Lyle Schofield's Technical Journal

I’m not a heavy user of Subversion, so forgive me for not being part of the prevailing “use the command line” crowd recommendations in OS X (and probably most Unix/Linux users as well).

SCPlugin Snapshot

I was using SmartSVN for a while – so long that the open source version I was using seems to have been replaced with a commercial version for $79.  Not a bad price for a heavy user, but I’m an extremely light user.  My old SmartSVN version was not dealing well with the file constructs in OS X for an application.  It had always worked fine when I was just editing PHP, HTML, or XML files.  But, it was breaking trying to maintain the application links so I looked for something else.  Here was my start: http://theappleblog.com/2009/02/23/12-subversion-apps-for-os-x/.

I didn’t bother with the cross-platforms and the commercial ones, but the SCPlugin one fit my needs immediately so I didn’t look further.  First, free and open source.  Second, comes from Tigris.org, which I’ve used for a long time and always liked their site and forums.  Small download, drag and drop install.  Installs directly on to the Finder tool bar.

I haven’t quite figured out how it knows where the server is – it “learned” this from a folder already in control of Subversion for my first try.  But, I like the Finder integration and it seems to work well.  No problems.

I’m using iReports a lot for general business reporting, which is an open source reporting tool in the spirit of Crystal Reports.  It merges SQL and Java, creating report “documents” which are an XML file which tells how to attach to the database, run the query, and then format the results into a pretty document with fonts and things.

A lot of times you’re working with dates and trying to understand the age of things.  iReports lets you create variables and attach Java code to them, which gives infinite flexibility for logic and conversion.  Unless, of course, you don’t know Java in which case its a bewildering concoction of spaces, periods, parens, and references to mysterious methods and objects in classes buried in attached, unseen, places.  A visit to a number of forums focused on Java or iReports will connect you to Java experts who berate you to read API documentation.

Or, use the DATEFIFF function in SQL (MySQL, in this case) to do the math and assign it to a SQL field:

SELECT
 DATEDIFF(table.`date_pickedup`, table.`date_arrival`) AS agedInSystem,
 DATEDIFF(table.`date_pickedup`, table.`date_service`) AS agedSinceDOS

FROM table

No point spending time in Java when SQL has a canned function for this.

Bloglines Screen Snapshot

I’ve been using RSS readers for quite a while.  Anyone that does a lot of web site reading really should, it saves a ton of time previewing what’s new material.  It used to be that many sites didn’t support RSS, or didn’t support it well, but at this point any blog or news site that doesn’t support it is frightfully behind in their programming features.

I’ve tried a number of them over the years on Linux, OS X, and Windows, and most of the browsers or E-mail clients support them now.  But, when you use multiple computers the issue of synchronization inevitably comes up forcing you to consider a server based RSS reader (and, aren’t we all going to be multiple computer users eventually with our phones and pads?).  My favorite is Bloglines, which is a simple layout, well supported across all the browsers I use it with (including phone based ones), and has only been off-line once in all the years I’ve been using it.  I’m a daily user of the program, and have occasionally looked at something else (like Google Reader) and never found a compelling reason to switch to anything else.

Came across QR Codes, which are a bar-code variant (2 dimensional) that convert to text. I’m seeing them on web pages, and the interest in them comes from a low end camera (think cell phone) being able to see the code and decode it. I used Kaywa software to generate the code, and am using an iPhone app called QRCode to read them. If the code translates to a URL it jumps right to the URL.

Note on the link to the QRCode app.  It’s in German, so I have no idea if that’s really the product link.  Here’s the iTunes store link.

This post on the WordPress support forums seems to have helped me resolve the bad Dashboard display, although I can’t point to a specific issue.

I changed the name of my plug-ins folder (renamed from “plugins” to “plugins_old”), logged out and logged into the dashboard and forced a reload of the pages.  Dashboard looked normal.  I then turned on the plug-ins one by one to see if I could identify a specific one that was causing a problem.  Alas, plug-ins back on and the problem did not come back.  So, the problem is fixed, but the source of the problem is not identified.

I’ll roll this through the other sites and see if I can find out more, but for now dashboard works fine which is all I care about right now.  Too busy to spend time exploring.

Having trouble posting.  All the dashboards failed even though the sites are running fine.  A couple of posts on support forums indicate I’m not the only having problems, but no answers being reported.  Messed up dashboard and the way its supposed to work shown below:

Update: http://lschofield.net/technical/2010/04/wordpress-dashboard-resolved-maybe/

My Mac Book Pro is coming up on three years old, and I noticed a few weeks ago that it was not holding as long a charge as it used to.  This is not foreign territory for laptop users; battery chemistry degrades over time and you don’t notice it until it drops to 80% or so of original capacity and once its down to 80% you are coming into the steeper part of the degradation process.  So, you don’t notice it, but once you do you really notice it.

No big deal of course, outside that decision point of replacing a battery and wondering if the laptop is going to last much longer or if you would be better served by replacing the computer and getting a new battery in the process.  A laptop battery is not really a cheap purchase, especially for an older laptop.  And, especially for a larger laptop (the 17 inch version is a much larger battery than the 15 inch version).  $139 for a new battery – ouch!

Failed Mac Book Pro Battery

Anyway, seemed worth it.  While older, the computer still has plenty of breath, storage space, and runs fine with the dozen or so apps I have running all the time.  My guess is that I’ll remain happy with performance until an operating system upgrade.  So, purchased new battery, left the old one on the desk thinking it was a spare I could get another two hours on for a long flight or something.

Yesterday, I noticed some books weren’t sitting flat on my desk.  They were sitting on the battery, and the chemistry in the battery was expanding to the point it split the case open.  Yikes!  I gave that little square of toxic sludge to a colleague for him to play with.

From Yahoo news we hear that there is a “Rickrolling” worm hitting iPhones:

iPhone fear as ‘Rick Astley’ worm spreads – Yahoo! News.

This is a ittle misleading on two counts.

First, the worm can only stick to the phone if it has its operating system modified to allow unauthorized software to be installed (commonly referred to as “jailbroken” in the tech community).  This process removes the mechanisms which protect the phone by design.

Second, the number of people who do this is very small making the opportunities to spread the malware very small.

So, it’s not really an “iPhone worm” as much as its a “modified (to remove security measures) iPhone worm”.  We’ll have to wait and see if there’s a real security hole out there.

Recent disasters and recovery of a failed video chip on a Mac Book Pro restore my faith in regular backups and leave me impressed with Apple Care.  This is a quick accounting of events and resolution.

Read more »

Is this a common problem?  You are in a book store, or a record store (yes, I still go to record stores), and you see something you like but you’re not sure if you bought it before?  Probably not too common, especially for a modern music purchaser who downloads from web sites and doesn’t go into stores anymore.  But, for an old geezer like me who still likes physical copies of what they purchase, it happens.  For proof, I’ll show you my multiple copies of Miles Davis’ Milestones.

I tried a running list which I copied to my Palm Pilot, but this wasn’t satisfying and a lot of work.  More recently, I discovered Delicious Library 2 from the software company Delicious Monster through an article.

This software is in the category of “inventory management”, optimized for books and CDs.  A more recent upgrade adds other categories so you can use the software for tracking tools, software, and any other categories you can think up.  Side note: the company could not be any cooler to contact for support or questions as I found out when the v2 upgrade was announced right after I purchased the original v1 software.

Snapshot of HTML Export page

The software UI design is clean and unique, using a bookshelf metaphor to show you your books or CDs with various sorting and display options.  Where it really shines is when you initially load your library into it.  Delicious Library 2 is able to use the iSight camera (or any camera) as a bar code reader.  You just hold up the item so the camera can see the code (a preview window helps this), it beeps when it recognizes a code, and it looks up information on the item over the Internet using Amazon.Com’s web services.  If the item is recognized you get reviews, categorizing information, cover art, and even reseller information.  It will also announce the item using the creepy software driven voice to confirm it found the right thing.

If it can’t find the item, you can manually search for it.  And, if its really old and not in the database you can enter everything by hand – useful for your bootleg home recordings.  There is also an option for a real bar code reader if you think you’ll use this a lot.  I do have occasional problems with using the camera for the bar code reader, mostly due to lighting conditions or unusual bar code printing (small codes on reflective CD cases, for example).  But, its not enough trouble to purchase a reader.

So, how does this help the original problem?  You can export the libary to HTML (and other formats), which I’ve done and published to my web server.  Now, if I’m not sure I have something I can quickly look it up on the server, even from my phone while I’m in a store.

Final verdict; love the product, love the company, been using it long enough that any warts have been exposed and they are very minor.  And, it allows me to search through my library from anywhere with an Internet connection, which these days is just about anywhere.  Very nice.