To MacBook Pro or not?

Two people I trust have just taken the dive into the MacBook Pro world. Sami Shalabi and Will Raabe. They have both promised updates on their thoughts and how much they use them. Will tends to love his toys and will test out all the latest gadets I am sure. Sami is more the hard core coder and if Sami likes it, I know it will be a very good development machine (fast compiles and eclipse j2ee friendly).
If both of these people still love it in a month, then it will be almost impossible for me to resist ditching my 2 month old Dell and getting one.

5 countries in a week

We have arrived in Australia now and hope to stay for a while. In the last week we have been in Bad Homburg Germany, Dublin & Cork Ireland, London UK and then Dubai UEA on the way to Sydney Australia. It will be good to be a little more settled and less "homeless" for the release of ProjectLounge Lite. We go to Brisbane this weekend and hope that will be the last of the flights for a while.
Having, just complained about flights, I was really impressed with Emirates for their service. Coming back to Australia did not really feel "proper" by not getting on Qantas. However, the combination fare from travelmood could not be beat on price. The economy sector from London to Dubia was only 6 hours and I did notice the extra 2 inches leg room over BA/QF. They even give out hot towels. However, when it came to the lounge in Dubai and the Business service to Sydney I was very impressed.
If they can keep up the prices, I am not sure I would fly anything else on long hauls to Australia. They even had an espresso machine on board to get me going before landing - they really thought of everything.

Reporting Spam to SpamCop from Lotus Notes

Here is a very simple agent to report a select email or emails to spamcop's quick reporting service. You will need a spamcop account and access to quick reporting.

It uses a new r6 feature of lotusscript to get the received header information so that spamcop will know exactly where the email came from at each hop. This is important as they use this for their black lists so that the correct servers are blocked while the innocent receiving servers are not.

It is also important to list your allowed hosts with spamcop so that if it routes through some of your servers then these will not be treated at open relays.

Sub Initialize
Dim s As New notessession
Dim dc As NotesDocumentCollection
Dim db As notesdatabase
Dim doc As notesdocument

Set db = s.CurrentDatabase
Set dc = db.UnprocessedDocuments

Set doc = dc.GetFirstDocument


While Not(doc Is Nothing)

Dim text As String
text = ""
Forall t In doc.GetReceivedItemText
text = text + "Received: " + t + Chr(10)
End Forall
Forall it In doc.Items
If it.name <> "Received" Then
text = text + it.name + ": " + it.text + Chr (10)
End If
End Forall

Dim mail As notesdocument
Set mail = db.CreateDocument

mail.form = "memo"
mail.subject = "Spam to report"
mail.body = text

Call mail.Send(False, "spam@uce.gov")
Call mail.Send(False, "quick.[yoursecretkeyhere]@spam.spamcop.net")

'You can then save or just delete it here
doc.RemoveFromFolder("($junkmail)")
Call doc.Save(True, False)

Set doc = dc.GetNextDocument(doc)
Wend
End Sub

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Rails acts_as_threaded Plugin

Left a comment on the acts_as_threaded plugin page as a warning to someone using it that wants to use proper ids for their tables.

If you end up using a guid for the table primary key and root_id, it you need to enclose the "#{self[root_column]}" with quotes. If you don't the sql will get broken by the hyphens in the id.

Otherwise, it works well even when you combine it with guid self generating 36 char ids.

Lines with root_column will change from something like this:

self.class.update_all( "#{left_col_name} = (#{left_col_name} + 2)", "#{scope_condition} AND #{root_column} = #{self[root_column]} AND #{left_col_name} >= #{right_bound}" )

to become something like this:

self.class.update_all( "#{left_col_name} = (#{left_col_name} + 2)", "#{scope_condition} AND #{root_column} = '#{self[root_column]}' AND #{left_col_name} >= #{right_bound}" )

People getting taller and seats getting smaller

I would like the executive at Airbus who thought of the idea of standing room only flights to fly economy to Australia from the USA or Europe before adding these seats. In fact, I challenge any airline executive who runs a service to Australia to fly this route in the small seats down the back.
I would like to see economy sleeper seats before economy standing seats. There must be a way to have bunk beds or the like that still allow you to have lots of people on the flight and not taking up too much room.
I am not against getting a lot of people onto the planes. In fact, that is the best idea. Flying is a really polluting business and if we can have more people on the flights, then this is better than more flights. However, it would be nice if there was a way to get some sleep when you are stuck on a 16 hour flight. 

gzip for your bedroom

I have been packing away some bedding using a vacuum bag system. I always thought these systems were a bit of a joke but they really work well on bedding and pillows (and we certainly have a lot of pillows). Anyway, I recommend a vacuum pack system for anyone who is moving. It really feels like gzip for your bedroom... now if only I could store these things on a sftp server somewhere while we move.

Geocodes are better than an address

After playing with google maps, I see now that the geocodes are far better than just an address. For instance, in the local TV station, many people find it hard to locate within the high school. However, with the proper geocodes GLatLng(42.4473, -71.3469) instead of the address one GLatLng(42.447601, -71.342077) it was possible to get the marker right at the door to the studio. Anyway, if you are finding it hard to find CCTV, then I hope you find the geocoded map at http://www.concordtv.org/site/index/directions useful in your search.

Hunting down invalid signatures

I have spent the last few days trying to hunt down an archive problem in a notes mail file. In doing this, I wrote a small lotusscript button to verify signatures that I can share here.

This could be written in the C API. However, keeping it in a button makes it easy to email out to users for them to test.

Const MAXUSERNAME =256
Declare Function NSFNoteVerifySignature Lib "nnotes.dll" Alias "NSFNoteVerifySignature" ( Byval hNote As Long, Byval null1 As Long, Byval null2 As Long, Byval retSigner As String, Byval retCertifier As String) As Integer
Declare Function NSFNoteUnsign Lib "nnotes.dll" Alias "NSFNoteUnsign" ( Byval hNote As Long) As Integer
Const NOERROR = 0
Const PKG_NSF = 512
Const ERR_NOTE_NOT_SIGNED = PKG_NSF+89 'Document is not signed
Const ERR_NOTE_INVSIG2 = PKG_NSF+91 'Document has been modified or corrupted since signed! (data)

Sub Click(Source As Button)
Dim ses As New NotesSession, irc As Integer
Dim retSigner As String, retCertifier As String
Dim doc As notesdocument, vw As NotesView
Dim db As notesdatabase
Dim dc As notesdocumentcollection
Dim fileNum%
Dim i As Integer, count As Integer

Set vw = ses.currentdatabase.views(0)
Set db = ses.currentdatabase

fileNum% = Freefile
Open "c:\temp\signatures.txt" For Output As fileNum%


Set dc = db.GetProfileDocCollection()
Set doc = dc.GetFirstDocument
count = dc.Count
i = 1
Print "Check profile Notes: " &Cstr(count)
While Not doc Is Nothing
Call fix_signature(doc, fileNum, i, count)
i = i + 1
Set doc = dc.GetNextDocument(doc)
Wend

Set dc = db.AllDocuments
Set doc = dc.GetFirstDocument
count = dc.Count
i = 1
Print "Check data Notes: " &Cstr(count)
While Not doc Is Nothing
Call fix_signature(doc, fileNum, i, count)
i = i + 1
Set doc = dc.GetNextDocument(doc)
Wend

Close fileNum%
End Sub

Sub fix_signature(doc As notesdocument, fileNum%, i, count)
Dim textline As String
retSigner = String$(MAXUSERNAME ,Chr(0))
retCertifier = String$(MAXUSERNAME ,Chr(0))

irc%= NSFNoteVerifySignature (doc.handle, 0, 0, retSigner, retCertifier)
Print Cstr(i) &"/" &Str(count)
If irc% = NOERROR Then
textline = "SIGNED: " &Cstr(doc.NoteID) &" " &Left(retSigner, Instr(retSigner,Chr(0))-1)
Write #fileNum%, textline
Elseif irc% = ERR_NOTE_NOT_SIGNED Then
textline = "NO SIGNATURE: " &Cstr(doc.NoteID)
Write #fileNum%, textline
Elseif irc% = ERR_NOTE_INVSIG2 Then
textline = "INVALID_SIGNATURE: " &Cstr(doc.NoteID)
irc% = NSFNoteUnsign(doc.handle)
If (irc% = NO_ERROR) Then
Call doc.Save(True, False)
textline = "REMOVED SIGNATURE: " &Cstr(doc.NoteID)
Else
textline = "COULD NOT REMOVE SIGNATURE: " &Cstr(doc.NoteID)
End If
Write #fileNum%, textline
Else
textline = "ERR: " &Cstr(irc%) &" " &Cstr(doc.NoteID)
Write #fileNum%, textline
End If
End Sub


Updated Full Text Wiki for Ruby on Rails

I have been playing with Ruby on Rails for a while now and started to use it with MySql's full text searching abilities.
I added some code to a search library on the Ruby on Rails wiki - hope it helps others in the space
see: http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/TextSearch

FastCGI failing on Fedora with Ruby on Rails

After battling with all the FAQ and wikis getting FastCGI to work with Apache, I found the last problem. FastCGI spawns temporary files in your /etc/httpd/log/fastcgi/dynamic directory (unless you override this in your http.conf file).

I was still getting these errors:

[Mon Mar 13 17:03:08 2006] [crit] (13)Permission denied: FastCGI: can't create (dynamic) server "/var/www/html/test.rails/public/dispatch.fcgi": bind() failed [/tmp/fastcgi/dynamic/a452aa13feeda365028a2d43d1b2ce13]

It turned out that my problem was SELinux getting in the way. It really locks down what the apache user can do (which is probably a really good thing). However, for fastcgi it was locked down a little too much. I intend to now fight a little with SELinux to see if I can get it to play nice.

If you want to temporarily disable it, you can run this command:

echo "0" >/selinux/enforce

you can echo a "1" to turn it back on.

Looking forward to some Sun

We are in London now until the 21st when we go back to Concord and had a good week of rain and clouds. It is really amazing how a little bit of sun goes a long way in the winter. Coming from Brisbane, you really took the sun for granted where here and in Concord you notice it and try to make the most of it. All said, I could really use a few sunny days here in London and hope for the best.

Setting up BIND locally on XP

BIND looks to have very good install instructions at: http://www.zytrax.com/books/dns/ch5/win2k.html

but it seems like the "run as service" option has moved in XP. However, running locally on 127.0.0.1 address it did not seem to stop it if I ignore the errors that there are too many privileges. I would never do this in production, but then I would tend to run *nix there rather than XP.

I found the trick to be go to a command and run: C:\windows\system32\dns\bin\named-checkconf.exe

and check for any errors in your C:\windows\system32\dns\etc\named.conf (that you have create yourself compared with fedora that gives you a cache servers out of the box).

So, I can now dig rather than nslookup and us my own DNS server. I found different DSL providers seem to be really mean on caching their names and do not update them as fast as I would like.

dig @127.0.0.1 mazhire.com any

Mazhire is ready for car hire rental orders

We have launched a new car hire rental website at: http://www.mazhire.com and there is city level content on each major city in the world. This includes cities such as Brisbane, Austrlaia to larger ones like London, UK.
Here we can bring our own content and ideas per city to help anyone planning to rent or hire a car. Now that the back end is all sorted out, there remains lots more work including JSON, widegets, xml editions and other exciting ways to hire cars online.

I have added my bookmarks

I am now keeping a del.icio.us link roll in my blog so you can all see what sites I like. You might find my tagging interesting but it makes sense to me.

Is Ruby beyond Java?

I just bought the Ruby and Beyond Java book from Foyles in London. I have played with Ruby on Rails but after reading blogs I think a bit of reading is in order.
I cannot help but think scripting is not the answer here but I really miss what Notes/Domino provides in the web world. I like the idea of just creating a field once and getting Create, Read, Update, and Delete without too much work. Struts, Hibernate, JSP and Tomcat involve a lot of typing and it does take time. Maybe my issue is getting Notes like flexibility from a relational back end but I do want to think on this issue for a while and I suspect there is no easy answer here.

Farewell and thanks for all the fruit

After a wonderful full 6+ years at IRIS and then IBM, I have decided to go out on my own. I will be starting with a week in London, UK where I just flew into - the superbowl is on but I guess I miss the million dollar commercials here.

Thanks to all my wonderful friends and workmates at Westford and beyond. I had a really nice last week and had a chance to talk to almost everyone and wish them well.

The new support site my team was working on will continue to change the IBM world for the better and Notes/Domino is going to continue to be the leader in groupware. I had a unique opportunity to see how truly professional software is written, tested and supported and learned and grew so much there.

The last project I worked on really drove home the importance of the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern. It is really important that complicated web applications or portal sites have a solid pattern in place from the start in order ensure quality code. I also learned that the View should be given to two different skill sets: user interface (UI) and development. It is probably possible to have the html and backend code generated by the same person but I expect this to be the exception rather than the rule.

I also really appreciated the UI team that can produce really clean compliant XHTML code. Having such a clean base to build on really makes all the difference when putting together complicated sites. I also learned just how important the UI team was in the development process and would encourage all UI teams that are working in the web space, to be able to provide XHTML rather than just photoshop or png files. If you cannot produce the HTML, then the chances are slim the development team will make a site that looks how you intended.

Franchising legislation being debated in Congress

The Federal Communications Commission is seeking comment on this issue. Click Here. I am not sure what comments they want apart from it is a bad idea that was paid for by companies and not citizens. If only they would conduct some independant research rather than rely on what the lobby groups provide :(

Cash is king - not miles

I have to disagree with a recent WSJ article "When It Still Makes Sense
To Take the Miles". I agree that their might be some point when it makes sense to use miles over cash back, but not based on the numbers they present.
I am not sure their "discounted" trans-atlantic flight is that discounted. The table gives an example of $900 as a discounted fare. I have personally never paid that much and am pretty picky when I fly. I like the morning flight out of Boston on BA so that I avoid the night flights that give you 3 hours sleep (maybe) and get you there at 5am in the morning.
Also, the example for a business class ticket from AA, at $6700 does not factor in two real points.
1. AA does not really have a proper business class (no bed), and
2. It is not too hard these days to get a decent discounted business class or economy plus flight.
In fact, recently, BA had a $199 each way economy plus ticket available. That is a discounted seat that is 7" longer.
The other missing point with points tickets is that you still have to pay for taxes and fees. Once you factor this into the table, I think you will find cash is king and I will stick to my Blue Cash card from AMEX.
Sorry WSJ, but I suspect you have written about this without asking the real question you need to ask and that is for the amount you pay (not the price advertised).

Inline HTML editors

Just found a neat HTML editor that I will try out at the concordtv web site. Seems really neat: http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/
It was mention in the comparison chart at: http://www.geniisoft.com/showcase.nsf/WebEditors

Concord TV Grand Opening is on Thursday

The renovations have been completed and the TV Station is about to be opened.

The Grand Opening: Reception & Open House
Thursday, January 5, 2006
5:00-7:00 PM
ALL WELCOME!

The Open House is followed by the Annual Meeting of the Corporation.

http://www.concordtv.org (or 978-369-5038)