Buddhamartini.com
I’ve brought back my old site Buddhamartini.com
Please go there for any gardening hydroponic natural type stuff.
Best,
–Joey
Different Direction
So I’m still working, different situation now, but still working. Rails is off the charts, XUL is gone, Dojo is in, Prototype is in. Winter is still here, but sun is coming soon. So how about a completely different direction??
I’ve been working on a hydroponics system lately. Will post more soon!
Update
Ok, so here’s where I’m at. I’m over Rails, done with it, caput. It’s got the greatest ideas, but the implementation is lacking. Many of the most common ideas are easy to implement elsewhere (Like PHP’s Adodb Active Record as one example). So my interests have floated back to PHP. I’m still a big JavaScript and XUL fan, and have been playing around with Dojo and Prototype a lot and have been able to accomplish a lot. And PHP and other languages have matured more than Rails, and you don’t end up with bizarre errors that are unhelpful, impossible to google with, and just silly when you learn the problem(the gem didn’t fully uninstall itself and ended up causing problems with the new version). I don’t consider wiping out all of my gems, ruby, and all rails stuff and doing a fresh reinstall “fixing” a problem. It’s more like whitewashing over an existing problem. To those who enjoy Ruby and Rails, keep going after the dream man. You have my support. It’s a great testbed for new ideas, and I had no problems with Ruby itself. Oh, and Rails people, if you haven’t yet, put spam controls on the Wiki. It’s used by lots of people but having to go to an earlier version every time you load a page is really a pain in the ass.
But PHP I’m finding is lacking something, a big something. Multithreadedness. Before, simple apps, simple servers, no problem. Now I’ve done work on 8 core machines, and find something that takes 20 minutes to run(typically statistics), but I could be using 2 or more of those cores and it would run that much faster. Sometimes there are ways around this that are simple, other times there are not. You can always break up one request into multiple request, since Ajax is Asynchronous. Sometimes you can execute each thread separately and have it randomly pick another server(in the case of Clusters) to do the work on or with. Not that I’m a multithreaded master, but I’ve done some before in C++ and I know the benefits. Sometimes it’s a good idea to make one request, rather than many, and keep the thin client, well, thin.
A good way around the lack of threads can be found here.
PHP6 doesn’t hold any promise for my current dilemma, but it has lots of new great features. I’d hate to learn another language just to be turned off to it.
There also looks to be a good implementation of threading here, but I would prefer more built-in approach. So I’m not giving up on PHP, far from it. For 90% of what I do it fits the bill perfectly.
I’ve been thinking of .NET or something, which has *nix support from mono, but I don’t care for the heavier languages unless there is serious advantages. ASP.NET is far from what I have intention of doing. I’ve always been averse to python but it could be time to look into it.
Holy Crap!
A new post. Where did this come from?
On being late to the party, or, PubSub, Jabber, and Pain
So recently I’ve decided to get back into Jabber, all that fun stuff. I’ve meddled with it a little before, but not very much. What got me into it was xmpp4moz which I’ve been able to use as a xulrunner extension for the big app I’ve been working on for work purposes. Hey, I thought, it would be great to use as middleware, and easy to apply for any minor instant messaging stuff people want to do.
So far so good, some bumps in the road getting xmpp4moz to work but the main dev there fixed it up real quick and no problems now. So I’m developing a pubsub implementation, on my company’s time but not in billable hours so I can release it for the world to use(it’ll work directly with xmpp4moz which handles the account details on it’s own). So far so good. Reading up on the XEP-0060: Publish-Subscribe. Apparently all this was very big recently, with a PubSub.com search engine and everything that is now defunct. Looks like a lot of steam is gone now. Very few new pubsub news or work. I’m running ejabberd, as it is what I’ve had the most luck with before. This time around, I could care less about transports, I have meebo for all of my IM needs. I’m using Sameplace, Meebo, and Gajim to help with my development right now. By the way, check out Sameplace and all of it’s fun stuff, like travelr and others. Very very nifty. Definately an 7 or 8 on the nifty scale.
Also using some google talk. On the work side, app side, getting ejabberd to work with my authentication scheme was pretty easy. After reading thru the XEP and using Gajim’s XML console, trying to make some default and non-default nodes, nothing but errors. Looking at ejabberd, nothing but cries for help. Apparently ejabberd doesn’t support the full featureset of pubsub. It’s very limited in fact. You can’t even name a node actually. It does instant nodes, but that’s all. Hmm, that could be usable with some outside hacks, but I’d rather avoid that. For my purposes, JAM(jabber as middleware) it would work, but this really has a potential for so much more.
Now tired of working with ejabberd and it’s lacking featureset for my specifici needs, I look at jabberd2. Wait a second, it doesn’t do pubsub either? What? Apparently, only ejabberd natively does pubsub, and not much of it(although again, it could work. I’m not here to diminish what ejabberd CAN do because it works quite beautifully). Ok, so google “jabber pubsub implementation.”
Enter Idavoll.
Apparently there is a XEP-0114: Jabber Component Protocol that Idavoll requrires, and ejabberd supports. Wow! Now we’re talking. So, hmm, light on details in the install. Ok, I installed the requirements, did the python setup.py install
Now what? Ok, mktap and configure it. Ok, it’s still not running. Don’t see anything on running it. Hmm, nothing. Maybe this twisted stuff is where it’s at. Yep, twistd idavoll and you don’t have to configure anything you can pass the configuration variables on the command line. Next step is to set it up under daemontools or something. Setting it up in ejabberd was simple, just follow the instructions for jmc. As it’s a component, just change the names, jmc.host.com becomes pubsub.engram9.com. Comment out mod_pubsub. Restart… Niiice. It works. You can even browse to it now, with Gajim and ejabberd you couldn’t Disco it no matter what you did or tried, even if nodes were in there. Now though, with XMPP4Moz you get a 404. Hmm, probably something in the configuration.
I hope this helps someone, being late to the party sucks, and finding a great protocol that seems to be diminished in reputation because of a now-defunct company is even sadder. But there is new hope, even if it’s with some strange python thing with few instructions if you’re not familiar. I hope this article helps someone, I’ll keep posting new data as I come across it.
Niiice
Niiice. Sorry it’s quiet, just working on stuff pointing out cool stuff. Dynarch calendar is awesome. 
Japan’s “real” 3D image projector - Engadget
Update: Actually, Rails Bundles is not so nice. 
Errors out in Rails 1.2.2. “wrong number of arguments (6 for 3)”
I’m not a rails genius(yet) so I can’t figure out how to fix(tried fixing it though). Tried to get SVN version of Rails Bundles but getting SVN timeouts. Ah well. Looked awesome, wish I could fix it.
Sweet
This is awesome. Rails Flash MP3/ImageSlideshow/Media Player Plugin
Haunted House Nation/Rails/Mac Mini HDTV Screen Paint
Where the heck is Haunted House Nation? Well, it is off season(although, technically, the season for house planning is just starting now) and I’m still struggling with the drupal upgrade, but it will be back in time. I plan to have it up, better than ever, by August. I’m working on a few other sites right now in my spare time(not much!) and playing with rails still for the new sites. HHN will always be drupal, as I have to do no coding with Drupal to get what I want.
Speaking of which, I did get the new 2nd ed of the rails book(Amazon was much cheaper than that “other” place) and it’s awesome. They’ve got migrations in there now, which is probably the killer switch for me as far as rails go. Even the main PHP app I work on has a psuedo-migrations in it that works well enough and makes much more sense.
On the HDTV front, I’m still sanding down the screen and filling in the screw holes(that have been grinded down) with wood putty. Hoping to put the Screen Goo on it soon. I can’t wait, it’s gonna look great.
USDTV is done
Low-cost alternative to cable/satellite is done. USDTV today announced they’d be closing down operations. Ah well, I was kind of looking forward to getting it but they didn’t have any of the channels I wanted. I closed out my cable after it switched from Comcast to Time Warner, after my internet was down for a little over a week with just a busy signal for me to complain to. Dish wanted too much money for a HD DVR(at the time, they wanted $800) although I now understand they have an affordable one, I’m still not really interested. I hope TV over Broadband will come soon, and hopefully HD over IP will come soon after, but I won’t hold my breath.
Although my little Mac Mini is doing amazing things with it’s eyetv hybrid. Amazingly clear reception once I found a happy place for the antenna.
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VisoPic
Just saw this over at the Betas Site as well, a free Admaker that blends video / sound / pictures / attachments together. Visopic looks pretty cool but I only see it as limited usefulness(blend sound? Bleh, no craigslist with sounds is a craigslist I want to be on!).
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Ambient Clock
Just saw this over at the Betas Site, an Ambient Clock that is colored based on what is going on. I love these concepts(like that old ball that changed colors, blue good, red bad, in between means in between). I’d still prefer a physical version of this that isn’t so expensive, but then again, a physical version that links to my google calendar would be pretty expensive.
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Texas Electric Choices
Yeah, ok, so living in Texas is pretty good 90% of the time. But electric prices are really high right now, at least with TXU, unless you sign up for 24 months of phone abuse and even higher prices, they’ll give you a $25 credit. Wow, let me contain my energy.
Ok, yeah, so this really is off topic, but, the State of Texas has a website for price comparisons. There’s also some sites out there that are popping up to give people “shopping comparisons” which, can you guess, compare only 3 or 4 companies, and can you guess which ones? The ones that charge enough to pay for an advertising budget. Use the state’s website, and you’ll see Amigo Energy is clearly (currently) the winner. Yeah, sounds like their Support line may not speak much English, but hey, neither does TXU’s. 
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Rails Plugin Repository
Talk about being out of the loop for awhile. Instead of the terrible spam ridden Rails wiki(which I’ve heard is better now too) there is a searchable place for plugins. Woo!
Ruby on Rails Plugins - Agile Web Development
Back on the bandwagon/Ruby on Rails
Ok, so it looks like I’m back on the bandwagon for a little bit. First rails 1.2, which isn’t as impressive as 1.1(although I may change my mind soon), and now Rails 1.2.2. Also, RadRails has had an update since last time I checked it out. I’m still trying to do some dev on a site idea of mine that I want to link to several other sites as well, so it looks like I’m back.
Firstly, I was distracted by my other site, Haunted House Nation then I just kind of fell away for the holidays. I’ve been in the mindset that Drupal can do anything, and it really can. But I figured I would like Rails for some other stuff I’m working on. Now that I’m out of the drupal-for-everything mindset I can start focusing on what I want to focus on.
But Drupal is going nowhere in my book. Haunted House Nation still runs it, and a few other sites will still be running it, now and in the future. But it isn’t one size fits all. I’m still trying to get HHN through the latest upgrade. You can see on the front page the wonderful google map provided by the gmap plugin, yeah, the gray box. Because the whole world is really gray. Yeah, so after I get everything fixed it’ll be ready to go again. Need to theme it again as well.
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Mac Mini HTPC
Finally got a new projector and got a Mac Mini to go along with it(as well as some work stuff, makes for a good portable unix box for debugging).
Let me just say this, although MythTV is great, it’s bulky, unpredictable(my hard drive filled because I hadn’t set it up to record anything yet, just installed, hooked it up, and watched some live tv. Yes, I exited the live tv afterwards). Front Row is awesome, and while it doesn’t play the part of a DVR, iTunes is now selling most of the TV shows I watch. I’ve cancelled my cable TV (and cable internet, but that’s another story, since Time Warner had me down for a week and you couldn’t call them because the line was busy).
But it’s really freakin’ awesome. It mounts the windows share from my main PC and I got a 320gb external USB HD for $129 at Best Buy for the Mac Mini, so lots of space. Video Podcasts and purchasing TV Show Seasons are really the way to go if you don’t watch a lot. I’m now considering netflix, but only considering. I still need the headphone jack to optical out connector for my stereo system but after what it works well. Picked up a cheap wireless keyboard&mouse for it too.
I’m very excited but I do wish it had extensions or modules like MythTV does, to read the news or display RSS feeds or somesuch. Ah well, such is life. Setup was easy as hell and it works just great.
Project Management Tutorial Part 2, First Iteration
Here’s our goals for the first iteration.
- Task Database Object
- Add Task via Xul Client
It’s small, but it gets us started on all the overhead of both rails and xul.
Project Management Tutorial Part 1, Planning and Design
Luckily/Sadly, there is no pressure for me to complete this on any timeframe, and it’s secondary to the rest of my work, which is far more important. However, a nice diversion is always in order, and helps get my mojo back into my regular programming work. Read on for the rest of this…
FreeBSD woes, back to Rails, project management
Trying to install FreeBSD on my main computer, thanks in part to a new 500gb hard drive replacing my old 90gb hard drive(woo hoo!), I get “BTX Halted” over and over again. Nothing else. I’ve tried i386 and amd64 builds(I’m on amd64 but it was a recommended fix) as well as disabling the DMA on my ide controllers, as well as disabling the ide controllers completely. Nothing works. The only remaining idea I have, before switching to a linux system completely, is to unplug any usb storage devices, based on this pr. However, as I am booting up from an external USB CD/DVD drive it could be a problem rewiring my main system completely to get it to even fit, as space is very cramped in the system(mostly towards the bottom, thanks in part to SLI taking up all the space along with the power cables). But the IDE controllers are right behind the video cards, d’oh. If that doesn’t work, or if I can’t find time soon enough, I’ll probably install gentoo. Not that I ever got along with it before.
I’m going to get back into rails, and as I never completed my older tutorial, I’m going to document this project as much as I can to help everybody out that needs it. It will be a project management tool that works the way I work, which is very loosely organized(but organization is needed!!). It will be dual interfaced, XUL and Web, multiple users(for multiple clients as well as devs and potentially managers), and the XUL interface will live as both a XulRunner app and a firefox extension.
I haven’t brought out rails or ruby in awhile, and my hard drive is all fudged up thanks to a lack of space(haven’t moved windows over to the 500gb side yet, and tried to and C got renamed F while my D drive which is my primary remains the same, sigh).
Quick Update
Not that I post that often, really, but here’s a quick update. I’ve been consumer by work and a recent death in the family.
First of all, for all you locals, there’s a project to create a Haunted House in Deep Ellum. I posted the MySpace bulletin on my Dallas Halloween blog page.
Secondly, Firefox 2 is coming about, with an updated XulRunner not to far behind(I hope!).
Thirdly, my experiment with Freespire is over. While I highly recommend it, I need more of a fine control over everything. So Gentoo here I come. Well, maybe. I think I want to give FreeBSD a whirl, but I’m not so sure of it’s MythTV support as that’s the ultimate goal of this box. It worked quite well on Freespire, but for some reason is not booting, and I have an inkling that it’s because I installed different kernel headers(and possibly the kernel itself) and now the system will not boot, it freezes and then turns itself off during the boot process. I will try to salvage it as much as possible. The projector has to be sent off for a new light bulb, Best Buy takes up to 3 weeks to change a light bulb. So of course this has me looking at new projectors too, as mine is very entry-level and not intended for Home Theater.
The HD70 by Optoma has good reviews on it’s amazon page, is pimped out by the Projector People as a good low-budget Hi-Def HT Projector. Price is right, that’s for damn sure. I really need to get a screen, and I plan on painting the screen on as my loft is a bit unique and there’s really only one place to throw the image onto the wall, so why not paint it a screen. It’s definitely cheaper too.
My spelling has greatly improved with FF2 Release Candidates, as it now has spell-checking in text boxes. Very nice.
One more quick note on Tech, Sage has been updated for FF2, thank goodness! I can’t live without it.
Oh, and anyone who has a Sony notebook, please comment on them. I’m looking for a new notebook computer, something light, and sony looks to be the way to go.
———————-
Ok, off of tech. Shortbus(IMDB) is coming soon. A sneak preview is tomorrow, that I, unfortunately, can not attend due to a scheduling conflict(Softball practice, d’oh). Anyways, it will be out at the Angelika on Friday, so I’m going to see it then. It’s by the same guy who did Hedwig and the Angry Inch, both the musical and the movie.
Check out the Trailer and the Teaser. The music sounds awesome as well, although it’s not on iTunes yet(at least not as the movie album). There is an uncensored trailer as well, but I’m not gonna go looking at it right now, I’ll just wait for the movie. Who the hell hasn’t seen porn on the internet these days anyways?
MySQLsla
So, going way off topic here, I was worried about some slow SQL queries, and, logs being mighty useless, I looked for a slow-sql log analyzer. In steps mysqlsla. Woo hoo, plain, simple, and to the point. Found out some weird queries that I can’t even find with a simple grep are some of the slowest.
Which leads me to my next problem, I need a search engine for source code, gonzui turns up in a quick freshmeat search. I’m running the import on the directories now, and I’ll let you know how it turns out!
Finding small SQL queries that take a long time(and need to be questioned of their existence before they are optimized) in old, old code mixed with new code and not-as-new code, is not easy.