Here we go. Changes are in progress.

Still alive and coding

So I think it is time to blog about things again. Been too long. Well well. mrjabba is busy writing a Rails app that manages soccer leagues. You can find the source on github.

I am not sure that I want to keep this blog in its current form anymore. Now that I have so many more deployment options, I'm considering using something like jekyll then I think I could combine that with a rails or sinatra app as the base for anything dynamic? Sound good? We'll see.

Cisco VPN, vpnc and Ubuntu upgrades

I get to do a little work from home here and there. And, I was happy to get my VPN account this fall with my new job. But, knowing that I usually just remote control my workstation at the office to do some of the work, I don't really need to boot into Windows to do this. After all, Ubuntu has a Terminal Server client that will support remote controlling a Windows box. I've done so at home. I had finally got the guts enough to install the Cisco VPN client on Ubuntu. I got it working and all was well with the world for some time.

Earlier this week, I ran some of the suggested Ubuntu updates, which gave me a new kernel version, now sitting at 2.6.24-22-generic. That broke the Cisco VPN client. And, I couldn't figure out why or how to fix it. I tried rebooting, reinstalling, etc. No love. It would start up the vpnclient, but would not be able to read my PCF (connection configuration thinger) file.

I did some searching and found a solution that worked for me. There is a package out there called vpnc. You can install vpnc using apt:

sudo apt-get install vpnc

Once you install it, you will need to convert your PCF file to get the host and address info it requires, You do this using pfc2vpnc. It's a Perl script. It should be installed and you can use it like so:

NOTE: I had copied my pcf file to my home directory. This just tells the Perl script to read it and output the results.

cd /usr/share/vpnc
./pcf2vpnc ~/myPCFFile.pcf

## generated by pcf2vpnc
IPSec ID theipsecid
IPSec gateway something.foo.com
IPSec secret ipsecsecret

IKE Authmode psk

## To add your username and password,
## use the following lines:
# Xauth username
# Xauth password

So, it didn't write that to a file that I could see. So, I wrote it down in a file to keep it handy. Once you have that, you just just start up vpnc and connect.
NOTE: I haven't been able to specify a separate config file yet, so I just typed it all. At least it works.

$ sudo vpnc
Enter IPSec gateway address: something.foo.com
Enter IPSec ID for something.foo.com: theipsecid
Enter IPSec secret for theipsecid@something.foo.com: ipsecsecret
Enter username for something.foo.com: myusername
Enter password for myusername@something.foo.com: pin and/or pass for vpn
VPNC started in background

Now you're connected to work. Or, at least I was.
So, I have to enter those 3 IPSec things for now. That's more than before. But, I'm sure with some tinkering I can figure out how to automate that out of the process and only have to enter my username and pass each time.

Good luck!

Golan 0.9.1 released

I uploaded a new version of Golan tonight. We'll call it 0.9.1. This version fixes a lot of things over the old one. You can now update an individual feed (as well as all of them using the service). But, now you can also cancel the dialog for individual updates. I'm also using SD card storage now for the feed content rather than the database. The app is much zippier now and now you don't have to worry about app bloat. My copy got up to 9 MB. And, a 9 MB app in RAM is no good. Now it's 100KB with external storage. Coming soon, plucking ability (multiple page levels). I'm close to releasing but I really want the plucking capability there first.

Get your Golan on here

Golan 0.0.8 released

I posted a binary of Golan tonight. No source yet. I still want to fix a couple of things before I show the crap brilliance underneath.

If you are feeling brave you can go ahead and give it a go. I expect I will have the source code up in about a week and up on the Android Market by the end of the month.


Golan Project

Direct download Golan 0.0.8 for Android

NOTE: this thing is still buggy but I've been using it for a while now.

Manic 8-Ball source released

Yeah. I committed my first open source project code. Version 1.0.1.

I also included a new build for download. No need to build it yourself.

Manic8ball 1.0.1 Release Notes:

- Removed some profanity questionable phrases
- Fixed tap sensitivity. It was too sensitive in previous release.

Manic8ball Home

Manic 8-Ball

Funny story. I decided to be Manic 8-ball for Halloween.

The crafty part of the costume making wasn't working out, attaching a real magic 8-ball to the top. So, I thought. Hey, Why not write a program. I'll just attach the phone to my costume. It will be more like the real character :-)

Well, 2 hours later, here's the app. And, I will be submitting the code for others to enjoy. It's a really simple app.

Manic 8-Ball Project Site

Golan

Got a new Android phone? Do you like to read news and blogs but find yourself offline a lot away from wifi? On a plane? On a train? Maybe you don't like how awkward it is to browse on a phone? If you answered yes to any of these things (Android phone required) then maybe you should try out my little baby. The name is Golan. The name was inspired from Golan Trevize, a fictional character from Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series.

Applications like these have been around for some time. For years, I owned Palm devices and was a heavy Plucker user. When I lived in NY, I was often out of network range in the subway. Plucker was so useful. I don't know if anyone will port Plucker directly to Android. But, this is my start in that direction. Only 1 level of "plucking" so far, but I'm pleased with it for now. There is room for lots of improvement.

The project site is hosted on Google's Code site where you can download the source (soon to be committed) or a built version and install on your phone. Once I save up $30 for the registration fee, I will post it to the Android Market. And, it will be free.

Golan Project Home




Let's get plucking!

Installing your Android Application to your Phone Locally

I bought my G1 phone today. Yes, my Android phone. Dude. Am I happy. It is soo much faster than the emulator. So much fun. Not much time to play with it yet.

When I got it home tonight, I got to the task of getting my application installed on it.

Obviously the way to go is to just publish the application to one of the many marketplaces.

But, my app isn't ready yet. I want to install it on my phone and play with it and to get feedback from friends.

Here are the steps to getting that app on your phone. Maybe I will clean this up later.

Use keytool. From the command line (you obviously need the JDK installed):

<br /><br />keytool -genkey -alias youralias -keypass yourpass<br />

Now you have a key. We will be using a self-signed key. Don't worry. Android accepts that.

Now you need to sign your .apk file. Screw the command line. You're gonna be doing this a lot. Use ant. Ant has a core task called oddly enough signjar.
Here's a build file you can start with.

<br /><?xml version="1.0"?><br /><project name="buildfile" default="signme"><br /> <target name="signme"><br /> <signjar jar="/home/mrjabba/Desktop/yourappfolder/yourapkfile.apk" alias="youralias" storepass="yourpass"><br /> </target><br /><br /></project><br />

Run the build. Hopefully, the "build" succeeds. Check the last modfied date on your file. It should have updated. It if it did, your jar should be signed. I'm sure there's a more intelligent way of examining it.

Now you can install your app on your phone. How the heck do you do that? Well, you need a server. Just install Tomcat locally. Copy the file to a simple web app. Modify your web.xml file (or your web server) to treat the .apk file extension as "application/vnd.android.package-archive".

<br /><!-- excerpt from web.xml --><br /> <mime-mapping><br /> <extension>apk</extension><br /> <mime-type>application/vnd.android.package-archive</mime-type><br /> </mime-mapping> <br /><br />

Now add a link to your file in a web page or JSP. Hopefully the PC/laptop you're running this little local app is on your local network. And, you've turned on wi-fi on your phone. Go to your browser on your phone. Access your pc/laptop: http://192.168.1.10/yourapp/yourfile.jsp or some such url). Click the apk file and the Chrome browser should download the file. Once the file finishes click on the file. It should try to install the application. If it fails, it will tell you so. Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you why it failed. If it succeeeds, it will tell you and allow you to launch it.

Good luck!

Classpath Doh!

I keep learning more and more about building complex systems and the importance of getting classpath correct.

The other day I did an SVN update on my project. All of the sudden, this one piece of code wouldn't compile. I think it's probably OK to show this 1 line of code.

<br />SchemaFactory sf = SchemaFactory.newInstance(javax.xml.XMLConstants.W3C_XML_SCHEMA_NS_URI);<br />

Anyway, the bit that was barking at me was javax.xml.XMLConstants.W3C_XML_SCHEMA_NS_URI.
I asked a colleague where this lives. In rt.jar, he says. Waa? OK. It's in the JDK. I looked around in rt.jar. Yep. It's there. Why the hell isn't it compiling then?

Hmm. Here's the answer.

Project | Properties | Java Build Path | Order and Export
There was a jar in our project (which wasn't being used any longer) called jsr173_1.0_api.jar. That jar contains a class in the javax.xml package called XMLConstants just like in RT.jar. Only this copy did not have javax.xml.XMLConstants.W3C_XML_SCHEMA_NS_URI. But, why does that affect whether it compiles or not? The jar without the class was listed higher in the classpath order. We didn't notice the problem before the JDK was previoulsy higher in the classpath order. Someone had re-ordered it on the last commit. Ugh. But, I'm glad they did it.

It was an easy fix for us. We were able to simply remove the unused jar from our project and the problem was gone. But, what if we couldn't remove it? Hmm. You can cheat, at least in the IDE. Though I'm sure that might have caused deployment issues. You can re-order the classpath by moving a class up or down in the list. Just click the jar in question and move it below the JDK entry. Voila, it compiles.

Be careful out there. It's a weird classpath world.

Android and sqlite3

Wow. For my new application which will go unnamed at the moment, I learned something very cool.

In the Eclipse Android SDK for Eclipse, there is a Perspective called DDMS. While your emulator (and application) is running, this will let you do all sorts of cool things. You can take a screenshot of what's showing on the phone. You can debug, look at logs, etc. It also shows you the filesystem for your application. Since your application is a its own Linux account, it has its own set of files and applications. And, if you are like mine and have persisted data using the built-in sqlite3 database, the database is also there on the filesystem. If your app is called foo.myapp then it's under /data/data/foo.myapp/databases.
There will be a file that is the name of the database along with any tables.

Let's say your database is called MyDatabase and you have a table, mytable.

Now click on the databases folder and click the action menu item for that view "Pull a file from this device". It will actually copy this whole directory to your local filesystem.

Now, hopefully at this point you are in Linux and already have sqlite3 installed. You do run Ubuntu right? :-)

Bring up a shell. Fire up sqlite3 like so:

<br />mrjabba@ionia:~/$ cd databases<br />mrjabba@ionia:~/Desktop/databases$ sqlite3 MyDatabase<br />SQLite version 3.4.2<br />Enter ".help" for instructions<br />sqlite> select col1 from mytable;<br />somevalue1<br />somevalue2<br />somevalue3<br />sqlite> .quit<br />

That's it. It should list the contents of your table (assuming you have a column named col1). Other than that, it's standard sqlite3 stuff.

There should be a lot of neurons firing right now about what this means. Perhaps involving snycing. You can add files back to the device. And, this sort of thing can be done with a standalone emulator, so no eclipse is required.

Enjoy!

Pluck Me

Having used Ubuntu now for some time. I figured I needed a little shell scripting practice. I admit it. I'm lazy. I don't want to go through a bunch of unnecessary clicks every time I use Sunrise (my app for PluckerDocs on my Palm Treo). Alas, my Treo is dying on me. It won't be much longer I'll be using this type of offline reading, unless I port it to Android or the iPhone. In the meantime, let's do it. So, normally I would just write something in Java. It's easy enough. I know Java well and it's easily accessible from the command line. It would have been simple. But, it must have been years since I've written a Bash script. So, here goes.

All this script needs to do to replace my monotony is do this workflow:

Old way
- I open Sunrise and tell it to update everything. We wait. It's takes some 5 minutes to pluck everything.
- I put in the SD (ugh, still gotta do that manually)
- I open my Pluckerdocs folder (the source).
- I open my SD card folder (where my Palm reader will see them, the destination)
- I remove the old pdb files b/c my old 1GB SD card drive died and I'm living off a 34 MB SD Card. Life is tough.
- I empty the Trash in Gnome. Yes. Another manual step if you aren't using the command line, else the card will look full.
- I copy over the new files

New improved Bash way
- I open Sunrise and tell it to update everything. We wait. It's takes some 5 minutes to pluck everything.
- I put in the SD (ugh, still gotta do that manually)
- I run the script (this is new!)
- Done!

Next on the list might need to be something fun like running sunrise headless and kicking off an update or something. That would be pretty cool. Running it as a job.

Here's the script. Yeah, it's tiny. So what?

<br />#!/bin/bash<br /># PluckerDoc Mover<br /># Will move my pluckerdocs from my pluckerdoc dir to my sd card...<br /># note : dont use spaces in filenames else you will have to change IFS for copying purposes. The script WILL fail with spaces in filenames<br /><br />echo "** Starting Pluck Doc Mover **"<br /><br /># 1 = 24 hours ago, file modification back<br />AGE="1"<br /><br />SRC_FILES="/home/mrjabba/pluckerdocs/src/*.pdb"<br />TARGET_DIR="/media/disk/PALM/Launcher"<br />TARGET_FILES="/media/disk/PALM/Launcher/*.pdb"<br /><br />echo "src files = {$SRC_FILES}"<br />echo "target dir = {$TARGET_DIR}"<br />echo "target files = {$TARGET_FILES}"<br />echo "age = {$AGE}"<br />echo "======================"<br /><br /># it's 2 easy steps <br /><br /><br />if [ -d $TARGET_DIR ]<br />then<br /> echo "deleting target plucker docs..."<br /> # 1 - delete existing plucker docs<br /> rm -v $TARGET_FILES<br /><br /> echo "copying.."<br /><br /> #2 - copy new pluckerdocs to destination<br /> #cp -v $SRC_FILES $TARGET_DIR<br /> # copy files less than 1 day old<br /> #find /home/mrjabba/pluckerdocs/*.pdb -mtime -1<br /> for i in `find $SRC_FILES -mtime -$AGE`; do<br /> cp "$i" $TARGET_DIR<br /> done<br /><br /> echo "** Finished! **"<br /><br />else<br /> echo "ERROR: Unable to find target directory and/or copy files. Is this SD card in? Duh!"<br /> echo "** Exiting! **"<br />fi<br /><br />exit<br />

Plurk

Yes, I'm out there. I just joined another one. This time it's Plurk.

This is interesting. Like Twitter (I don't see any SMS support). I also like Pownce (who also doesn't have SMS support, but lets you share files!).

The cool thing about Plurk is that it has this nifty timeline UI. Interesting.

It appears to be written in Python (or at least partly). I believe the same is true of Pownce. Python and Ruby are coming along. That's cool. The more the merrier. I love languages.

Plurk sounds kind of nasty.

I love me some Ruby

So, I'm learning Ruby and Rails at home, and I'm absolutely loving it.

I love the little idiomatic stuff that make typing in it so concise.

Let's say that I have a list called mylist. I want to add an object to the list, foo.

In Java, I'd have to go something like this.

<br />mylist.add(foo);<br />

In Ruby, it's just this:

<br />mylist << foo<br />

It's not earth shattering, but there are a dozen examples like this that I really like. If you understand the symbols and operators of the language, it actually reads just fine. Maybe I'm getting cranky in my old age and not wanting to type out all that stuff as much anymore.

Another perhaps bigger example was the "attr_accessor" convenience method.

<br />class Person<br /><br /> attr_accessor :firstname<br /><br /> def initialize(firstname)<br /> @first = first<br /> end<br /><br />end<br />

What just happened here? For me, the critical part was the getter/setter bits. In Java, I'd have to select a menu option in Eclipse to generate the getter's and setter's for this class. Imagine a class with 10 fields in Java. You are NOT gonna type out those methods.

In the Ruby case, it's just 1 line of code. And, you can add more fields to the same line. "attr_accessor" tells us that what are our accessor methods. Nice!

See also attr_reader and attr_writer which do as you would expect, allowing only read or only write methods.

Alfresco partnering with Adobe

I just randomly hit my bookmark for the Alfresco blog today and was like...whoa!

It appears Alfresco is partnering with Adobe now on forms. They're gonna embed the Alfresco repository as part of the LiveCycle suite. Wow. Congrats if that works out for ya. Not sure how that works yet but I'm intrigued. I was just speaking with a colleague about forms applications and how badly OpenText did it in the past. Not sure if their competitors did it any better. Having not worked with LiveCycle directly, I cannot say that this is a good thing, only it's a big thing. Something to keep an eye on.

Here's the Press Release.

Read more... on their blog.

MyEclipse Quirk

I discovered a really weird UI quirk with MyEclipse today. I updated a thread on the MyEclipse forum for good measure. But, this is the issue:

I've seen this where case where the Add button on the Manage Deployments dialog is grey or greyed out. It's the weirdest thing. This was happening to me on Ubuntu Linux today but I don't think that matters. Also, I'm using MyEclipse 6.x. And, this also happened to a colleague of mine using Windows a few weeks ago. It was maddening and I couldn't figure it out at the time.

It seems that if the current open project doesn't have focus, this occurs. Make sure to click somewhere on your project in your project explorer. Then click the Deploy button again to bring up the Manage Deployments dialog.

So, to re-create this problem click on a closed project on your package explorer then try to deploy. It should be greyed out.

I don't know if this is really a bug as much as it is a UI quirk?

SQL's brain-lock on the development community....

I was reading this blog post by Tim Bray on the subway this morning. It seems so spot on to me. So, I'll link to it now and maybe comment on it later.
By the way, Tim was one of the co-founders of OpenText back in the day.

Tim Bray: Multi-Inflection-Point Alert. The comments are quite insightful as well.

How Fast Can OpenOffice.org Be Extended?

Here's a nice article with code and screenshots on how to extend Open Office using Java. When I was playing around trying to do some stuff with Plucker, I also noticed they have a Java package to handle Palm database files (.pdb). Look around in their repository. You might actually find some useful code.

TDD, yeah you know me

If you've been keeping up with my rants lately, you know that I have become a big advocate of TDD in the last few months. But, it's a practice that's hard to convert people to, including yourself. I wish I could even get to the point with code coverage that I could get to this argument. Alas, I'm not there yet with my current group. Follow the link. There are a lot of good comments related to TDD following the post on Cedric's blog. Like anything, it's not for everyone, or for everything. But, you should at least look at the idea.

Otaku, Cedric's Blog: TDD leads to an architectural meltdown around iteration three

Kindle envy

So my trainer last week showed off his Kindle to me. I must say I was more impressed than I expected to be. The demonstration turned into a discussion of the pro's and con's of owning one and why someone like me would be offended by the DRM included in the device. But, after thinking on his comments and looking at the features more myself, I am now wondering when I can afford one.

I read a lot of blogs on the subway. Soccer, programming, etc. I have even synced down technical documentation and manuals. My current process is to use Plucker ala the Sunrise application to sync those down to my old Treo. Code is not a very realistic option on my current device as it doesn't wrap well at all.

I'm cheap so I had concerns that owning a Kindle means I couldn't get all that nice free content down to the device. No problem. The Kindle has an email account you can send content to. If you have something in Word or text you can email it to the Kindle account and it will show up on the device. The device comes with wi-fi.

My current method works great but a nicer screen is so tantalizing. I want to read more. Unfortunately, I don't have the money to be buying books as often I would prefer. And, NYC doesn't have a nice chain of half-price books with good books on the shelves ala the likes of a Half-Price books in Austin. Alas, my choices are thin on the ground.

The Kindle screen is excellent for reading. It's hard to see the difference on a PC screen. If you know someone with one, just take a look at theirs.

I was surprised to see that they sold out on the Kindle in five and a half hours. Jeff Bezos apologized that there was still a six week delay. Interesting. As of today, the price is still sitting at $399. Ouch. Maybe at 300-350 this would be more attractive for my pocket book. However, demand will not allow for such a price reduction anytime soon. It will take competition to force a price reduction.

Maybe in 2009 things will look better.