Thoughts

Ubuntu 10.04 upgrade

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:22:17 -0700

I've been using Ubuntu for a few years now and quite like it. And when I saw they had released 10.04 I was excited to upgrade. The last two releases I did an upgrade-in-place with their upgrade tool and I didn't run into any major problems. So I did the same thing for this release. But that's where this story begins.

First I noticed that I was getting warnings and errors related to my X.org config. This was very alarming since I've never seen that before and I don't run any thing unusual in my x.org config. I tried a few different things to address it but could never really solve the problem. Then I noticed that rhythmbox was always crashing on me. Like all the time. Oh and my startup applications would never start up as they were supposed to. And compiz wouldn't work due to complaints about in correct driver even though I did install the correct one.

So after complaining about it for a week to my coworkers they suggested that I back up all my important stuff and then do a fresh install. Complety wipe it and install from scratch with 10.04. So I bought an external hard drive (500G) and did that. The fresh install was soooo easy and quick. I then carefully restored data back to my home folder. If you are doing this be careful not to copy back .gnome2 or .gvfs or anything .g* or at least be very cautious in doing so. Those could break things on an upgrade like this.

Conclusion- the fresh install worked beatifully. Ubuntu 10.04 works great and i'm not seeing any of the problems I had earlier. In fact it also fixed a completely separate issue I was having with my wireless card. So I'm definately still an Ubuntu fan.

ideas for blog posts

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 01:25:09 -0700

I haven't written for a while, but I have gathered several ideas to write about. Here are a few of them:

My SageTV setup, and why I chose to go with SageTV versus MythTV, or TiVo or others.
Controltier. This is an automation framework for deploying and managing software. It is a bit complex but can be very powerful. I use this at work.
My presentation at Postgresql Conference East, entitled "Postgres Administration for Sysadmins". This presentation covers basics of configuration and running Postgres and monitoring your database.
An updated how-to for Virtual Box- setting up several servers and getting them to talk to each other.
How-to on getting CUPC (cisco's chat/video thingy app) working in Virtual box vm.
Snippets of some of my screenplays (works in progress).

As you can see, I actually do have things to write about, now if I could only make the time.....

Music covers are interesting

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:27:05 -0700

For some reason I'm drawn to music covers. I like to hear new versions of the same song be different artists and compare styles and interpretations. I have another blog post from a long time ago that mentions an idea for a mp3 player plugin that would connect to SecondHandSongs to query their database of song covers and provide information on the current song and related covers if any.

Well, I actually have renewed the desire for such a plugin and have a few links of resources to help be get started on this:

http://www.secondhandcongs.com (of course)
http://code.google.com/p/rhythmtoweb/
http://live.gnome.org/RhythmboxPlugins/ThirdParty
http://live.gnome.org/RhythmboxPlugins/WritingGuide
http://www.grooveshark.com
http://apidocs.tinysong.com/

My current idea is to ping SecondHandSongs with the song info and retrieve:
1. if this is a cover
2. if this is an original, with other artists covering it
3. if this is not found at all in their database

for 1 and 2, I'll get the list of all covers and artists, and then query TinySong.com to see if they have that song in their database. If so, they will provide a URL to listen to that song in a browser.

So you can listen to a song and say, "Hmm, I wonder if anyone has redone this song...", then right click on it, or something, and choose "Find Song Cover Info...", and then a list of songs and artists get displayed, and when you click on any one of them, it pauses your current music player, launches a web browser with the URL for that song cover and you get to listen to it right there.

Coolness.

Blogging is hard if you don't do it

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:24:31 -0700

I've found that is it hard to keep up your blog if you don't keep up your blog. Sounds silly when I write it out like that, but it's true. If you don't make time for something, then it probably won't happen on its own. Enough said.

learning something new

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:44:57 -0700

So I'm spending a little time to learn something new. I've been working on www.todocycle.net for a while now (actual hours spent are still pretty low, but with the little free time I have it's been a long time)... any hoo. I purposely chose to use some technologies with this site that I have never used before but had heard about and wanted to learn.

I started out with a few things that I am very familiar with, so that this project wouldn't take for freaking ever to get off the ground as I learn. I only spend about 3-4 hours a month on it, so my time better be well spent in order to see any visible progress. I started out with Postgres for the database, perl as the coding language, and CGI::Application as the MVC framework. All of which I'm quite comfotable with.

Then I chose a few things to work with to force me to learn. Template Toolkit for templating (I've been using HTML::Template for most other things), DBIx::Class for ORM (I've never really given and ORM a chance), and jQuery for a Javascript toolkit.

So far things have been a mixed bag. Picking up Template Toolkit was no problem at all and I am quite impressed by it. DBIx::Class has been another story. It has been a struggle for me to embrace it, and another one to try to get it to do what I want. I'm not giving up on it yet though. I want to give it a fair shot, but it was not a "learn it in one sitting and go to town" sort of thing like Template Toolkit was.

And then there's jQuery. I actually have been putting that one off becuase I was so focussed on the backend of things until now. I just started reading the docs on jQuery and have to say I am mightily impressed. I used Prototype before and disliked it. At my work, they use Yahoo's YUI toolkit, which seems big and bloated to me. jQuery is tiight, lightweight, and very easy to pick up.

So far:
   jQuery    A
DBIx::Class    B-
Template Toolkit   A

How to: Set up a few virtual servers on your desktop

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:22:34 -0700

This is an attempt at a how-to for getting a few servers up and running that can talk to each other as well as with your host desktop machine all with vitrtualization. This has been a personal desire for some time and I have read documentation about how to do this and have tried multiple times, and every time it seems that the job is complex and error prone. So this how-to will describe how I finally was able to get it working with almost no effort! Yeah!

First of all, let's set the scene and give ourselves a goal: We want to have a VM web server and a VM database server running on our desktop that runs a simple web application. The two machines need to talk to each other. And we want to be able to open our desktop web browser and access the web application running on these VMs. And do all that without any complex configuration or breaking your desktop's network settings.

The first thing we will use in this setup is VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/)

Time management

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:02:29 -0700

For a long time I've suffered under the illusion that I was doing ok in managing my time and all that I was working on. I assumed that all other programmers, software engineers, system administrators, etc. all had lives similar to mine and that we all barely keep our heads above water and at any moment we could drown.

Well the truth is different from that, and it took a book to help me understand that. Please, please, please- if you are at all in the IT industry and work with code, or systems, or networks, or stuff like that- then please buy and read "Time Management for System Administrators" by Thomas A. Limonecelli (O'Reilley). This book is not magic, don't get me wrong- but if you feel that being burried by tasks and projects is normal and that you have to work more hours a week than a "normal person" becuase your job is just that demanding- then you need this book to help you see differently!

Light reading over the Holidays

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:44:23 -0700

So, it's Thanksgiving weekend and I find myself online reading a few articles and blog posts. One of note that I wanted to comment on and point out:

The benefits of vanilla CGI vs FastCGI for Perl apps

   Interesting read from Mark Stosberg. I'm quite familiar with Mark from his work with CGI::Application,l as I've been a fan of that perl module for many years now. I think there is a bias here that I need to mention, and that I think Mark and I share.

   What people value in a web development process/toolkit is significantly weighted by the process and tools that web developer a) first learned, and b) is most confortable using. Meaning that a developer whose first experience programming web applications was with Catalyst and has since found Mojo more comfortable and uses it regularly, will have a different set of "values" (or criteria by which other things are compared) than a developer who started web development with straight CGI.pm and is now a Jifty user. (this bias should extend itself to any and all programmers, but I find it more appearant in web developers where there is more contention about which toolkit is better than another).

   Whew. OK, after all that, I have to say that I agree with Mark and feel that "vanilla CGI" is a great way to get things rolling as a developer without having (usually) to change a thing to a web server. Just write your code and go. I also feel that if people expect things to run slow in CGI and not in mod_perl or FastCGI because that is their biased environment of choice, then they will program accordingly. Meaning that they will write code that is slower, heavier, etc. because "oh, mod_perl will take care of it and it will be fast enough," or something similar.

   I've never actualy heard anyone say that, but I hear things close to it from other developers (Java web developers mostly) who feel like everything is perfectly normal when you have to rely on huge complex tools and frameworks and middleware and dedicated containers and separation of tiers and abstracted everything and this and that and the kitchen sink too just to develop web applications. This "normal bloat" I'll call it, is where that bias I mentioned earlier really comes out. If people can't even see that their tools and process is overly complex, burdensome, and has a moderate to high degree of dependencies for normal development and opperation, than how can you persuade them that it is perfectly fine to live without that? How can you make them see that that is not "normal" for many, many other web developers?

   Living without FastCGI??? Shudder. You're still using perl for web development?!?!?!? How can you live without Hibernate for data access (or replace with your favorite language specific tool here)?!?! Running perl CGI without mod_perl??? Are you stupid??

Yes, stupid like a fox. Err... I mean, doh.

Sleep and the art of staying awake

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:28:35 -0700

It has been far too long since my last post, so... here's one now. I recently had a new baby boy. That has been really cool, but my 2 year old daughter has been more difficult, at least when it comes to sleeping.

Sleep is an interesting thing. For some people it is an absolute necessity for basic functioning from day to day. For others it is just a nice-to-have optional sort of thing. However, when you go for long periods of little-to-no sleep, anyone will feel the effects.

I'm trying my best to keep my lack of sleep from affecting my day to day behavior and general happiness, but it's hard. One of the main things that helps is good food and a good shower.

Software design patterns and excess

Sun, 04 May 2008 10:05:59 -0700

So this will probably be a first in a series of posts related to software design patterns and all my inner strugglings regarding what is hype and what is real. There are probably lot of other people out there that may have similar strugglings, and more than likely there are some out there that are blissfully unaware of the concerns. So what am I talking about? Well let's start where I started a while ago, with ORMs.

ORMs (Object Relational Mappers) are a basically a way to have a OO layer between your application code and your RMDBS. There are some basic "features" of an ORM, but not all ORMs support all of these. In any case here is a list of common features:

OO interface to tables, rows, functions, etc, in your database. So you can use native application code and OOP to interact with your data.
A more elegant/simpler API to interact with your database. Many ORMs use some other database API under the hood, but add routines and interfaces (or simplifies calls) that the normal API lacks.
Object (data object) persistence. So that you can create an instance of some data you are modeling and then be able to store that object and revive it later with state preserved.
Abstract the interaction between your application code and your database such that in the future if/when you need to move to a different database you application code will require as little change as possible. Ultimately, changing databases should be a matter of configuration files, or perhaps even less work. And your app code wouldn't even know the difference between Postgres, MySQL, SQLite, or something else.

Where's your cube again?

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:03:33 -0700

So, I had an idea and wanted to capture it before I forget. A relatively simple tool to graph a floor plan map of office cubicles with info about each cube- person who sits there, department, extension, and any other info about them. It could be done really easily with the right database structure and using the Javascript graphing library wz_jsgraphics.js (http://www.walterzorn.com/jsgraphics/jsgraphics_e.htm).

That way, all you would need is to maintain the data through an easy management tool, then your map is updated realtime online. And anyone can go to the map in their browser and mouse over a cube and get info, or do a search and get a highlighted cube within the map of what they are looking for.

Microsoft Exchange problems

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:05:17 -0700

So a while ago at my work, "they" decided to move away from Zimbra and go with Microsoft Exchange. The main points that made them want to switch were: 1) the calendaring/booking conference rooms/scheduling/sharing calendars didn't work very well in Zimbra and is "known to work in Exchange", and 2) email and calendaring for a large organization just needs to work. Now- I must admit that this is my take on what has been going on, and I may be wrong here. But, with that- my experience with Exchange has really sucked. The points for moving to exchange are one-sided.

Exchange doesn't work well with free software. Exchange is designed to work with Outlook, and no other client is even considered important. They do claim to have IMAP support for other email clients, but Microsoft's IMAP seems to be unstable. It continually has problems freezing up. About 3-5 times per day the IMAP service on the Exchange server hangs and needs to be restarted! Lame! And so all Thunderbird users are stuck playing this "is my email working now?" game all the time.

The other thing is calendaring only works with Outlook clients. Exchange doesn't support iCal/WebDAV or any other open standard. So for calendaring we pretty much are forced to use the web interface for Exchange. And the web interface for Exchange has two versions- a full featured one that only works on IE, and then a crippled one that is served to all other browsers. LAME again! So all the "features" of switching to Exchange are really only features for Windows users who use Outlook and IE. If you use anything else, then your email and calendaring just got a whole lot worse!!

Zimbra did have some known bugs in their calendaring, especially in booking conference rooms for meetings. However, I believe the folks at Zimbra have been working on that for their next release. Email never was a problem with Zimbra for any user that I could tell- Outlook or Thunderbird or whatever.

But I'm not bitter.... yet.

Cover your bases (musically)

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:12:18 -0700

So I have an idea that I think would be really interesting. I like music. I like to listen to music. I like hearing new songs and discovering new artists. I also have a weird desire to hear the same song done in different ways by different people- covers.

I stumbled across SecondHandSongs.com and found that there is a database of cover songs (it only lists covers that were recorded and put out by a record label, no do-it-yourself or amateur covers allowed). Fascinating.

Now I come to the idea part. I think it would be cool to have a plugin for your favorite music player (Banshee, iTunes, WInamp, etc) that looks up the song from your play list and lists covers of that song, with other info perhaps or links to find more info. It would be really cool to see a list of others that did that song and be able to click on them to hear a sample of their version, or a link to a music service (or store) to buy/download the other version(s). And perhaps a way to rate them too? Not sure about that one.

Finally a way to build my own collection of nothing but covers of the song "Moon River"! (this is a joke, I actually hate that song).

Hot Dang.

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 08:21:52 -0700

Well, I finally got Movable Type installed here and working. I'm using Postgres as my backend. I just wish my hosting service used a recent version (they are still on 7.4.x!). But Postrges is still the best open source RMDB so there you go. I would have probably chosen SQLite if I could just get the perl module installed (yet another issue with my hosting service). I think for any small - mid size database work SQLite is a better choice than MySQL, and for anything larger than that chose Postgres.

I like Movable Type a lot. It seems to be more intuitive than a lot of the other ones I have looked at and tried. I will be moving my posts from my other blog to this one over the next little bit.

Minimal AJAX toolkit

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 17:45:21 -0700

So there is a wide world of tools and methods for "web 2.0", and for developers it is hard to know which one to chose to use and support. I have tinkered with two AJAX toolkits and found things that I liked and disliked with them. But overall I found that they were both too big and too feature rich for simple use.

So it occured to me that for some of my simple projects all I needed was bare-bone functionality, meaning the ability to fetch the contents of a given url. Beyond that I can do what I need in small simple javascript. I didn't need fancy event handling, or animation, or auto-complete drop downs, or such. And if I did, then I could probably do that my self later, as long as I had the ability to easily fetch a URL.