TheAboutBox.com

PHPMyAdmin on Mac OS X

admin — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:06:31 +0000

Most Web hosts have PHPMyAdmin installed as the interface to manage a MySQL Database. It’s full-featured and easy to use. It runs well in Mac OS X Leopard, but there are a few tweaks that are necessary to make.

To Install:

Download the latest stable version from phpmyadmin.net
Decompress the tarball in your Sites directory
Rename the folder to something shorter, like ‘phpmyadmin’
Go to ~/Sites/phpmyadmin and copy config.sample.inc.php to config.inc.php
Edit config.inc.php
Change line 31 to

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = '127.0.0.1';

Optionally change line 35 to

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['extension'] = 'mysqli';

The reason to change the host to 127.0.0.1 is because phpMyAdmin will try to connect through the socket if the host is localhost regardless of the ‘connect-type’ setting. The default mysql installation puts mysql.sock in /private/var/tmp, but the mysql and mysqli extensions look for it in /var/tmp/mysql.

Changing the extension to mysqli is mainly a performance improvement.

At this point, you can tweak the auth_type and DB credentials to your heart’s content.

Symbolic Links with Web Sharing on Leopard

admin — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:46:01 +0000

Out of the box, Apache won’t follow symbolic links in the ~/Sites directory, which is frustrating for development. After tons of messing with .htaccess files, the fix is simple:

open /etc/apache2/users/[you-user-name].conf
Add FollowSymLinks to options
Save file
Go to System Preferences -> Sharing, and restart Web sharing

Accessing the Internet with Flash

admin — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:42:03 +0000

Flash 9 has a security sandboxing built in, so when devloping flash applications with either the Flash authoring tool or Flex Builder the player might show a number of security violations. To fix those, go to the Global Security Settings page on the Adobe Web Site and enable any files or folder that need to be given access to the Net.

Test

admin — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:21:00 +0000

I am a test

64-Bit Adventures

admin — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 19:15:14 +0000

Doing serious work on Linux requires a willingness to go down the rabbit hole as far as it will take you. This must be part of the reason why serious Web developers like the mac—generally things work. Last week, after getting the 64 bit desktop up and running, I downloaded 64-bit eclipse and ran it. The experience was like juggling clubs filled with nitroglycerine. It was fine until some random moment that everything blew up. I’d be in my flow zone, open a file, and poof, Eclipse crashed. I tried Eclipse 3.2 and 3.3—same result. I tried sun’s 1.5 and 1.6 VM—same result.

After some substantial amount of digging, I read that BEA’s JRockit VM does a much better job in 64-bit Linux. After downloading it, installing it to /usr/lib/jvm and running:

sudo update-alternatives—install /usr/bin/java java /usr/lib/jvm/jrockit-R27.4.0-jdk1.6.0_02/jre/bin/java 300
sudo update-alternatives—config java

Life was much, much better.

Opinion on the street is that Sun’s 64-bit Linux VM is not very good. My particular configuration (Ubuntu Gutsy 64 bit) seems to agree. I wonder who should get the bug report on this one.

(Hat tips to Dave Shuck and this Ubuntu bug)

Ubuntu Gutsy

admin — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:34:58 +0000

I decided it was time to upgrade to 64-bit linux at work. Our new production servers run it, and my big development box is 64 bit, so I reformatted and started over with the latest Ubuntu ‘Gutsy Gibbon’.

While it isn’t as easy as installing Mac OS, this was my easiest Linux install yet. I ran into a hiccup getting dual screens and Compiz working together, and another getting Flash to work with 64 bit Firefox, but it took me about two hours to get a good looking desktop with all the right fonts, flash and effects. (Love those wobbly windows!)

Impressions

Installation was almost painless. If you have a raid controller, you need to use the Alternate Install CD. The installer ran, and it rebooted and showed the login screen, no problem.

The Good

Finally there was an install where the graphics worked out of the box, the disk controller worked out of the box and I didn’t need to hand-edit my xorg.conf file to add some arcane information about my monitor. If you are running a basic setup (relatively new computer, no RAID, no dual-DVI, I am sure that you can run the installer and it will just work)

The Ugly

But, one of my dual-monitor displays did not work, but after the initial login I was able to upgrade to nvidia’s proprietary drivers. Then both screens worked, but the fonts looked like crap and compiz religiously segfaulted on launch.

Envy to the rescue

After downloading and installing Envy, I was able to get the latest nvidia drivers. Running nvidia-config allowed me to disable xinerama and enable the native Twinview. After rebooting, both screens looked great

Then I was able to enable compiz effects. I got a bogus screen asking me to use Ubuntu’s version of the restricted driver. I said ‘ok’ and then re-ran envy to make sure that I continued to use the same drivers. After rebooting, everything was good

Flash and 64-bit Firefox

For some crazy reason, Adobe doesn’t have a version of Flash for 64-bit linux. I guess I should be thankful that they care about Linux enough to have a flash player at all. It seems that the approach is to use the 32 bit plugin and use something called nspluginwrapper that basically acts as a thunking layer. But you don’t need to know that. All you need to do is follow the directions on the Ubuntu Forums.

Pimp my Desktop

If you look at the ubuntu forums you can find some highly-customized, sexy desktops. I’m busy and I don’t really want to learn how to customize themes, but I want to take advantage of the compositing and transparency available with Compiz. Forlong’s Blog has some excellent instructions on how to make Compiz look good.

Pretty Pictures

InterfaceLift is my favorite place to go for pretty desktop pictures.

In The Tranches - Spring AOP

admin — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:32:00 +0000

I’ve been spending the last few days working on server application written using Spring. I need to have the server send email notifications of any processing errors, so we can act upon them, and I had this flash of insight that this would be a great use of Aspect Oriented Programming. The server restores and transcodes files, delivering them to the user who requested them, and there are many ways this process can fail. If it fails because of an invalid video file or because a file doesn’t exist or something that we can specifically look for and trap, then there is a bottleneck method setError() that gets called. If a programming error causes a Java RuntimeException to be thrown, it will probably end up getting thrown by the JobQueue.run() method. So instead of adding even more logic to send error notifications in different parts of the application, I can put all error notification configuration and implementation in one place, and not muddy up program code elsewhere. Sounds great.

I set up a unit test to simulate a failed job and make sure the error notification aspect gets called properly. It never did. I could intercept methods to run the queue, but I could never intercept the method that gets called to set processing error conditions. The only place setError() gets called is internally, and it turns out that the way that Spring implements AOP, using proxy objects or classes, it is not possible to intercept intra-object method calls, only calls between to different classes. You can use the custom AspectJ compiler and make this work, but you can’t do it using the less-invasive proxy-object technique because the intra-object calls do not get invoked on the proxy object, only the proxied object. As an example

class A {
/** This method can be proxied */
public void foo() {
bar();
}
private void bar() {
System.out.println(“I cannot be proxied”);
}
}

So using Spring it’s possible to intercept calls to foo(), but not bar().

Good Agile, Bad Agile, Google Gloating

admin — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 03:34:41 +0000

Steve Yegge got a lot of attention with his Good Agile, Bad Agile article. I finished reading Steve’s well-written article feeling a little less than satisfied. The point of the piece, it seems, is: consultants bad, Google good. And if you had the money, the manpower and the cooler-than-thou-ness that they have in the Google-plex, then you too can eat the great meals, munch on free snacks and drink manna straight from heaven, working on whatever you want and having over-the-top rewards sprinkled on you. That’s nice and all, but it doesn’t do me any good. I don’t work for Google. We don’t have control over our office space, we have a limited number of projects, and a wide spectrum of demands on us.

That being said, Steve is right: when agile goes bad, it’s horrible—the short iterations can make it feel like it’s always crunch time, and there is management asks ‘is there any way we can get this on the schedule too? It’s really important’ and next ting you know, you’ve been in crunch mode for two years straight, and feel like you’ve aged fifteen dog years, and you’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel good. It’s a never-ending string of short death-marches, which is the same as saying a never-ending repetitive, grinding death march. Actually, it’s even worse than the long waterfall-style death march: those usually had big shipping bonuses at the end of them and you could cash your check and leave for greener pastures.

When agile goes well, it’s incredible—it’s that feeling you get when you’re riding your bike on the road, and you’ve got a groove going and you are hauling and you feel like you could go at that incredible clip forever. It’s energizing, and everyone feels like they are in control: the developers, the testers, the product managers, management and the executive team. That’s the incredible feeling you get from good communication, short planning horizons, and productive working conditions for everyone.

The key to good agile is not to blindly follow any process, rather have the flexibility, or agility, to do the right thing. People and progress are more important than process, and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell something. The real agilists know that. Understanding what software development is supposed to feel like is the first step towards getting better. Sex is going to suck if you’ve been abused all your life, and you don’t realize it’s supposed to be intimate, pleasurable, fun and the best thing in the world. If it’s not like that then something is wrong. Software development, while I would never compare it to sex, is not supposed to be exhausting all the time. Like any sport, there are periods of heavy exertion, rest and recovery, and those magical moments where you are in a zone, and feel like you can just go forever. Really, the key to a good process is to create an environment and culture that maximizes developers’ chances of finding that zone, and maximizes everyone’s feelings of control.

Everyone is supposed to have control over the schedule and what gets accomplished in an iteration. Even you. If you feel constantly pressured and overworked, then you need to put your foot down, realize what you can reasonably accomplish, and refuse to do more, no matter how much they beg you, cajole you or threaten you. Nothing burns out an engineer like biting off more than you can chew.

Iterations should be long enough to get a demonstrable unit of work done, and that depends on your people and the products, not some stone tablets brought down from the mountain. If by the end of an iteration, nothing can be demonstrated, then iterations are too short. If you’re bored, looking for bugs to fix or some gonzo programming task to undertake, then maybe the iterations are a little too long.

So if your process feels like a constant death march, and nobody is in control, then you know you’re doing bad agile, or something worse, and it’s time to change. Make sure there is some structure to finding time to ‘clear the brush’—those tasks that nag in the back of your head, but aren’t on the board. Friday afternoons are a good time to institute for that. And at least one day per iteration should be a total developer free-for-all. At least that’s what I think.

Just like it’s nearly impossible to run like the wind when it’s 98 degrees out with the same level of humidity in the air, environmental factors play a huge role on how effecively you can write software. In an ideal world, we’d all have private offices if we wanted them, with multiple light sources, and peace and quiet, and if it were truly possible to hammer the point through your CFO’s and investor’s MBA-addled brains that productivity is the secret sauce and worth far, far more than the increased cost in office space than it would be a no-brainer.

To fix this problem given a lack of control over office space requires some analysis. Even if you can’t fix the space, you can fix the placement of the people, and even work at home from time to time. As Malcolm Gladwell notes in The Tipping Point, every group has some connectors: the people who are nexuses of communication flow in an organization. In our company, the tech manager and the creative director were those people. Find those people and get them as far from the developers as possible. Every organization needs connectors, but you don’t need them where they will distract the tech staff who is trying to find a zone but feel like they are stuck in a cage full of feces-throwing spider monkeys.

Posting to TextPattern from Writely

admin — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 15:40:10 +0000

I’ve heard great things about this Writely thing, so I figured I would give it a try. It’s an awesome browser-based editor. So then I thought…I should be able to post to my Textpattern blog from this thing, so I did some Google searching and it’s easier than you might think. Here are the steps I followed:

Download XML-RPC for TextPattern from the Textpattern forums
Upload xmlrpcs.php to the textpattern/ directory of your textpattern installation
In Writely, go to Blog -> Publish Post to my Blog
Enter http://textpattern-site.com/path/to/textpattern/xmlrpcs.php (replacing your own site and path to your textpattern/ directory)
Choose the MetaWeblog API
Enter your username and password
Enter your section name under the ‘Blog Name’ field
Check the ‘Include title’ checkbox
Push ‘test’ to make sure your settings are good
Go to Blog -> Preview Blog Post
You can post, tweak and repost to your hearts’ content.

By the way, this post was authored in Writely

In the Trenches - Music Sharing with Rhythmbox

admin — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 17:16:24 +0000

After upgrading to Ubuntu Edgy, while I like Rhythmbox’s simplicity, I could not see music shares around the net. Bummer. I finally figured out after some Googling that Gnome uses a service called ‘Avahi’ to handle all of its multicast-DNS stuff, including iTunes-style DAAP music sharing. In Edgy, Avahi isn’t enabled by default, so to make it enabled by default, edit:

/etc/defaults/avahi-daemon

and change the START parameter from a 0 to a 1. Now you should be able to run:

sudo /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon start

Restart Rhythmbox and everything should be happy.