February 4, 2010 by ricog
I’ve been digging around on webOS for a little while, learning how it ticks. I get pretty excited about the possibilities of open source mobile development. Although I haven’t created any official apps yet, I’ve learned some pretty cool stuff.
A few weeks after I got my Palm Pre my All Inboxes mailbox counter got out of sync. If I had any unread mail it would show +5 more than what I had. I think this occurred when I removed an account or had a crash or something. I’ve forgotten the details. Anyway, it was bugging the hell out of me. So today I decided to track it down. To my surprise it wasn’t too hard to figure out. Read more »
Tags: Linux, Palm Pre, SQLite, webOS
Categories: webOS •
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January 15, 2010 by ricog
Sometimes it’s surprising how many web users don’t know what a web browser is. I don’t know how many times I’ve been helping a customer, relative, etc and said “open a web browser” and their reply is “what is a web browser”. My immediate thought is “DAMN, how in the heck am I ever going to get them through converting a word doc into PDF and uploading it to the WordPress site I just created for them”.
Note: If you happen to be a customer, relative, etc and are reading this, don’t take offense. Trust me, if you were trying to walk me through stuff you do at work every day, you’d be saying “WTF, this guy is an idiot” too.
It usually turns out that they know more about the web than that first response reveals. Their intelligence isn’t the problem. There is a deeper cause. And a lot of times I can rephrase and say “open Internet Explorer”. Or amazingly, if they don’t know what IE is either, I can almost always get away with telling them to “get on the internet” or “go to Google” (or Yahoo, etc).
The problem I think is that the web browser is such an integral part of a web users Read more »
Tags: chrome, firefox, internet explorer, web browser, Web Development
Categories: Web Development •
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November 6, 2009 by ricog
Google Wave has a lot of potential, and in many ways is already useful despite being in early beta. One problem I’ve seen with many people however is forgetting to check for new waves. Here are a few tools that can help.
Google Wave Notification – Firefox add-on
Google Wave Notification – Chrome add-on
Waveboard – Google Wave Client for iPhone and Mac
Google searches indicate that there may be a Windows Desktop notifier in the works, but I can’t confirm. If you know of any others please comment and I’ll add them to the list.
Tags: Google Wave
Categories: CakePHP •
2 Comments »
November 4, 2009 by ricog
Jungle Disk is a great tool. If you use it with Ubuntu though, you might have a little trouble getting it to run automatically. It comes as an executable file in gz or deb format for Ubuntu, but there is no clear way to set it up at startup.
Adding it in System > Preferences > Startup Applications doesn’t properly load it into the panel, which confuses it and causes it to constantly pop back up when you try minimize it. This was driving me crazy. What’s more, when shutting down or rebooting, Jungle Disk doesn’t cleanly exit and leaves a few session files laying around. This causes an error about multiple copies running when you try to run it on boot.
Fortunately I was able to work around these quirks. I’m happy to report that Jungle Disk is loading and working as expected now. Here is what I did:
- Put the following into a text file:
#!/bin/bash
if [ -f ~/.junglediskworkgroupinstance ]
then
rm ~/.junglediskworkgroupinstance;
fi
if [ -f ~/.com.jungledisk.workgroupservice.status ]
then
rm ~/.com.jungledisk.workgroupservice.status;
fi
sleep 30;
/usr/local/bin/junglediskworkgroup;
- Make the file executable with “chmod 755 /path/to/file” or something similar.
- Add the new command to System > Preferences > Startup Applications.
You might change the sleep period for more or less time as needed. 30 seems to work well for me. And I’m sure there are better ways to handle this. If you have a any recommendations, let me know.
Tags: Jungle Disk, Ubuntu
Categories: Ubuntu •
3 Comments »
June 8, 2009 by ricog
If you run VirtualBox you may eventually run into problems with the time or time sync within your VM guest. You can run this command on the host to disable time sync:
vboxmanage setextradata <vmname> “VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/GetHostTimeDisabled” “1″
Just replace <vmname> with the name of your guest. On Windows hosts, you’ll need to change the command to “VBoxManage”.
You will most likely want to set the client to sync with a time server after this. On Windows clients, just double click on the time and go to the Internet Time tab. Check the box and choose time.nist.gov (better reliability).
I needed to solve this because QuickBooks Pro 2000 complains about the system time being changed continuously while in multi-user mode.
I found this simple VirtualBox time sync tip in a post titled Synchronize a Virtualized Domain Controller with External Time Servers.
Tags: Linux, Ubuntu, VirtualBox
Categories: Ubuntu •
8 Comments »
May 27, 2009 by ricog
In a previous post, I wrote about running Synergy on boot in Ubuntu. Synergy also lets you setup keyboard shortcuts for various actions. Below I show how to setup Synergy keyboard shortcuts for switching between computers. Now you can work away without the need to grab the mouse to get from one screen to the next.
- Open a terminal and enter
sudo gedit /etc/synergy.conf
- Add an options section with keystroke lines something like this
section: options
keystroke(Alt+1) = switchToScreen(comp1)
keystroke(Alt+2) = switchToScreen(comp2)
end
- Save the file and exit
- Restart Synergy (reboot if you don’t know how to restart otherwise)
You will need to replace “comp1″ and “comp2″ with your computer names or aliases. These should be listed in the screens section of your synergy.conf. And of course, if you have more than 2 screens, just add more keystroke lines.
You can learn more about Synergy’s options on the Synergy configuration page.
Tags: Linux, Synergy, Ubuntu
Categories: Ubuntu •
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May 25, 2009 by ricog
Synergy is a great tool that lets you control multiple computers with one keyboard and mouse. If you use Ubuntu, or another linux distro, it may not be entirely obvious how to get synergy to run on boot. Below are the steps I took:
- Install Synergy if you haven’t already
- Frontend applications like QuickSynergy will install Synergy for you
- Otherwise, you can go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager, and search for “synergy”
- Create your synergy config file
- Store the synergy config in /etc/synergy.conf
- From a terminal type sudo gedit /etc/synergy.conf
- Set synergy to run on boot
- Go to System > Preferences > Startup Applications
- Add Synergy, entering /usr/bin/synergys (note the s on the end) for the command
- Reboot to test it out
I’m sure there are many other ways to accomplish this. If you are interested in learning more about Synergy, the Synergy-plus project maintains an excellent list of Synergy Related Projects.
Tags: Linux, Synergy, Ubuntu
Categories: Ubuntu •
1 Comment »
May 11, 2009 by ricog
Over the last 3 weeks we’ve been working hard in our secret lab. We’ve been pouring in extra time and effort on a tool that will help revolutionize the way people get things done. Although our new application is still a work in progress, we just couldn’t wait any longer to start sharing our creation.
Peep! is the new, friendly way to get things done. With focus on simplicity and speed right from the start. You’ll be able to think more about getting things done and less about your collection tools, inbox, and filing systems.
Get started today at http://trypeep.com.
Categories: CakePHP •
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May 7, 2009 by ricog
When adding, editing, or deleting records in a web application, it is common to return the user to where they originated. That is what they typically expect. The SmartRedirect plugin allows just that, without any coding in your models, controllers, or views.
You can grab the plugin using git or by zip from the SmartRedirect Plugin project page on GitHub.
All you need to do is extract the file and drop the smart_redirect folder into your app/plugins directory. After that, add SmartRedirect.AutoReturn to your components list. Something like this:
var $components = array('SmartRedirect.AutoReturn');
Now when you add, edit, or delete records in your application, you’ll be returned to the page you were on before.
The plugin does use a custom view, so may conflict with other plugins such as Debug Kit.
Tags: CakePHP, plugin, redirect
Categories: CakePHP, Web Development •
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May 2, 2009 by ricog
CakePHP makes it easy to reuse your small blocks of presentation code throughout your application by using Elements. You can read more about them here:
http://book.cakephp.org/view/97/Elements
Sometimes though you want to reuse a regular controller view without moving the code to an element. In fact, if the view code is specific to the controller, it is good practice to keep it in the controller view.
Fortunately this is fairly simple. Just create the view and then reference it like this:
<?php echo $this->element('../projects/menu'); ?>
In the example above, I’m accessing the following file: /views/projects/menu.ctp
As always, the element will have access to all existing view variables (the ones typically passed using $this->set()).
Tags: CakePHP, controller, view, Web Development
Categories: CakePHP, Web Development •
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I am a web developer and technology geek. I enjoy being healthy and hanging out with my family.
