January 06, 2010

Enterprise Computing

Tim Bray pegs it nicely; the solution is less clear.

"The community of developers whose work you see on the Web, who probably don’t know what ADO or UML or JPA even stand for, deploy better systems at less cost in less time at lower risk than we see in the Enterprise"

Posted by Michael at 02:20 PM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2009

DB Optimisation

"I’ve been in a lot of Cloud-flavored discussions recently about what kind of Platform-as-a-Service offerings might hit sweet spots. On several occasions, People Who Should Know have said things like “A huge proportion of apps, even really big apps, can coast along just fine on a single MySQL instance with help from memcached.” Some numbers crossed my radar today that would tend to support that theory; and they’re sort of astounding."
- Tim Bray at http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2009/05/20/Memcached-Performance

Posted by Michael at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2005

Multi-screen, Multi-PC control

How-to: Share your keyboard and mouse in realtime with Synergy - Engadget - www.engadget.com

Posted by Michael at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2004

HTML interactive connectivity graph

Nice Java app -- TouchGraph GoogleBrowser shows all in/out connections for a site, and increases detail on double-clicking a node.

Posted by Michael at 12:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 11, 2004

Lighter Side

Finally, a case mod I can use...

-- How-To add a Cigarette Lighter to your PC - Features - features.engadget.com

Also available with a cup holder!

Posted by Michael at 12:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 22, 2004

Etch This!

Way fun -- remote controlled etch-a-sketch.

-- geekdiy.com - Semi-automated Etch a Sketch

Posted by Michael at 10:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 13, 2004

Icon preview of images

Preview icons of images, via HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ PAINT.PICTURE\ DefaultIcon set to "%1." ... Annoyances.org - Enable Iconic Preview of Bitmaps

Posted by Michael at 12:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Device Manager shortcut

To get device manager directly, just run devmgmt.msc... Annoyances.org - Go Directly to Device Manager

Posted by Michael at 12:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 17, 2004

CSS in IE

Proper CSS support in IE, thanks!

dean.edwards.name/IE7/

-- via Roland Tanglao

Posted by Michael at 01:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 26, 2003

Windows Scripting download

Another f^&ing search for the script editor download, which, it turns out, is here.

Posted by Michael at 11:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

JScript docs

I spent 15 minutes, again, searching for the MS site for scripting and DOM manipulation. The DOM stuff for JScript is here.

Posted by Michael at 11:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 20, 2003

web app vs web site

One developer's experience in moving from web to app design... Digital Web Magazine - Features: Web design and integrated marketing

Posted by Michael at 05:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 06, 2002

Zaurus with Opie

Picked up a Zaurus the other day. I'm astounded that the general PDA purchasing public might want Linux PDAs, but as a developer I'm delighted.
I've flashed in the OpenZaurus kernel, so now linux lives on a flashROM and takes up no memory. The kernel is built with no ramdisk, so all 64Meg are available for software -- cool! I leave a 64M SD card in the box to host Qtopia, and if I pop it out I still have a linux PDA with a command line. The CF slot is great for docs, images, etc. -- and works well with the 1G card from my camera.
Best of all -- I can rotate the screen and use a browser with more width than height, the way most pages are laid out. Sweet!

Posted by Michael at 11:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 31, 2002

Apache three-way

OK, got it working.... and here's how...

Note: You can get nice how-tos here. Much of this solution somes from there.

To connect Apache 2 to PHP, httpd.conf should contain:

LoadModule php4_module c:/php/sapi/php4apache2.dll

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php

AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

(the php4apache2.dll file is part of the php install)

To connect Apache 2 to Tomcat 4.0.4:

In httpd.conf:

LoadModule jk_module modules/mod_jk.dll

JkWorkersFile "C:/Program Files/Apache Tomcat 4.0/conf/workers.properties"

JkLogFile "C:/Program Files/Apache Tomcat 4.0/logs/mod_jk.log

JkMount /servlet/* ajp13

JkMount /*.jsp ajp13

You can get mod_jk.dll from here.

Your workers.properties should contain something like:

workers.tomcat_home="C:\Program Files\Apache Tomcat 4.0"

workers.java_home="C:\jsdk1.4.1"

ps=\

worker.list=ajp13

worker.ajp13.port=8009

worker.ajp13.host=localhost

worker.ajp13.type=ajp13

worker.ajp13.lbfactor=1

In Tomcat's server.xml:

Make sure there's an ajp13 connector defined (should already be there).

Create a context for your web stuff:

Note that the docBase is relative to the appBase, which is by default "webapps" in the tomcat directory. You can also simply define the default context (path=""), which is usedd when no other context matches.

Special note: after the connector's set up, you'll find tomcat.exe gets started as a service -- which makes it impossible to see debug info live and to easily restart it. To change this (should you wish), look at control panel/services and switch tomcat to a manually activated service.

Posted by Michael at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)

July 30, 2002

Apache HTTPD + Apache Jakarta + Apache PHP = auuuughhhh...

Here's a great way to spend a day:

Download and install Apache's web server. No problem, works great.

Download and install Apache's PHP package. No problem, works great.

Download and install Apache's JSP/servlet engine (Tomcat). No problem, works great.


Try and get them to work together.


Problem.

fyi, I got the httpd to use the php module OK by putting the lines:

LoadModule php4_module c:/php/sapi/php4apache2.dll

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php

AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

into the httpd.conf file.

It should work to also put

LoadModule webapp_module modules/mod_webapp.so

after putting the mod_webapp.so and it's dll file into your modules directory.

But it doesn't... sigh...

Posted by Michael at 04:58 PM | Comments (0)

July 23, 2002

Simple Tasks

There aren't any. There are an astounding number of things that look simple. This impression is due to the poor resolving power of the human brain -- the farther things are away in time, the less we remember what a pain in the ass they were.

I suppose that explains second children, as well.

Today's simple task was getting CSS styles to work with relatively positioned div sections. Thought you could position relatively and specify top/left amounts? Not. Try specifying margin-top etc. instead, and that works. Damned if I know why.

And, of course, why should you care?

Fair enough.

Posted by Michael at 12:15 AM | Comments (0)