In any event, for any of you poor suckers that do and need access to datetime components within a batch, here’s an ugly solution… If you know of a better way.. I’m all ears!

echo %DATE% %TIME% > datefile.txt
REM parse Datefile (format mon MM-DD-YYYY (US date and time setting default))
For /F "tokens=2,3,4 delims=/ " %%a in (datefile.txt) do (set CurrentMonth=%%a&& set currentDate=%%b&& set /A currentYear=%%c)
For /F "tokens=3,4,5 delims=: " %%a in (datefile.txt) do (set CurrentHour=%%a&& set currentMinute=%%b&& set currentSecond=%%c)
echo Timstamp is: %CurrentYear%%CurrentMonth%%CurrentDate%%CurrentHour%%CurrentMinute%%CurrentSecond%


God help us all thats fugly!

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After spending several nights reinstalling Xcode, updating my macports, trying to compile from src to no avail I had someone recommend Homebrew to me. At first I figured.. meh.. another package manager that won’t work… suprisingly.. it did!.. Macports is garbage in comparison.. so to get to the good stuff.. here’s the steps to take if you find yourself in this situation!

1) Best to start clean.. first thing was to wipe the macports installs.


sudo port -f uninstall installed

sudo rm -rf /opt/local \
/Applications/MacPorts \
/Applications/DarwinPorts \
/Library/Tcl/macports1.0 \
/Library/Tcl/darwinports1.0 \
/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.* \
/Library/StartupItems/DarwinPortsStartup \
/Library/Receipts/MacPorts*.pkg \
/Library/Receipts/DarwinPorts*.pkg \
~/.macports


2) Download and install the latest XCode development tools.. your DVD is probably out of date. Ensure that the optional components for command line development are installed (“Unix Development” in the Xcode 3.x installer). Also include the X11 items.

3) Rebooted and hold down ‘6′ and ‘4′ keys to switch to 64 bit mode… (by default snow leopard boots in 32 bit mode.. you can check this in the System Profiler).

4) Install homebrew
sudo chown -R `whoami` /usr/local
curl -L http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/tarball/master | tar xz –strip 1 -C /usr/local
brew install git

5) Install mysql
brew install mysql
export ARCHFLAGS=”-arch i386 -arch x86_64″
gem install mysql — –with-mysql-dir=/usr/local \
–with-mysql-config=/usr/local/bin/mysql_config

6) Install imagemagick
brew install imagemagick

and finally:

7) sudo gem install rmagick

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[notification]
smtp_enabled = true
use_tls = true
mime_encoding = base64
smtp_server = smtp.gmail.com
smtp_port = 587
smtp_user = user
smtp_password = password

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find . -path "*/certificates/*" -not \( -name .svn -prune \)

I recently used this technique for pulling all certificates that were scatterred throughout a svn repository. Taking this output you can then easily copy them to another location (say for production deployment)

find . -path "*/certificates/*" -not \( -name .svn -prune \) -exec cp '{}' ./deploy/dist/certificates ';'

To go one step further integrating this into an ANT build proved to be a pain in the butt.  The ant exec task was causing me alot of grief so ended up using antcontrib tasks like this:


<target name="distCerts"
description="Prepare folder with all certificates required for deployment.">
<delete  dir="${projectRoot}/deploy/dist/certificates"/>
<mkdir dir="${projectRoot}/deploy/dist/certificates"/>
<shellscript shell="sh" dir="${projectRoot}">
find ./servicegroup -path "*/certificates/*" -not \( -name .svn -prune \) -exec cp '{}' ./deploy/dist/certificates ';'
find ./deploy/certificates -path "*" -not \( -name .svn -prune \) -exec cp '{}' ./deploy/dist/certificates ';'
</shellscript>
</target>


… much easier!

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Setting the java.property.java.io.tmpdir environment variable acts as a permanent fix for this as you can specify a custom directory that will not be purged automatically.

Modify these config files:

<tibco_home>/administrator/domain/<domain_name>/bin/tibcoadmin_<domain_name>.tra
<tibco_home>/tra/domain/<domain_name>/hawkagent_<domain_name>.tra

To add the following:

# CUSTOM – Specify the location of the temporary files for upload.  System default of
# /tmp will error after a few days as the dirs get cleaned out.
java.property.java.io.tmpdir=<path>

ie. java.property.java.io.tmpdir=/opt/tibcotmp

** NOTE: Using a custom token in your comment (ie: CUSTOM) will allow easy identification of all config files that you modified you add a custom property that is outside the normal configuration.

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What exactly is soapUI?
soapUI is the leading desktop application for inspecting, invoking,
monitoring, simulating/mocking and
functional/load/compliance/surveillance testing of REST/WADL and
SOAP/WSDL-based Web Services over HTTP.

There are plugins Eclipse, IntelliJ, NetBeans and Maven.   I’ve tried the plugin using IntelliJ 8.1.1 and it works like a charm!  This is an invaluable tool if your actively developing SOAP apis!

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M2TS files are used primarily with Sony hardware. Camcorders make use of M2TS in the form of AVCHD, a recording format made specifically for camcorders. Some camcorder models from Canon also use M2TS files. These files are also present on Blu-ray disc compilations, therefore they are capable of storing quite a large amount of information and data tracks. Software called the “Picture Motion Browser” is distributed with Sony camcorders and can play these kind of files, but in the event you don’t have this software what other options are there?

So far, the best option I’ve found has been the VLC software that is available for mac,linux and windows.  Although I was able to yum install vlc on my linux fedora 8 install without a hitch, I found the hardware requirements were more then my meager p4 could bear and I ended up with sound, but a frozen video frame.   Turning to my much more powerful mac book pro I once again installed a mac version of VLC and was able to playback the video.  Although somewhat ‘clippy’ it still played.  At present the software available for playback of these files is quite limited so if I find a better option I’ll be sure to post it.

My next task is to figure out how to convert these files to something that can be viewed through a standard web video player so that I can post them on my blog or share them on the internet.  If you have any insight into how to do this, I’d love to hear from you….

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After syncing up ICAL I proceeded to look for a way to keep myself up to date while on the go.  Another handy application allows me to sync google calendar to my blackberry pearl 8130.   Using gcalsync I can sync the google calendar to my mobile phone’s calendar application.  This is good as I don’t want to have to login to google mobile calendar everytime you want to check it and consume expensive bandwidth!

Powered by ScribeFire.

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I’m currently attending a course about “Practical Product Management” put on by the Pragmatic Marketing folks. So far I’ve been very impressed with the content and delivery. Its definately a course geared towards product managers however there is a benefit to be had having various cross functional member attend to help guide the process. A series of templates is available here if you’re interested in making use of some of the techniques.

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Error reported was ‘The server “shawmail” cannot be contacted on port 110.’.

From a terminal window, typing ‘host shawmail’ yielded an unknown host error. This got me on the right track.

The shaw setup pages all tell you to use “shawmail” as the incoming/outgoing smtp server. This doesn’t seem to work in all cases. I changed the smtp servers to be “shawmail.cg.shawcable.net” and also set the server port to be 9590 and then had some success.

Hope it helps someone else out there!

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