Matt's Journal

Why does Java have a maximum memory size at all?

2012-01-05T12:39:00.001-05:00

It might make sense for applets but 99.9999% of java code runs on servers now. Memory limits should be deprecated for code which doesn't run through a browser. Heck, I think applets should be deprecated.

Is there a real reason why it ever had a maximum heap? I don't know. If it's still used it should be optional with the default being unbounded heaps.

Dbms_xmlgen Convert Error

2011-12-23T12:22:00.001-05:00

When running through a large amount of data stored in clobs, I was doing
    DBMS_XMLGEN.CONVERT(DBMS_LOB.SUBSTR(lobcolumn,4000,1))
to first truncate my clob and make it into a varchar, then convert xml/html entities to regular characters. This was throwing
    ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character string buffer too small
when I got to a value which was actually more than 4000 characters long. I didn't realize that xmlgen.convert can work on lobs though, so just reversing the order of operations resolved the error:
    DBMS_LOB.SUBSTR(DBMS_XMLGEN.CONVERT(lobcolumn),4000,1)
and it's good to go.

Tax Credit Idea

2011-12-21T10:49:00.001-05:00

A credit for parents who take a class about how to discipline kids might help reduce child abuse.

JSR 303 Validation Question

2011-12-15T10:38:00.001-05:00

I don't know if anybody has asked this before, but I can't find it on google. I have a class with two fields (username,email) and need to validate that the email starts with the username. Can I do something like this?

private String username;
@Pattern(regex="^${username}.*$")

I'm guessing not.

Software which is Done

2011-11-29T15:28:00.001-05:00

Some things are done. They met the requirements and the only changes
ever needed again will be if the requirements change (which is
unlikely) or there is a bug. Subversion and tortoisesvn for example.
They were done. They're still actively developed. They're being
changed all the time to introduce new features and unneeded
complexity. TortoiseSVN abandoned the requirement that it be simple
and instead crudded up the GUI. It must take a great leader to say
"ok, lets shelve our best work and find something new". Cause that's
what they should have done.

Dear Groupon/LivingSocial/Any Coupon for Sale Site

2011-11-18T17:56:00.001-05:00

Your confirmation emails should come in the form of an outlook
invitation so that people can add the expiration date on these things
to their calendars easily.

Get on that already.

Undocumented Processes

2011-11-18T16:47:00.001-05:00

When a process is complicated and undocumented, your users are
basically being blindfolded and set loose in an electric fence maze.

Note to Self

2011-11-18T13:32:00.001-05:00

Learn this tomorrow:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweep-picking

Garmin 205

2011-11-10T11:40:00.001-05:00

That battery in the Garmin 205 is a 3.7V Li-ion 750mAh battery. It is approximately 34mmx38mmx6mm

Texting

2011-10-20T11:53:00.001-04:00

I just thought of a solution to a very small part of the texting while driving problem. Everyone complains that doing something dumb like disabling devices moving over a certain speed will screw with passengers or people on buses or trains, but if the phone is the key to the car (like the GM commercial where the guy's wife starts and unlocks the car from an airplane w/ her iPhone), then you can just disable text/data on the phone which started the car. It'd only be a useful solution for parents who want to give their kids smartphones (and newish cars), but in 10 years, that will be a lot of people. And if your kid's phone battery dies, then they can't get home.

Flickr + Android

2011-10-19T12:06:00.001-04:00

Flickr finally has an Android app! Except, it has no real awesome features. Other free alternatives are better. Flickr Companion in particular rocks the official app's socks off. It has no batch uploading and no automatic uploading, I couldn't even figure out how to edit the titles or permissions on already uploaded photos. I'll stick to the better options, but I'm going to keep an eye on this.

TrixBox HowTo Ring Phone First, Then Forward

2011-06-22T17:32:00.000-04:00

Probably not the only or best way

1. Create submenu "ext123specific"
2. Set extension 123 to forward to submenu "ext123specific"
3. Set the steps of submenu "ext123specific" to ring extension 123 w/ no forward (duration 5 seconds got us two rings), then to forward to the external number
4. Test it out

IIS 7 Bug

2011-06-21T16:29:00.002-04:00

You cannot run the Siteminder ISAPI filter on a request which you are going to reverse proxy using their built in reverse proxy, apparently.

Really Sick of Trixbox

2011-06-21T10:30:00.001-04:00

Next time I'm going with PBXInaFlash and maintaining control.

TrixBox cannot do this (according to the support ticket I filed):
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+G.729+pass-thru

9 out of 10 of my support requests get a response that can be summed up as "nope, can't do that"

Active Directory Domain DNS headaches

2011-06-17T12:09:00.001-04:00

If your users in the domain are having DNS trouble outside of the office, maybe you did something careless like somebody at our organization and set the DNS servers in the group policy. Edit the group policy to remove this option and let client computers revert to using the dhcp configured DNS servers and their vpn will work again.

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/294785 for more

Tomcat Caching Argh

2011-06-16T18:05:00.001-04:00

If you're wondering why your files won't refresh unless you restart tomcat even if you delete the work folder, maybe you were a dummy like me and set antiJARLocking and antiJARLocking to true a while back and forgot about it. And then proceeded to suffer slow crappy development times.

TrixBox

2011-06-10T18:24:00.001-04:00

Sick of this. Their phone support (ha) is horrible. The guy repeatedly whined (yes, it was very clearly whining) "could you just email the problem" offered zero help and was just generally useless. The email support guys are equally horrible and close tickets as soon as they send you a tangentially related FAQ response. Seriously, my issue was "I don't want dialing my own phone number to use a trunk" and that was interpreted as "how do I setup a virtual extension for conference calling?"

Useless.

Cheap PBX w/ TrixBox

2011-06-09T18:44:00.001-04:00

Relatively easy to setup, but trixNet is unsupported and softphones and virtual extensions use licenses. Stick with PBX In a Flash.

Gotopresentation

2011-05-25T17:03:00.001-04:00

Gotomeeting or one of their competitors needs to create a gotopresentation box that just outputs hdmi dvi or vga to a projector while connecting to a wireless network so that people don't need to use dongles or whatever and they can just make their chosen conference room a participant in their meeting to get it to show up on the big screen. Seriously, this needs to happen yesterday. Wimedia connectors (warpia, iogear, imation) just aren't up to snuff. Then they could also integrate the software package into IP connected TVs for more brand propagation.

Amazon

2011-05-10T12:09:00.001-04:00

I'd like to see universal country of origin labelling on Amazon product pages. Mostly for the musical instruments where it can affect the kind/quality of the wood, but it'd be neato for other stuff too.

Remote Controls

2011-04-28T16:15:00.001-04:00

There are a hundred remote control programs for Droid and iPhone and some of them have the ability to learn remote codes. I'd like the option to take a photo of my real remote and map the buttons in the image to remote codes that the phone learns. Then just use the photo of the remote as the interface. Include the fact that the program will consider learned remote codes and photos of remotes as public domain data and you could have a nice IR-remote wiki too.

Washington Gas Customer Service Bites

2011-04-28T11:29:00.001-04:00

If you have tenants move into a house you own and they crank the heat to 80 like dummies, Washington Gas won't read the meter when the account is transferred. They'll wait till the end of the month and then when you complain that your bill should be ~$30 like it has been for the past months while the property was unoccupied, they'll concede and do a simple pro-rating where they take off a percentage of the bill for the amount of time that they overbilled you for instead of adjusting to the real much much lower amount that you would have owed if they had done their job in the first place. Then they'll disable your ability to pay through their website just to add an extra hurdle and bitch at you about it.

Morons.

Netflix Pain in the Butt

2011-04-13T15:27:00.001-04:00

Netflix streaming is failing more and more in Windows 7. Windows Media Center shows a login page instead of a movie when you hit play (despite signing out/in repeatedly and uninstall/reinstalling the netflix plugin) and now boxee is just showing a blank screen instead of playing movies. At least XBMC and the Wii still work, although the Wii isn't HD.

Time and Upgrades

2011-03-28T16:59:00.001-04:00

I feel obsolete because I haven't had the time to migrate from Liferay 5.2.3 to 6.0.x. The custom theme changes are still just too involved for the little blocks of time I have. I dearly want a lot of those features, but consistency is more important at this point.

Idea

2011-03-18T14:51:00.001-04:00

Distributed service + browser plugin for streaming video where users hit mute when commercials start nad unmute when they end. If enough other users hit mute, send a message to other people's browsers to mute them and unmute them accordingly.

flickr hates android

2011-03-15T11:37:00.000-04:00

The flickr mobile website sucks for uploading photos. The email function is a dumb workaround. Why did they bother developing an Apple app but not android? The free apps that are available stink and don't integrate well with android. I'm not going to use facebook for my photos. I don't want to pay more than the pro fee I already paid. What a bunch of maroons.

Microsoft Online BPOS Tech Support

2011-03-10T19:38:00.001-05:00

I rue support tickets with these guys. It's like talking to a ghost standing on the other side of a long hallway who is also unwilling to open their mouth more than a millimeter to let the sound of them speaking get past their lips unless it's quieter than a feather falling onto fresh snow in the Himalayas. I swear I don't answer the phone with them because out of 4 or 5 support tickets, I have never once understood anything they said without three or four clarifications. I need one of those old people mega-blaster amplifiers for my phone or something. Or they need to SPEAK UP!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't care what kind of wonderfully peaceful quiet office you guys are in. I CAN'T HEAR YOU! THIS PROBLEM IMPEDES YOUR ABILITY TO DO YOUR OWN JOB!

Doesn't matter if I'm on a landline or a cell, you guys are way too quiet. I can't even understand the voicemails when I turn my computer speakers up to full volume because you're averaging the same decibel level as the noise floor on a typical phone line. And I know it's not always the same guy (although it was at least the first two times). I'd open a ticket about it but that would make my head explode.

Thorn in my Side

2011-02-22T15:11:00.000-05:00

It is a constant headache that Microsoft's own email service, Microsoft Online, uses Exchange 2007 instead of 2010. The whole lack of search folders until you connect exchange to the email service is a major detriment to my own ability to work.

Self Funding Cloud Apps

2011-02-18T13:41:00.000-05:00

Cloud providers like Amazon and Microsoft could let customers host a web application and limit the available cpu and bandwidth based on current ad revenue. Put in seed money to get your initial hits, then turn the site into an Ouroborus (self feeding/eating monster). If users really like the site they can contribute directly or via subscriptions. Probably not a great idea, but a decent one best suited to not for profit websites.

FYI ATI HD3300

2011-02-17T10:26:00.000-05:00

Just a heads up since this information eluded a lot of web searching, the ATI HD DVI Component Out adapter (the one w/ al the DIP switches) does NOT work with embedded ATI HD 3300 graphics. At least not on my Biostar TA790GX XE mobo. Too bad my older hdtv doesn't have HDMI inputs.

IIS Authentication Error

2011-02-10T17:42:00.001-05:00

Pro-tip: If you can't get into an IIS website without valid NTLM credentials, maybe somebody decided to check the box for the IUSR_machinename (Internet Guest User) Account that says "Require User to Change Password at Next Logon".

Bad Ant Build Script Leads to Doubled file size

2011-02-09T13:20:00.001-05:00

I couldn't figure out why my war file was so damn big, until I realized that by specifying the webinf folder in the war task, I was compressing/including it twice. Since my fileset already included WEB-INF, I didn't need to specify it twice. Just deleting the <webinf/> element fixed my problem and I no longer have files which are twice as big as needed.

Fixing a Screwed Up Full Duplex scan

2011-01-28T18:12:00.001-05:00

I scanned a two sided document and every other page came in upside down. Thanks to pdftk, I fixed this in short order.

I ran
pdftk A=messedup.pdf shuffle A1-11odd A1-11evenS output fixed.pdf
which means

use A as shorthand for messedup.pdf
shuffle the following pages:

the odd pages in A
the even pages in A, but rotated so that South is Up (flipped)

Write it out as fixed.pdf

Easy peasy. Great tool.

Verizon Droid Pro versus Droid 2

2011-01-25T17:12:00.001-05:00

This review hit the censorship filters on the Verizon Wireless review thingy because of the word "crap".

The screen doesn't work if you're wearing gloves. When you turn the phone on, it bleats DROID at you in a voice that makes you want to throw it at a wall and there's no apparent way to disable it. It needs a trackball or optical mouse of some sort because zooming in the browser is a pain in the butt and the screen is small. Applications besides VZW Navigator (like google maps or GPS Status) don't appear to work with the aGPS only. The keys take a lot of getting used to. Using the voice dial function still requires you to look at the screen and tap it sometimes. The 5MP camera on my Samsung Omnia (winmo 6.5) phone was higher quality. There's no built in flickr integration. It's polluted with Social apps. The encryption feature isn't available yet. The software update fails repeatedly despite restoring all the verizon crap software on the phone. It still suffers from the problem of trying to make calls and just giving me two minutes of silence then failing fairly often which isn't much better than a dropped call in my book.

It's better than any other Android phone. I tried the Droid 2 Global and this is lighter and the keyboard is better. There's no flickr integration, but you can work around that.

Unanet Timesheet Works on Glassfish

2011-01-24T18:39:00.001-05:00

I just had to wrap unanet.xml into the war as META-INF/context.xml and point it at my unanet.properties file's absolute location on the server and put my config from jaas.config into /opt/glassfishv3/glassfish/domains/domain1/conf/login.conf and it worked with no apparent problems. I'm pretty psyched.

Odd NumberFormatException w/ Halogen eAppraisal

2011-01-17T16:27:00.001-05:00

Halogen suddenly stopped working for us recently with tons of errors in the logs saying stuff like

[ERROR] [TP-Processor23] (108) EXCEPTION java.lang.NumberFormatException
java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: "jsp1.2"
.....
[ERROR] [TP-Processor26] (113) EXCEPTION org.apache.jasper.JasperException
org.apache.jasper.JasperException: org.apache.jasper.JasperException: Unable to load class for JSP

Not sure what caused it. Either the latest version of tomcat somehow or having Jasper Server on the same tomcat. Jasper and Halogen have been coexisting happily for a while though. Neither was upgraded recently and it's not like I put the jasper jars in the global lib folder so I'm really not sure.

Anyways, the solution was to edit WEB-INF/*.tld and change all occurrences of "jsp1.2" to "1.2" then restart tomcat. Good as gold.

ProxMox VE vs ConVirt vs ESXi

2010-12-31T14:22:00.002-05:00

ESXi is a bit of a pain in the ass. You have to use windows to manage it and cloning isn't straightfoward and clusters aren't straightforward either so I went looking for alternatives. I wanted something to let me work quickly without investing a lot of brainpower in managing the vms and use a decent GUI because other people besides myself will have to manage our servers too and they might not always have time to go through a long learning curve.

I tried Proxmox VE. It worked simply and quickly. The UI bites, but it's functional. The whole easy LVM setup and choice of OpenVZ or KVM with each VM you make is super sweet. I couldn't get a virtual console to launch so I moved on to convirt. I was probably doing something stupid, but with the UI wasn't inclined to push too hard because it would be hard to get buy in from my coworkers on something that has the choice of the command line or their web app that doesn't hold your hand at all.

Convirt is not easy to setup. First I had to setup Ubuntu Server. (If they had an ISO bare metal install I probably would have used this) The UI kicks ass, but moving the administration to port 443 wasn't straightforward (and people besides me need to manage these things) and it didn't install itself to /etc/init.d (the linux services directory). I don't know enough to know whether I should be using KVM or Xen and I didn't get any guidance on that. I'm sure if I had used their support it would have been better. They do offer a 30 day trial of the commercial version, but I wasn't going to use the pay version in the end anyways (I'm cheap) and I didn't want to do the trial just to exploit them.

ESXi is annoying with the limited features for the free version, but was ultimately easiest to use despite the limitations. Updates are easy to install (and a thousand times easier if you have the pay version) and cloning isn't that hard if you go in through ssh. It just needs to be documented better. The lack of a web interface that does anything is BS too. It's moronic that I have to run a VM and get a windows license just to manage the VM Server using a GUI. I have no interest in VMWare Go which should make managing stuff easier because it runs on VMWare's servers. There's a reason we're not on the cloud and the reason is control. So esxi is good enough for now.

Playstation Move Idea

2010-12-07T13:31:00.001-05:00

I wonder when we'll see the first hack of the Playstation camera controller where the camera is pointed at another TV which plays a game perfectly in place of a real person moving around.

VMWare ESXi

2010-12-03T13:36:00.001-05:00

Can't be managed with a native linux app. It's stupid. This is linux and they haven't gone to the trouble of writing the VSphere client in a cross platform way. I downloaded the whole thing before I realized "oh, this is an exe. I can't do anything with this". What a waste of time.

Dumb Joke

2010-09-24T13:30:00.001-04:00

It would be funny for Tazer to design a stun gun that also detects if your pulse is there or not so it can switch between torturing you and defibrillating you. The ad campaign would be "Tazes great, less killing"

IPTables Firewall Nonsense

2010-07-30T19:46:00.001-04:00

I have three firewall rules:

-A OUTPUT -p tcp -s 192.168.110.41 -d 192.168.111.33 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.110.33
-A OUTPUT -p udp -s 192.168.110.41 -d 192.168.111.33 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.110.33
-A OUTPUT -p icmp -s 192.168.110.41 -d 192.168.111.33 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.110.33

Only the third one (ping!) works.

The other two result in the log messages:

NAT: no longer support implicit source local NAT
NAT: packet src 192.168.110.33 -> dst 192.168.111.33

What the heck. I'm just trying to redirect outgoing traffic to a different ip address and the source is specified, not implicit. I really don't want to read iptables source code, but their documentation and the whole internet isn't helping.

How Not to English

2010-07-20T14:31:00.001-04:00

I wish more technical reporters on the internet invested in some
college level writing classes. Then they might just sound smart
(which they usually are) instead of merely informed. This occurred to
me while reading Anandtech today.

Waiting for Liferay 6.0 GA

2010-07-14T16:31:00.001-04:00

Just chalked up new feature request number eleventy million that is already done in Liferay 6.0 but hard to implement in 5.2.3. Event tags are so nice and so not available to us without hack code.

Hard to Debug Tomcat JK Connector Problem

2010-06-23T15:00:00.003-04:00

If you try to open a page in Liferay (or any J2EE app) and only see "The data area passed to a system call is too small", chances are you're using IIS and the Tomcat IIS Connector library in front of your J2EE server. The problem is that the url is too long. Because Liferay uses the longest urls in the universe I had a similar problem with the Pound reverse proxy, but at least Pound told me what the problem was in the error message ("Error: request URL too long" or something like that). Naturally, you won't get messages about this in your logs because the request gets stopped before tomcat even sees it.

Here is a mailing list thread about this from 2009. Basically, it looks to me like the apache guys are misinterpreting the variable INTERNET_MAX_URL_LENGTH from WinInet.h as including the maximum query string length when it is only intended to represent the url before the query string (the protocol, the "://" protocol/domain/path seperator, and the path). So urls which are valid for IIS can have really long query strings which cause them to break isapi_redirect.dll. I fixed this by adding a macro (#define ISAPI_MAX_URL_LENGTH 4096) then replacing every occurrence of INTERNET_MAX_URL_LENGTH with ISAPI_MAX_URL_LENGTH and it appeared to work fine. I'm not a security expert though, I might have opened an exploitable hole. Point is, it works better now.

If you're not using IIS, I have no idea.

Liferay JSP Wrapping

2010-06-10T13:56:00.001-04:00

The best tip from the east coast developer's thing was about overridding just part of JSPs in ext or a hook if you're modifying the appearance of the liferay core. Apparently the info was already out there. I think it should be publicized better, so go read this jsp hook tidbit and it will make future upgrades easier on you if you're modifying the core: Do you need to override JSPs?

Idea for SUVs

2010-06-03T11:17:00.001-04:00

A sun/rain shade that can pop out of the rear hatch w/ when it's raised all the way to make loading groceries in the rain easier and make tailgating more comfortable. Something like the material in the popup tents that are so common now except it'd just be an extra foot or two of shielding on the perimeter of the hatch and not a wholly separate thing. It'd have to retract automatically too to be useful in the rain.

Dear Virginia DMV

2010-05-20T05:59:00.001-04:00

Drivers license photos without smiles are un-American and ugly to boot. I enjoyed the service and people at the DMV until I remembered that my state government capitulated to outside forces. Now we all look like we hate living here on our official IDs. Thanks for nothing.

Lunarlite

2010-05-05T15:53:00.001-04:00

I wonder if Nike has tried to market their lunarlite foam for use in car seat cushioning. I don't know what the weight savings vs cost increase might be though. I also wouldn't drive a car that smells like feet.

JQuery Supersubs IE7/8 Tweak

2010-05-03T15:12:00.002-04:00

I probably just botched my version of superfish.css, but I found that for supersubs to work properly in Internet Explorer 7 and 8, I had to change:

                var emWidth = $ul.add($LIs).add($As).css({
                    'float' : 'none',
                    'width'    : 'auto'
                })

                var emWidth = $ul.add($LIs).add($As).css({
                    'float' : 'none',
              'overflow' : 'visible',
                    'width'    : 'auto'
                })

I also added an extraOffset setting which nudges submenus left or right depending on the alignment, but it's probably another fix my own bad css. I did it to avoid z-index problems which are made worse by bgIframe in IE6. I'm not going to share this extraOffset code both because it's trivial and probably not generally applicable if you don't screw up superfish.css (which is too complicated for me).

I tested both changes successfully in IE6,IE7,IE8, and firefox.

Longer Run

2010-04-30T07:43:00.002-04:00

I am proud of this run. If I can replicate it a week from Sunday, I will definitely break a two hour half marathon finally.

Activity

Route:	--	Elev. Avg:	31 ft
Location:	Mount Vernon, VA	Elev. Gain:	+0 ft
Date:	04/30/10	Up/Downhill:	[+675/-675]
Time:	05:33 AM	Difficulty:	3.2 / 5.0

Weather:	Fair
	42 F temp; 96% humidity
	42 F heat index; winds Calm

Performance

Distance:	12.11 miles
Time:	1:48:46
Speed:	6.7 mph
Pace:	8' 59 /mi
Calories:	1812

Map

Elevation (ft)

Pace (min/mile)

Splits

Mile	Pace (min/mile)		Speed (mph)		Elevation Gain
Mile	actual	+/- avg	actual	+/- avg	Elevation Gain
1	8' 16	-0' 43	7.2	+0.6	-10 ft
2	8' 40	-0' 19	6.9	+0.2	+10 ft
3	8' 46	-0' 13	6.8	+0.2	+7 ft
4	9' 26	+0' 27	6.3	-0.3	+17 ft
5	9' 26	+0' 27	6.4	-0.3	+23 ft
6	9' 18	+0' 19	6.5	-0.2	+16 ft
7	8' 56	-0' 03	6.7	+0.0	-16 ft
8	9' 02	+0' 03	6.6	-0.0	-29 ft
9	8' 46	-0' 13	6.8	+0.2	-36 ft
10	9' 06	+0' 07	6.6	-0.1	+26 ft
11	9' 07	+0' 08	6.6	-0.1	-17 ft
12	9' 04	+0' 05	6.6	-0.1	+13 ft
end	7' 24	-1' 35	8.1	+1.4	-3 ft
Versus average of 8' 59 min/mile

Posted from bimactive.com

Long Run

2010-04-30T07:41:00.002-04:00

Not really proud of walking at 9.3 miles here.

Activity

Route:	--	Elev. Avg:	26 ft
Location:	Mount Vernon, VA	Elev. Gain:	-3 ft
Date:	04/28/10	Up/Downhill:	[+610/-613]
Time:	06:08 AM	Difficulty:	3.8 / 5.0

Weather:	Fair
	33 F temp; 92% humidity
	33 F heat index; winds Calm

Performance

Distance:	10.31 miles
Time:	1:31:35
Speed:	6.8 mph
Pace:	8' 53 /mi
Calories:	1537

Map

Elevation (ft)

Pace (min/mile)

Splits

Mile	Pace (min/mile)		Speed (mph)		Elevation Gain
Mile	actual	+/- avg	actual	+/- avg	Elevation Gain
1	8' 05	-0' 48	7.4	+0.7	-3 ft
2	8' 09	-0' 44	7.4	+0.6	+3 ft
3	8' 11	-0' 42	7.3	+0.6	-3 ft
4	8' 52	-0' 01	6.8	+0.0	+27 ft
5	8' 22	-0' 31	7.2	+0.4	+26 ft
6	8' 37	-0' 16	7.0	+0.2	-46 ft
7	8' 53	+0' 00	6.8	-0.0	+7 ft
8	9' 10	+0' 17	6.5	-0.2	-20 ft
9	9' 03	+0' 10	6.6	-0.1	+23 ft
10	10' 52	+1' 59	5.5	-1.2	-30 ft
end	10' 16	+1' 23	5.8	-0.9	+13 ft
Versus average of 8' 53 min/mile

Posted from bimactive.com

Costco Milk

2010-04-15T12:50:00.001-04:00

Costco's milk prices are great. I just have trouble pouring out of their pitchers when they're full. We end up just cutting holes in the foil instead of tearing it off. Kinda like using a can opener, except that actually just using a can opener didn't work as well as using a knife. I make one pour hole, then poke the knife and twist a little to make three air holes on the other side and it works well.

Fairfax Family Practice

2010-04-08T13:27:00.001-04:00

Don't bother using their website to try to make appointments even though it says you can do that.

Hudson's Dumbest Mistake

2010-03-11T07:30:00.001-05:00

If you have a subversion server in a DMZ with no NTP server, the clock will drift. If you have a Hudson build server outside of that DMZ with an accurate clock and you've setup a project to build using the dmz svn server, it will not automatically just check out the head revision. Instead it will look at the clock time and get the code from subversion based on that. Which, if you've got drift, means you'll need to wait 10 minutes to build the files you just checked in.

Idea

2010-03-04T17:23:00.001-05:00

This would probably patentable if somebody hasn't already filed for it.

A two display interface for showing sheet music.
The displays may use electronic ink or other low power display technology.
Networked versions would "turn" to the next page automatically when the right part of the song is reached.
Student models could put LEDs behind or LCDs in front of the electronic ink to indicate where in the song the student should be.
A metronome could be incorporated as another blinking LED of another color.
In networked models, the metronomes and current location indicators would be synchronized for all students in a room.
The device would display PDFs, postscript, and lilypond files. Other file formats could be supported with software updates.
Wireless networking would allow upload of new sheet music in addition to the option of a memory card slot (SD,microSD or USB key).

2010-02-05T23:53:00.001-05:00

My longest run in four weeks, I was not really ready.

Activity

Route:	--	Elev. Avg:	0 ft
Location:	Alexandria, VA	Elev. Gain:	+0 ft
Date:	02/05/10	Up/Downhill:	[+0/-0]
Time:	10:18 AM	Difficulty:	0 / 5.0

Weather:	Light Snow
	35 F temp; 78% humidity
	35 F heat index; winds SW 8

Performance

Distance:	8.01 miles
Time:	1:14:26
Speed:	6.5 mph
Pace:	9' 18 /mi
Calories:	1201

Notes

Just starting to flurry. Heavier by the end.

I saw a sparrow trying to fly against the wind at gravelly point. It was hovering like a giant hummingbird. Quite a site. That's where I stopped briefly on the map.

Map

Elevation (ft)

Pace (min/mile)

Splits

Mile	Pace (min/mile)		Speed (mph)		Elevation Gain
Mile	actual	+/- avg	actual	+/- avg	Elevation Gain
1	7' 35	-1' 43	7.9	+1.4	-- ft
2	8' 45	-0' 33	6.8	+0.4	-- ft
3	8' 50	-0' 28	6.8	+0.3	-- ft
4	9' 08	-0' 10	6.6	+0.1	-- ft
5	9' 59	+0' 41	6.0	-0.4	-- ft
6	10' 00	+0' 42	6.0	-0.5	-- ft
7	9' 44	+0' 26	6.2	-0.3	-- ft
8	10' 02	+0' 44	6.0	-0.5	-- ft
end	15' 00	+5' 42	4.0	-2.5	-- ft
Versus average of 9' 18 min/mile

Posted from bimactive.com

Ungoogleable VIM Question

2010-02-01T14:31:00.002-05:00

This can't be searched on the web easily mostly because google is moronic about searching for spelling variants of what I type when I know exactly what I want. So I will rely on other people's google alerts to help me as they have in the past. The docs/faq are so far equally unhelpful.

Why is VIM 7.2 launching short lived dos/command prompt windows whenever I save? I have nobackup set and no other obvious options that would affect save behavior. The window is too short lived for me to click on it and freeze it (I have slow reactions), but is still causing a pain in the butt delay every time I save. Not to mention it screws up my window focus.

Update: Turns out it was eclim doing the popup. It is now uninstalled and forgotten.

Embedded Excel in Powerpoint Macro Problem

2010-01-12T18:03:00.001-05:00

Working with the Java (aka crappy) version of Aspose and the Object
Changed problem, we discovered that the ApproveIT add-in for Excel
and/or Powerpoint causes our macro that updates the excel files to
fail when you try to close the embedded excel file (opening is fine).
Our only solution so far is to disable the ApproveIT add-in which is a
bit of a deal breaker.

Media Center Todo List

2009-12-30T14:35:00.001-05:00

Try to get pvTivo to work w/ my series2 tivo or buy Tivo Desktop pro version.
Try out TVersity.
Try out latest Myth release.
If I like the latest version of Myth, buy a Command Mini IR blaster or go nuts and build one w/ an arduino.

SugarCRM License Nonsense

2009-12-11T10:52:00.002-05:00

If you get the message "This copy of the SugarCRM customer relationship management program appears to have legal notices or author attributions modified or removed in violation of the GNU General Public License version 3. Please contact SugarCRM Inc. to correct this problem."

Try installing php-mbstring and ignoring the guy who work for Sugar who's only solution is to undo the modifications that you never made because you're still displaying their logos even though you think it is a GPLv3 violation to require logo/footer display to end users. That reaction sure didn't make me want to pay for the pro support.

I Want a Dual WAN Router Roundup

2009-11-23T11:13:00.001-05:00

I need a comparison review between different brands and models or routers that support multiple WAN interfaces. So far I can only find individual reviews or about 50 million people telling me to use pfSense. That's great, but a pfSense computer would be expensive.

Using s3fs with centos and https

2009-11-22T15:10:00.004-05:00

There are several s3fs projects, this is the one I'm using: http://code.google.com/p/s3fs/wiki/FuseOverAmazon

When I tried to connect in Centos to the filesystem while using an https url, I got the message:

ls: reading directory /mnt/s3: Input/output error

And in /var/log/messages:

Nov 22 15:02:57 host s3fs: init $Rev: 177 $
Nov 22 15:03:01 host s3fs: ###problem with the SSL CA cert (path? access rights?)
Nov 22 15:03:01 host s3fs: ###retrying...
Nov 22 15:03:01 host s3fs: ###problem with the SSL CA cert (path? access rights?)
Nov 22 15:03:01 host s3fs: ###retrying...
Nov 22 15:03:01 host s3fs: ###problem with the SSL CA cert (path? access rights?)
Nov 22 15:03:01 host s3fs: ###retrying...
Nov 22 15:03:01 host s3fs: ###giving up
Nov 22 15:03:05 host s3fs: destroy

Based on a message on that google code page, I added the slightly different than suggested function call:

curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_CAINFO, "/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt");

which took care of the errors. Then it mostly worked. Although there are still random failures so I'm trying s3backer next.

10.2 Miles

2009-11-20T18:12:00.002-05:00

Decent run.

Activity

Route:	--	Elev. Avg:	11 ft
Location:	Alexandria, VA	Elev. Gain:	+0 ft
Date:	11/20/09	Up/Downhill:	[+242/-242]
Time:	04:08 PM	Difficulty:	2.7 / 5.0

Weather:	Mostly Cloudy
	55 F temp; 48% humidity
	55 F heat index; winds NW 8

Performance

Distance:	10.20 miles
Time:	1:27:31
Speed:	7.0 mph
Pace:	8' 35 /mi
Calories:	1528

Map

Elevation (ft)

Pace (min/mile)

Splits

Mile	Pace (min/mile)		Speed (mph)		Elevation Gain
Mile	actual	+/- avg	actual	+/- avg	Elevation Gain
1	8' 00	-0' 35	7.5	+0.5	+6 ft
2	8' 20	-0' 15	7.2	+0.2	+14 ft
3	8' 27	-0' 08	7.1	+0.1	-27 ft
4	8' 45	+0' 10	6.8	-0.1	+9 ft
5	8' 41	+0' 06	6.9	-0.1	-7 ft
6	9' 06	+0' 31	6.6	-0.4	-6 ft
7	8' 47	+0' 12	6.8	-0.2	+19 ft
8	8' 38	+0' 03	6.9	-0.1	-6 ft
9	7' 50	-0' 45	7.7	+0.7	-7 ft
10	8' 53	+0' 18	6.8	-0.2	0 ft
end	8' 47	+0' 12	6.8	-0.2	+3 ft
Versus average of 8' 35 min/mile

Posted from bimactive.com

Using Jackrabbit with Oracle, JNDI, and Tomcat

2009-11-19T17:30:00.002-05:00

This took me weeks to figure out completely, but I think this is the simplest possible solution. I'm using Jackrabbit 1.5 instead of 1.6 because that's the version in Liferay 5.2.3 and I didn't want to upgrade besides getting the latest point release. I tried the patch at http://wiki.apache.org/jackrabbit/JNDI but had problems since it's for an older Jackrabbit and I wasn't interested in debugging it. I tried the instructions at http://wiki.apache.org/jackrabbit/UsingJNDIDataSource but they weren't sufficient since Oracle threw a ClassCastException when jackrabbit tried to create blobs using the DBCP pooled database connection classes. I tried working around those exceptions with overly complicated class reflection code in the OracleFileSystem but that was a waste of time. Then I looked at the Oracle JDBC driver javadoc and noticed that they have their own DataSource pooling classes that return Oracle Connection objects which should work with Oracle's blob code.

I did this with version 10.2.0.4 of the Oracle JDBC driver (ojdbc14.jar).

Patch Jackrabbit.

Download the source, open jackrabbit-core/src/main/java/org/apache/jackrabbit/core/persistence/bundle/util/ConnectionFactory.java
Change

if (user == null && password == null) {
To

if ((user == null && password == null) || (user.length() == 0 && password.length() == 0)) {

The goal is to rely on the JNDI Resource to define the username and password instead of expecting them in jackrabbit's repository.xml. This breaks the (useless) case where you actually want to use both a blank username and password for your database connection. So don't do that. Otherwise it should still work with both non-JNDI style and JNDI datasources.
Run "mvn install" or "mvn package" in the root jackrabbit source directory. For me, it didn't matter which command I used since Liferay doesn't get built with maven so I had to manually copy the modified jackrabbit jars to the lib/portal folder regardless. If you're using maven on your project, do "mvn install" and skip the next step
If you're not using maven, find the new jackrabbit jars you built and copy them to your project (jackrabbit-core-1.5.7.jar / jackrabbit-core.jar is the only one we changed, but I grabbed all the ones already in Liferay for good measure)

Define your DataSource in the tomcat config (I mostly stole this part from Gregg Lagnese, of MicroDeveloper, Inc ). The key here is to use Oracle's DataSource and Factory classes to avoid the ClassCastException I mentioned in the introduction paragraph above.

Either in tomcat's server.xml or your application's context.xml add a resource

<Resource name="jdbc/JackrabbitPool"
auth="Container"
type="oracle.jdbc.pool.OracleDataSource"
driverClassName="oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver"
factory="oracle.jdbc.pool.OracleDataSourceFactory"
url="jdbc:oracle:thin:<schema>/<password>@<server>:<port>:<instance>" />
Attempts to put the username and password as separate attributes from the url (aka the standard way of doing it) failed. It has to be in the url to work.
Liferay specific note: I had to specify separate resources for Jackrabbit and Liferay since Liferay had problems with the Oracle DataSource class. That wasn't a big deal to me since I'd rather have my database connection info appear twice in context.xml instead of appearing once in context.xml, again five or six times in repository-ext.xml, and then in repository.xml and workspace.xml once Liferay is deployed.

Edit repository.xml (Liferay people edit ext-impl/src/com/liferay/portal/jcr/jackrabbit/dependencies/repository-ext.xml)

Set the driver classes to javax.naming.InitialContext
Set the urls to "java:comp/env/jdbc/JackrabbitPool"
Use the Oracle specific classes:
org.apache.jackrabbit.core.fs.db.OracleFileSystem
org.apache.jackrabbit.core.persistence.db.OraclePersistenceManager
Save/deploy. If you're using Liferay don't forget to delete tomcat\data\jackrabbit so your old version of repository.xml doesn't linger and make you think it's working when it isn't.

That's it. Let me know if you tried it and how it went. This should also work for JBoss application server and probably all of the other J2EE projects that either fork or use Tomcat.

Cygwin Awk Error

2009-11-16T11:40:00.001-05:00

If you run awk and get the message "ntvdm encountered an error", see this post.

The blog said to remove c:\cygwin\bin\awk.exe and create the file c:\cygwin\bin\awk.bat with the contents:

c:\cygwin\bin\gawk.exe %*

And the error is gone.

Upgrading Eclipse

2009-11-12T11:42:00.001-05:00

I avoid upgrading Eclipse as much as possible because I hate losing my third party plugins (subversion really should be part of the default package now). What a pain in the butt upgrades are. It should take two seconds, not twenty minutes.

A Technological Cure for Distracted Driving

2009-11-04T15:50:00.001-05:00

Stick shifts.
(see http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/47208)

Windows 7 Random Wake Ups

2009-11-02T11:51:00.002-05:00

What a pain in the butt to have your computer randomly turn on in the middle of the night. I though that this might be a solution, but it didn't work. I find that my computer only wakes itself up when I hibernated it but didn't shut it down. Very strange and annoying. At least it boots somewhat fast if you choose shut down instead of hibernate.

Testing with JavaMail

2009-10-19T18:36:00.003-04:00

Does anybody know a way to quickly configure a JNDI mail resource to write mail as files on your local machine (eg sendmail) instead of actually sending email so we can test without inadvertently spamming people if our other steps to prevent that didn't work (removing real emails from the development database)? That would be great.

Update: This thread lists several good options. Dumbster and Papercut look simplest/best

Apache Geronimo First Impressions

2009-10-16T17:04:00.001-04:00

Their error messages bite. I had to manually check every single port they had configured by default for other listening programs because I couldn't tell what port number was causing a problem that prevented me from starting it.
Also, the "Set it up as a windows service" instructions stink too.

Liferay Trunk

2009-10-02T18:22:00.003-04:00

For what it's worth, I wish Liferay had a continuous build server (Hudson or CruiseControl or whatever Atlassian offers) so bleeding edge users could know which subversion revision last worked without problems.

(It does. Read the comments.)

Windows 7 ReadyBoost

2009-09-27T12:11:00.001-04:00

It's ok, I guess. It's faster (because I installed it on a faster computer). But I tried to setup a 16GB usb flash drive as a readyboost drive and it took me a while to get straight. First, since I had been using the drive with Linux, most of it was extfs3 formatted and windows happily formatted the last 200MB and wouldn't tell me why the friggin drive capacity didn't match. Then, when I found that I could open Computer Management (Right click My Computer) to get a disk management screen that let me delete the linux partition, it wouldn't let me delete the stupid 200MB windows partition it had made. So I had to use diskpart in a dos prompt to do it. Finally, I was able to format the whole 16GB drive (as a 15.04GB drive). But it wouldn't work with readyboost even though it's a recent purchase USB 2.0 drive. Turns out that NTFS formatted, it was too slow, but exFat it was fine. So I finally have my flash cache and booting should be quick.

I still would rather have used Linux but I want a few windows only features and I chose the wrong hardware. Turns out supporting AMD because they're releasing open source graphics drivers was the wrong plan. I should have supported NVidia because they release graphics drivers that don't suck. Also, I really wanted to stream Netflix. If that's ever possible on Linux again, I'll switch back.

DC Antiscalping Laws DC AG Response

2009-09-22T10:21:00.002-04:00

This is part of a response to an inquiry to the DC Attorney General's Office asking what the specific law that forbids scalping is which I asked as a followup to this older post.
--

You may review the DC Municipal Regulations
online by visiting the DC government, Office of the Secretary website.

http://os.dc.gov/os/cwp/view,a,1207,q,522392.asp

http://os.dc.gov/os/site/default.asp?osNav=|31372|

While nothing in this correspondence should be construed as legal advice, you will find the following:
Chapter 24 DC Municipal Regulations

500.5 No person shall sell or offer to sell tickets from the sidewalks,
streets, or public spaces anywhere in the District of Columbia for any
excursion, theatrical performance, opera, ball game, or any
entertainment of any kind.

We would like you to know that the Attorney General for the District of
Columbia, like the state attorneys general, serves as a lawyer for the
District of Columbia government. In that capacity, the Attorney General
represents the District of Columbia, the Mayor, and various District
government agencies, officials, and employees in litigation. The
Attorney General also provides legal advice and transactional assistance
to the government, its agencies, and officials. However, the Attorney
General is generally without authority to represent private individuals
in litigation, to provide legal advice to private citizens, or to
conduct legal research on their behalf.

--
Summary: Read DC Code Title 24, Chapter 5, Section 500.5. The quotation above is accurate.

2009-09-22T08:22:00.001-04:00

Activity

Route:	--	Elev. Avg:	15 ft
Location:	Alexandria, VA	Elev. Gain:	+0 ft
Date:	09/22/09	Up/Downhill:	[+137/-137]
Time:	07:10 AM	Difficulty:	1.9 / 5.0

Weather:	Overcast
	68 F temp; 90% humidity
	68 F heat index; winds Calm

Performance

Distance:	5.73 miles
Time:	0:50:22
Speed:	6.8 mph
Pace:	8' 47 /mi
Calories:	824

Notes

I saw a duck dip into Four Mile Run and stay under for about 3 minutes. It was awesome. That's what the discontinuity is in the pace graph.

Map

Elevation (ft)

Pace (min/mile)

Splits

Mile	Pace (min/mile)		Speed (mph)		Elevation Gain
Mile	actual	+/- avg	actual	+/- avg	Elevation Gain
1	8' 44	-0' 03	6.9	+0.0	0 ft
2	7' 54	-0' 53	7.6	+0.8	0 ft
3	8' 56	+0' 09	6.7	-0.1	+23 ft
4	8' 05	-0' 42	7.4	+0.6	-23 ft
5	9' 38	+0' 51	6.2	-0.6	+4 ft
end	8' 54	+0' 07	6.7	-0.1	-4 ft
Versus average of 8' 47 min/mile

Posted from bimactive.com

2009-09-19T11:06:00.001-04:00

Had to turn around because of flooding.

Activity

Route:	--	Elev. Avg:	21 ft
Location:	Alexandria, VA	Elev. Gain:	+0 ft
Date:	09/18/09	Up/Downhill:	[+226/-226]
Time:	07:27 AM	Difficulty:	2.4 / 5.0

Weather:	Overcast
	65 F temp; 83% humidity
	65 F heat index; winds S 8

Performance

Distance:	6.99 miles
Time:	1:02:48
Speed:	6.7 mph
Pace:	8' 59 /mi
Calories:	981

Map

Elevation (ft)

Pace (min/mile)

Splits

Mile	Pace (min/mile)		Speed (mph)		Elevation Gain
Mile	actual	+/- avg	actual	+/- avg	Elevation Gain
1	8' 50	-0' 09	6.8	+0.1	0 ft
2	6' 46	-2' 13	8.9	+2.2	+10 ft
3	9' 08	+0' 09	6.6	-0.1	-10 ft
4	9' 24	+0' 25	6.4	-0.3	+29 ft
5	10' 03	+1' 04	6.0	-0.7	+10 ft
6	9' 34	+0' 35	6.3	-0.4	-39 ft
end	9' 08	+0' 09	6.6	-0.1	0 ft
Versus average of 8' 59 min/mile

Posted from bimactive.com

Alive Again

2009-08-31T23:35:00.001-04:00

I brought back to life my old Shuttle SN85G4 v3 with a noisy new power supply that I finally got around to installing after nibbling out just enough space for it to fit (even though it's resting on my ram's heatsinks I think it'll be ok). It's been 450 days since my last backup it tells me. Everything is very very old. Windows update won't even run. Sooooo old. Soooo loud. Louder than before.

Annoyance

2009-08-14T11:43:00.001-04:00

I setup a new computer w/ a BIOSTAR TA790GX XE. I was able to install
the OS just fine, but now I can no longer boot to a CD even though I
didn't change the hardware at all. It doesn't show up in the BIOS
boot order menu at all. It's just a major hassle.

2009-07-30T21:21:00.001-04:00

My leg is kinda hurting now.

Activity

Route:	--	Elev. Avg:	0 ft
Location:	Alexandria, VA	Elev. Gain:	+0 ft
Date:	07/29/09	Up/Downhill:	[+0/-0]
Time:	06:29 AM	Difficulty:	0 / 5.0

Weather:	Overcast
	77 F temp; 81% humidity
	80 F heat index; winds S 9

Performance

Distance:	8.65 miles
Time:	1:26:09
Speed:	6.0 mph
Pace:	9' 58 /mi
Calories:	1005

Map

Elevation (ft)

Pace (min/mile)

Splits

Mile	Pace (min/mile)		Speed (mph)		Elevation Gain
Mile	actual	+/- avg	actual	+/- avg	Elevation Gain
1	8' 06	-1' 52	7.4	+1.4	-- ft
2	9' 47	-0' 11	6.1	+0.1	-- ft
3	9' 39	-0' 19	6.2	+0.2	-- ft
4	9' 50	-0' 08	6.1	+0.1	-- ft
5	10' 34	+0' 36	5.7	-0.4	-- ft
6	9' 37	-0' 21	6.2	+0.2	-- ft
7	13' 14	+3' 16	4.5	-1.5	-- ft
8	9' 16	-0' 42	6.5	+0.4	-- ft
end	13' 21	+3' 23	4.5	-1.5	-- ft
Versus average of 9' 58 min/mile

Posted from bimactive.com

What's Up With Firebug?

2009-07-28T17:48:00.001-04:00

It's getting complicated and when I try to mess with CSS and the HTML DOM I find that what I type gets magically disappeared as soon as I hit enter. I feel like I should got back several releases to get my functionality back. I've even used the IE Web Developer Toolbar a few times in the last month when I couldn't get a job done quickly with Firebug.

Bill Versus the Tornado

2009-07-10T10:35:00.001-04:00

My idea was always just to drop really large bombs into the eye of hurricanes. It seems easier and safer than messing w/ ocean temperatures.

Bill Gates wants to stop hurricanes.

Plugin

2009-07-07T13:20:00.001-04:00

Plugin does not have a dash or a hyphen in it. It never has and never will. All spell checker software is wrong.

2009-07-02T08:29:00.001-04:00

I did this in lieu of a hills workout. Next time, I'll sprint the 400s. It still worked to work out the stiffness though.

Activity

Route:	--	Elev. Avg:	8 ft
Location:	Alexandria, VA	Elev. Gain:	+0 ft
Date:	07/02/09	Up/Downhill:	[+147/-147]
Time:	06:37 AM	Difficulty:	1.9 / 5.0

Weather:	Partly Cloudy
	68 F temp; 81% humidity
	68 F heat index; winds Vrbl 5

Performance

Distance:	6.44 miles
Time:	1:03:10
Speed:	6.1 mph
Pace:	9' 49 /mi
Calories:	708

Map

Elevation (ft)

Pace (min/mile)

Splits

Mile	Pace (min/mile)		Speed (mph)		Elevation Gain
Mile	actual	+/- avg	actual	+/- avg	Elevation Gain
1	8' 59	-0' 50	6.7	+0.6	-4 ft
2	8' 40	-1' 09	6.9	+0.8	+10 ft
3	10' 26	+0' 37	5.8	-0.4	-17 ft
4	10' 50	+1' 01	5.5	-0.6	+6 ft
5	9' 37	-0' 12	6.2	+0.1	-7 ft
6	10' 09	+0' 20	5.9	-0.2	+7 ft
end	9' 07	-0' 42	6.6	+0.5	+3 ft
Versus average of 9' 49 min/mile

Posted from bimactive.com

2009-06-23T21:28:00.001-04:00

Activity

Route:	--	Elev. Avg:	20 ft
Location:	Alexandria, VA	Elev. Gain:	-3 ft
Date:	06/23/09	Up/Downhill:	[+111/-114]
Time:	08:21 PM	Difficulty:	2.0 / 5.0

Weather:	Mostly Cloudy
	75 F temp; 71% humidity
	78 F heat index; winds S 5

Performance

Distance:	4.00 miles
Time:	0:36:28
Speed:	6.6 mph
Pace:	9' 07 /mi
Calories:	469

Map

Elevation (ft)

Pace (min/mile)

Splits

Mile	Pace (min/mile)		Speed (mph)		Elevation Gain
Mile	actual	+/- avg	actual	+/- avg	Elevation Gain
1	8' 40	-0' 27	6.9	+0.3	0 ft
2	9' 23	+0' 16	6.4	-0.2	+20 ft
3	9' 07	+0' 00	6.6	-0.0	0 ft
4	8' 56	-0' 11	6.7	+0.1	-23 ft
end	**	**	**	**	** ft
Versus average of 9' 07 min/mile
** Insufficient data to calculate this split

Posted from bimactive.com

What's Next?

2009-06-23T16:29:00.001-04:00

Not sure.

What the Heck, Liferay?

2009-06-22T06:59:00.001-04:00

So I configured liferay to use mysql. I've done this a million times for oracle, but this is a personal site, so I'm using mysql instead:

jdbc.default.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
jdbc.default.url=jdbc:mysql://server/liferayportal?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8&useFastDateParsing=false
jdbc.default.username=liferay
jdbc.default.password=liferay

Which is great. Way back when 5.2.2 was new (I'm using their binaries from the liferay/tomcat 6 bundle), I ran and saw "Detecting dialog for mysql" in the catalina log and thought that was that. What I didn't notice was that it's not only using mysql, it's using hsql too.

Loading file:/usr/local/liferay-portal-5.2.2/tomcat-6.0.18/webapps/wol-portlet/WEB-INF/classes/service.properties
04:00:37,102 INFO [DialectDetector:64] Determining dialect for MySQL 5
04:00:37,103 INFO [DialectDetector:97] Using dialect org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect
04:00:37,796 INFO [DialectDetector:64] Determining dialect for HSQL Database Engine 1
04:00:37,797 WARN [DialectDetector:79] Liferay is configured to use Hypersonic as its database. Do NOT use Hypersonic in production. Hypersonic is an embedded database useful for development and demo'ing purposes. The database settings can be changed in portal.properties.
04:00:37,833 INFO [DialectDetector:97] Using dialect org.hibernate.dialect.HSQLDialect

So now I have to figure out how to migrate hsql data to mysql, which apparently the mysql migration tool can do, but that's one more thing I have to go do that I shouldn't have needed. I discovered this bug when preparing to migrate to 5.2.3. I made a db dump but it seemed small, so I looked and there were zero insert statements for users or the site or anything important. Major bummer.

Jansen Medical

2009-06-05T15:52:00.001-04:00

Doesn't answer questions.

Ideal Thermostat

2009-05-30T06:45:00.002-04:00

I would like a thermostat that had a mode in which the fan but not the heat or A/C runs periodically. Having the fan always on is too much, but not at all leads to stagnant air. I would like to run it for 5 minutes out of every 20 or some other interval that I could define myself. I couldn't find such a device online.

2009-05-27T07:22:00.001-04:00

Activity

Route:	--	Elev. Avg:	9 ft
Location:	Alexandria, VA	Elev. Gain:	+0 ft
Date:	05/26/09	Up/Downhill:	[+72/-72]
Time:	07:29 AM	Difficulty:	1.6 / 5.0

Weather:	Light Rain Fog/Mist and Breezy
	65 F temp; 90% humidity
	65 F heat index; winds NE 23 G 29

Performance

Distance:	3.03 miles
Time:	0:25:12
Speed:	7.2 mph
Pace:	8' 19 /mi
Calories:	359

Map

Elevation (ft)

Pace (min/mile)

Splits

Mile	Pace (min/mile)		Speed (mph)		Elevation Gain
Mile	actual	+/- avg	actual	+/- avg	Elevation Gain
1	7' 56	-0' 23	7.6	+0.3	-3 ft
2	7' 49	-0' 30	7.7	+0.5	+7 ft
3	8' 41	+0' 22	6.9	-0.3	-3 ft
end	12' 00	+3' 41	5.0	-2.2	0 ft
Versus average of 8' 19 min/mile

Posted from bimactive.com

Another Liferay Theme Gotcha

2009-05-20T11:23:00.001-04:00

You are required to include the line

$theme.include($bottom_include)

if you want the document library to not have a blank upload screen or if you want the look and feel option in the portlet config to work. It adds the javascript includes necessary for those two things to function. I don't know if this was documented anywhere, but if it was I skimmed right over it.

( The look and feel thing I get since that's also part of the theme, but why the heck does the document library portlet depend on the theme to provide any javascript includes? I feel strongly that portlets should include this stuff themselves, despite yahoo's best practices for fast loading sites. )

The Problem With Apache Jackrabbit

2009-05-07T16:00:00.001-04:00

Jackrabbit is configured in repository.xml. If you don't store your users' content on a filesystem (and really, who does except in special cases?), then you need to specify database config in this file. 5 times. 6 if you want clustering support. You can avoid this by using JNDI database connection pooling provided by your j2ee server. Unless you use Oracle. Then you need to apply a patch to Jackrabbit that has been available for over a year but still isn't in the trunk. Why not? I have no clue. That's the problem.

Liferay Custom Themes w/ Velocity Macros

2009-04-29T14:31:00.001-04:00

Here's a tip. If you have multiple custom themes and they're all using macros, if the macros get customized for a specific theme, you have to rename them to be theme specific. Otherwise, the macros will get cached based on whichever theme renders first when the portal opens despite being in different application contexts. It's a major macro pain in the butt to figure out this particular problem.

Liferay Extension Environment Protip

2009-04-24T09:35:00.001-04:00

If you aren't developing portlets or services in the ext environment, don't delete the reports example from your ext folder. You will get errors like:

org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'transactionAdvice' defined in class path resource [META-INF/base-spring.xml]: Cannot resolve reference to bean 'liferayTransactionManager' while setting bean property 'transactionManager'; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'liferayTransactionManager' defined in class path resource [META-INF/hibernate-spring.xml]: Cannot resolve reference to bean 'liferayHibernateSessionFactory' while setting bean property 'sessionFactory'; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'liferayHibernateSessionFactory' defined in class path resource [META-INF/hibernate-spring.xml]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is org.hibernate.MappingException: entity class not found: com.ext.portlet.reports.model.impl.ReportsEntryImpl

Got the info from this forum thread. It looks like some oddity about the way they're using AOP.

Developing a Liferay Theme with Apache Velocity Macros

2009-04-22T21:55:00.001-04:00

See my bug at http://issues.liferay.com/browse/LPS-3081

Inline macros still don't appear to recompile. It's a major pain in the butt.

New Liferay Book Coming Out

2009-04-21T18:51:00.001-04:00

The upcoming book "Liferay Portal 5.2 Systems Development" promises to be helpful. I think I finally realized why they make development so painful and unintuitive. Liferay is so hard to develop, it makes me wish they used Maven. For the record, I hate Maven.

Liferay Protip

2009-04-14T11:02:00.001-04:00

When you set up a new Liferay site that serves users with emails from multiple domains, be sure to set "company.login.prepopulate.domain=false" inside your portal-ext.properties file. That way you don't get @liferay.com in the login box which will get you a lot of emails from people not sure how to log in. I think it should be the default, but that's apparently just me. I also edited the new account and password reset emails to explicitly say "Login with the email blah@example.com and this password." This has been my number one user issue so far.

Samsung Omnia Quick Review

2009-04-02T10:21:00.002-04:00

The Omnia is an iPhone clone for Verizon Wireless. It's got 802.11b/g wireless and a 5 megapixel camera.

Good:

Windows Mobile is a kickass operating system with lots of available software to do absolutely anything.
The camera is awesome. It will actually focus and the pictures look really nice if your subject isn't moving. It's a slow shutter, but still the best phone camera I've ever seen.
You just use normal headphones with a 3.5mm plug and their connector cable has a microphone for when you want to talk while driving or whatever.
The wi-fi is nice even though it eats up your battery.
It includes Opera Mobile.
There is an optical trackpad (like a mini-version of the mouse pad on laptops or like an optical mouse turned upside down) for when you can't point accurately enough. It's a nice backup feature.

Bad:

The touchscreen is slow to respond to your input.
The stylus isn't built in.
The antenna gets bad reception. Calls will drop a lot if you touch the wrong part of the phone.
Contacts and Company Directory aren't integrated (only matters if you use Active Sync)
It takes two button presses to open the Contacts page. Because people dial numbers from memory all the time in this day and age.
The screen is glossy and acts like a mirror in the sun.
Voice commands either aren't easy to use or just don't work. I still haven't managed to get this to work despite much effort.
The GPS is completely useless. It has never worked no matter how out in the open I am. GPS that Verizon Wireless wasn't going to disable is one of the reasons I bought the phone.
The FM Radio doesn't appear to work. I'm not trying to get distant stations here . . .
MSN Live Search "Locate Me" feature doesn't work.
You're forced to buy an unlimited internet plan even if you will use less than 10MB/month.
The virtual keyboard takes up 3/4ths of the screen.
Samsung's default screen widgets are annoying and pointless. But you can turn them off and use the regular Windows Mobile home screen.
No included travel charger.

I think that a lot of what I hate about this phone is more due to Verizon Wireless than Samsung.

Powerpoint Macros with Aspose

2009-04-01T15:37:00.001-04:00

This macro never worked for me because I didn't want to bother with the add-in that runs stuff when powerpoint starts. Instead I made a text box in my template with the alt-text "instructions" and told people to hit F5, then click the box to run the macro that refreshes OLE Objects (excel charts) and also tables that for whatever reason were showing in the normal view, but not presentation view. This shouldn't be needed for Aspose .NET since you can just use Aspose.Charts and render a picture of your actual chart to replace the "Object Changed" image that is the default. Of course, I don't know if that strange occasional table bug affects the .NET version.

Sub Image1_Click()
    Dim ashape As Shape
    load_all_charts
    For Each ashape In ActivePresentation.Slides(1).Shapes
        If ashape.AlternativeText = "instructions" Then
            ashape.Delete
        End If
    Next
End Sub
Sub load_all_charts()
    Dim oShape As Shape
    Dim oSlide As Slide
    Dim oGraph As Object
    ActivePresentation.NewWindow.Activate
    ' Loop through each slide in the presentation
    For Each oSlide In ActivePresentation.Slides
        ActiveWindow.View.GotoSlide (oSlide.SlideNumber)
        ' Loop through all the shapes on the current slide.
        For Each oShape In oSlide.Shapes
            ' Check whether the shape is an OLE object.
            If oShape.Type = msoEmbeddedOLEObject Then
                ' Found an OLE object; run edit on it
                oShape.Select
                oShape.OLEFormat.DoVerb (0)
            End If
            If oShape.Type = msoTable Then
                oShape.Select
                oShape.Ungroup
                oSlide.Shapes.Range().Regroup
            End If
        Next oShape
    Next oSlide
    ActiveWindow.Close
    ActivePresentation.SlideShowWindow.Activate
End Sub

Just set your instructions' text box onclick method to Image1_Click and make sure your users enable macros (or sign your presentation so they don't have to lower their security settings and macros are enabled automatically). Also, don't forget that Aspose only preserves macros in the Presentation object you got by loading your template. No creating a new presentation from scratch and copying slides to it. Yes, this means you waste time loading the template file repeatedly.

Uncommon Sense

2009-03-31T17:33:00.001-04:00

I would like to see use of any touchscreen device while driving banned. Not being able to press a button without looking at the screen is stupid and I read about more and more radios and nav systems that don't have real buttons. Give the passenger their own controls if you want, but don't force the driver to press a flat screen that has no tactile feedback to change radio stations or turn on the A/C.

Aspose Slides Pro-Tip

2009-03-25T15:55:00.001-04:00

Replace all your endline, newlines, and carriage return characters ('\n' and '\r') with the vertical tab character ('\v' or if you're in java '\013'). Otherwise you'll get exceptions if you try to put text in a paragraph that contains a newline. This way you don't have to do anything stupid and ugly like this.

Electronic Library

2009-03-23T10:41:00.001-04:00

I have this idea for an extra display next to my computer using electronic paper instead of a monitor. It would take a flash memory card (SD, microSD, or whatever), have ethernet built in, and basically be a library. You would install a virtual printer that would send documents to this device over the network or use a simple web interface. Documents would be classified by dewey decimal or some variant. They would be stored on the device as TeX or LaTeX, with a sqllite DB to store the categorization/classification info (much like jsr-170 document libraries, but without java).

It would be a decent replacement for printing stuff out with the exception that I don't think color e-Ink has really arrived yet.
I'm thinking it could be implemented on an ardunio and it probably wouldn't use a whole heckuva lot of power.