/dev/weblog

So I put an extra gigabyte of RAM in my modest development server and installed Xen to do some playing around.  Amongst the many new experiences, I saw this message which made me chuckle.

clocksource/0: Time went backwards: ret=343f6d032989 delta=-17674760 shadow=343f4cbff272 offset=21530354

It looks as though I inadvertently created a DeLorean DMC-12.

In recent months, I've taken to spreading the love that is Ubuntu. 

For Christmas, I gifted it to my parents and installed it on their PCs.  My dad uses the Internet and checks his e-mail, my mom does some more power user things, like scanning documents, syncing music to her iPod Nano, and managing her photos (I even got her dated Windows Pocket PC syncing correctly).  They both enjoyed not having to pay to renew their security packages.

When Jaunty Jackalope came out, I made sure my friend Dustin got it installed—who had more malware infections on his Windows XP laptop than I've ever seen.  He was blown away by how simple the software installation process is, and he's now considering marriage with Compiz Fusion.  Alas, I couldn't get Planescape Torment working for him under Wine.

Deidre, one of the players in my tabletop roleplaying group, has requested a Live CD to try it out—soon she too will be one of us.

Not too long ago, I set up my friend Serge with a dual boot of Ubuntu on top of pre-existing Vista.  The only reason he even agreed to keep Vista there was because his Intel graphics chipset did not play well with WoW on Wine.

Serge's wife Cristi has been declaring that she's fed up with her Windows XP laptop and just today mentioned it's now unusable thanks to malware infections.  We have plans to get together soon to get her hooked up as well.  The best part—her direct words were: "I would like to destroy Windows forever with the IRON FIST OF UBUNTU JUSTICE!!"

The Florida Supreme Court has approved Judge Dava Tunis' recommendations for the permanent disbarment of John B. "Jack" Thompson, forever and ever, amen.  They're also slapping him with $43,675.35 in disciplinary costs (facial!).

Basically, he's got 30 days to appeal or it's GAME OVER.  Of course, appealing will be very difficult because he needs another attorney in good standing with the bar to file the motion (so he can't do it himself).

This comes on the heels of the news that the RIAA lost its $222K verdict against Jammy Thomas! ZDNet writes:

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Davis dismissed the verdict, saying it was based on the faulty "making available" theory of distribution. Thomas will face a new trial, in which the RIAA will have to prove actual distribution.

The decision means the RIAA now has zero wins at trial, Wired notes.

Apparently, Thursday is a good day for law. 

Eclipse Ganymede came out today.  (Those who donated could have gotten it earlier).

Here's a screenshot of my download speed for Ganymede.

Thanks for ~2.0MiB/sec download speeds, Verizon FiOS!

Now I'm about to install the latest Integration version of PDT, so we'll see how that goes.

I like programming and listening to music.  It helps set a pace for me to work.  This little gem just popped in my head while I was listening to AC/DC:

Yes, I know. I'm awesome.

Build 6 of the Xyster Framework has been released. Tons of new features both in core and in incubator.

Please head over to the Xyster site and grab yourself a copy.

Last night I tried to install Oracle 10g XE on my Debian-based database server for testing purposes. Tried is the key word here.

Interestingly enough, Oracle offers a deb repository for this purpose. Add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://oss.oracle.com/debian unstable main non-free

Then execute the following commands as root (or with sudo) to add Oracle's public signing key and then install Oracle XE:

# wget http://oss.oracle.com/el4/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle  -O- | sudo apt-key add - 
# apt-get update
# apt-get install oracle-xe

Here's the catch: my database server is an OpenVZ VPS. The Oracle installer checks for a sufficiently large swap partition and will bomb out if one of a sufficient size is not found. OpenVZ VPSs do not have a swap partition.

OpenVZ does support swap space, and that swap space can be set with barriers and limits, but the swap space is as a whole meaning that there is one swap space for the entire system, not a user-configurable swap space per-VPS.

So now comes the task of tricking the installer to think I the VPS has a swap partition, or trying to get it on there some other way.  Stay tuned for the nuttiness.

Oracle is stupid.

Hey, this is a quick reminder.  Don't forget about Shutdown Day on May 3rd.

Be part of one of the biggest global experiments ever to take place on the Internet. The idea behind Shutdown Day is to find out how many people can go without a computer for one whole day, and what will happen if we all participate!

You might know by now that Adobe makes my blood boil sometimes.  Their needlessly expensive graphics and publishing package represents all that open source is not.  When I read news blips this morning about Open Screen, I was pleasantly surprised.

This blurb taken from a CNet article:

Wadhwani said the Open Screen project has five basic elements. Adobe will remove license restriction on the .swf file format. "It is published already, but in order to view it you have to say you will not create a competing player," said Wadhwani. "We're lifting that restriction. People have been worried about vendor lock-in. This will remove that obstacle, and concern."

Adobe will also remove licensing fees for embedding Flash Player on devices. The software has always been a free download for PC users. But Adobe has charged for embedding on devices. Those charges will disappear with the next release of the software.

Even though Adobe still rubs me the wrong way, this move is entirely in the right direction. Maybe this means I can finally get a working Flash player on my x84_64 notebook.

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron came out yesterday. I meant to upgrade yesterday but, on a whim, I thought I'd install from scratch and live blog it. What follows is the result of that effort.

Did I mention I ordered the limited edition Hardy Heron t-shirt from the Canonical store? Because I did.

Continue reading "Ubuntu Hardy Heron Install Live Blog"

If you want foreign key support in MySQL, you need to use the InnoDB storage engine. If you want fulltext index support, you need to use the MyISAM storage engine. Ain't that a bitch?

Just for the record: PostgreSQL supports them both well.

To be fair, the syntax for fulltext searching in MySQL is more simple than that of fulltext searching in PostgreSQL. Here's an example:

MySQL:

SELECT title
FROM example
WHERE MATCH (title, body) AGAINST ('foobar')

PostgreSQL:

SELECT title
FROM example
WHERE to_tsvector(title || body) @@ to_tsquery('foobar');

So while the syntax is easier, you can't use fulltext and foreign keys simultaneously in MySQL. PostgreSQL wins this battle.

Build 5 of the Xyster Framework has been released. This version includes more features in Xyster_Container and various other slight modifications. You'll also find a bit more user documentation.

Please head over to the Xyster site and grab yourself a copy.

Note that this version of the framework uses features in Zend Framework 1.5 which hasn't been released yet. You can get a snapshot of ZF from their download page.

Congratulations to the Drupal team on their release of Drupal 6.0! There are many changes under the hood, but perhaps the most instantly useful of which is their native support for OpenID.

PHP 4 is end-of-life very soon. In addition to offering projects the chance to refactor and improve their application design, PHP 5 offers many things PHP 4 just doesn't. This series of posts will deal with things projects can get their fingers into that will benefit everyone.

The third: play nice with authentication.

Your application isn't the only kid on the block, especially if it's a single-purpose application like a forum or an issue tracker. Nothing is more frustrating than having to hack your application so my users don't have to login to different parts of my Web site.

Clay Loveless made a post in June of '06 stressing the stupidity of "loner applications".

You can remedy your application's isolation using one of two things: OpenID authentication or some kind of authentication plugin API or adapter.

Implementing OpenID is perhaps the lesser solution. Users would still have to put their OpenID address into each application on a site to login; it's not nearly as bad as having separate passwords, but still less convenient than a unified sign-on.

The preferred solution to this mess is to provide an API for others to write pluggable authentication modules and then pick which one is being used in a configuration somewhere. I applaud DokuWiki for their very simple and effective implementation of such an adapter. I also have experience with MediaWiki's plugin system, but don't get me started on the MediaWiki source code. Mantis has a decent start on an authentication plugin, but it still leaves much to be desired.

If you're going to start an authentication adapter system from scratch, may I suggest Zend_Auth? Adapters are a breeze to implement and Zend_Auth takes care of persisting a user's session. If you're using the Zend_Controller MVC, may I also suggest Xyster_Controller_Plugin_Auth? It gives you the ability to specify the MVC dispatch locations for login prompting, success, and failure.

Actually, adapters and plugins are a good idea for any software. If I have to edit a single source file for your application, you're doing a poor job at keeping extensibility in mind.

Build 4 of the Xyster Framework has been released. Most notable new feature: Xyster_Container, the dependency injection package.

Please head over to the Xyster site and grab yourself a copy.

Note that this version of the framework uses features in Zend Framework 1.5 which hasn't been released yet. You can get a snapshot of ZF from their download page.