows you to transfer written text to computer. The catch is that you *must* write on special paper, with microscopic marks that help to note the position of the pen.

I was surprise how successful was the CRC software of making some sense from my cat scratches :-).

FEOTD (Firefox Extension of the Day): del.icio.us

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 21:37:47 -0500

If you do not know and use on-line social bookmarking site Del.icio.us, take a break now and go there. Currently owned by Yahoo, is Del.icio.us is a one of many social bookmarking tools out. Probably not the one with most features, not the one with coolest user interface - but pretty good one and certainly winner for me.

I have been struggling with the problem of how to keep my collections of URL's under control for several years. Yes - every browser has bookmarks or favorites, but if you use multiple computers daily basis (multiple means > 5), with actively accessing Web with more than single browser on each of them (usually with some subset of IE/Firefox/Mozilla/Safari/Opera), you can pretty much forget about browser's bookmarks/favorites - you will never have your bookmarks where you need them.

The 30 day challenge

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:58:12 -0500

It's been awfully quiet here in last two weeks. Mostly because it was awfully busy pretty much everywhere else. Being a single parent, even for a short and definite period of time is pretty demanding task. Now when my wife is back from the trip overseas, I do not spend my mornings and evening in various skating rinks, I am slowly catching up on everything that got backlogged, delayd and so on. Starting with my project and progressing slowly through my reading list, lot's of downloaded podcasts and LBNL (last but not least) the blog.

To upgrade or not to upgrade ?

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 21:48:10 -0400

It's official. The Browser version 2 final is out. I mean Firefox, of course - it should be quite obvious what is "the browser" these days. Yes, I know - IE still holds majority of the browser share and yes, Safari is really really nice, fast and good looking application - but let's face it: browser is not just another application - it is a *platform* these days. Platform means extensibility and extensibility means being a good foundation for add-ons, extensions and plugins. And from the platform perspective, the Firefox is the king.

Back again

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 23:28:56 -0400

I have been back since Monday October 2nd late night, but until today, the backlog of things in both projects did not leave enough time to do any blogging. Not even any project-unrelated thinking - which is a prerequisite. Thanks to long weekend, I almost caught up with my backlog in both projects, so I can get back to the fun part of business such as Internet and blogs ...

Taking off

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 14:19:35 -0400

In few hours I am taking off for a quick trip overseas, which very likely means that I will be quiet - at least as far as blogging goes. Not that the place I am heading to is not wired enough - actually, the broadband penetration is surprisingly high. The real reason is that I will be moving around a lot and meeting lot of people, so the blog must wait (yes, I am taking the Mac with me - what have you expected ...).

Moved in ...

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 01:08:30 -0400

I have been pretty quiet in last few days. The reason why was hinted here - we have finally a space. The project started on Monday and we were running around like crazy since Sunday. Started with moving in looots of boxes - 9 workstations, each with two 19" LCD monitors plus three servers, network gears, cables etc - three full cars. Then came the unpacking and setting up, which took much longer time that I would ever have expected. But it went well - modulo few glitches - like missing DVI cables and only one disk in server that should have been RAID-ed ...

Quote of the day

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 00:02:06 -0400

Testing by itself does not improve software quality. Test results are an indicator of quality, but in and of themselves, they don't improve it. Trying to improve software quality by increasing the amount of testing is like trying to lose weight by weighing yourself more often.

What you eat before you step onto the scale determines how much you will weigh, and the software development techniques you use determine how many errors testing will find. If you want to lose weight, don't buy a new scale; change your diet. If you want to improve your software, don't test more; develop better.

On Ottawa beduins - or - We want Starbucks with whiteboards

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 22:50:34 -0400

We will be moving into new office space soon. It is exciting time, stepping from working (mostly) at customer's locations to own project office. Location is of course Kanata Business Park North, with nice view to a golf course. This location brings several changes against the office in downtown - some of them are great - such as 1) we have lot's of space and 2) parking is not an issue - arrive any time, park as long as you wish. Some of them are not so great - selection of possible choices for lunch shrunk considerably (with very few in walking distance) and to get to closest Tim Hortons you have to drive (unless you are ready for 25 minute walk one way). In case you are wondering - we are keeping the office at Albert Street - it is managed by same company as the new place, so we are just scaling up.

Working On-Line: More to word processors and spreadsheets

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 22:45:00 -0400

Bruce Byfield has interesting article in Linux.com featuring hands-on comparison of four on-line wordprocessors: specifically ajaxWrite, ThinkFree Online, Writely, and Zoho Writer. I do not 100% agree with all his conclusions, but it's interesting and worth reading if you are exploring these tools. I am certainly staying with Writely, right now I am using it on daily basis. Combination of WriteRoom for off-line concepts and "thinking phase" of writing and Writely for on-line editing, adding links, etc fits ideally my needs.

Harddisks turns 50 on September 13th

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 21:33:19 -0400

It is hard to imagine - on September 13th it will be 50 years since IBM introduced the very first hard drive.

Since that time technology made quite a progress. Compare for yourself:

1956 - RAMAC drive

capacity: 5 Megabytes, built from fifty 24" spinning disks
weight: about one ton
price: $250'000 / year (lease)
price per gigabyte: about fifty million dollars

2006 - typical harddrive

capacity: 500 GB
weight: < 1kg
price: ~ $300
price per gigabyte: about 60 cents

Amazing, isn't it ?

Internal: Free books to a good home :-)

Sun, 03 Sep 2006 23:26:16 -0400

Again, I need to make some space on a shelf and I simply cannot throw away a book ... This time I have decided to reduce my Java bookshelf to allow new (mostly .NET books) come in. No, I am not abandoning Java - but for next 8-12 months I am very likely fully booked in .NET projects, and after that, it will be time to upgrage to new sets of books for Java 1.6 anyway ...

Working On-Line: Excell-ent On-Line Spreadsheets

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 23:15:20 -0400

Continuing in Working On-Line Series - see previous post on word processors

Spreadsheet is after editing text probably second most important business application. Let's explore what is out there for those of us, who do not want to install Microsoft Office or commit yourself to one particular platform. Most of the spreadsheet try to copy or emulate subset of the features of "de-facto" spreadsheet standard Microsoft Excel

Good starting points for search is (obviously) Google search for "on-line spreadsheet" and Wikipedia. The offer of Web based spreadsheet programs is surprisingly large. They differ in capabilities, but typically allow import and export of Excel spreadsheets and CSV files, entering formulas (with subset of Excel functions), text formating, some form of graph creation and most importantly - colaboration and shared viewing/editing of the spreadsheet. I tried accomplish two task with some of them: import my timesheet from XLS and edit it online and do shared editing of a spreadsheet. Here is quick summary of the features and personal experience working with them.

Road to Mac VI: The infection is spreading

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 20:57:29 -0400

See also Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV and Part V

This Mac thing seems to be quite contagious. Gabo started to seriously considering buying the MacBook, after listening to my happy stories about Great Mac Discoveries. Even Vlad, right now living trough his latest love-affair with Ubuntu Linux was deeply impressed with OS-X after we seeing Expose, Spotlight, PhotoBooth and iPhoto in action.

Next day, after I arrived to the office in the morning, Gabo was already there. Which is not unusual. Since his little son and wife are back, they get up quite early in the morning and Gabo usually beats me to arrive first to work. He lives only 5 minutes away anyway ...

Road to Mac V: Feeling happy

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 11:16:10 -0400

See also part I, part II and part III and Part IV

August 13th
#

I have discovered wonderful thing today. I was experimenting with my PocketPC (Toshiba e830) and switched on Bluetooth. Mac discovered the device OK - all I had to do was to follow the wizard Setup Bluetooth device, under Bluetooth menulet (the strange B icon upper right). I have entered the code Mac suggested on PPC and they new about each other. What was really cool was that I found out how to access files on that device ... but let's step back a moment.

Road to Mac IV: Getting accustomed

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 22:51:19 -0400

August 10th
#

That Spotlight thing is just freaking fantastic :-). After few days of work, accumulating some files, emails etc, just for fun I typed Gabo’s last name to Command-Space search box. I did not even finish typing and first results were coming in the result list: all emails exchanged with Gabo, saved chats, text documents and as “best hit” Gabo’s contact card. Which was exactly right.

Road to Mac III: The Culture Shock

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 21:00:09 -0400

August 3rd
#

This is my second day with Mac, writing in TextEdit as I have not installed any other editor (yet). Still learning, do not want to install lot of junk before I find out proper ways how to do things. Time to learn how things are in the Brave New World ….

Road to Mac II: I've got a Macbook !

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 21:22:13 -0400

See part I

July 25th - August 2nd
#

After ordering, I received two emails from Apple, confirming the order. It took 3 days until the order finally got shipped from China (where else, of course) on Friday, July 28th and the estimate for delivery was 5-8 business days. I have received the tracking number and was able to track how my Macbook was moving around the globe: starting from Shizou, China on 28th, arriving to USA, Anchorage, Alaska one day later. One more day and it showed up in Memphis, Tennessee. That was on July 30th. It seemed to stuck there for over 2 days and then, without any interim stops it showed up on August 2nd in Ottawa Fedex location. I have just arrived to customer place in the morning and saw the news on Fedex Tracking page (dutifully bookmarked and checked every few hours )…

List of Mac applications by macgiver

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 21:00:53 -0400

Just stumbled upon this blog and noted at least three things of interest:

he has got a new a Mac Pro (I am green with envy :-) )
uses as a nick nice wordplay on MacGyver (this name has special meaning for all us, ex-Montage folks)
he started to learn Objective C and Cocoa and blogs about it, I am curious - (not that I plan to give up Java, C# and Python ..)

Also see his list of recommended (mostly) free Mac applications. Going to try out some of them for sure !

Road to Mac I: Hard Decisions

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 22:53:06 -0400

January - July 2006
#

This is the story of a journey travelled quite often these days. It describes discoveries, joys and frustrations of one long time Windows user learning how to use Mac OS-X. Many have done this before, many have blogged about it.

The reason why I am writing this down is mostly to remember, and as well because I can. One of the assumes uses of the new MacBook was creative writing so I guess I am trying fulfill the promise to myself. I have no idea whether this will be an interesting read for anybody else but me. But I’ll write it anyway.

On blogs, bloggers, blogging

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 07:42:55 -0400

If you would ask me to pick one technology phenomenon that had the largest impact on and was the most characteristic for the technology during the years 1995-2000, my answer would be “Web, of course”. For the years 2000-2003 I’d vote for eCommerce, online applications and collaboration (like Google, eBay, Amazon and many others). And for the last 3 years, I would definitely pick online communities and blogs.

Blogs are like tsunami that is changing the landscape of online content. There is nothing really new about what they are. Blog is user editable Web page, with very few features: implicit tracking of entries by creating calendar-based index of older entries, ability to add comments to the entries, limited form of categorization and tagging as well as some simple, blog-2-blog notification mechanisms (backtracks and pings). The only aspect in which blogs are different is simplicity of creating and running a blog. The same way as Google made searching for on-line content very easy and accessible, blogs are the very easy way how to create that content. Good content is one of the main reasons why people go online.

Hello world!

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 18:24:13 -0400

Since R&K published the The Book, the title above became de-facto standard way how to start anything. Which is one of the two reasons why I used it as title for this very first entry. The second reason is that the friendly folks from to Wordpress.com have created the title and the first blog entry for me.

Posts on Miro's World

Catching up: Taming the Online Storages

Catching up: Offsite Backups That Let Me Sleep

Picking the provider #

Catching up: Tailscale Everywhere

Why a mesh VPN #

A Wiki Wiki Wikend

Catching up: Reorganizing My Digital Life

Catching up: Obsidian + Claude

The setup #

Catching up: Riding the LLM Wave

Spectator to User (2023) #

Catching up: Why Obsidian Won

Catching up: My Note-Taking Odyssey

How klassify.com went live: one static page, GitHub Pages and Route 53

Catching up: From Spain to Bratislava (Again)

How Valencia actually happened (it was never a plan) #

The Five-Year Intermission

What happened #

How to monitor Bitbucket user and group permissions with API

How to manage users and groups in Bitbucket #

How to mirror Github and Bitbucket repositories

Mirroring large number of GitHub or Bitbucket repositories #

Assumptions #

Steps #

How to list Github repositories and users

How to list repositories in GitHub #

Setup #

How to list Bitbucket repositories and users

How to list repositories in Bitbucket #

Setup #

Documenting multi-repository projects

Reference Architecture as a Code

Many shapes of Architecture #

DockerCon 2020

Accessing Terraform cloud Module registry programatically

Using SSH keys with multiple Bitbucket accounts

History of Faith

The beginnings #

Kubectl client and server version mismatch

Accessing Rancher cluster #

Rancher CLI vs kubectl

Accessing Rancher cluster #

30 day commit challenge - Checkpoint 1

On harvesting credit card numbers and passwords

30 day commit challenge

BOTD - Blog of the Day

Quote of the day

November in Valencia

Building Hugo as well on GitLab pages

Parallel building challenges #

Using same repo #

Current Hugo setup on Github Pages

How does the blog setup and publishing work #

From Jekyll to Hugo

Why Hugo replaced Jekyll #

Thought of the day

All Day DevOps 2019

All Day DevOps 2019 - Notes #

AWS Inspection

Bunch of one-liners for AWS #

How many instances of each type do I have, and in what states? #

What CIDRs have Ingress Access to which Ports? #

Which Services am I using? #

CIDR access to ports #

Lambda runtimes #

Memory size #

Lambda Environment variables #

Pyrenees

Short version #

Long version #

Spanish and Catalan

Welcome back present

Cafe Eleven

Favorite places

Je me souviens

Family vacation

Finland Män

Rejoice! The Finland Män is back! #

Company picnic

Picking the provider
#

Why a mesh VPN
#

The setup
#

Spectator to User (2023)
#

How Valencia actually happened (it was never a plan)
#

What happened
#

How to manage users and groups in Bitbucket
#

Mirroring large number of GitHub or Bitbucket repositories
#

Assumptions
#

Steps
#

How to list repositories in GitHub
#

Setup
#

How to list repositories in Bitbucket
#

Setup
#

Many shapes of Architecture
#

The beginnings
#

Accessing Rancher cluster
#

Accessing Rancher cluster
#

Parallel building challenges
#

Using same repo
#

How does the blog setup and publishing work
#

Why Hugo replaced Jekyll
#

All Day DevOps 2019 - Notes
#

Bunch of one-liners for AWS
#

How many instances of each type do I have, and in what states?
#

What CIDRs have Ingress Access to which Ports?
#

Which Services am I using?
#

CIDR access to ports
#

Lambda runtimes
#

Memory size
#

Lambda Environment variables
#

Short version
#

Long version
#

Rejoice! The Finland Män is back!
#

Adding Bash to Tensorflow notebook
#

Cybersource Testing Tool
#

git-attic
#

Example
#

git trail
#

Czechoslovakia would be 100 today
#

1918-10-28 - 1992-12-31
#

Skopeo
#

Installation
#

Usage
#

Pre-requisites
#

Test of access
#

Set the environment variables
#

What it does
#

The idea / motivation
#

Install AWS CLI on Mac
#

Unsuccesfull path - keep the Python 2.7
#

The issue
#

Options
#

Use git-svn bridge
#

Task
#

User setup
#

Update all local branches in Git repo
#

git ffwd-update command
#

Free resources
#

Hands On
#

Good news 1
#

Fix
#

Show merged and unmerged branches
#

Example
#

The code
#

Show committer activity - whole project
#

Git project statistic tool
#