Sh*tmores

Looking for Java/Groovy/Ruby/Python hacker

2012-01-11T09:30:00.000+08:00

Hi, we are looking for a guy (or girl) who can hack Java/Groovy/Ruby/Python -- a generalist.

You must love to learn & and work on new stuff -- pick up advance Javascript, Android development, work on iOS projects, solve big data problems with mongodb, HTML5/CSS3 etc.

You will have fun, glory, and opportunities to get your hand dirty on the latest techs.

We are based in Singapore and expect you to be here. We will pay you good, and hope you will grow with us.

Interested? PM me on my Twitter @seymores or Linkedin.

DLog

2011-09-23T15:02:00.004+08:00

#define DLog(fmt, ...) NSLog((@"%s [Line %d] " fmt), __PRETTY_FUNCTION__, __LINE__, ##__VA_ARGS__);

Simple Scala IRC Client

2011-09-20T21:57:00.001+08:00

Direct and simple port of a typical Java IRC client to Scala. Notice the break. Consider this iteration 1 to learn Scala. :-)

Homebrew install formula for Scala 2.9.1 final

2011-09-05T00:06:00.000+08:00

Save this homebrew formula to /usr/local/Library/Formula/scala2.9.1.rb. Then 'brew install scala2.9.1' from command line.

UI Engineer (SG)

2011-08-04T15:33:00.000+08:00

UI Engineer (Base in Singapore)

We are a successful web and mobile development consultancy seeking to bring on a UI engineer to assist with front-end web development. Our work environment is both fast-paced and fun.

An ideal candidate should have these capabilities:

Ability to communicate effectively in English. Mandarin is helpful but not mandatory.
Very solid HTML and CSS skills. You must live and breathe it.
JavaScript - understand concepts like scoping and declaration hoisting
Understand the differences between browser implementations of HTML, CSS, and JS
Reasonably adept with Photoshop

To be clear, this is not a web design position. It involves client-side development and implementation of designs.

This is a full-time position based in Singapore (S088853).

To apply, please email a resume/CV to hr017@favoritemedium.com and use 'SG UI Engineer [2011Q3]' as the email subject. Include links to Twitter and/or Github accounts, if applicable.

MOSC2011: Programming Google App Engine with Gaelyk

2011-07-09T23:50:00.002+08:00

Google App Engine with Gaelyk

View more presentations from Seymour Cakes.

Custom UIColor from hex value

2011-05-30T15:34:00.003+08:00

This is how to convert hex to uicolor for iOS/iPhone development.

Where I sit and work

2011-05-26T15:20:00.001+08:00

How about you guys?

What happens when you read a lot of books?

2011-05-24T17:39:00.001+08:00

You buy more books of course.

For the rest of the interesting video, go here.

AndroidManifest.xml file decompressor

2011-05-24T15:21:00.000+08:00

If you ever need to extract out the string from AndroidManifest.xml from your apk file, and you happen to need it to be in Groovy, use this. I hope this help someone out there. Thanks to Robo.

Plaything: Andengine

2011-05-20T23:43:00.001+08:00

What I am playing now -- Killer Pool 2011, Android game with Andengine.
I spent 2 hours of my youth reading the code examples and hack around the physic engine to come up with a simple game, screenshot below. I like what I see so far. The code on github here.

Re: Seven Advantages Of Java

2011-05-20T13:31:00.000+08:00

My usual routine is to checkout dzone.com after coming back from lunch and today the Seven Advantages of Java blog post caught my attention. It's a quick and easy read but I will play the devil's advocate and lets put a spot light on the 7 "advantages" of Java.

1. Java is easy to learn
Java was designed to be easy to use and is therefore much more easy to write, compile, debug, run and learn than other programming languages.

Well not really. This is pretty subjective -- Java is easy to learn compared to what? C or C++? Ruby is easy. Groovy is easier if you already have Java background. Python is the easiest as most claimed.

2. Java is object-oriented
This allows you to create modular maintainable applications and reusable code.

Just because it's OO does not mean that it will create modular and maintainable program. OO languages are dime a dozen and that doesn't necessary make it an advantage for Java. (Psst, It's how you write the code).

3. Java is platform-independent
One of the most significant advantages of Java is its ability to move easily from one system to another. The ability to run the same code on many different systems is crucial to www, and Java succeeds at this by being platform-independent at the source and almost binary levels.

This platform-independent thing is overrated but I bought it -- hook and sinker -- when I was in college. This is a marketing-speak advantage but not so much of a practical thing in real world. It helps to know how to program in Java but you still have to learn the platform idioms and usage patterns. For example, you can't and don't run servlet as desktop app and vice versa. Btw, wassup with the "almost binary levels" -- it will always compile down to JVM bytecode.

4. Java is distributed
Java is designed to make distributed computing easy with the networking capability that is inherently integrated into it. Writing network programs in Java is like sending and receiving data to and from a file.

This true and may be cool many years back but almost every language framework comes with some kind of distributed capability that you can use right away. So, meh, overrated.

5. Java is secure
Java considers security as part of its design. The Java language, compiler, interpreter, and runtime environment were each developed with security in mind.

This is true to certain extend but when we talk about security we have to understand that security covers a huge body of concern -- authentication, authorization, integrity etc. So Java VM is secure against attacks like buffer overflow, but the security of the software is not guaranteed by Java alone. It's how you program it. The author should back it up with more specifics.

6. Java is robust
Robust means reliability. Java puts a lot of emphasis on early checking for possible errors, as Java compilers are able to detect many problems that would first show up during execution time in other languages.

By robust you mean the damn thing doesn't crash mysteriously then ya Java is robust. But so is every languages worth their beans. Weak argument really. Reminds me of an advert I came across many years ago -- one of the publicize "Feature" of the program is, Bug Free. :-O

Oh, I don't think you will think about this advantage point when you are getting OutOfMemoryException.

Java is multithreaded
Multithreaded is the capability for a program to perform several tasks simultaneously within a program. In Java, multithreaded programming has been smoothly integrated into it, while in other languages, operating system-specific procedures have to be called in order to enable multithreading.

I think we get it, multithreaded is important and Java is multithreaded language. Ok. So what are the "other languages"?

The author sounds like he is new to Java world. I hope he won't bail once he learned about Ruby. Hmm, maybe he will write "100 Reasons Ruby Kicks Java-ass" then.

I earned the "Famous Question" badge in StackOverflow

2011-05-20T11:28:00.001+08:00

But it shows how Objective-C can be shitty in areas other language never give a rat-ass about.

So What is the right way to check for a null string in Objective-C?

What's new in Groovy 1.8

2011-05-18T21:14:00.003+08:00

Groovy 1.8 update - Guillaume Laforge - GR8Conf Europe 2011

View more presentations from Guillaume Laforge

MY FM iPhone app sucks shit

2011-05-18T20:25:00.004+08:00

I have been pondering this since last week and at last I decided that I have to say my piece or I will continue to not shit comfortably. Yes, this MY FM radio app disturbs me this much. To flesh out my points I am putting numbers to the UI elements that which I think made this app sucks shit.

But before we proceed, let me just say that I love this app. I was a daily listener to MyFM many years back when I was living in KL and driving to work with MyFM is a daily thing. I don't understand all the Cantonese but I understand enough to laugh along.

This app is a radio streaming app and it appears that MY FM is using radioactive.sg service for the content steaming. This client might just be a generic app that radioactive.sg provides along with the streaming service. But boy the UI doesn't do MY FM justice at all. If you are radioactive.sg and appreciate my criticism, then please contact me -- I hope I can provide some sort of help.

Now lets get on to the shit.

First you can get the app here. While you are on the page, check out the comments, generally ppl are saying this app is a fantastic app. I agree. Just that the UI makes it sucks shit. Now on startup, everything looks nice and cool. I like the little Bruce Lee with the crap helmet. Thumbs up!

Then things go downhill from there.

Notice the MY FM logo? It's not supposed to be here. In fact it's confusing why it's part of the "tab". Logo lives in titleView -- the top center bar, see #2.
"Player" title is seriously, re***** -- I don't know, something doesn't look right here. I am thinking the designer got lazy, and rather go home early than say, not design shit. I suggest the logo be put here. But well that's just my opinion.
"Background". Wtf is that? Oh wait, something about using Safari to access the site. Well whatever, I am getting some MySQL error. I know it's getting repetitious, but this button is shitty. Get rid of it.
I don't even want to talk about the "twitter" icon here. When I got to this screen, the icons looks blurry and shitty. Get rid of it.
The "i" info screen is also another sucks shit section -- you can safely ignore it. This is also the part where you found out that either Airtime Mangement and Programming Sdn Bhd did the app, or radioactive.sg got the job done. I don't know, since this app is shitty, I recommend you stay clear of them.

Well, so far so good. Erm, I mean, yes it's good enough except I don't hear anything. Something is not right. Oh well, lets proceed anyway.

So, now if you go to "Stations" and select "MY FM" you will come to the screen above. At this point I realized that the tabbar doesn't look native. Probably this app was done using phonegap or one of those Adobe thingy. I don't know, it sucks shit, and I only have one advise at this point -- go learn the damn Xcode and use the controls properly! Geez.

Now, first off, I thought the "Call" button is a good feature. And no harm if they could add a SMS button too. However, being used to proper button, the leveled bevel look is confusing. I didn't know it's a button and took me few seconds to figure out it's a button. Well, you know, I have been saying -- this app sucks shit. Also, go check out the book, Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition
Email button is fine, but the usual complain here, the button is a shitty leveled or pressed bevel button. Real button doesn't look like this. I suggest the designer go press a few buttons with the native iPhone app and try again. Seriously.
I like the big "Listen Live" button, but with all the fuckups, this is like finding a single piece of toilet paper left in a dirty toilet. But it's Ok. This app can try to win the "Shitty App" category.
Now, if there's is anything, anything wrong at all in this screen, it has to be this "Back" button. This "Back" button represent all that is wrong with this app -- they got it wrong so bad it sucks shit. I will keep it short -- PUT THE DAMN "BACK" BUTTON AT THE TOP LEFT CORNER. You know, like how the rest of the app universe works. Seriously, Apple need to buff up their review team. If I am Steve Jobs, I would yank the fucker doing the review of this app and tell him in slow calm voice, "You disgraced Apple".

Ok, I got bored, but I guess you get my point. It's basically sucky in UI but it has the goods. Still...

Lets rethink the app for a moment. MY FM is a radio app and really all we want is to tune in to the live radio stream. Cut out the rest of the stuff. Just the radio.

I ripped off some radio app and spent like 20 mins "redesign" it for MY FM, and I present to you the super-lite MY FM app. Now if I could figure out how to hook into the radioactive.sg stream, I could probably create the whole app, but for now, this is what I think is good and shit-free. I mean, it's basically featureless so what the hell can be so sucky about it? But who knows, if you agree or disagree, drop me a line. Cheers.

*PS I love MY FM. :-)

What's your "music setup" like?

2011-05-18T12:11:00.003+08:00

The thing about us programmer is that we glue our butts on the chair whole day and we just gotta have some music. I am sure you heard a lot about "programming songs/music". We I need to warn you that regardless whether it's Britney Spears or Massive Attack, you music is only as good as your speaker or earphone (cans).

Getting a good pair of cans can be expensive. I know because I already gotten myself few pairs with price tags that I am embarrassed to say out loud. I own Grado S65, K75 (best bang for buck type), and my latest Atomic Floyd. Well you get what you can.

But there's something else other than getting a good cans -- get a headphone amplifier! Shown here is my Hippobox headphone amp. Cost me SGD$40 bux and boy does it make my cans sing. You don't want that ugly box dangling if you are traveling but no reason not to have one of these baby pump up the music while you're on your desk.

Short description -- with my mini amp, the orchestra is right in front of me and music is live and loud and clear. Without, I am sitting in front of the TV with the orchestra showing. I hate that fucker who introduced me to these baby amps -- how could I live without them from now on?!!!

* Warning, get a good headphone first before getting any kind of amp. Get both if you can. :-)

Kill all firstResponder

2011-05-17T11:22:00.000+08:00

If you ever have the problem of keyboard not resigning, it is most probably caused by "runaway" pointer to the texfield/textview that was holding the firstresponder. The popular way to clear all firstResponder in the view is by iterating through all the views and check if it's firstResponder -- and if it is, then resign.

- (void)resetKeyboard {
    
    // Resign keyboard
    for (UIView *view in [self.view subviews]) {
        if ([view isFirstResponder]) {
            [view resignFirstResponder];
            break;
        }
    }
}

Get UIImage from NSString URL

2011-05-10T15:42:00.001+08:00

To get an image from Internet, you can load the image with NSURL as NSData and then init the UIImage with the NSData.

 NSData * imageData = [[NSData alloc] initWithContentsOfURL: 
                                       [NSURL URLWithString:
                                        @"http://graph.facebook.com/seymores/picture"]];
 self.image = [UIImage imageWithData: imageData];
 [imageData release];

MyOSS Conference 2011

2011-05-07T19:45:00.001+08:00

So MOS2011 is coming up and I am kind of excited about it. I was there last year to talk about Agile practices for healthy software engineering. I didn't attend all the sessions but I remember the session on converting a normal HTML site to fit mobile browser very informative, and as well as MariaDB engine session by Colin Charles.

I have submitted a proposal to talk about using Gaelyk for cloud programming. Gaelyk is a Groovy PaaS framework on top of Google App Engine -- it is mature and a viable alternative to using Java for developing GAE application. Like all Groovy framework, it's easy to get started and I hope I will get the chance to show a glimpse of the future of cloud programming with Gaelyk and GAE.

But for now, if you want to learn more, check out Gaelyk Tutorial.

How to create photo frame effect (UIImageView)

2011-05-07T19:02:00.002+08:00

There is a really easy way to make a ordinary UIImageView photo frame with just few lines of code.

UIImageView inherits from UIView so it has a CALayer. Among the CALayer properties that you can manipulate is the shadow and border. The trick is to set the border to few pix thick and drop some shadow radius and you instantly get a nice photo frame effect.

So if you want to turn a boring looking photo (like the below) into something that look like it's in a photo frame with some drop shadow, do this:

// #import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>
    // picture is an instance of UIImageView

    CALayer *layer = picture.layer;
    [layer setBorderColor: [[UIColor whiteColor] CGColor]];
    [layer setBorderWidth:8.0f];
    [layer setShadowColor: [[UIColor blackColor] CGColor]];
    [layer setShadowOpacity:0.9f];
    [layer setShadowOffset: CGSizeMake(1, 3)];
    [layer setShadowRadius:4.0];
    [picture setClipsToBounds:NO];

I have made a handy category to apply this photo frame effect to any UIImageView easily here.

A little preview of what I am working on

2011-04-24T13:57:00.001+08:00

Xcode tip: Make use of #warning directive for good

2011-04-23T12:07:00.000+08:00

If you have been using Xcode4 lately you will notice few #warning being generated a for new UITableViewController class. I didn't notice it before in Xcode3, but it's good directive that you can make use of to add note or todo. Of course you can add custom directive but I am not going into that.

See how I am making use of the #warning for todo items in the screenshot below.
Hope this tip helps you.

Github t-shirts

2011-04-19T13:11:00.002+08:00

I have some Github t-shirts for sale, see pic below. Only SGD 39.00 each including shipping to Malaysia and Singapore.

The original t-shirt from github: http://shop.github.com/products/i-octocat-code & http://shop.github.com/products/blacktocat-2-0

Fan of Github

2011-04-19T13:05:00.001+08:00

** Test

2011-03-10T12:20:00.001+08:00

- (NSString *)applicationSupportDirectory {

    NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSApplicationSupportDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
    NSString *basePath = ([paths count] > 0) ? [paths objectAtIndex:0] : NSTemporaryDirectory();
    return [basePath stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"MyTime"];
}

import static com.google.appengine.api.datastore.FetchOptions.Builder.*

def common = Common.instance

/**
 * Listing of classified in the first page.
 * TODO: Paging
 */

def commone = Common.instance

int RESULT_LIMIT = 30
String cacheName = params.t? "listquery-${params.t?.trim()}" : "listquery"
def result = memcache[cacheName]

if (!result) {
    def query = new Query("classified")
    query.addSort("dateCreated", Query.SortDirection.DESCENDING)
    query.addFilter("active", Query.FilterOperator.EQUAL, true)

    if (params.t) {
        query.addFilter("tags", Query.FilterOperator.EQUAL, params.t)
    }

    PreparedQuery preparedQuery = datastore.prepare(query)
    result = preparedQuery.asList( withLimit(RESULT_LIMIT) )
    memcache[cacheName] = result
//    System.out.println(" [info]  Cached \"${cacheName}\"");

}
request.result = result
//System.out.println(result)

forward  '/list.gtpl'

Android: Using csv file as config/resource

2011-01-07T10:30:00.001+08:00

While working on Android projects, I constantly need a way to save external configurations or simply some String value resource. For iPhone we have the "plist" file but this is not so clear cut for Android.

The ~~best~~ simplest way is to just use a plain CSV file to store these resources. This is easy to do in Android without using any 3rd party library.

Lets start by putting the csv file in "/res/raw". So I have a csv file named as "ref_codes.csv". Inside the file I have a simple "name,code,date" format.

Next is, create a method to load the CSV content.

private List loadCSV() throws IOException {

     InputStream inputStream = getResources().openRawResource(R.raw.ref_codes);

     BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream));

    String line;

    while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
       //process the line, stuff to List

       String[] values = line.split(",");

}

}

** Do note that CSV usage as shown here has many shortcomings and it's recommended that if you config need is complex then I suggest you look into JSON or XML. (Thanks for the feedback from Mark Murphy)

Social Hacking: Future of Information Guerilla Warfare

2010-12-09T16:13:00.002+08:00

Re: Java Programmer Wanted

2010-11-30T11:34:00.000+08:00

I am looking for a full time Java programmer.

I will love you if you are:

Independent -- basically knows how to google a lot
Java few years of Java programming experience
Dig Groovy & Grails
Use Linux/Unix almost daily

We make software and we believe in making software the agile way. We are based in Singapore but you can work at home if coming here is not possible.

Seriously, if you are tired of screwing around and just want to get things done the right way, come talk to me.

I don't want you to leave your email here to be spammed so DM me on twitter.com/seymores

Powers of Ten

2010-11-17T00:41:00.000+08:00

MacRuby: Test 1

2010-11-01T09:52:00.001+08:00

Get list of all visible windows from running apps.

framework 'cocoa'

=begin

enum {
kCGWindowListOptionAll = 0,
kCGWindowListOptionOnScreenOnly = (1 << 0),
kCGWindowListOptionOnScreenAboveWindow = (1 << 1),
kCGWindowListOptionOnScreenBelowWindow = (1 << 2),
kCGWindowListOptionIncludingWindow = (1 << 3),
kCGWindowListExcludeDesktopElements = (1 << 4)
}


=end

kCGWindowListOptionOnScreenOnly = (1<<4)
kCGNullWindowID = 0 #(CGWindowID)0


windowlist = CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo(kCGWindowListOptionOnScreenOnly,kCGNullWindowID)
n = 1
windowlist.each {| w |
p " #{n} #{w["kCGWindowOwnerName"]} "
p " #{w}"

w.each { |e| p " #{e} " }

p " ============================ " 
n += 1

}

Fascinating work desks of very creative people (via Gizmodo)

2010-10-13T05:38:00.000+08:00

Desk - Music and Sound Design from Aaron Trinder Film:Motion:Music on Vimeo.

My Slides: Open Source Software Development Practices that Works

2010-06-30T12:09:00.000+08:00

Here is my slides for my "Open Source Software Development Practices that Works" talk in MOSC2010 today.

TARCRooms.com is back!

2010-03-18T00:33:00.002+08:00

I miss TARCRooms.com so I brought it back to life.

New technology, new workflow and trying out a self-sustain system that fully automated without me need to do anything -- well except fix bug. Bug #1: Manual intervention.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out -- Story of Richard Feynman

2010-02-09T00:46:00.000+08:00

Twitter Got Hacked!

2009-12-18T14:25:00.001+08:00

Malaysia Groovy & Grails User Group

2009-12-10T18:55:00.002+08:00

Finally moved from Ning.com to Google Groups. Hopefully more ppl will join in this time.
http://bit.ly/grails-malaysia

Mac Secrets: Make focus follow mouse for terminal app

2009-11-13T23:23:00.002+08:00

defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse true|false

(Source http://secrets.blacktree.com)

How to create ICNS icon for your Cocoa application in less than 5 minutes.

2009-10-15T23:02:00.003+08:00

Here's how I get an cool looking icon for my Cocoa app in less than 5 minutes. We need Snow Leopard for this to work. I haven't try but it could work with Leopard.

Download one of the free PNG icons -- you can start with SmashingMazagine
Open with Preview -- just double click on the png image will do.
Goto File, Save As. Give it a name or save as it is. Choose Format -> ICNS.
Save.

Now you have a Mac OS icon file that you can use in your Cocoa app. You can do this easily by dragging the icon file to your project in XCode's Resource. Open *-info.plist file and set icon to the icon filename that you just drag in.

Rebuild your application and you will get a nice icon for your app.

Secret of Money-Making Blog Titles

2009-10-06T13:33:00.000+08:00

1. The secret of [blank]
2. Little known ways to [blank]
3. [Do something] like [world-class example]
4. Here's a quick way to [solve a problem]
5. What everybody ought to know about [blank]?

http://www.copyblogger.com/10-sure-fire-headline-formulas-that-work/

Consume RSS Feeds easily with Groovy and Rome

2009-01-08T22:34:00.004+08:00

This is what I did to start consuming RSS feeds with Groovy within 20 minutes!

1. Download Rome.
2. Download Rome Fetcher.
3. Download JDOM is you haven't done so.
4. Extract rome-x.jar, rom-fetcher-x.jar and jdom.jar to a tmp directory -- I placed them at lib.
5. Start you Groovy Console with the classpath set to the jar files, like the this:
$ groovyConsole -cp lib/rome-1.0RC1.jar:lib/rome-fetcher-0.9.jar:lib/jdom.jar
6. Use the code below:

import com.sun.syndication.fetcher.*
import com.sun.syndication.fetcher.impl.*
import com.sun.syndication.feed.synd.SyndFeed


FeedFetcherCache feedInfoCache = HashMapFeedInfoCache.getInstance();
FeedFetcher feedFetcher = new HttpURLFeedFetcher(feedInfoCache);
SyndFeed feed = feedFetcher.retrieveFeed(new URL("http://feeds.digg.com/digg/topic/programming/popular.rss"));


feed.entries.each {
println " -> ${it} "
}

println " == ${feed.entries?.size()}"

7. Finally start reading the below docs:

Malaysia Groovy and Grails User Group

2008-12-16T08:54:00.004+08:00

Hi guys,

I just created a social site for Groovy and Grails user in Malaysia to get together here. Join us!

http://mygroovies.ning.com

Cheers. :-)

Poor man web app monitoring

2008-08-12T16:53:00.004+08:00

This is actually something I need to make sure my web apps are still up and running.

1. Put the start time in global session.
In Bootstrap:

servletContext.setAttribute("startTime", new Date())

2. Then create a controller, or resuse an existing controller and define "uptime" action there:

def uptime = {
def starTime = servletContext.getAttribute("starTime")
long uptime = new Date().time - startTime.time
render(text:uptime)
}

3. Now come the easy part -- a simple groovy script to periodically check the server to make sure it's up.

try {
def p = new URL("http://host:8080/app/foo/uptime").text
println p // up and running
} catch (e) {
println "Server seems to be down"
}

Missing Groovy Recipe: Send e-mail from Groovy

2008-08-12T14:50:00.003+08:00

This seems to be missing in Groovy Recipes collection -- sending e-mail easily with Gant.

//----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// using AntBuilder; for more info, see:
// http://ant.apache.org/manual/CoreTasks/mail.html
ant = new AntBuilder()
ant.mail(mailhost:'smtp.myisp.com', mailport:'1025', subject:'Test build'){
  from(address:'config@myisp.com')
  replyto(address:'me@myisp.com')
  to(address:'all@xyz.com')
  message("The ${buildname} nightly build has completed")
  attachments(){ // ant 1.7 uses files attribute in earlier versions
    fileset(dir:'dist'){
      include(name:'**/*.zip')
    }
  }
}

Grails Sparkline plugin in action

2008-07-22T12:12:00.003+08:00

The below is the hit data for my blog and see the sparkline tag to produce the sparkline.

 03 Jul, Thu     100   
04 Jul, Fri     109   
05 Jul, Sat     54   
06 Jul, Sun     50   
07 Jul, Mon     82   
08 Jul, Tue     97   
09 Jul, Wed     109   
10 Jul, Thu     104   
11 Jul, Fri     116   
12 Jul, Sat     42   
13 Jul, Sun     44   
14 Jul, Mon     83   
15 Jul, Tue     105   
16 Jul, Wed     103   
17 Jul, Thu     134   
18 Jul, Fri     95   
19 Jul, Sat     45   
20 Jul, Sun     38   
21 Jul, Mon     109   
22 Jul, Tue     30

<sparkline:sparkline value="100,109,54,50,82,97,109,104,116,42,44,83,105,103,134,95,45,38,109,30" />

Laptop Tux sticker

2008-07-22T11:02:00.003+08:00

Thanks a lot to Wing Loon for the free 2 strips of 16 tux stickers. They are high quality and I indeed have lots of fun time rubbing the high quality tux sticker on my palmrest -- not to mention the brag session of that sticker. :D :D

GUI Blopper -- Lenovo Contact Us page

2008-07-17T15:03:00.002+08:00

The fact that the wording seems to make as if the user love to be spammed by Lenovo, it also assume that the user would like to receive news on new offerings and also not to received news on new offerings.

This is pretty confusing!

Who wrote these things anyway?

Berfungsi dengan Mozilla Firefox sahaja!

2008-07-09T11:45:00.001+08:00

This is very refreshing indeed -- way to go Penang.

UnixHacker

2008-07-03T23:25:00.006+08:00

Interest to get one? Drop me a line. Price not sure yet but below RM 50.00.

I like this -- Death by Powerpoint

2008-07-02T16:08:00.003+08:00

| View | Upload your own

I am making lots of presentation lately so until now I didn't know my presentation is more sucky than I thought.

Hey that was me! -- Software Development with Ruby

2008-07-02T10:40:00.004+08:00

I came across this slide (http://www.scribd.com/doc/96613/foss-ruby-software-development) that I almost forgot about.

Damn that was not so long time ago and I am completely out of touch with Ruby now. I am still a Java guy though I am getting my hands pretty dirty with Django and Python.

Shown here is my pet project with Ruby GTK+, bzzz. Yup I totally forgot about it. Maybe I should do a Python GTK+ version and a Groovy version too for old time sake. :D

The future of Ruby? erm...

WIP: Grails Sparkline Plugin

2008-06-28T19:22:00.004+08:00

Just a small preview of the sparkline plugin that I am working on. Should be able to release it anytime now... just need to clean up the logs and give more options to the taglib. It seems that almost every platform have some kind of sparkline lib or addons except for Grails. Well not anymore. :D

* Updates: Just released the plugin -- to install just do "grails install-plugin sparkline"

Mercurial (hg) is nicer with colors turn on

2008-06-23T09:46:00.003+08:00

I have been using hg for quite sometime now but only recently got the time to upgrade to the latest 1.0.1. I checked on the extensions available and saw this curious Color Extension. I turn it on easily with:

[extensions]
color=

And my goodness, shouldn't svn already have something like this long time ago? It's amazing how much Feel Good factor being generated by just having colors!

Catchup on my readings...

2008-06-22T09:39:00.004+08:00

Just managed to stack up all the books that were lying around my room. Some were re-reads and some are just plain too boring to finish.

[ANN] Compress Grails Plugin Release

2008-06-06T15:53:00.002+08:00

I just release a new plugin to compress Grails output. This will be very helpful in cases where you have large CSS or Javascript files. See the above screen -- a whopping reduction from 1068KB to 220KB!

Get it now; grails install-plugin compress

Pokey ma cheese pie

2008-06-05T09:05:00.003+08:00

Easy HTTP compression with mod_deflate

2008-06-04T17:15:00.002+08:00

This is something that smack you in the face for not doing it any earlier. We have lots of internal documents served by our office Ubuntu server. Most of them are API docs which is in HTML. So it would make sense to turn on compression to save on the bandwidth. Well okay, it's mostly LAN so it's not that important. But small files will be faster to load up.

I am using Ubuntu Hardy so you may want to look up here on how to install mod_deflate manually.
Anyway to get mod_deflate to work with Apache2 this is what you have to do:

1. Sym link /etc/apache2/mod-available/deflate.conf and /etc/apache2/mod-available/deflate.load to /etc/apache2/mod-enable/

2. Edit deflate.conf. The default compression is only turn on for html, xml and plain text files. Add in "text/css text/javascript application/javascript application/x-javascript". This will enable compression for CSS and Javascripts files.

3. /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

If you have Web Developer Toolbar installed in your Firefox, go to Information -> View Document Size. You can see how much you have saved on the bandwith.

Using listener to update Window shadow

2008-05-22T12:05:00.002+08:00

This is an update to my earlier post on fixing Window with closable fieldset. My earlier approach is to use event after creating the Window. The better and shorter approach is to make use of listener.

So instead of :

      Ext.getCmp('formfieldset').on("collapse", function() {
         console.log("[fieldset] resize -- sync");
         win.syncShadow();
     }, this)

We can just do this:

form = new Ext.FormPanel({
              labelWidth: 75, // label settings here cascade unless overridden
              url:'save-form.php',
              frame:true,
              bodyStyle:'padding:5px 5px 0',
              width: 350,
              autoHeight:true,
              defaults: {width: 240},
              defaultType: 'textfield',
          items :[{
                  fieldLabel: 'Full Name',
                  name: 'fullname',
                  allowBlank:false
              },{
                  fieldLabel: 'Company',
                  name: 'company'
      },{
          xtype:'fieldset',
          id:'formfieldset',
          title: 'Contact',
          collapsible: true,
          autoWidth:true,
          autoHeight:true,
          defaults: {width: 220},
          defaultType: 'textfield',
          items :[{
                  fieldLabel: 'Email',
                  name: 'email'
              },{
                  fieldLabel: 'Phone No#',
                  name: 'mobile'
              }
          ]
          }],
          listeners:{
                     collapse:function(panel) {
                     this.syncShadow();
                   },
                   scope:this
          }
      });

Shotest way to determine if a date is within the current month

2008-05-22T11:58:00.003+08:00

Note to self:

How to determine a given date is within the current month.

def prevMonth = new GregorianCalendar()
prevMonth.roll(Calendar.MONTH, -1)

def nextMonth = new GregorianCalendar()
nextMonth.roll(Calendar.MONTH, 1)

if (update.after(prevMonth) && update.before(nextMonth)) {
// println "Within this month"
}

This is in Groovy, but can easily be translated to Java.

Book Review: Teach Yourself Django in 24 Hours

2008-04-17T10:43:00.005+08:00

Sams Teach Yourself Django in 24 Hours (Sams Teach Yourself) is indeed a good beginner Django book and no doubt will teach you Django within 24 hours. Of course you will not be an expert in Django with this book but more than enough to get started. The real stuff is the online reference anyway. :-)

The content is easy to follow and Brad Dayley is no stranger to Python as he is the author of one of the best short Python book, Python Phrasebook (Developer's Library).

I did find the chapter on Model lacking and seems incomplete. This frustrated me because the first thing I look for in the book is how to define and use many-to-many model relationship in Django. Not much reference for this in the book beyond mere mentions. But this could be because Django API is still growing and as reflected by the online API.

Despite that I am happy with the purchase. :-)

In short this book deliver its promise of learning Django in just 24 hours. However I suggest you donate this copy away when you are comfortably using the online reference -- because this seems to be the book intention; get you started and then move you to the real world docs.

ExtJs: Fixing shadow on auto resize Window on FieldSet open/collapse

2008-04-11T15:35:00.008+08:00

I have been hunting the solution to auto resize Window on the collapse and open of a FieldSet contained within. It is very simple actually but there is a catch. Lets start with the usual Window and a FormPanel. The FormPanel will have few fields and a FieldSet with few more fields. See screenshot. Simple enough, and here is the code:

      
           form = new Ext.FormPanel({
               labelWidth: 75, // label settings here cascade unless overridden
               url:'save-form.php',
               frame:true,
               bodyStyle:'padding:5px 5px 0',
               width: 350,
               autoHeight:true,
               defaults: {width: 240},
               defaultType: 'textfield',
           items :[{
                   fieldLabel: 'Full Name',
                   name: 'fullname',
                   allowBlank:false
               },{
                   fieldLabel: 'Company',
                   name: 'company'
       },{
           xtype:'fieldset',
           id:'formfieldset',
           title: 'Contact',
           collapsible: true,
           autoWidth:true,
           autoHeight:true,
           defaults: {width: 220},
           defaultType: 'textfield',
           items :[{
                   fieldLabel: 'Email',
                   name: 'email'
               },{
                   fieldLabel: 'Phone No#',
                   name: 'mobile'
               }
           ]
           }]
       });

           win = new Ext.Window({
               layout:'fit',
               width:360,
              // height:300,
               autoHeight:true,
               closeAction:'hide',
               plain: true,
               items:form,
               buttons: [{
                   text:'Submit',
                   disabled:true
               },{
                   text: 'Close',
                   handler: function(){
                       win.hide();
                   }
               }]
           });

On clicking the FieldSet toggle button, the FormPanel would collapse nicely together with the Window. Note the autoHeight:true configuration for the Window, FormPanel and FieldSet. But the catch is the Window's shadow will not be auto resize. See the below screenshot: We are expecting to see the FieldSet fold nicely and the Window auto resize together with the FormPanel. As discussed on this thread this problem could be fixed by attaching to the resize event and call Window.syncShadow();

Looking into Panel.js code, toggling the FieldSet doesn't seem to trigger the resize event at all. So we would have to watch for the FieldSet collapse event instead. See the below code for the final fix.

        Ext.getCmp('formfieldset').on("collapse", function() {
          console.log("[fieldset] resize -- sync");
          win.syncShadow();
      }, this)

Btw, have you guys heard about this book to create your own programming language? Less than 1000 pages and that's what the CoffeeScript guy uses (or inspired from) to create CoffeeScript. I'm reading it. It's cool, and you should check it out -- create your own language, for bragging rights or whatever.

Exploring Django - The Basic Cygwin Setup (1)

2008-04-04T10:04:00.003+08:00

Some quick notes on how to get started with Django with cygwin on Windows. Lets start with the basic development setup with Cygwin and Sqlite3 database.

1. Setup cygwin and install the latest Python 2.5. Well Cygwin by default will install Python so just make sure your cygwin has Python 2.3 and above -- that's the minimum Python requirement for Django.

2. Download Django from Djangoproject.com.

3. Install is straight forward, just tar xvfz and setup.py install. If you get confused at this stage, please consider Rails. :-)

4. Next, setup the dev environment with Django and Sqlite3. Make sure your cygwin has sqlite3 installed and Gcc. I couldn't figure out how to install python-sqlite3 as cygwin package -- there's none -- so we will have to install from the egg.

6. If you haven't install setuptools yet, go here http://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools to download and install setuptools.

7. Then run "easy_install pysqlite3". This will auto install the latest Python-sqlite3 for you. The catch is you will need gcc installed. If your cygwin doesn't have gcc, re-run your cygwin's setup.exe and select gcc.

8. After all this done -- took me about 20 minutes but this depends on your Internet speed :-D -- go watch this Video. You should be up and running Django in another 3 minutes by following that Django newbie video.

9. Go spend the next few hours trying to figure out why choose Django over Ruby on Rails and Grails. Hint: it's Python.
Another hint: It's not Ruby.
My tip: Use Grails if you can. :D

10. There is no step 10.

Asshole

2008-04-03T13:19:00.002+08:00

Simple method events with Groovy meta-programming

2008-03-22T08:47:00.006+08:00

Groovy has an amazing meta-programming capability and the behavior can be changed easily if you know where to look.

Lets start with a simply concept of method event -- you can think of it as a primitive form of AOP if you want to -- and we want to automatically call a before* and after* methods on a method (huh?).

Example;


   class Person {
       String name

       String toString() {
           return name
       }
   }

A simple before and after event for toString method will be beforeToString() and afterToString().

With Groovy we can make use of its metaClass to intercept and modify its method behaviour. In this case we want to intercept all method call and check if it has any defined before and after event methods available and execute this methods.

Lets go back and define the before and after method for toString;


   class Person {
       String name

       String beforeToString() {
       }

       String toString() {
           return name
       }

     String afterToString() {
       }

   }

So now we have defined 2 before and after event method,
lets look at the basic groovy code to make all these happen.

Person.metaClass.invokeMethod = { String methodName, args ->
   println "[invokeMethod] ${methodName}() called with ${args}"

   def metaClass = Person.metaClass
   def method = methodName.getAt(0).toUpperCase() + methodName.substring(1)

   def beforeMethod = metaClass.getMetaMethod("before${method}", args)
   def afterMethod = metaClass.getMetaMethod("after${method}", args)
  
   if (beforeMethod) beforeMethod.invoke(delegate, args)
  
   def metaMethod = metaClass.getMetaMethod(methodName, args)
   def result
   if (metaMethod) result = metaMethod.invoke(delegate, args)
  
   if (afterMethod) afterMethod.invoke(delegate, args)
  
   return result
}

First we would have to look for the existence of before/after methods.
This is done at this line:

def beforeMethod = metaClass.getMetaMethod("before${method}", args)

Then we execute them in the correct order:

if (beforeMethod) beforeMethod.invoke(delegate, args)

Finally, we execute the real method and return the result:

def metaMethod = metaClass.getMetaMethod(methodName, args)
def result
if (metaMethod) result = metaMethod.invoke(delegate, args)

Of course this is the very rough and basics of the method event and you still have to consider about cyclic-method-call prevention, continuation of method call, and proper return of method value.

Turn Web Apps into Desktop App With Prism Easily

2008-03-11T10:33:00.000+08:00

Take a peek into future of Desktop webapps with Mozilla Prism, http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/10/prism/.

If you are running Firefox 3b*, use this plugin, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6665.

Then simply "Tools > Convert Website to Application" and you have your desktop web application.

The first thing I did was to turn GMail into my desktop app.

[ANN] JFreeChart Eastwood Servlet Plugin

2008-01-10T22:10:00.000+08:00

I just finished the plugin for JFreeChart's Eastwood Servlet. You can find more information about Eastwood project here.

Basically it's a Google Chart API clone using JFreeChart. Well calling it clone may be an understatement as this is a really cool project.

Anyway I have applied for a plugin developer account and so I hope to be able to upload to the repository soon, and in the meanwhile you can find the plugin here.

For a quick test, once installed open this page, http://localhost:8080/app/plugins/eastwood-chart-0.1/test.gsp. You should see the actual graphs produced from Google Chart on the left and the Eastwood charts on the right side.

(Charts produced by Google Chart on left and Eastwood charts on right)

**UPDATES: File has been uploaded to the plugin repository. You can now install by the usual "grails install-plugin eastwood-chart". For more information go to the plugin page, http://grails.org/JFreeChart+Eastwood+Plugin.

ExtJs UI Pattern: User Selection Dialog

2008-01-04T19:32:00.000+08:00

User Selection Dialog

A flexible dialog for selecting user in groups.

It is a common requirement to select user from a list of users grouped by hierarchy or role, for example select a user from a department. The User Selection Dialog displays the group and users within the group in a tree structure. To select a user, click on the tree node. The selected node contains the user ID or primary key which will be then be processed by a function handler.

How It Works
The User Selection Dialog is only responsible for displaying the user and group structure in a tree form, and will make available the user ID or primary key of the selected tree node.

It is user responsible to code the handler to process the user ID or primary key. This will make the dialog highly reusable.

Example Implementation and Usage

    var dialog = new UserSelectionDialog();
    dialog.onFinished = function(userId) {
        //perform operation on the userId
        dialog.close();
    }

The dialog use is very simple here as we are only interested to get the selected node ID. The ID can represent the unique username or the primary key used in database.

Below is the implementation of the dialog using ExtJS 2.0 with the new and improve way of extending ExtJs classes.

Ext.namespace('Myapp

');

UserSelectionDialog = Ext.extend(Ext.Window, {

     title: '

User Selection

',

width: 280,

height: 300,

shadowOffset:6,

layout: 'fit',

iconCls: 'teamIcon',

buttonAlign: 'center',

initComponent: function() {

UserSelection

Dialog.superclass.initComponent.call(this);

/**

* Config for Tree and tree store

*/

var Tree = Ext.tree;

var root = new Tree.AsyncTreeNode({

text: 'Departments',

draggable:false,

expanded:true,

id:'source'

});

this.treePanel = new Tree.TreePanel({

autoScroll:true,

animate:true,

lines:true,

containerScroll:true,

loader: new Tree.TreeLoader({

dataUrl:    Util.ctxpath )+ '/user/treelist'

}),

selModel:new Tree.MultiSelectionModel(),

root:root

});

this.add(this.treePanel);

/**

* Config for buttons -- Close & Save

*/

var closeButton = new Ext.Button({

text:'Close',

scope:this,

minWidth:75,

handler:this.onClose

});

this.addButton(closeButton);

var okayButton = new Ext.Button({

text:'OK',

scope:this,

minWidth:75,

handler:this.onOkay

});

this.addButton(okayButton);

},

onClose: function() {

this.close();

},

onOkay: function() {

var nodes =

this.treePanel.getSelectionModel().getSelectedNodes();

var idlist = [];

for (n = 0; n <>            idlist[n] = nodes[n].id         }     
                 this.onFinish(idlist)  
    },   
    
    /**
     * This is the method to be handle by programmer
     * to process the id returned by the tree selection.
     * Note that multiple selection is possible hence
     * the expected array from the tree.
     */
    onFinish: function(idList) {
        //XXX: Expect idList to be an array
        this.onClose;  
    }
});



Grails Open Flash Chart Plugin -- Progress towards 0.1 release
2007-12-20T18:42:00.000+08:00
Updates:
* Added taglib namespace
* Adding all possible default sensible -- and pretty - default values
* Added "pie" tag

ToDo:
1. Add "bar", "line", "area", etc tags
2. Change default color themes to something pretty to the eyes
3. Figure out how to combine multiple graph types into 1 chart
4. Release o Grails plugin repository


For now, to create a simple pie chart, it can be simple as the tag properties below -- definitely will be shorter if using default values.


           <chart:pie title="AJAX Toolkit Usage Survey Dec '07,{font-size: 18px;color #d01f3c}"

                     x_axis_steps="1"
                     y_ticks="5,10,5"
                     line="3,#87421F"
                     y_min="0"
                     y_max="20"
                     alpha="60"
                     height="350"
                     width="350"
                     line_colour="#505050"
                     label_colour="#005600"
                     bg_colour="#ffffff"
                     pie_labels="Prototype,jQuery,Ext JS,Script.aculo.us,Mootools, I Use raw Ajax,JSON,Dojo,Backbase"
                     pie_values="34.10,29.30,22.50,14.30,13.00,12.90,11.90,8.30"                          pie_slice_colours="#006600,#0066cc,#993300,#9933cc,#cc3300,#cc66cc,#ffcc00,#99ccff"
                     links="http://ajaxian.com/archives/2007-ajax-tools-usage-survey-results"
                     tool_tip="#val#%"
             />







Firefox 3b2 + Firebug?
2007-12-20T13:09:00.000+08:00
To get Firefox 3.0b2 to work with Firebug, you need to install the patched Firebug 1.1 beta from Fireclipse Project here.

Anyway, just a short note on this patched Firebug:

Firebug 1.1 beta
Firebug 1.1 is Firebug 1.05 by Joe Hewitt with enhancements and bug fixes by John J. Barton (IBM Almaden) and Max Stepanov (aptana)

 Firebug-1.1.0b10 supports:  eval() debugging,
external editor interface,
browser-generated event handler debugging,
executable lines marked with green line numbers,
user-controlled naming of eval() buffers,
Stack side panel on "Script" panel for callstack,
Supports Firefox 3,
 "better" debugging icons,
 CSS errors report against source lines,
bug fixes (incl. issues 8, 69, 218, 230, 239, 249, 269, 314, 321, 345)
Internal firebug debug output
The file is an XPI file that will add-on to Firefox as Firebug v1.1. Firefox's updater will allow you to get new experimental versions until Firebug 1.1 is official.  At that time the experimental version will be replaced by the official one when you update. Please report problems on the Firebug Group or bug tracker.




Note to self: Ext..DomQuery to traverse table
2007-12-19T19:02:00.000+08:00
Use Firebug and ExtJs, then follow the rules.

    var table = Ext.query("#table-id")[0]; //would probably be $("table-id") in jQuery
    var rows = table.rows;

    for (var i = 4; i <>
        console.log(rows[i]);
            var cells = rows[i].cells;
    
            console.log("Cell size: " + cells.length);
    
            for (var n = 0; n < cells.length; n++) {
                    console.log(cells[n]);
            }
    }




Grails Open Flash Chart Plugin
2007-12-18T14:20:00.000+08:00
Just a little early preview of a plugin I am working on now.

Using Open Flash Chart's and Grails's plug-in, you can create cool Flash-based graphs like these:


An example of code to create a pie chart:


<g:graph title="Pie Chart,{font-size: 18px;color #d01f3c}"

                     y_legend="Grails Open Flash Chart Plugin,12,#736AFF"

                     x_axis_steps="1"

                     y_ticks="5,10,5"

                     line="3,#87421F"

                     y_min="0"

                     y_max="20"

                     pie="60,#505050,#000000"

                     values="14,14,12,15,11"

                     pie_labels="IE,Firefox,Opera,Wii,Other"

                     colours="#d01f3c,#356aa0,#C79810"

                     tool_tip="#val#%" />





ExtJs 2.0 Fileupload and Grails
2007-12-17T20:44:00.000+08:00
If you are having problem with file uploads using ExtJs and Grails, this might help you.

To upload file with the latest ExtJs 2.0, you need to specify the the Ext.form.BasicForm to be configured as fileupload, just pass "fileUpload:true" to the config options. Then add a textfield as specify the "inputType" as "file". This will get you a ExtJs form with a standard File browser button to choose file.


The tricky part comes next.

Using latest Grails 1 RC4 snapshot, handling fileupload is still very easy -- in fact nothing changed at all on how to upload file. (Follow this guide to the upload details)

However because ExtJs's formpanel is expecting JSON reply, typical HTTP 200 response is not valid and you will get error on the client side Javascript.

The fine print is that, you need to specify the JSON response as normal "text/html" instead of "application/json" type. This is as simple as below:

 // render (someJsonResult as JSON) //won't work
// render ([success:true, responseText:$msg] as JSON) won't work for fileupload
 render """{succes:${success}, responseText:"${msg}"}"""




My first Linux experience many years back ...
2007-11-01T20:37:00.000+08:00
Back then successful installation means a lot. Those were the RedHat 4 days. Heck even ordering Linux CD is not easy. Anyone still remember Cheapbytes?

Just upgraded to Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy. Damn, I don think I will spend a dime on Vista or Windows unless I am forced to.

To everyone who still hesitates, do it now. It's going to be the smoothest Ubuntu upgrade you will ever have to deal with. There won't be a lingering doubt about clean re-install. I promise.


New Adventure with GWT
2007-10-31T22:37:00.000+08:00
Now everyone knows I like to try out new technologies, especially if it has to do with Java, web, and agile way of doing things. I just finished messing around with ExtJs 2.0 and I got one word -- please wait for the final release, unless you have plenty of time on ya hands.

Over the weekends I also tried out with Mootools and JQuery. This is after realizing Prototype is not so cool anymore, particularly when I found myself constantly wishing I can chain some effects together without using queue. So I digg out some examples with JQuery and chaining. JQuery is a clear winner here, though Mootools Fx stuff is very cool. But I'll blog about them next time.

Today I want to remind myself that programming is hard, no matters what Grails or Spring framework, or ExtJs  or whater frameworks flavor of the day. Having hand code most of the AJAX stuff lately, I began to wonder if there's a better way to do things. So I took a break and look up Ajaxian. I found out about GWT 1.4 release.

Well why not. So I downloaded the 1.4.60 release for Linux, unzip it and run the samples according to the get started guide. And I got this:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /mnt/windows/files/gwt-linux-1.4.60/libswt-pi-gtk-3235.so: /mnt/windows/files/gwt-linux-1.4.60/libswt-pi-gtk-3235.so: failed to map segment from shared object: Operation not permitted         at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method)         at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary0(ClassLoader.java:1751)         at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1647)         at java.lang.Runtime.load0(Runtime.java:770)         at java.lang.System.load(System.java:1005)         at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Library.loadLibrary(Library.java:132)         at org.eclipse.swt.internal.gtk.OS.(OS.java:22)         at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Converter.wcsToMbcs(Converter.java:63)         at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Converter.wcsToMbcs(Converter.java:54)         at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.(Display.java:126)         at com.google.gwt.dev.GWTShell.(GWTShell.java:264)

At 1.30 AM, I googled in vain for the solution so I posted up in the GWT Groups hoping for an answer by the time I come into office tomorrow morning. Morning came and hours passed, nobody gives a shit to my plea for help there.

Well no matters, so I followed the guide to build my own dist from the src. The guide for this is pretty straight forward.

I grab the tools and the trunk and it build myself. And it works then. I am not sure why it says my gwt is at version 0.0.0 though.

At this point I think GWT is definitely a tool that is not getting enough attention than it should. As my first adventure, I am going to play with the samples. Next, my killer 2.0 app. :-D




SeymourCakes.com
2007-07-25T17:49:00.000+08:00
I'm moving now. Find me at
SeymourCakes.com


I am back.



How to create favicons for free
2007-06-20T17:22:00.000+08:00
A favicon is the icon shown inside the browser's location bar and bookmark. It is a cool way to brand your site.

Here is a short guide on how to create your own favicon for your website or blog.

1. Startup Gimp
2. Create a 16x16 pixel image.
3. Zoom the image to at least 200%. (View -> Zoom)
4. Create your icon. You can import any graphic as long as it fit into the 16x16 space.
5. Save as "favicon.ico".

Next upload to the web server.

1. Put the favicon.ico to the root directory of your server.
2. Verify the icon is uploaded successfully by by http://www.yoursite.com/favicon.ico.
3. Using Firefox to access your site again you will see the favicon immediately but may not be so if you are using IE. (Go ask Bill)

Well of course if you are lazy, then use of the those favicon generators like this one.


Java regex matching date
2007-06-20T11:50:00.000+08:00
I found many resources on the web give really weak regular expression for date matching. The best I found is this. However, I found some example of pretty horrible regex for matching date in Java.

For example, to match a date of 25/05/2007 (dd/mm/2007).
\\d\\d-\\d\\d-\\d\\d\\d\\d
\\d{2}-\\d{2}-\\d{4}
While these may work, but it won't be accurate. What is needed is:

     (0[1-9]|[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])-(0[1-9]|1[012]|[1-9])-(19|20)\\d{2}


     (0[1-9]|[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])
This will make sure that date is within range from 1 to 31.

(0[1-9]|1[012]|[1-9])
Similarly matches against month from 1-12 or 01-12

(19|20)\\d{2}
And of course year to be a valid 19** or 20**.


Convert java.sql.Blob to String
2007-06-12T21:34:00.000+08:00
For some reason I have put in really lots of effort to find the reference to convert Blob to String.

Blob blob = rs.getBlob("Data");
byte[] bdata = blob.getBytes(1, (int) blob.length());
String text = new String(bdata);


Btw, have you guys heard about this book to create your own programming language? Less than 1000 pages and that's what the CoffeeScript guy uses (or inspired from) to create CoffeeScript. I'm reading it. It's cool, and you should check it out -- create your own language, for bragging rights or whatever. 


Tok: Chat program in 2 hours.
2007-04-22T12:26:00.000+08:00
My DSL line was down for almost a week so I took the chance to get some quality offline-time to brush up on my Groovy. I thought about doing another IRC bot but that's kinda stale as I have done something similar with Ruby.

I want to learn more on SwingBuilder and socket programming with Groovy. And that is when I thought about a simple multiuser chat system. What you are seeing above is Tok, simple chat system written in Groovy. The client and server is done in about 2 hours with Groovy in Action as my guide.

The first thing I did was to get the basic GUI up. As you can see from line 10 and line 21, creating basic Swing panel and frame is very easy. The tricky part is to get the layout right -- line 35. But then again layout has always been a PITA.

For the client server communication I use XML-RPC. It's simple to setup and use in Groovy. Read line 52 - 55. Just start a server and listen for incoming message. The chat server will send updates to everyone who is listening.

The server is a simple server that simply accepts a new client and register it to a list. The "ticket" is simply a serial int number -- indicating the port to be used for the server to connect to the client. See line 27 of the server code.

Well this is a simple chat afterall so you should track by IP and maybe some string token as session control. Anytime a new message is sent from the client, the server will send back the same message to everyone registered in the server list. See line 19.

Tok client
 1 import groovy.swing.SwingBuilder
 2 import groovy.net.xmlrpc.XMLRPCServerProxy as Proxy
 3 import groovy.net.xmlrpc.XMLRPCServer as Server
 4 
 5 import java.net.ServerSocket
 6 import java.awt.BorderLayout as BL
 7 import javax.swing.WindowConstants as WC
 8 
 9 
10 def swing = new SwingBuilder()
11 def content = new StringBuffer()
12 def remote = new Proxy('http://localhost:8081/')
13 
14 newMsg = swing.action( name:'newMessage', closure: {
15     msg = remote.chat( swing.inputMsg.text )
16     //content << "<br> ${msg}" 
17     //swing.msgPane.text = content 
18     swing.inputMsg.text = ""
19 } )
20 
21 def frame = swing.frame( title:'Tok' ) {
22     // Menu bar
23     menuBar {
24         menu('File') {
25             menuItem 'Quit'
26         }
27         menu('Edit') {
28         }
29         menu('Help') {
30             menuItem 'About'
31         }
32     }
33 
34     // Panel
35     panel( layout: new BL() ) {
36         scrollPane( constraints: BL.CENTER ) {
37             editorPane( id:'msgPane', editable:false, preferredSize:[60, 100],
38                         editorKit: new javax.swing.text.html.HTMLEditorKit() )
39         }
40         panel(constraints: BL.SOUTH) {
41             textField(id:'inputMsg', columns:20)
42             button( action:newMsg, 'Go' )
43         }
44     }
45 }
46 content << "Tok session started on ${new Date().toString()}"
47 swing.msgPane.text = content
48 
49 // Perform client registration to the chat network
50 int ticket = remote.register()
51 println "TICKET: ${ticket}"
52 def server = new Server()
53 server.startServer( new ServerSocket(ticket) )
54 
55 server.update = { msg ->
56     print msg
57     content << "${msg}"
58     swing.msgPane.text = content
59 }
60 
61 frame.pack()
62 frame.setDefaultCloseOperation( WC.EXIT_ON_CLOSE )
63 frame.show()


Tok Server
 1 import groovy.net.xmlrpc.XMLRPCServer as Server
 2 import groovy.net.xmlrpc.XMLRPCServerProxy as Proxy
 3 import java.net.ServerSocket
 4 
 5 
 6 def ticket = 9991
 7 def clients = []
 8 
 9 def server = new Server()
10 
11 server.chat = { msg ->
12     println msg
13         clients.each { client ->
14             //client.update( msg )
15             updateClient(client, msg)
16     }
17 }
18 
19 def updateClient(client, msg) {
20     try {
21         client.update( msg )
22     } catch (Exception ex) {
23         println ex
24     }
25 }
26 
27 server.register = {
28     clients << new Proxy("http://localhost:${ticket}")
29    return ticket++
30 }
31 
32 def socket = new ServerSocket(8081)
33 server.startServer(socket)




Grails + Ext Grid Mini Tutorial
2007-04-21T22:32:00.000+08:00
Ext Grid component is very easy to use with Grails listing. However you should go over the basic Grids tutorial and then the paging Grid tutorial first.

Because the Grid component talk to your Grails controller with either XML or JSON, you have to use XML or JSON builder. Render your XML data like this:

 render(contentType:'text/xml') {
     Minutes {
         totalCount(totalRecordCount)
             for(m in results) {
                 Minute {
                     ID(m.id)
                     Subject(m.subject)
                     MeetingSummary(m.meetingSummary)
                     Scribe(m.scribe)
                     Venue(m.venue)
                     MeetingStartTime(m.meetingStartTime)
                     MeetingEndTime(m.meetingEndTime)
                 }
             }
     }
That's about the only thing you'd have to do on your Grails controller to output the XML data. Then if you follow through the Grid component example, you should get ya data rows on the Grid. Next enable paging, you need to a few modifications.

Use DomainClass.count() method to get the total number of records. Generate that along with the XML data.

 render(contentType:'text/xml') {
         Minutes {
             totalCount(totalRecordCount)
             for(m in results) {
                     Minute {
                         ID(m.id)
                         Subject(m.subject)
                         MeetingSummary(m.meetingSummary)
                         Scribe(m.scribe)
                         Venue(m.venue)
                         MeetingStartTime(m.meetingStartTime)
                         MeetingEndTime(m.meetingEndTime)
                     }
                 }
         }
In your controller, you need to get 2 params from Grid, "start" and "limit". This is passed by the datastore during load time (Refer to the paging tutorial) . Grails paging need "offset" and "max" to work so we will just assign "start" to "offset" and "limit" to "max".

           results = DomainClass.list( [offset:params.start, max:params.limit] )

Well you can also change the default example paging params to "offset" and "max" staightaway instead of reassign them in the controller.

            ds.load({params:{offset:0, max:25}});


Grails + Ext Exprience Log
2007-04-21T21:58:00.000+08:00
I found out about Ext recently and was taken by the slick UI. Diving into the documentations and tutorials I find Ext suspiciously easy to implement. I have been using Grails a lot since beginning of this year but I am still looking something looks as cool as Echo2.

So on Monday night, I started with a small project to get a Grails app integrate with Ext. I worked with the Ext components one by one until I get a fully functional Meeting Minute tracker sort of application. And this is what I got to show for.

Some stats here:
Use AJAX for tree, tabs, grid, and content refresh.
Never mess with any SQL, CSS or HTML. Pure Grails and JavaScript.
Btw, my level of JavaScript is up to using alert() for debugging.
Ext support 3 really cool themes, no messing around with graphics or buttons.
Stable and fast. I tested on old P3, works just fine.
Very helpful forum.
Open Source license or commercial licence -- up to you to choose.
Good documentations and examples.
The API is developer friendly and can be use with Java, Grails, Ruby on Rails, PHP or just about anything that can generate JSON or XML data.
Started on Monday night, worked every night for at least 1 hour till Saturday to complete all the basic features.

What I found out is that:
Grails is very cool.
Ext together with Grails is going to be a blast.
Like Grails, you can get something of quality up in short time with Ext.
A few weeks back I completed a small project using Prototype and Scriptaculous, and wondered how am I going to create any cool webapps without them. Well, I'm going to delete them off from my bookmark tonight. :D Extjs.com will do fine now.

To help others on using Grails together with Ext, I am going to start a small series of tutorials of integrating Grails with Ext. I hope many will find it useful.

By the way, Ext Version 1.0 has just been released. If you have been using Ext beta2, you can see the list of changes from beta 2 to version 1.


Easy fileupload with Grails
2007-04-20T11:51:00.000+08:00
Uploading files in Grails is as simple as this. Add a upload closure in
the controller, then create the multipart form in the gsp.

   def uploadFile = {
      println "Getting new file"
      def f = request.getFile('upfile')
          if(!f.empty) {
              f.transferTo( new File('someotherloc') )
              println f
          }
          else {
              flash.message = 'file cannot be empty'
                  redirect(action:'upload')
          }
      println "Done getting new file"
  }



Personal WTF
2007-04-10T19:26:00.000+08:00
I read TheDailyWTF daily and I can really empathized with the victims in the story. Heck I have been shoving lots of shits myself over the years, in fact I made money from it.

Anyway, I just finished a reporting part which requires some data mungling before output to the PDF report. I looked at the one piece that bugged me whole day and I thought to myself,

WTF!

I just hope whoever that is going to maintain that piece of code will forgive me. I blame myself for not putting the effort to learn JasperReport!


    $F{SCORE} == null ? "" : (
       (Double.parseDouble($F{SCORE})) > 91 ? "X" : (
           (Double.parseDouble($F{SCORE})) > 81 ? "XY" : (
               (Double.parseDouble($F{SCORE})) > 61 ? "Y" : "Z"
           )
       )
    )



Rails pagination with condition
2007-04-10T12:31:00.000+08:00
TarcRooms.com was launched a year back and at that time all I wanted was to get the site up with the basic features. The ads was slow to come in but nowadays I get on average 10 ads per week. I guess that's good since it's serving people.

Some of the features which I initially planned that didn't make it are:
Limit ads to 30 days
Registration free
E-mail reminders
After so long I finally got the pagination to work with condition -- that is to display ads that are no more than 30 days old.

The code for pagination is relatively simple.

  def list
    @classified_pages, @classifieds = paginate :classifieds, 
        :order => 'post_date DESC', 
        :per_page => 15, 
        :conditions => '( CURDATE() - classifieds.post_date)<30'
  end

I avoided that from the start because I didn't want to tied the condition to MySQL's CURDATE(). Well I guess I'll be pragmatic about it and do what works for me now.

The condition above actually translated to:

 SELECT (*) FROM classifieds
WHERE ( CURDATE() - classifieds.post_date)<30>


Poderosa: The PuTTY killer
2007-04-09T19:29:00.000+08:00
I have been using PuTTY for years and it's one of those invaluable software that you thank God not because it's free but it solves your daily problem over and over again. PuTTY has its wrinkles but I still love it nevertheless.

However I think the time has come to move on. I have stopped using PuTTY for months. Let me introduce to you Poderosa  -- a tabbed terminal emulator for Windows.

Among the features you get from Poderosa are:
GUI tab
SSH1/2 connection
Local Cygwin connection
... (this means you should find out more from the website)
I am impressed most by the tabbing of terminals. However you might not like the fact that this software .NET based. The good news is that it's under Apache 2.0 license so you can get the source and have a ball with it if you want to.

I used it everyday for my Cygwin sessions and also for SSH. Very easy to use, stable and fast. I tried various terminal emulators but most has stability issues. No problem for me so far. I think I finally found what I am looking for in a terminal emulator.

Give it a try.


Shipping culture
2007-04-04T19:07:00.000+08:00
I'm watching this Java in Trenches and I must say, if you are doing any kind of serious software development works, then please spend sometime with this video. This stuff is so good I would pay money for it!

Anyway, something from the slides.

In Malaysia, this is not a culture. It's a mandatory thing if you want to continue to get your pay cheque. The problem is really not whether you ship it out -- on time or otherwise -- but shipping out the kind of software that won't come back and bite your ass.

By biting your ass I mean:

   1. Your client won't call you up and explain what professionalism means.
   2. You don't have to explain why the software puke errors every 2 clicks.
   3. You don't have to debug and fix code that needs to be running on the client server the next morning. (And it's already 2.30 AM)

Well, I'm actually taking this slide out of context. These guys ensure quality every step of the way, and when they deliver the final product, the really deliver. And that says a lot about Eclipse Software Framework.

By the way, if you still think that using a good framework will ship, you should find out more about the shipping. Think "process".

Ship it! A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects is a good book on how to navigate your way out of the mess of shipping out the good stuff on time. If you need to start, start with this short guide.




A personal note on productivity with Thunderbird 2.0
2007-04-04T18:28:00.000+08:00
One of the coolest features of the upcoming Thunderbird 2.0 is tagging for your e-mail. When I first discovered tagging of e-maill with Gmails I have been looking for something similar for my POP mails.

I am using Thunderbird 2 beta 2 now, and I'm not sure why it's still beta. As far as I am concerned, it's might as well be the final version. This beta software haven't crashed on me since many moons ago! Seriously Thunderbird raises my standard as to what beta software means.

Apart from tagging, I think the search function beats the crap out of Outlook. I remember waiting for my colleague to search for some information from his Outlook. After a while waiting, I just go to my Thunderbird and got the search result back almost instantly.

This whole Thunderbird 2.0 experience taught me 3 things.

    1. Beta version software is the new gold version.
    2. Outlook sucks.
    3. Use your own Thunderbird to do you own damn search. 
    Or "Quit asking people to do your shit"

But anyway if you need to know 3 things about Thunderbird 2.0 now, they are:

      1. Damn stable
       2. Damn fast search
      3. Damn cool tagging

Now, see that "BAD IDEA" up there?

Well take it from me and try it out yourself. I have been creating so many tags that, I didn't know which tags are for which anymore. I think after about 3 tags, you'll pretty much start getting confuse about which tags are for which.

As you can see I have:
Important (default)
Personal (default)
ToDo (default)
Work
BugReport
Report
bla bla bla bla blaaa...
More bla bla

First, I shouldn't even have report tag, just create a folder to hold the e-mails related to reports. That's probably what I should have done for the rest of stuff.

After some "refactoring" -- I basically delete everything except these 3.
Important
To Do
FuckIt



Book review: Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash
2007-03-29T14:02:00.000+08:00
The first thing I can tell you about this book is that it is not boring at all. Second thing is that you will learns a lot from it.

In brevity, Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash is about making software pragmatically, from the management point of view.



I was pleasantly surprised to learn how to apply Toyota Production System to software engineering. For example, the concept of Poka-yoke or "mistake-proofing" can been in Rename Method refactoring.

    public void close(Object obj);

There are few potential  mistake that could happen when calling this method. The method name, "close" is vague enough to mean closing a database connection or a file. That and the parameter of Object type which could mean closing anything and everything.
Lets refactor that to

public void closeFile(File file)

Now there is no way to make mistake with the method -- unless you try really hard. That's Poka-yoke for you in software development. You should read on the rest of the book to find out how TPS works for making software.

See, those stuff are not just for making cars or plastic chairs. :)

Reading this book feels like listening from a manufacturing engineer teaching software engineering, which is actually enlightening considering that manufacturing has embraced "lean and agile" methodologies for ages.

I don't think grunt programmers would appreciate what Poppendiecks are trying to teach about lean development, but I highly recommend this book to management people looking for answers to why you should get on the Agile bandwagon today.






My first useful Grails plugin
2007-03-16T16:22:00.000+08:00
After about 4 weeks for part time research, trial-and-error, and countless night digging Grails source code, I finally finished the my first useful grails plugin.

It's really a search plugin, using lucene as the engine. It still has many basic features to go before I can call it barebone complete, but what the heck I'm using it on production system.

I will be releasing the source code and licensed it same as Grails's licenced term, which is Apache 2.0.

Coincidentally Maurice Nicholson released his Searchable Plugin 0.1 last night.


Grails Plugins notes
2007-02-16T09:33:00.000+08:00
I tried my hands at creating Grails plugin and I'm documenting my findings here.

1. First thing anyone who wants to develop plugin should join the grails-dev mailing list. There's too much hidden information which you just cannot get from the Plugin Developer Guide.

2. Of course you need to read other plugin codes.

3. I think the best way to get started is to simply get started with "grails create-plugin". Then simply package it and try to load it in your grails project. (See below for my kickass shitmore plugin)

....
Attempting to load [1] user defined plugins
    Grails plug-in [shitmores] with version [0.1] loaded successfully
....

4.  I did found out there is not easy way to test for plugin. The usual GrailsTestCase just won't do it properly. Well atleast not yet anyway.   :(

5. The stable 0.4.1 release has problem with custom plugin, so you might as well be using the 0.5-SNAPSHOT.   :(






Grails' new dynamic encoding
2007-01-24T12:59:00.000+08:00
Grails' dynamic encoding is something really useful and will be available in the upcoming Grails 0.4.

Right now it only has 2 standard codec -- HTMLCodec and URLCodec. I want to show you how easy it is to create a custom codec of your own here. Lets take Base64 encoding and decoding for this example.

We start by creating the basic codec class, Base64Codec.groovy and define 2 methods; encode and decode.


  class Base64Codec {

     static def encode = {  str ->
         // TODO: Implement me
     }

     static def decode = {  str ->
         // TODO: Implement me
     }
 }
So far so good. Grails will automatically pick up your custom codec as long as your class ends with a "Codec", like this Base64Codec.groovy for example. Well of course you need to put this class in grails-app/util folder.


  class Base64Codec {

     static def encode = {  str ->
        return new sun.misc.BASE64Encoder().encode(str.bytes)
     }

     static def decode = {  str ->
         def result = new sun.misc.BASE64Decoder().decodeBuffer(str)
         return new String(result)
     }
 }

//Encoding string to Base64:  someString.encodeAsBase64()
//Decoding Base64 string:  def s = encodedString.decodeAsBase64()
A word of warning, you are not supposed to use those Sun's undocumented classes. Try something like Apache Commons Codec library for Base64 encoding and decoding.


Setup Subversion 1.4 on Windows 2003
2007-01-23T11:20:00.000+08:00
I have been going through the web for the steps to install SVN on Windows server. I tried the Svn1Click but I think it is obsolete now. Well anyway to those who needs it, here are the latest guide on how to setup Subversion 1.4.2 on Windows 2003 server as Windows service.

1. Download and install the latest Subversion. The latest package is 1.4.2 as of today.

2. Create your root folder for your project repository. I created mine at D:\svn_repository.

3.  Test out if everything is okay. Fire up cmd (Command prompt) and execute this command, "svnserve -d -r d:\svn_repository". You can find out more of the svnserve options here.

4. That is to start up the SVn light weight server in daemon mode. Now lets see if svn client can connect to it. Execute this "svn ls svn:\\localhost". No news is good news here as we don't have anything in the repository yet.

5. Next lets install SVN as Windows service. Now if you google for this topic, you are going to find some old stuff. I believe the latest and correct way to install SVn as Windows service is by using SC.exe. Well you can get the details of this here.

Execute this command:
sc create "SVNservice" binPath= "\"C:\Program Files\Subversion\bin\svnserve.exe\" --service --root \"d:\svn_repository\"" DisplayName= "Subversion" depend= tcpip start= auto

Assuming that you install Suversion and never mess with the default program path, then you can copy, paste and run the above command.

Note that the space " " between the binPath= and the parameter. The name value pair must be separated by a space. I wasted about half and hour wondering why it won't run.

6. If all goes well, you will see "[SC] CreateService SUCCESS".  Yay. Now lets open up the Services tool window and you should see "Subversion" listed as on of the services.




No fear.
2007-01-19T20:28:00.000+08:00



Sunday afternoon with Geek00L
2006-12-18T12:51:00.000+08:00



You mean all these cool games are done in Java??!!
2006-11-08T10:18:00.000+08:00
The common perception of Java in game development is a impossible, or at least slow and lousy. However, many have tried to push Java to the gaming industry since the 90's.

If you think Java games are only for the puzzle and turn base type, then watch this video. We are talking about 3D and fast action pack games.





PgOSS -- What coming next
2006-11-07T11:06:00.000+08:00
Was chatting with geekCool earlier about his call for help to run the next PgOSS. The last PgOSS was lots of fun, we have people coming in just to check out the Penang FOSS thing.

Well, obviously we lack manpower.
So if you are in Penang and interested to join the team, this is the ToDo list that you might be interested to get into.
Event planning
Organizing
Looking for presenter
Spreading the words of PgOSS event
Linux CDs give-away
Giving presentations
Donation
We you can reach geek00L at #myoss @ freenode, and me at this number here, zero one seven - five four seven zero two four seven. Yeah, I changed my number recently. :D
(If you do ring me up, you can call me Shitmores -- no worries) :D :D

I really hope we can our November PgOSS.


Top 9 books to read to become a professional Java developer
2006-10-28T13:20:00.000+08:00
You can forget the other shallow Java books on the market. I have put together a short list of great Java books for newbies aspiring to become professional Java programmer. These are the books I wished I had when I was starting out early in my career.

Follow this link here to view the books.

No these books won't turn you into a great Java developer overnight, but invest time and absorb the knowledge and you are surely on the right path.

However if you absolutely need to read a good Java newbie book this year, then get Agile Java(TM): Crafting Code with Test-Driven Development (Robert C. Martin Series).

Or you just want to sharpen the skills regardless of the language you use then get The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master.

Ultimately, a good Java book will always make you a better programmer.


A little thought about PetalingStreet.org's AutoPinger
2006-10-26T21:43:00.000+08:00
I was setting up my new Wordpress blog and applying for the PetalingStreet.org autopinger.  The instruction to setup AutPinger for self-installed server caught my attention.

To obtain the Ping URLs for Project Petaling Street, please write an email with your blog URL (e.g. http://www.myblogname.com) as the SUBJECT to the following email address: autopinger (a) petalingstreet.org. A reply with the latest ping URL will be sent to you. This ping URL changes on a regular basis to defeat ping spammers so please make sure your membership details are up to date as an email notification will be sent to you whenever the ping URL changes.
Changing the ping URL is a feeble attempt to discourage spammers. In fact it is quite easy to solve that problem (if I'm a spammer that is).

Just apply for an auto pinger URL myself, and have my SPAM scripts to update accordingly when the ping URL changes.

Talk about spamming, I am reading this book, "Inside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark Side" by Spammer X. I don't know who is Spammer X. And I am not sure if he is actually happy that he couldn't get any fame from writing this book. But hell, I'm sure he enjoys the wealth. You see this is a really good book.

If you have the time, I recomend it. I couldn't stop reading after the first chapter.





Firefox 2.0 is out and this is how you get Newsfox to work
2006-10-26T21:31:00.000+08:00
If you are like me, who reads alot of online mags and blogs, you need a RSS reader. And if you happen to use Newsfox and Firefox 2.0, you would know how pissed I was.

Well, be glad the sufferings is over and this is how you get Newsfox to work now.

Step 1:  Go http://newsfox.mozdev.org/.
Step 2:  Install dev version of Newsfox
Step 3:  Restart and rejoice.

Actually you can cheat by just clicking here to install.
This links directly to the deve xpi file. Have fun!






Linux is not boring at all man
2006-10-14T12:34:00.000+08:00
Look at this coolness




Google search source code now
2006-10-10T11:48:00.000+08:00
Something new from Google, "Advanced Code Search"
POSIX regex search
License aware
package-constrainable
search even if contained in archived files
I tried it, and it was fun.
See what I mean here, here, and this.

Well, you go try now.
http://www.google.com/help/faq_codesearch.html