Snowulf - Tech

Google Apps users screwed again, still no Google Buzz

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:00:00 -0800

If you own your own domain name, you can have Google Apps for your domain. Basically, what this means is you get all the standard Google applications like Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Gtalk, but under your own domain name. It really isn't terribly complicated to setup and for only a few small time users, it is free. Personally, I think it is great because I like Gmail overall but I'd rather have my own email address than an @gmail.com one. So I use Google Apps for several domains, including my main email/account @ snowulf.com.

Everything about it works well in my book except for the fact that new features for Gmail tend to lag on deployment to Google Apps. As such, Buzz has been out for over a month now and I still can't use it on my account. They said (don't they always) that it would be coming to Apps 'shortly after launch' (or something to that effect). Anyways, I can accept several weeks delay, even a month, but that has come and gone and still no Buzz.

I know there were a lot of issues with Buzz's launch (not every product launch is smooth ::cough::Assassins Creed 2::cough::), but I still think it has potential. Google will work out the bugs and patch in some new features (like a shiny API) and life will be good. Good as long AS THE GOOGLE APPS USERS CAN HAVE BUZZ TOO, PLEASE.

Disabling sleep on MacBooks

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:00:00 -0800

I complain about Apple products a lot, mainly in how they dumb everything down. It isn't the internet that is making people stupid, it is Apple devices like the iPhone and OSX. Last time I was complaining about the Macs need for hibernation, this time it about their need to NOT sleep. It is one of those fascinating dumb downs of Macs, you will use this device how the designers made it and you don't have a choice in the matter. Either the Mac is on or off. If it is on and you close the lid, it is going to sleep. This is so universal that even my mother knows it.

Turns out, someone wrote some software to fix this issue. Really depressing that 3rd party software is needed, but what do you expect, it is the IdiotBook. It is really simple:

Go to the InsomniaX homepage
Download InsomniaX (Direct DL Link)
Install & Execute
You'll see a new blue icon in the top tray, click on it
Click "Enable Insomnia"
Close your screen and relish in the fact that your mac hasn't gone to sleep

I can think of about a hundred reasons why you'd want to do this. For me the major push was to play music at Christmas. But you might want to leave your computer running for a long download (For example). The only word of caution I have, at least on the MacBook Air, it doesn't turn off the screen. So I turn it off with the screen brightness settings (F1/F2) before I close it. Annoying, but better than nothing.

Changing timezone in under Ubuntu & Debian

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:00:00 -0800

In the old days of running Linux, I used to change timezone of a machine by running time --set= at the command line and simply including the timezone code (PST). These days, Debian, Ubuntu, and the other similar derivatives have made life so much easier. If you want to change the timezone, all you need to do is run (as root):

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

It will pop up a little config screen, asking you where you are and will summarily set your timezone. These is much easier than the old way since you don't even have to know your own timezone code (though... who wouldn't?).

Another day, another server migration

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:00:00 -0800

Sometimes I feel like all I do in my job and personal life is shuffle data around from one location to another. Last week it was re-installing Windows 7 on my two daily-use machines. This last weekend it was completing a server migration. Of course, I had just completed a migration 4 months ago.

To clarify, at the beginning of December I received an email from my hosting company letting me know that my VPS host was to be moved. At that point in time we were heavy into our project and I summarily ignored it. Not too long after that I got an email saying that my VPS had been replicated over to a new location and to check it out since I only had 3 days before they shut down the old server. Fun times, migrate all the data changes, make sure everything is functioning properly and then change the DNS. Not really a big deal but of course we were busier than hell with work.

A few weeks ago I warmed up a VPS with a new hosting provider. I wanted to play with Gallery 3 beta and the old VPS was running Ubuntu 8.04 with an old, old, old version of PHP. I had heard good things about this new company, and they offered Ubuntu 9.04, so I tried it out. In the end, I decided against using Gallery 3 and went over to SmugMug to host Snowulf Photography, but kept this new VPS. So I did yet another server migration (it feels like I do one every week) to this new setup.

All the sites I host have been moved and so far everything is working out. Really the only troublesome portion of a migration is dealing with MySQL. I exported everything from the old host which was running 5.0 (I believe) and the new one is running 5.1. They changed some of the setup in the `mysql` database, especially the `users` table which has caused some issues. In the end it got scraped and rebuilt by hand.

In the move I did some upgrades, like the blog software (Serendipity) and other minor fixes. So if you see something funny, odd, strange or generally broken, please let me know.

Thank you Apple for cleaning up the AppStore

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:00:00 -0800

# of Apps removed from App Store by AppShopper.com

In case you haven't heard, Apple recently decided to ban most "sexy" applications from the iTunes app store, nearly 6,000 in total. In brief, they removed anything that had any implied sexuality up to anything showing skin at all. CNN Money put forth the theory that they are doing this because of the upcoming iPad release (ah, the biggest flop we all know and love).
So I titled my post "Thank You Apple", and you might be wondering: why? Because this is fantastic news. The more stupid stuff Apple pulls like this, the more disillusioned developers will become. The more people that become publicly jaded by Apple's bible thumping antics, the less likely they will want to develop for it and the quicker Apple will die a slow, painful death.

No Bikini's, except if you're name is "Sports Illustrated"

Let's look at it realistically. Here are nearly 6,000 applications which were previously allowed, that no longer are, through no fault of the developers of these applications. Even if the application was nothing but gratuitous tits and ass, it cost money to make. Someone had to put in the time writing the code and compiling the application. Someone had to take or license the media used in these applications. Someone had to take the time to go through the app submission and approval process. It may not have been a lot of time to program; it may have been a lot of money to license the images, but it did cost actual time and money. Money these developers can no longer recoup, just because Apple woke up one morning and decided that's the way it is. Hell, even if you're marketing is a bit risque (and by risque I mean risque as used by the Islamic militants, or maybe the puritanical Amish) like in the case of Wobble, you get delisted.

Continue reading "Thank you Apple for cleaning up the AppStore"

Driving Tax vs Gas Tax

nospam@example.com (John) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:00:00 -0800

This post was inspired by: an article from the Washington Post.

Currently we pay a tax on each gallon of gasoline we buy. Part of it is Federal, part State, and possibly even a local part (don't know anywhere like this, but it is a possibility I suppose). As we move toward more fuel efficient vehicles (be they motorcycles, hybrids, or whatnot), the amount of tax money is decreasing. Obviously, the governments dislike this as they need that money to keep the roads up, one of the things that has been suggested is to replace the per gallon tax with a "Per Mile Driven" tax. This would mean that the cost of filling up, be it a hybrid or a truck would be much closer in cost. Sounds good for the gas guzzling truck, but not so much for anyone who bought a more fuel efficient vehicle to save on gas fill ups (and/or pretends to care that they really bought it to make the environment better).

Were something like this to pass it could put a serious dent into hybrid sales and also standard motorcycles (like the Suzuki Boulevard S40). Since Standard bikes are fairly cheap (new and used are generally well under $5k) and get good fuel economy (40-80 mpg depending on the model), they are popular sellers when gas prices start to rise, as they usually pay for themselves in a few months, depending on your commute (not to mention the awesomeness that is a motorcycle). Hybrids on the other hand are less of an impulse buy as they are quite costly. The main reason people suffer this cost though is because they are getting a savings at the pump. Remove that savings and hybrid sales will slump.

When Jon and I discussed this new tax, we kept coming back to the same question: How can you, the government/tax collector, prove how many miles I've driven?

Continue reading "Driving Tax vs Gas Tax"

How To: Unfuck (restore) Firefox 3.6 tab opening order

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:00:00 -0800

If you're a regular user of Firefox (as I have been since way back before 1.0), or ANY OTHER piece of software that has tabs in it, you know that when you open a new tab, it opens all the way at the fucking end (on the right). As of Firefox 3.6 they changed this behavior. I figured that if they made the change a default, they must think that this is a "better" way of doing things, ok, I can adapt and try it out. I've been using Firefox for years, so it'll take me some time to get used to it, no big deal.

Well. Fuck. That. Noise. Today, I've officially become sick and tired of this new features since it is a piece of shit for any serious work. The first problem is that is hard to predict. Say you are on Tab A (For the sake of argument, say this is for instructions on how to install something) and open some links into new tab (Ex: Software you need to install in order), say B, C and D. You go check on something in tab B real quick then go back to tab A. Now open another few links from tab A, they are E & F. What tab order would you expect to have? A, B, C, D, E, F. But is that the order your tabs are in? Nope, because they are relative to the tab you are on. Your tab order is A, E, F, B, C, D. This is a fairly simple example, but even an idiot could see how it might be a problem if you have to... say... FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS IN ORDER.

How do you turn off the bat shit features?

Goto about:config
Accept the anti-idiot warning
Find browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent (You can just type in 'related' and hit enter)
Right click on it, and hit Toggle (This will change it from 'false' to 'true')

Open some tabs, rejoice to lord Jesus that they open in a a logical manner again. Translation: New tabs open on the RIGHT and always on the RIGHT and not wandering through the middle of your tabs like a drunk looking for the shitter.

DB2 LUW vs zOS: Selecting from nested subselect

nospam@example.com (John) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:00:00 -0800

SQL0104N An unexpected token "" was found following "". Expected tokens may include: "CORRELATION NAME". SQLSTATE=42601

This was the error that I got while attempting to execute a stored procedure under DB2 v8.1 for z/OS. Being quite confused about it, I googled for the answer. I didn't find one, but I did find this google groups post which made mention of it.

Basically, the situation was that I had

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM
(
SELECT ...
UNION
SELECT ...
)

And while that works just fine under LUW, z/OS doesn't like it. The simple solution is to add "AS TBL_1", or any other name to the parenthetical subselect, which I have done below. Both commands work just fine in LUW, but if you are working under z/OS (or at least version 8.1) you will need to use the bottom example.

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM
(
SELECT ...
UNION
SELECT ...
) AS TBL_1

Google Buzz

nospam@example.com (John) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:00:00 -0800

Google announced Buzz yesterday and has started rolling it out to its users. This morning when I logged into my gmail account it notified me of this and everyone who was following me, along with who I am following.

If you know nothing about it, check out the Google link above and this PC World article. They both give a quick bit of info about the service.

I played with it for a few minutes, basically adding a few more follows, turning off the sharing of my information. Right now, if I comment all anyone sees is my name, however you can change this to include a plethora of information, such as how many people you follow, as well as are followed by, location, etc, etc. I don't have Facebook; I don't want it. I have a MySpace from days of yore, but I don't really use it. LinkedIn I use because it is a nice professional medium (though I have gotten the occasional connection request from people who are trying to grow their networks by just adding random people) and I think of it as a good resume and networking tool (that I thankfully haven't needed to use). I have a twitter (as you have probably seen on the blog).

In general, I don't want to share my information with others. People I know and care to chat with know how to contact/chat with me. Maybe I'm just getting all crotchety in my old age, but I don't feel the need to make myself exceptionally accessible to others. I keep hearing that I have a really basic phone for a techie. I always tell people that I like having a basic phone; it gets great battery life, and I don't want to be more accessible when I'm away from my computer. I have an iPod Touch and it is starting to have issues (audio keeps cutting out intermittently), and rather than replace it I am considering an iPhone, but... I don't know if I would use it enough to justify the expensive data plan that goes along with it. Yeah, there are times when that thing would really help (so that I don't call Jon to verify/for directions - speaking of which thanks for putting up with that), but in general I don't need it 24/7. I have a GPS that I rarely use. I have a Kindle. Worst case scenario, I could pull up Google Maps on that, however the iPhone would obviously be faster.

Google Buzz seems like another step toward the Googlezon, though not one I'm overly excited about.

What about y'all? Do you have Google Buzz? If so, do you like it?

Bafflingly stupid programming & error reporting

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:00:00 -0800

Last night I was playing Star Trek Online for the first time in a few days. I played a good couple of hours before the game took a dump on me. After they got over the initial hurdles of the launch, the game has been relatively smooth to play so I've been happy. Plus the problem occurred during a load from one zone to another after a quest was completed, so I didn't "lose" anything. I got a message saying that I was "Disconnected From Server", but it doesn't give me any options to do anything about it (like quit, or reconnect). Being the good little QA minion that I am, I like to report these type of issues to the developers so they can fix them. I knew there was a tool that came with STO for this exact purpose. It wasn't widely published, that I know of, but I ran across the EXE once. So I dug into the folder, found and launched "crypticError.exe" and then it started to crumble.

The first screen is fairly simple, you select the running process name and explain what you did/what went wrong. Simple enough; I did so then it started collecting data. Great, after about 10 minutes I came back to find it still uploading a dump. I thought this was a little odd so I looked closer. The "dump" was over 1 GIGABYTE in size, which corresponded directly to the exact size in RAM the game was taking up. It was uploading the ENTIRE game's RAM state. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand how that can be useful... but this is a VIDEO GAME on a CONSUMER'S machine. You launch the thing and it is taking up over 300MB of RAM. Even on my go go speedy DSL line, it was going to take about an hour and a half to upload the entire dump. My DSL is also fast, and uncapped. What about those people who have 1.5meg lines, and have bandwidth limits.

Seeing things like this just blow my mind. It wasn't like I clicked some checkbox that said "Upload over 1GB of RAM state", because you don't have any checkboxes to hit. Plus, I hate to say this, but there is no damn reason for the error reporter to upload the entire RAM state. Why does one need to upload all the texture data? Report the file names loaded into memory and the checksums. If a checksum doesn't match, then that could have been the culprit.

It is safe to say that shitty design like this is why some error reporting tools never get used. I wouldn't be surprised if the devs were actually shocked the first time anyone let this tool run it's full course (provided anyone has been that dumb).

Henrietta Lacks

nospam@example.com (John) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:00:00 -0800

You probably don't know who Henrietta Lacks is, but the doctor that invented the medication you are taking certainly does, or rather knows her cells. She is perhaps the most influential woman of modern medicine and many of us have directly benefited from her, yet very few know her name or why she is important. You see, she is the (well, creator doesn't seem to be the right word here... mother seems to be the most apt as these cells were created by her body, just as her children were) mother of the first documented immortal cell line. What is an immortal cell line? Well, basically it is a line of cells that will just keep on keeping on; in biological terms this means they keep creating more cells ad infinitum, without ever breaking down. To quote wikipedia: Biologists have chosen the word immortal to designate cells that are not limited by the Hayflick limit (where cells no longer divide because of DNA damage or shortened telomeres).

Back in February of 1951, Mrs. Lacks went to Johns Hopkins Hospital due to a vaginal discharge; she was diagnosed and treated for cervical cancer though in October of the same year, she died. As part of the treatment and/or diagnosing procedure samples were taken. This is something that happens in every clinic and hospital, although nowadays we are a bit more aware of the taking and usually are required to give our permission (NOTE: there generally isn't a choice, or rather the choice is: give permission and get treated or go somewhere else). Like most people receiving medical treatment at the time, neither Mrs. Lacks nor her family were made aware of this or asked. Glossing over the ethics of this, let's look at what her cells (referred to as HeLa cells or the HeLa cell line) have done.

Developed the Polio Vaccine. In 1954, Jonas Salk used her cells to create the Polio Vaccine.
Pioneered Space Travel. That's right, before any man ever went to space, Mrs. Lacks cells were there, used to determine what effects zero gravity would have on humans.
Heavily contributed towards research on virtually every disease ever studied, including HIV, AIDS, Parkinson's, Herpes, and Leukemia, to name a few
Participated in various Nuclear Tests, to determine side effects
And the list goes on...

Many people will debate about the ethics of what was done with Mrs. Lacks' cells, but if Dr. Gey hadn't taken them we wouldn't be where we are today. I'm sure the Polio Vaccine would have eventually been developed, but at the cost of many more years and lives. However, I don't see a reason why he couldn't have asked. This is probably part of the reason that we "sign our life away" when we go to the hospital. Anything and everything they take out of you becomes their property; you don't like it, tough. It doesn't matter if your body contains the cure for cancer; if you go into a hospital for any work, they will take various samples and if someone notices something interesting, they can make a fortune off your body. The best you can hope for is a mention in a textbook. I guess not much has really changed with regard to that since Mrs. Lacks time.

Rebecca Skloot recently wrote a book about this woman and her legacy, it is currently available in hardcover and electronic formats.

A brief summary by Dinosaur Comics and a recent post from the New York Times close out the links for this article.

This post was partially inspired by a friend of mine; she is celebrating Black History Month by doing a post a day on the topic. She asked her friends to join her and I was happy to oblige.

Wishlist for a "Kindle 3"

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:00:00 -0800

There have been a number of rumors recently as to what the Kindle 3 is going to be and when it is going to be out. This time last year there was a bunch of rumors about the "Kindle 3", most of which involved a larger screen. As it turns out, that was the Kindle DX, and that came out. As of late the rumor mill seems to have started up again with new talk of a Kindle 3 being released/announced at some point this month. The Kindle 2 was released in February of 2009, so if Amazon plays by the Apple rules and releases a new version around the same time each year, we're looking to have the Kindle 3 here shortly.

I was surfing about looking at Kindle 3 rumors, most of which were from last year (and for what turned out to be the DX). I have combined these along with some thinking of my own and put together what I'd like from the Kindle 3. I kept it to the "big" items, meaning I'm not bitching about the desire for a new browser, enhanced MP3 player or other software tweaks. Yes, I do desire all those "niceties", but they can be firmwared at anytime. If I'm gonna wish for something, I'll wish big(ish), and hope that it is still reasonable.

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Lose your wireless adapter? Check the BIOS

nospam@example.com (John) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:00:00 -0800

As you may or may not know, Windows 7 RC is coming to an end. This isn't unexpected (presuming you remembered to read this at some point), but it is a problem. So with that in mind, I decided it was time to install the actual version of Windows 7.

Since Jon was up and harassing me, I handed it to him while I was working on other things. He delivered it back a little while later and I started Windows Update (one of the Optional Items I selected was Atheros 5007EG Wireless Network Adapter). Things were going fine until the screen went black.
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PHP: "Only variables can be passed by reference"

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:00:00 -0800



<?php

$dir = "./mydirectory/";



if ($handle = opendir($dir)) {

  while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {

    if (preg_match("/^\..*/",$file,$junk) || preg_match("/^BAD.*/",$file,$junk) || preg_match("/^TEST.*/",$file,junk){

      //Skip it

      print "Skip: $file\n";

    }else{

      //We want to edit this file

      print "--EDITING--: $file\n";

    }

  }

  closedir($handle);

}

?>

This isn't exactly the most complicated piece of code, but it was extremely annoying when I got the error "Only variables can be passed by reference" back from PHP. Getting this error really made me miss Perl again. Perl's interpreter had the most fantastic error catching. It would (generally) tell you what the error was in language that was very easy to understand, and in some cases even suggest the fix (Like you forgot a semicolon on line X). PHP on the other hand, loves these damned messages that make no sense.

So what's wrong here? The preg_match line, the final "$junk" is actually just "junk". I forgot the string symbol ($). Very simple issue, very easy to fix... but very difficult to find information on. Normally a quick google reveals all, but for this error... Nada. So if you happen to google this error and land here, hopefully this solves your issue.

Macs need hibernate

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:00:00 -0800

I'm generally not a fan of Macs and have made it a point to avoid them where possible. I think their hardware is extremely sleek and attractive, and the same is to be said about their software, but that doesn't mean it is functional. Things like the lack of right-click, and having almost every shortcut different in OSX than from Windows is a great annoyance to me. Macs are designed around idiocy, rather than power. Oh well.

That all being said, I've had a MacBook Air in my possession for a while now. I got it from the office because I was going to do some iPhone app development in my free time, though almost as soon as I got started, the free time dried up (doesn't it always?). I decided that I'd try and use the Air, for writing, instead of my netbook (for a while) since the Air has a nicer keyboard. It isn't bad to use, but I've had more than a few usability issues with it, something that I'll probably talk about later, however today I have a more pressing issue.

Mac's don't have hibernate.

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