atlantageek

Yesterday I went to the Edward Tufte Course that my company sent me on. I’m trying to figure out how I can keep the books.The Class rocked. I was inspired by some of the stuff with SparkLines Got some great ideas for the Dashboard design that we’ve been struggling with. Also learned a few other things. Edward Tufte hates Microsoft, loves the iphone and thinks that a handout beats powerpoint any day. I have to admit he made some great points. For instance.1. Data Throughput is slow during Powerpoint presentations2. Handouts that are engrossing are a good thing. Even if the audience ignores you.3. Handouts can sit there for hours while a powerpoint is on display for only a few minutes. And what better way to unsurp your competitor than by giving the potential client something to read during the competitors boring presentation.Other things I learned. Minimize space dedicated to controls. I must have known this already.  I love VI editor because there is little space dedicated to controls.  Its all about the content.  Where as on most IDEs you are luck to get 25% of the screen used for editing code. Hell on this entry form my text box is luck to be 15% of the screen. So I’ll look for ways to hide controls.That is the Gist of what I learned. I truly enjoyed this class and I should have taken it a year earlier. 

I often develop my flex code on a machine that is not running a web server. So I have to hardcode the IP of a working server when I need to pull data from the hosting server.

This can be a pain because before you checkin the code you have to remember to change the method of pulling the IP address.

So here is my solution

   var domain:String=mx.utils.URLUtil.getServerName(url);
  var port_nbr:int=mx.utils.URLUtil.getPort(url);
 if (flash.system.Security.sandboxType == "localTrusted")
  {
    Alert.show("In Development mode:"+domain+","+port);
    webService.wsdl="http://10.0.0.60:3000/services/wsdl";
  }
  else
  {
     webService.wsdl="http://"+domain+":"+port+"/services/wsdl";
  }

Obviously this is for web services but this technique can be used for sockets as well.

I’ll never buy a dell again. My wife shopped for a computer and chose the Dell M1330 last December. Around Feburary the hard drive failed. After replacing the hard drive and reinstalling Windows Vista the machine was unstable. We’ve had two technicians to come out to repair it. We’ve sent it to the Depot. We’ve spent 20 hours working on this thing. It is still failing. We’ve asked for a new computer. They say that they’ve replaced so much hardware that it is literally a new computer. That’s not the point. Obviously they are missing something. These machines are working fine from the factory but can’t handle a simple Vista reinstall. I’m not the only one with these problems with these machines.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=206587&page=3

I’m sure this is part of the Vista madness that is going on. However If I had purchased a mac that I could dual boot I’m sure that apple would have made things right. They would have refunded my money or given me a different machine. Or at least I could have installed Linux on the machine.

The customer service is horrible. We’ve spent more time repairing, reinstalling, using the computer and then it failing that Dell should have worked with us. But they refused too.

Advice. If you do buy a machine and it starts acting up within 2 months of purchase then suspend the payment on your credit card until its fixed.

Working with SNMP can be challenging. If you are a Newbie to SNMP and are trying to do something a little unusual (Writing a Ruby agent that sends snmp traps) you probably have trouble finding examples. So I’ve been fighting SNMP for a few days and here are some notes.

Before you start writing ruby code make sure you can send and recieve snmp messages. In my case I was working with traps. This is how I got it working in Ubuntu.

1. Install net-snmp (This is the snmp library and its daemons.) also install net-snmp-utils which is a lot of the command line tool. On Ubuntu <code> apt-get install net-snmp ; apt-get install net-snmp-utils</code> should work.
2. On Ubuntu the /etc/default/snmpd file overrides a lot of the default snmp settings. On my version the SNMPDOPTS variable included ‘127.0.0.1′ as the address list. You can just remove this if you want to recieve snmp traps from other servers. Also change ‘TRAPDRUN’ to ‘yes’. This will start snmptrapd daemon.
3. Try the following command.<code>snmptrap -v 1 -c public localhost 1.3.6.1.4.1.10300.1.1.1.12 localhost 3 0 ”</code> This should work. We are not using any mibs. Something should be written to your /var/log/syslog

If you still have trouble with snmp you can use tcpdump to make sure you are getting a udp message on port 162. I won’t get into that. Its just a sanity check.

Now for the ruby code. To send a version 1 message from ruby you need the snmp gem. So do your ‘gem install snmp’

Some sample code to do the same call

require 'snmp'
SNMP::Manager.open(:Host => "localhost",:Version => :SNMPv1) do |snmp|
x=snmp.trap_v1(
"1.3.6.1.4.1.10300.1.1.1.12",
'localhost',
:enterpriseSpecific, #Generic Trap Type
0,1234
)

end

Notice the :Host key in the Manager object. This is the address of the manager that you want to send the snmp message to. The localhost in the parameters is the ip or domain name of the agent that is sending the trap.

These are just some quick notes mostly for myself and for others who get stuck. It is probably not enough but there are so few examples of this out there on the net it should be useful.

A really cool looking design.  Apparently the goal was to create stuff that traditional craftsmen using sustainable materials to create high value products.  Singgih Kartono came up with the Areaware Mango Wooden Radio . I like the idea but I thing a clock design would have carried over better.  I have trouble dedicating that much space to an object I rarely need to look at from afar.  By the way why someone needs to mix a cool wall clock with an mp3 player.  Now that would rock.

Adobe - Developer Center : Designing for Flex – Part 3: Structuring your application

Excellent news. Sun acquires Mysql.

MySQL AB :: Kaj Arnö

Three Reasons why Sun bought MySQL

First: Sun has seen its technology base crumble with the rise of Microsoft on the enterprise site and Linux on the Anti-Microsoft side. They’re getting their ass kicked.  Java has helped them slow their decline but even there they are not the only Java tool shop in town. Now with MySQL they have a chance.  A while back they did a deal with Oracle where they sold a DB appliance with Oracle being the DB. I never saw one being used but it seemed like a great concept.  The problem with these DBs is that they are a pain in the ass to tune to your hardware.  With the appliance the DB will already be tuned to the hardware.

Second Sun gets to capitalize on its enterprise good name.  MySQL is an excellent product but risk averse companies do not consider it an option. With sun’s name behind MySQL it will get an air of legitimacy.  So Sun gets to add value to MySQL with very little effort and gets to reap the rewards of the legitimacy with little effort.

Last of all

Sun gets it sales force back in the Web based companies contact list. All these companies trying to be corporate citizens are sending Sun their $500 to pay for MySQL and while they are on the phone they get to hear about Sun’s new hardware lineup.  Really when was the last time you went to Sun instead of Dell for your web server needs.

ChRoMicro - Cheap Robotic Microhelicopter HOWTO

A good essay on how to find a good programmer.

Inter-Sections » Blog Archive » How to recognise a good programmer

Found an interesting blog called Google blogscoped . Looks like its all about the google statistics.