I know. I know - Wiki's are old news; And being a computer science major and software developer, I should have discovered wiki's long before now. But I didn't, ok? So BACK OFF!
Anyway, I just recently installed an open source package called "trac". It's a python web application that manages software development projects. It includes a wiki, ticket tracking, and hooks up to your subversion repository to provide a nice, user friendly view of your source code. It's very slick.
I was playing around with the wiki feature on trac and got excited about it so I decided to download the mother of all wiki's - MediaWiki. This is the same open source software that runs Wikipedia. And it is freakin' cool.
I finally bit the bullet and traded in my 8 year old cell phone for a T-Mobile Google G1 Android. I've had the G1 for 4 days and so far, I'm loving it. I already used gmail, google calendar, and google contacts, and now it's great to have all that info right in my pocket.
I use the open source project "Gallery2" to host all my family photos on my website. I'm continually impressed with Gallery2 and I highly recommend it. The other day I wanted to move all my picture files (mostly jpg's) into a different directory to be better organized. Unfortunately, because of the way I've been managing my albums and photos in Gallery2, I ran into a snag. Here's a short summary of the problem and how I managed to solve it.
The Problem
Every few months I upload my photos from my camera into a /var/data/pictures/ directory on my server. For example, the other day, I uploaded the photos from my camera into the following directory: /var/data/pictures/20090202.
I've found that developing and consuming web services can be very overwhelming because there are so many technologies to understand: XML Parsers, SOAP, and WSDL to name a few. I confess that it has taken me a long time to get a grasp of all the technical pieces involved in web services and I'm sure I still have more to learn. For java developers, learning to use the Axis2 wsdl2java and the jdk 1.6 wsimport tools to generate the java classes necessary to communicate via a WSDL is a good way to get started with web services or build on what you already understand.
My brother called me last week and asked if I could help him troubleshoot why his laptop wasn't starting. It turned out to be a problem with his motherboard. He's currently in college and his laptop happened to fail right before he needed to turn in a paper for his midterms...I hate it when that happens. This reminded me to go back and check that all my backups were running and working correctly. It has also been a few months since I posted about how to use "dump" to backup files in linux. So, I thought this would be a good time to post about how to use the "restore" command to, you guessed it, restore files from a backup taken using the dump command.
Remember the scene in Office Space when the printer starts beeping and Michael Bolton shouts something like "PC Load Letter? What the hell does that mean?". That's kinda the same reaction I have whenever I see the following runtime error:
javax.servlet.ServletException: com/sun/tools/javac/Main (Unsupported major.minor version 49.0)
org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:244)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:802)
Is it just me? Or does anyone else ever feel like Sun and Microsoft are in cahoots to try to make it as difficult as possible to figure out which version of java your windows machine is using? If you're pulling your hair out trying to troubleshoot why a java program is complaining that it can't find a jre or jdk, here's a quick summary that might help. If you've already gone insane troubleshooting, that means that you're probably imagining reading this article, in which case, I can't help you, but you might try imagining being on a nice sandy beach in the Caribbean instead.
If I had a penny for every time I've needed to send a screen shot to someone to clear up an idea, well, I'd have like ... 5 or 6 dollars maybe? Ok, it's not about the money; my point is that sending screen shots can be very helpful in order to get an idea across. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Taking a screen shot is free. It's amazing to me how many software developers don't realize this. You don't have to spend $50 on snagit. Here's how to get free screen shots:
Subclipse is a plugin for the Eclipse IDE that allows you to manage code in a Subversion (svn) repository ... without leaving your mouse. For me, using Subclipse is kinda like having a cell phone; I never missed it before, but now that I have it, I can't live without it. I find the ability to commit, checkout, revert, and diff source code all from my Eclipse Environment is now almost a necessity. Here's a quick summary of how to install and use the Subclipse Subversion Eclipse Plugin.
My brother called me last week and asked if I could help him troubleshoot why his laptop wasn't starting. It turned out to be a problem with his motherboard. He's currently in college and his laptop happened to fail right before he needed to turn in a paper for his midterms...I hate it when that happens. This reminded me to go back and check that all my backups were running and working correctly. It has also been a few months since I posted about how to use "dump" to backup files in linux. So, I thought this would be a good time to post about how to use the "restore" command to, you guessed it, restore files from a backup taken using the dump command. 
