Cozmo's Dev Blog - Geeks

And I thought I had problems

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 21:31:00-0700

I got a new phone... Actually I got a new pocket computer (with Windows CE) that came with a built in phone. The thing has more horse power than my workstation back in 2000. So my first thought is, being the geek that I am: What can I get this thing to do? What should I try first? Hmmmmm... Wouldn't it be cool if I could get it to serve up web pages. HEY!!! It *is* connected to the internet. Huh? I wonder if I get it to run Apache? Then the rational part of my brain kicked in: WHOA!!! STOP right there.. I have so much OTHER stuff I need to learn. My to do list could keep me occupied for the next ten years... easy. Then I saw this article in my in my inbox and it made me feel better: Installing Linux on the PlayStation 3. Seriously... is there some sort of 12 step program for this sorta stuff? I am going to end up like this some day (again). The confessions would be funny:

"Hi, my name is Gerald."
"Hi Gerald."
"I tried to turn my phone into a web server...."

It seems that I am not alone

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:19:00-0700

Are You Frustrated With Firefox?

In the market place of Ideas

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:05:00-0700

FOSS in it's "pure" form is communistic in nature and will fail accordingly. One Governing body will ALWAYS fail in light of a free exchange of ideas and the resulting competition. Don't think so? Get a history book and get your read on. Suck it freetards. Here endith the lesson.

Open Source my ass

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:54:00-0700

Open Source is starting to get on my nerves. I love open source about 90% of the time. But FF and Eclipse are turning into a bloated sacks of fark that makes MS's worst bloated sack of fark look like notepad. Let me see.... Right now FF is using 450 megs of ram and Eclipse is @ 358 megs. A browser using 450 megs of ram? I close out all but one browser window and it is still using 450 megs. Open what? Suck what? If a site has a flash video (like Youtube), FF pegs the processor of my 3 yr old (1.8 gig P4 - 1.28 gig ram) laptop and grinds it to a farking halt. Unusable. Flash videos also pegs my 2.8 gig duel processor HP box. Nice. No wonder I think that OSS zealots are idiots. "But OSS is FREE!" So is dirt. Blow me.

Why I have problems sleeping

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 04:19:00-0700

My thought pattern. >> Spuds >> biology > DNA >> DNA = Persistent Data store >> So much data in on molecule. >> IS DNA relational? Can you query it? That is a fuck load of data!! Will databases become biological? How do you query a cell? Will we be able to make living mater into a hard drive? Will I sleep tonight?

The spaghetti monster from hell - and a mentor

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:49:00-0700

The intranet I work with at work is a nightmare. I hate it. It is the spaghetti monster from hell. I have written some crappy code in the past but this thing takes the cake. When I first started I thought that I just didn't "get it"... that the guy before me had some mojo I just couldn't get my head around. Now I know he was a bad coder and a horrible architect. Smart? yes. talented? Sorta. Good? no. Both my boss and myself DREAD having to deal with his code. My second thought: I want a mentor. There is no one that I work with that can bring me to the next level with Coldfusion. My boss is a gifted programmer but he is a VB Jedi and is still learning CF. He has taught me a lot but I want an Andrés Segovia type mentor. Someone who will not take no for an answer, whip me into shape, and teach me the ways of the code warrior. I am truly ready, willing and able.

I'm a Cool High Nerd.

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:16:00-0700

Yahoo chat

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 01:25:00-0700

I love web dev. I love to talk shop. I went to the web designers chat room on yahoo chat. I asked a question. I was abused, ridiculed, tormented and mocked for asking a question in a forum that encouraged people to share knowledge. What I found there was a group of elitist, abusive, condescending, too cool for Christmas, jaded assholes. It disgusted me in a manner is beyond words. They are the most insecure, trash talking, gossiping, "look he is down, kick him" bitches I have ever seen in my life. If geeks conducted themselves in real life in the same manner that they do online, their bodies would litter the streets. I am ashamed that I even share genome with these cretins.

ZDNet disgusts me more and more everyday

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:11:00-0700

Every time I get one of their "Tech updates" it has at least one story that fans the flame of the eternal (and in my opinion, STUPID) holy war. My opinion is that software (OS's included) are tools to get a job done. Look, it is a hammer, not a freaking religion. For 99% of the population computers are, much like a truck, a means to an end and not the end themselves. But of course there are always those people who become emotionally involved with their tools and have those stickers of Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes, peeing on the rival truck's logo. Ford drivers have Calvin peeing the Chevy Logo and vice versa. Most people would probably agree that the whole Chevy vs. Ford debate is a big adolescent prick wagging contest and, at its core, is pretty damn stupid. If you look at it from this vantage point, the whole Windows vs. Linux argument here is basically on the same level. It is a bunch of "grown ups" carrying on like kids on a playground except the mantra of "my dad can beat up your dad" has been replaced with "my Operating System can beat up your Operating System" I am an IT professional. In being so I keep up on the latest trends by reading blogs and subscribing to trade journals and newsletters like InfoWorld, IDG, DevShed.com, internet.com, devx.com and so on. In comparison to these journals, ZDNet reads like a gossip column. Some of these "Tech Update" have more in common with Joan Rivers's coverage of Hollywood red carpet events than IT professional's covering industry events and trends (you know who you are). Do any of the aforementioned trade journals partake in ZDNet's brand of IT yellow journalism? In a word, no. They offer sound, competent coverage of pertinent industry news, developments and tools. Often times they do have their own slant or agenda but they don't use sensationalism to drive traffic to their website's comment section. I would wager that the majority of the traffic on the ZDNet news and blog site is generated by their "discussion" section. I use Linux freakin every day. I develop on the LAMP stack, among others. It is a fantastic platform. We also develop using the Microsoft, Adobe, Sun and New Atlanta stacks. Why? There are several reasons, but mostly because it is more cost effective. Visual Studio is a fantastic product. Java is, well Java. Flash and Flex don't have viable alternatives, and we can get ColdFusion apps out the door in half the time it takes to develop them using "free" platforms like LAMP or .NET. I use Open/closed Source tools every day. For instance my primary IDE is Eclipse. Eclipse is absolutely astounding. But I also use DreamWeaver, mostly because it is the best tool for building web based GUI's. My Databases of choice are MySQL, Derby and MS SQL Server, in that order. I love MySQL. It is by far my favorite, but SQL Server's Data Transfer services make MySQL look like a child's play thing. Mind you, all of them are outstanding at what they do. They just do different things better than the other. Do I care if they are Open Source or not? Not really. Just as long as they do what I want them to do and gets me from Point A to point B in the most efficient, practical and cost effective manner. I use Windows as my OS of choice. Why? One reason is that a good portion of my day in, day out tools run on Windows with out having to kludge together a work around or have some apps be crippled or semi functional, like I would with Linux. Another is that Macs, while very nice, are still too expensive. The other reason is that *I don't like* the Linux desktop environment. I have tried to like it. I really have. I tried to switch in earnest. I used it almost exclusively for three months, so I know. But after 12 weeks of kludging together a work-arounds and a few rounds of dependency hell, I finally said screw it. I need to get some work done. What really bothers me is that I have been played for a fool by the editors of ZDNet. Once again they have sucked me into this time wasting and ultimately futile debate, AGAIN. I stopped get the ZDNet news letters a year or two back for the same reason. But I started to do so again, despite the flame bait that they use to drive traffic to their site, because they do have items of professional and personal interest. It is rather insidious how they drag you into the fray. But now I am going to back off and port the energy that I have wasted in this mindless debate into developing my skills on BOTH Windows and *nix platforms. And remember, you are being played as a fool in order to pad another mans bank account. Y'all have fun pounding sand. One day it might turn into glass.

<CFSet ArrayNew = "My Life sucks" >

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 02:21:00-0700

I inherited a huge intranet at my new job. It is all done using CFWACK (ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit) procedural style development. No biggie. I have been do that sort of development for years... I learned CF using CFWACK as my guide. But my predecessor loved arrays... As my boss told me "I cannot express to you how much that man loved arrays". It was not some sort of neurosis... this man was psychotic about it. The site is littered with him literally creating and parsing arrays for the sake of doing so. He literally spent four months converting the site from using query datasets to arrays. So there is four months of bat shit crazy code that I have to un-scramble. The man was a human code obfuscater. Oh, and did I mention that the man did not indent his code? I mean, AT ALL? Ever? Never ever? This is what I wrote my boss the other day:

Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 12:10 PM
To: My Boss
Subject: ArrayNew = My Life sucks

I am really, really, REALLY, REALLY starting to hate arrays. If people made cars the way my predecessor made data structures a gocart would be the size of an oil tanker, have 400 steering wheels, no brakes and starting it would require more secret hand signals than an epileptic third base coach on meth.

Here is an example of the shit I have to deal with:

         SELECT * FROM tbl_Contact WHERE NOT Email IS NULL AND StatusID = 2                                                                                                                                                                             SELECT ProjNum, Title FROM tblProj WHERE ID=#ProjID#                                                                                    SELECT tblRP.ClientName FROM tblRP INNER JOIN tblRPProj ON tblRP.ID=tblRPProj.RPID WHERE tblRPProj.ProjID=#ProjID#                                                   
  #DateFormat(Now(),"dddd, mmmm d, yyyy")#
  
 Dear #EMailArray[L][1]#:
  #EmailArray[L][1]#
 #EmailArray[L][3]#
 #EmailArray[L][12]#
 #EmailArray[L][4]#
 #EmailArray[L][5]#
 #EmailArray[L][6]#, #Application.StateArray[EmailArray[L][7]][1]#  #EMailArray[L][8]#
  
 ..... etc

When ever I see ArrayNew I know that my life is going to suck. All I have to say is why in the fark don't you use the variable names? I mean, CF casts the query as a structure with the variable scope being the name of the query for fucks sake. Why in the name of all that is not stupid do you need to turn it into yet another data structure?

Slash Dot'ers Crack Me Up.

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:02:00-0700

I am all about Open Source. I love it. It has changed computing and has contributed to the betterment of all users. I use TONS of OS Software and at work I am known as the Open Source Guy.

But I HATE Open Source fundimentalists. They are nothing more than elitist, intellectual bigots and snobs. That is why I use the term Open Sores as a category on my blog

So when I saw on fullasagoog.com that Apollo was featured on slash dot I HAD to look.

JD on EP was nice enough to highlight some of the comments

My overall impression is that there are many reactionary attacks based on insufficient study of source materials, as well as an impressive number of defenses based buttressed by observable reality. One unstated subtext among many attacks seems to be "I don't like it so no one must be permitted to use it." Overall trend is positive, though.

From there I ran into this thread on slash dot. As far as I am concerned complaining about Flash not running on Free BSD is like complaining about water being wet, as illegalcortex pointed out in a very humorous manner.

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=227249&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=18406815#1840702

illegalcortex (1007791)

Just give up. Otherwise, this will eventually end with them complaining that it doesn't run on the VIC-20.

by MaggieL (10193)

Nobody *made* them call it a "cross-operating system runtime"...excuse us for asking how many operating systems it crosses.

They could have just called it a "proprietary thing to build apps with", but somehow that sounds less appealing.

illegalcortex (1007791)

I'd hate to be the sporting goods salesman when you people come around to ask about the cross-country skis...

MaggieL (10193)

I'd hate to be the sporting goods salesman when you people come around to ask about the cross-country skis...

"How much country can I cross with these skis?" is so unreasonable to ask...

Look at it this way: if your OS portfolio is Mac and Windows, then you're about as "cross-platform" as Excel is.

illegalcortex (1007791)

"Can I cross water with these skis?"

"Well, no, not really. They're not water skis..."

"HAH! Do you realize water covers almost 71% of the Earth's surface. So you're telling me these skis are useless on over two-thirds of the planets surface?!"

"Uh, I'm not really sure what that has to do with-"

"And these skis, can they be used on mountains?"

"Well, mountains with snow and-"

"Not rocky mountains? What part of the definition of the word 'country' says that it doesn't include rocks?"

"Again, I don't really see-"

"And how about roads?"

"Roads?"

"Yes, roads. Streets. Boulevards. Avenues. And sidewalks. And freeway entrance ramps. And stairs."

"Look, are you actually going to buy these skis?"

"Why would I buy these skis? I live in Los Angeles and it never snows. So until you come out with some skis that can be used in downtown LA, I suggest you stop calling these "cross-country" skis. Also, I don't have any legs, you insensitive clod!"

The part about the stairs cracked me up.

Look.... If something will run on Windoze (sic), Mac and Linux, or 99% of the machines out there, then it is cross platform.

There is no pleasing some people

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 19:40:00-0700

This is a response to a comment on Ben Nadel's Blog http://www.bennadel.com/index.cfm?dax=blog:580.view " Just read this post, I have to say that as a developer I have real issues with all of my IDEs. I started coding HTML using Notepad back in the dark ages (early 90s) since then I think I've used just about every code editor around. Most recently having started with Eclipse. The only thing I can say for sure is that, IMHO, they all suck! Dreamweaver is like a Humvee stuck in mud, Eclipse is java and buggy, homesite doesn't support the features I need (like decent inline CSS support). They have all cost me lost hours because they wiped code during a crash or, in the case of eclipse, deleted an entire new project that was not yet on the backups. Sorry to rant on your blog Ben but I just wish either Adobe could sort dreamweaver out or someone could make eclipse as good in terms of FTP support etc. Maybe I should just bin all this new fangled kit and use CF Studio again. I still resort to that in times of dire need! Why couldn't macromedia have kept developing CFstudio instead of trying to force us into using sub-standard dreamweaver? " *They all suck*???? Interesting....I guess there is no pleasing some people, no matter what. The tools you mentioned are all excellent in their own way. None of them are *end alls* by themselves. But together they are a fantastic tool kit. I have all but abandoned CF studio for eclipse. Eclipse is amazing but it does have some serious short comings. Namely the edit tag function. I like to see all my options for a tag all at once, either as properties or as a tag edit dialog. You can ADD a tag to code using a dialog but you cannot edit it. The lack of an HTML dictionary is a bummer to. Also the A href="" ... does not have code completion... etc... (which is why I usually have CF studio open as well) but besides these minor irritants and being a bit buggy it is awesome. The fact that I can edit Java (native) JS jseclipse http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/jseclipse/ and aptana http://www.aptana.com/download_all.php PHP, PHP Development Studio http://www.eclipseplugincentral.com/Web_Links-index-req-viewlink-cid-634.html CSS Aptana http://www.aptana.com/download_all.php (X)HTML Aptana and CFEclipes And a ZILLION other languages http://www.eclipse.org/home/categories/languages.php using the same FULL FEATURED, FREE IDE in of itself boggles the mind. I never liked DW all that much. It is does have the agility of Fat Bastard in a tub of sludge. But for CSS and XHTML formatting and designing GUI's it is excellent. As for HS / CF Studio, We all know that it is a masterpiece but it is getting old and does support all the things that we are having to use on a daily basis. It was truely a ssad day when they dropped it from their product line.....

Are we in the early stages of a Renaissance?

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 21:05:00-0700

It is almost as if the web has been just incubating for the last ten or twelve years and then all the sudden it seems to be just bounding with innovation (or I was just too far into my depression and/or too busy building the business this last year to notice). It is like it is in the early stages of a renaissance. Sure some cool things came out like .NET, SOA, PHP and MySQL 5, XHTML and Web Services over the last several years. But for the most part it was business as usual. It was mostly back end stuff; new features to old stand bys or different ways of doing the same old stuff. Nothing really exciting was coming out. The basic mechanics of web development has not really changed all that much since the the late 90's. If you really look at it, there was a markup language (html or xhtml), CSS, graphics, flash, JS on the front end and a scripting language and a database on the back end. The only really major turning point was when Netscape died and pretty much enabled cross browser CSS and JS (Well, sort of). But now it seams like a FLURRY of developments and innovations are all happening all at once: AJAX, FLEX, Apollo, Flash 9, a bazillion Frameworks, ZK, Ruby on Rails, Eclipse, more web development plug-ins for firefox than you can shake a stick at, and so on and so forth.... These are some really exciting times and I am totally pumped about being a web developer. I am so overwhelmed and excited about it I just don't know where to start with all the new toys I have to play with. I have a hard time getting to sleep knowing about all these new toys... It is like everyday is Christmas Eve and I am 7 yrs old all over again.... I am a luck man because I wake up each and every day looking forward to the wonders that the new day will bring.

A Complete Cross Platform PHP, JSP and ColdFusion Development Environment on a Stick.

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 22:03:00-0700

AKA
CF(Absolutely)Anywhere
or
PHP(Absolutely)Anywhere

I have been messing around with making Live Demo Disks for almost a year now. I have tried a whole slew of web/database/application servers and apps that ran off a CD or a Thumb Drive (Stick) and found some that were excellent and some that were, frankly, held together by the digital version of duct tape. Not that there is anything wrong with digital duct tape, we use it all the time. :)

Well, after a lot of trial and error I have come up with (what I believe to be) the best portable development and Live Demo environment around (For PHP, ColdFusion and MySQL that is) .

Pretty bold statement, huh?

Well, this offers a complete self-contained development environment for *AMPE Apache/MySQL/PHP/Eclipse and ACME (Apache/ColdFusion/MySQL/Eclipse). It will run on Windows, Mac AND Linux (Except for MyManager, which is nice, but optional).
Right now I cannot run both CF and PHP on the same web server but it is close enough. I am sure it can be done but I don’t feel like it at the moment. Feel free to take the ball and run with it though.

Here goes:

XAMPP or XAMPP Lite:

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html#646

XAMPP Lite provides you with every thing to run a bare bones *AMP stack. It even comes with phpMyAdmin so you can manage MySQL with out needing a desktop app.

XAMPP Lite is a very reduced version of XAMPP with:
Apache 2.2.4
PHP 5.2.1
MySQL 5.0.33
phpMyAdmin 2.9.2
Openssl 0.9.8d
SQLite 2.8.15.

Railo:

http://www.railo.ch/en/index.cfm?treeID=200
Railix (Live Version) is a self contained CF engine that, unlike CFEverywhere, runs right out of the box. Unzip it and run the start.bat (on Linux run start.sh) and it is up and running. You can change the port to 80 by editing the server.xml file. What I like most about it is that the Linux and Windows versions comes preloaded with a version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) so you don’t have to worry if it is installed on the machine you are using (Do Macs come preloaded with the JRE?). You can even use the JRE to run Eclipse or other Java apps.

Eclipse:

http://www.eclipse.org/
http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

Eclipse is an AWESOME IDE and it runs on all the popular OS’s and comes with plug-ins for every language imaginable. All you need for this to run is the JRE. If you do not have the JRE installed on your system you will need to copy the JRE folder from Railo to your Eclipse folder. I am not sure how it works for non-Windows systems, as I don’t have the time to get involved with that at this juncture.

I use the Pre-built PHP IDE (I never had luck installing all the Required prerequisites) and CFEclipse with the RDS plug-ins from Adobe (See my previous Blog entry on how to install CFEclipse and the RDS plug-ins).

EMS SQL Manager 2005 Lite for MySQL.

http://www.sqlmanager.net/en/products/mysql/manager

MyManager Lite is a great little tool (windows only) for managing SQL databases. The stand alone version does not need to be installed. Just unzip and run.

EMS makes a great product and has a whole line of great DBMS tools (including a lot of free (lite) versions) for
MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle, DB2 etc....

So ther you have it . I have a USB stick that I can plug into any computer, be it Mac, Windows or Linux and I can write, run and test applications written using PHP, ColdFusion and JSP. It truly is a complete cross platform web development environment for most of the languages I use.

I am sure that someone will flame me for some unfathomable reason.

I really hate (some) geeks

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 23:57:00-0700

I got on some of the chat rooms wanting to talk to others about why I think flex is the next killer app and all I got was a bunch of condescending "know it alls" telling me why flex would not work. I think that intelligent people are just as bigoted and narrow minded as the average joe. Yahoo chat is the anus of the internet.