Stickfight

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@formula is a fab thing, and some features just cant be beat, one of my faves is its

@Middle( string ; startString ; endstring )

Java has the normal substring stuff, but this format is a bit of a pain (I personally hate the whole "get indexof" rigmarole to do it), but with a bit of help from regular expressions we can just use this

private String getMiddle (String inStr, String startToken, String endToken){
String Expression = ".+" + startToken + "(.+?)" + endToken + ".+";
inStr = " " + inStr + " "
return inStr.replaceAll( Expression, "$1");
}

so say we have this String

String longString = "GD=testing~BSZ=567~ST=1~UNID=357DHFDC4DA4AE802574F60006F249~"

Then

getMiddle( longstring , "BZ=" , "~") will give us "567"

handy eh?

N. B. If you want to search for any of the following characters [\^$.|?*+() you need to put \\ before each one (except for "\" which only needs 1) as they are special characters in regular expressions (yes i should just alter the function to handle them, ill do it later)

Posted by Mark At 23:49:28 Location | Permalink | Comments (2)

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After my first full year of proper blogging I feel justified in doing a review


1) I no longer class my self as a pure domino person, Im a Java person who does domino (and flex and other stuff).

2) I have discovered what both true beauty of the soul and self destructive evil looks like (Personal).

3) The blogging and Notes community stuff has paid me back the effort I have put into it more than I could have ever hoped. (with particular thnks to Matt White, Bruce Elgort, and that wretch Poole)

4) I now know the person I want to be (still a long way to go).

5) The people I work with now (in the lotus Community) are the best.

6) Just about everyone out there is brighter than me, but I'm not going to let them get away with it for long

7) The future is bright.

nuff said

Posted by Mark At 11:15:11 Location | Permalink | Comments (2)

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As the development I'm doing gets more and more serious, I find myself missing the hideous nature of my old Alienware laptop, its dedicated RAID card was a real boon to multiple vmware images running at once, when the memory ran thin.

However with my latest machine (a badly butchered Compal FL92 which I'm normally very very happy with), there is no dedicated RAID card and the internal space and voltage won't stand the double/triple height of the raptor 2.5 inch drive, sooo, i have to keep it away from the drive (the processor is fine), but I'm at 4Gb already, surely the little devil will take the latest 8Gb cards, a trip round the forums comes up with a guy with proof that the FL92 will take the Crucial 8Gb set, it's £258 which is about what I was expecting. Clutching a credit card in my sweaty hands, I make my rash purchase.

Now that I'm committed (Crucial had it delivered to my hand by 9am on Saturday, when I ordered it Friday afternoon and I picked the slow, free postage), time to make it work with the old software EEEEK!, Linux Generic can't cope with more than 3Gb, and 64 bit is not to be considered, as there is no flash player and lots of other software won't work ***Update*** Vaughan Rivett's has since corrected me that the 64bit version is just fine and not missing any of the good stuff, so ignore my drivelling ***End Update***, hmmmm, but Linux servers have been running more than 4Gb for ages on 32bit, and indeed they can, using something called Physical Address Extension so I just have to swap out my kernel and it will be OK.

In Linux this is easy - just do the following in the nearest terminal:


$sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-server

$sudo apt-get install linux-headers-server

$sudo apt-get install linux-image-server linux-server


I then had to go into "/boot/grub/menu.lst

and add

title Ubuntu 8.04.2, kernel 2.6.24-24-server
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-24-server root=UUID=24bcaa1c-2860-4171-b760-e1129947958e ro quiet splash acpi_os_name="Windows 2001 SP2"
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-24-server

at the top of the "## ## End Default Options ##" section (I just copied the 4 lines that were previously at the top of that section and changed the "initrd.img-2.6.24-24-server" and "vmlinuz-2.6.24-24-server" values so that they matched the latest changed files in the "/boot/" folder
then restarted.

and LOOK!!!

But would that new memory be passed on to the applications?

Well I'm happy!! (Where's me copy of WAS??)

Posted by Mark At 17:01:35 Location | Permalink | Comments (8)

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In these day of firefox's built in spell checker, why do we need an extra spell checker, well frankly for me its because Flex does not have one built in, enter

Spelling Plus by http://gskinner.com

Its the best spell checker i have found for flex, you do have to remember to manually 'refresh' the checker with code if you change text boxes via back end code (not the apps fault), but otherwise an excellent checker, and one I'm very happy with (be warned its not free)

Posted by Mark At 23:05:38 Location Notes Alternatives | Permalink | Comments (0)

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A top book to read/listen to is "the Graveyard book" by Neal Gaimen, recommended by me by my far better half, not only is Mr Gaimen his usual inventivate self but as normal his books manage to be exciting and interesting without being socially stressful, to top this Mr Gaimen does is own narration on audio books, this sets him apart from a lot of modern authors ( Douglas Adams and Spike Milligan both did there own narration) it also helps that he is very very good at it.

Posted by Mark At 23:32:19 Location | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Just a quick note to the people out there taking advantage of the one click update from Ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04, make sure you don't have "auto logon" enabled, if you do, you stand a huge chance of happily screwing up your install (you will get lots of permission denied errors against /dev/null when you launch a xsession, even if your ctrl-Alt-F1 in and reset the security to "666" from "600" the darn thing resets on reboot (and anyway you just get a blank screen even if you get it (ie by ctrl-Alt-f7) to get back to xsession login,


....so carful carful party people

.. P.S. to the Mac boys out there laughing, i rebuilt in 14 mins (after backup), and i did not have to go to a "genius bar" to fix my problem...so RASSSSSSP!!

Posted by Mark At 09:16:10 Location | Permalink | Comments (6)

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Its been over a month since i last blogged, but I have a good reason, I have been given an amazing opportunity (given the current financial climate), and my working skill set has taken a amazing leap, I am now working on FLEX 3, Proper Java (with Spring, Hibernate and very serious web services) in addition to Domino, and all with those tight times that make a project fun, its been disturbing my sleep but i wake keen to be at work (always the best way to be), but time to get some useful blog entries out.

Posted by Mark At 22:31:41 Location Home | Permalink | Comments (0)

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So, first proper fight night over (by proper i mean at a competitive club rather than at a social club), and my blisters have all burst and i am hobbling like an old man, i have reached the "messy" stage of fencing training, in which your body has to make certain changes to let you continue (such as growing hard skin and proper muscles), and at the moment the mass of body parts are voting for nothing more stressful than xbox

I would appear i have remembered how to "fight" but not how to "fence", which just makes me a thugist embarrassment, but we will persevere

Mini Haverstock Thursday Review:

I've been away from Haverstock for a while and in the mean time they have started doing proper targeted training on Thursday, and i can completely recommend it, Soooo it does not let you do exactly what you want (shrug), but it does make you a better fencer and in the end that's what competitive clubs are supposed to do, you realise how bad your basic fencing is and Alex (who does the advanced version), guides you thought without rancour and in a way that make you determined to succeed, a good move on haverstocks behalf (dont know if other clubs are doing it, but they should)

Posted by Mark At 10:27:36 Location | Permalink | Comments (2)

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Now look you software makers, its all very well saying "built on eclipse", but i now have 3 completely separate instances of eclipse (Notes 8.5, Myeclipse and Flex3) on my machine and none of them seem to be talking to each other (I've even just opened them up all at once to see if there was a glimmer of recognition between them, I KNOW you can check for such thinks during an install because vmware workstation DOES for its debugger, I'm not asking for perfect integration, but come on party people, standard platform is nice, but COMMON standard platform would be better, all you have to do is ask "do you have an existing eclipse workspace you wish to install to". (mutters and trundles off to see if he can glue them together because most of the players don't seem to like you just switching to a common workspace, there must be an article to be written in getting these to all work)....end of rant

Posted by Mark At 00:24:10 Location | Permalink | Comments (5)

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To my shame I do useless articles, however this one by Stephan H Wissel is just perfect, it has everything a good article could want

1) Informative
2) Excellently presented and clear
3) Something for everyone in the target audience
4) Needs no re-formatting to show to other people

To prove the point, i just forwarded on the link to one of my managers, and got the response "Looks ideal, how long to implement"

Perfect.

Posted by Mark At 12:42:52 Location British library | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Sometimes i subscribe to the whole "x degrees of separation", "only 100,000 people in the world kind of thing", for example I'm doing Steve's my fencing instructor's web site and going through his portfolio, when i find the following image


The fact that a fencer (not a common sport) who has advertised a piece of IBM software on Unix, is having a website built on IBM software on a UNIX derivative (Linux), is quite frankly more than a little freaky to me.

enough of the random gibbering, back to work

Posted by Mark At 21:30:31 Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

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I am at last re-taking up fencing, and due to the fact my blog drivel level is dangerously high already, i have introduced a new RSS feed This will only contain tech/notes type blog entries (the planetlotus feed has already been changed)
If however you want your notes posts to be interspersed with swearing,blood and me getting the snot kicked out of me (and no I'm not doing 1st line support), then just leave your feeds how they are

Posted by Mark At 12:13:19 Location London | Permalink | Comments (3)

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I feel like i have wandered in to a club for big game hunters, its more fanatical than a star trek convention, I'm sure if a tattooist opened up in the product showcase floor, he would make a killing.

today has consisted of discovering the following

1) Mind blown with all the new stuff, had to take a quiet hour to get all i wanted to do in order in my mind (and on paper)
2) Cognos are actually here in person so I'm going hunting them this week
3) Selling Ideajam is not going to be hard as it is not only amazing but now award wining (its notes porn)
4) Got contact names for the foundation stuff i want
5) There is tons of sessions i want to go to, having to be VERY picky


Please forgive me for leaving you now as there are free drinks and a beach with my name on it. (hmmm must sort out the parties for the rest of the week)

Posted by Mark At 23:20:59 Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Its 6.30 am on a Sunday morning, and mist rises off the lakes in the riverside area of Disney's world, an air of mysticism shrouds the place, then in one's a two's figures skulk from the shadows each with a yellow pod clinging to their back, they converge in their thousands on a predefined point muttering to each other in a bizarre language, is it a strange race come to take over the world , No its all the lotusphere attendees all going for a free breakfast!!, my first lotusphere has begun, and I'm more excited than a priest in a 6th form exercise yard.

P.S. Im using Matts ID to post this

Posted by Matt White At 13:41:14 Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

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1) If you mix vanilla custard with Mascarpone it tastes like Walls Mr whippy icescream
2) The Popcorn Hour 110 is bloody marvellous!
3) A week is about my limit to be without my girlfriend before i start to pine (hoooowwwwl).
4) Thoughtful presents beat expensive ones every time
5) Once a tech always a tech: My father is able to take on ipods, podcasts, media tanks, nas, dvd ripping and VHS conversion in one day...Go dad!
6) Read the Bloody Manual!!!
7) i can survive about half a day with out the internet
8) God i needed a few days off!!!
9) Christmas is the worst time to not be seeing your children (worse that the rest of the year put together).
10) Family is best

Posted by Mark At 13:50:00 Location Parents Place | Permalink | Comments (0)

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I cant decide if THIS shows that the English can keep a secret, don't care what's going on around them, or are completely dateless

But its fun.

Posted by Mark At 09:10:08 Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Ok todays unloved freebe, is a notes based Geolocator, so you can tell the source country of your visitors by their IP address, it uses a lookup of world wide ISP IP address ranges, A demo of it working can be found Here, Mainly designed so you can do a best guess on the language for things like logon screens and such. it uses a little ajax call onload, against a notes agent, the database can be down loaded from IPLOOKUP.nsf, you will need to download the latest version of the data from http://ip-to-country.webhosting.info/ (which is free) and import using the "ImportIPaddressFile" agent, settings can all be found in the "configuration Documents" view, the db must be full text indexed as there are over 100,000 isp documents, but you can set it to a very low update scedule as it only needs to do it once per import.

Think thats it, yell if its giving you jip

Posted by Mark At 15:41:15 Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Some of you may have heard of Cognos (version 8), its one of IBM's business planning bits of software that always get managers more excited than is good for an English gentleman, but for the rest of us it means one thing, reports... wo wo woohhhh, stay!!!, don't shut down the site yet, i know you have had it up to your nostril hairs with reports but that's not what I'm on about, I'm just going to share the pain (and eventual joy), of getting it all working in domino, so that your managers/clients can get reports off a congnos server cleanly and see them in domino, through one web service port. so here we go.

firstly, cognos is a chunk of java working on an apache box, regardless of the fact you might think its working on IIS, its reached by port 9300 (by default),

I know this sounds dumb, but I'm just going to stuff the code in with a heap load of comments in it, the reason for this is i spend ages searching the net for help with cognos stuff and other than cognoses own HEAVILY protected site (cor! don't they want you to hire a congnos consultant), there's is only one free support site, so i want to make it as google friendly as possible., also this code depends on you having the cognos SDK (which as far as I'm aware costs about $10000), I'm pretty sure that if i put the necessary cognos jar files from the SDK up here i would be sued to within an inch of my life, but in case you have it they are: axisCognosClient.jar, cognos-axis.jar, cognosClient.jar, axisReportNetClient.jar) anyway, click on the attachment link to get the code (its too long to just paste into blogshpere)

Posted by Mark At 00:29:45 Location | Permalink | Comments (6)

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Bit of blog love, a college of my better half visited us, she has a mainly photo blog at http://www.frantzdatter.dk, which amongst other things has this Funny Sign, and i was taught the word "krappen" which is Icelandic for credit crunch, a better word for it all round i think.

Posted by Mark At 15:05:59 Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Fiends and Followers of this pack of feeble ranting's will know my love of the drobo external nas drive, as i had filled mine up with 1tb drives, i was much pleased with the news that the first of the new uber big Seagate drives came out (1.5tb), i purchased 4 of said drives, and popped them in, a week later one seems to fail for 30 seconds then be ok, but the drobo did its rebuild thing for 24 hours (which means it goes slow), i shrugged, but then a couple of days later another one failed on the other drobo, so they were both rebuilding,i started to get nervery if one more failed i would lose the raid, Eeeeeeeek!.
How ever it seems i was not alone, the drobo forums were alive with the horror of these drives, turned out that something to do with their slightly larger power requirements, if the drive did not get EXACTLY what they wanted on startup, they would go in to "autistic mode" for 30 seconds (ie sulk), which breaks the drobo raid, it turns out that is problem is common to all the modern operating systems (Linux, Mac osx, vista), Seagate flatly refused to accept responsibility telling people were miss using their drives (it mainly happened when people were using them for raid), however as they had put "best usage: Desktop raid" on their website, that did not cut much mustard (the little devils removed it once people pointed that out but thanks to the joy of the internet, plenty of screen shots had already been taken....ha..power to the geeks!!), they have now released a firm ware fix (which you need a PC to apply to the drives), but it too late for me, I've already swapped back to the 1TB drives and used the 1.5Tb for other backups, the following is how to format said drives in Linux as they throw a little tantrum.

Most people who are Linux users who have come from a windows background, like gui apps, and the best for disk formatting is called Gparted, however the current "sanctioned" version of Gparted (0.3.5), throws a hissy fit when you try and format a partition greater than 1TB, Sooooo, with these monster drives, open a terminal window:

> sudo su

means you don't need to keep putting "sudo" at the beginning of all your commands for this terminal session

> parted /dev/sdd

or what ever drive is if you have gparted you can see the drive name there, now your in parted, but your drive is completely blank so you need to enter

(parted) mklabel msdos

an msdos label will do these drives fine, Next enter "print" to see the drives details

(parted) print                                                    

Disk /dev/sdd: 1500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start  End  Size  Type  File system  Flags

as you can see we have no partitions on this drive, in this exersise i want one partition that takes up the whole drive and to use the ext3 format, the 2 numbers at the end are the start and end points of the partitions so "0" to "1500GB" to do the whole drive.  

(parted) mkpart primary ext3 0 1500gb                                    

now lets do "print" to see if that took effect

(parted) print

Disk /dev/sdd: 1500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
1      32.3kB  1500GB  1500GB  primary                    

rayyy, worked, now we need to pop out of parted
                                                                 
(parted) quit                                                            

the drive is still not formatted so fill in the following (you can check on gparted again if you don't know what to put as the drive, ie. /dev/ssd1)

> /sbin/mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdd1

mke2fs 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
91578368 inodes, 366284000 blocks
18314200 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=0
11179 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
       32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
       4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968,
       102400000, 214990848

Writing inode tables: done                            
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 28 mounts or
180 days, whichever comes first.  Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.

here you go that's the format done, while your here you might as well sort out the other bits, soo

> e2label /dev/sdd1 mp3picsbackup

This give the drive a label, so that, say this is a usb drive, it will auto mount to the label, now i like really open security (lazy sod), and as such,

> chmod 777 -R /media/mp3picsbackup

oh, i had to mount the drive for this command to work.

Posted by Mark At 12:15:29 Location | Permalink | Comments (2)

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Have been watching the 80's cartoon ThunderCats while working this weekend, and my mind must have blocked out the memory of the voice Overs to prevent me being scared for life, some of it made be go and hide under the bed until there episode is over, but in any case "snaff" still needs nailing to a tree

Posted by Mark At 13:11:53 Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Is it me, or has anyone else noticed, this trend of putting multiple page articles on the web when they could quite happily live on a single page? i can understand the logic to it, ie that more page views mean more add space, and it is a good idea (we all have to make a living), but they are taking it to far i reckon, if i can see the "Next" or "page 1 of 5" buttons without any scrolling at all, then i just close the article as they are taking the Mickey, in the end is self destructive, just like people not watching movies that have too many add breaks. (waves walking stick and mutters)

Posted by Mark At 09:04:42 Location | Permalink | Comments (4)

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Being the dirty traitor i am, i have spent the day coding ASP web sites (Microsoft Visual Developer 2008 free version), i know, i know, but yah got to earn a living, i have to say that Microsoft basic methodology and layout style have not changed (its been 3 years since i last did .Net stuff), and quite frankly that's a good thing, im reskinning someone else's site, so i don't get to take advantage of the famous Microsoft wizards, but one thing i have noticed, Microsoft development environment still throws the same hissy fit when you step out the box and start fiddling, it is however very very polished and give you a good reminder of why it so popular.

Nearer home, the Domino Beta 2 client on Linux has improved in both speed and functions (we now have spell checker back, along with some strange graphical glitches), Soooo want the Dev client.

Posted by Mark At 19:07:11 Location Home | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Well UKlug has finished and i really enjoyed it, learnt a lot and took home some great things, but to put it all in bullet points

Good:
1) Some real big guns there and some fantastic speakers
2) Very well organised and venue was perfect.
3) Very good vendor turn out and we went away with a couple of them we will use.
4) Cutting edge (well as far as notes can be).

Bad:
1) I completely screwed up my session (very poor proof reading, under ran, projector was max 640x480, which was to low for my content but i had not thought to check before, overly nervy), though got more people coming up to me afterwards for thanks, questions and requests than the last one (perhaps it was out of pity)
2) I think that keeping a big gun talk for last session, would stop people like me slopping of to the pub and staying there on a warm Friday afternoon.

Neutral:
1) Faced the double edge sword of London being the venue, on the plus side its very easy for a lot of people to get too and so the official attendance is high, but on the down side, people don't commit to it and so drop out as work finds it easy to cancel/call back people, but what can you do about that

Posted by Mark At 15:44:14 Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

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so you think you can get all smug, and know your stuff but it turns out the you are only ever scratching the surface no matter how much your learn, take me for example i use eclipse and do most of my proper code in java rather than lotus script, all of my desktops are Linux (admittedly i still have a vmware image), so i decided to work with a college on a serious project, Linux/Jboss/Spring/Domino 8.5 all the latest stuff, total CV frenzy, and do it in the most hard core form, now I'm looking at a RedHat server command line with no GUI in sight, and a bunch of build files!!

So it not imposable but it certainly gonna take a bit more time, perhaps i'll skip the rest of tonight and go watch tank police (feel the power that they got)

Posted by Mark At 23:16:08 Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

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1) You've just upgraded your windows domino server to the latest and greatest version, but for what ever reason, you have bounced it before running domino, when it comes back up it just sits and hangs at "applying windows setting", after staring at the screen stupidly for about 15 Min's, you realise domino is stuck at the "do you wish to update you system databases designs" prompt, but you cant get at the screen, you cant click yes as windows is waiting for the service to completely start, solution, map a drive to you D$ (or what ever) from another machine, yes you can do that!!, rename the notes.ini file, and reboot, windows will throw up a service error, sulk for 2 Min's then let you in, rename your ini file back and load your domino server, sweet!,

2) So you have an ill web app server, that needs a bounce or 2 during the business day, you or the Dev's are working on the fix but it will take a day or two (or more if its hardware related), how do lessen the impact on the users, simple!, use sso (single sign on), its dead easy to set up (look it up in the admin nsf) and if the server crashes, when you bring it back up the user does not have to re-login to get back to where they were (often they just blame the pause on the Internet/proxy and you get to escape blame all together. Ray!!!!)

3) Linux full screen apps suck balls on your ubuntu machine (VMware, MAME etc), you always seem to get menus and stuff appearing at the top an bottom, and they flicker and come and go as they please, well weep no more, turn off the "visual Effects" (System --> Preferences --> Appearance, last tab), and get back to enjoying samurai showdown VI (and of course VMWARE) in glorious 256 colour full screen.

4) It doesn't matter how bad your diarrhea is, always check that there is toilet paper before you sit down on the bowl.

Posted by Mark At 17:44:15 Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

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I have a hell of a lot of stuff to write about and tons of work to do, but for some reason am not doing them (lazy toad that i am), but i want to put at least one thing up per week that might be of some use to people and the big stuff is taking to long to write up, so here's something for the admins, its called unlocker assistant and can be found http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/ (well i can be found all over the place but this is the best place)

Simply put, this means you can pull a sickly or corrupt database out of a domino server when the server wont let go of it, yes i know that theoretically risks crashing or damage the database, but quite frankly, if your going to have to bounce the box and the database looks stuffed, then your risking that anyway and it keeps the rest of the server up for the rest of the business day, i've used it a lot and have not had any problems at all, the server does a little W.T.F. "wheres me database" but copes with it in a few seconds, try it when your devs screw up their server and see what i mean.

On other news, it looks like i have been accepted as a speaker for uklug, this is fab and i am looking forward to it, there is only one problem, and that is i looked at the other Speakers and quite frankly I'm the only there that i have not heard of (lots of important people and one random peasant), eeek!

Posted by Mark At 21:25:46 Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

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The thought last week was, F**king Lacie, the bloody thing has gone and died, one Lacie big disk 1 TB had snuffed it, taking with it a huge chunk of thankfully replaceable data, sooo, time to bite the bullet and get a Drobo, i cant afford it, and should not get it, but this is the second drive i have lost in the last month and i need RAID (or what ever it uses), one surf latter and its off to Scan I go, (they were the cheapest, had it in stock and also had a special offer on good reliable 1TB drives)

2 days pacing (and frantic downloading), and it arrives, there are hundreds of normal reviews and deboxing views out there, so here is the points that the other reviews seems to miss

The dashboard app that you REALLY need (ignore what they say, its got all the groovy functionality in it), does not work on Linux, not under wine and not even under vmware (yes it loads and everything but it does not find the drobo, and i tried it in both bridged and natted modes, also it does not allow you to specify and IP address to connect to), so i go crawling to my beloved and beg the use of her XP machine (STOP SNIGGERING!!!), i had also got the Droboshare, as its currently the only way to support EXT3 with out a whole lot of farting around (it can support 2 Drobo units to 1 Drobo Share) and anywhere theres is something groovy about NAS's rather than SANS.

Anyway, after that, is really was a doddle to setup (it also tootled of to the net and did all the firmware and such), and suddenly i had 3.8 gig of safe data space (broken up into 2TB chunks), you can rename the drives and everything, some extra notes:

1) its not too slow, i get 19Meg Sec, on normal USB drives and the same on this, and about 7-10Meg Sec on network transfer, so you can stream moves just fine.

2) its does not like surprises, ie it takes a while to warm up once it has fallen asleep, and if you suddenly do something it does not like (say attempt to transfer 1.5TB), it wants a little sulk and a quiet 5 mins to flash its lights, and don't just turn it off (you don't lose any data, but it acts like someone has nicked its teddy bear)

3) it knows best, even the instruction book says to leave it alone so it can sort it self out and do thing, and each time i have tried to intervene when it was taking longer than i wanted, i have just made it worse, and it simpler to just go and have a shower.

4) its bleeding quiet, nuff said

(clicking sound attacts the scums attention, and he scuttles off for 10 mins), Phew, back, my other lacie drive must have heard the swearing as it started making a very nasty clicking sound, and stoped responing, i tell you that company hates my guts, after a franting few mins i got it working by taking it to bits and spreading the parts out on paper in the cold outside (dear lord dont let it rain tongiht) and its talking to me again, backup BACKUP!!!,

back to the drobo, all in all an excellent bit of kits and well worth it if you have a couple of Terabytes of data you really don't want to loose, and dont want to waste you money on lacie drives.

Posted by Mark At 21:53:13 Location | Permalink | Comments (3)

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Recently i decided to make the jump from Windows to linux for all my kit rather than just a few select bits, this was strangely driven by Apple, i altered the volume setting on my apple so that i could make my ear drums bleed (I worship at the altar of happy hardcore), this went fine, until i plugged it back into itunes, and it stated quite flatly that i had altered my ipod and that it would wipe it, no cancel button no "are you sure" , nothing, nada, big brother knows best, right then Jobs you git!!! (sound of IPOD being punted across a room), im off to get a new media player (but that's a subject for another blog),

This led to a complete hissy fit against all the big players. (damn them all to hell, if i wanted my computer to do that i would tell it to!!)

So new laptop in hand, i download the latest ubuntu and began, the following is the things i have learned from the experience, with the windows to linux software alternatives.

1) BUY VMware, yes i know its $200 per Host version, but if your doing it on a professional basis it is so worth it.

2) Download the VMware converter (its free), then using it take a vmware image of you existing installation, this means that you have all you old stuff with you and can be using all your old software, no licence keys lost, no discovery that there is no equivalent software on linux, its totally the soft option. and the more you use it the more you love it (yes i know virtual box is supposed to be faster, but quite frankly I'm looking for reliability here)

3) On you vmware box enable shared folders then basically have a drive mapped to your "home" folder, this means that you can use this as your common store (it should be known that you WILL get some file location problems when you do this for things like the lotus data directory, as linux is case sensitive on file names and there seems no consistency even in big programs like on whether they are looking for "data" , "DATA" or "Data")

Software Alternatives:

Windows: My Eclipse
Linux: My Eclipse
Comment: Duh!!!, but i have noticed that if you're sharing your workplace on a share folder between my old VMware windows version and the new linux version, there is some case issues on the directory names

Windows: Lotus notes
Linux: Lotus Notes
Comment: well not quite, it's supposed to be here in 8.5, so not quite there, but have sacrificed a goat to the great yellow god

Windows: Mame32 (its an arcade emulator for the heathens out their)
Linux: Loemu on top of SDLMame
Comment: exactly the same even my logistic usb controllers work

Windows: Total Recorder (a stream ripper for radio)
Linux: streamripper (i kid you not its actually called that)
Comment: command line instead of gui, but so easy to use its embarrassing

Windows: FLashFXP (simply the best FTP client)
Linux: FileZilla
Comment: Q handling not quite as good but the best linux one that i have found so far

Windows: Outlook
Linux: Google Mail for domains
Comment: yes i know i should be using domino, but quite frankly i just want it to work, on my own mail i just want to be a user, so sue me,

Windows: Office
Linux: Open Office
Comment: yeah yeah symphony, again this is a core app and i just want to be a user

Windows: msn/sametime
Linux: pidgin
Comment: it works and its already on there, I'm happy

Windows: Better File Rename
Linux: Bulk Update
Comment: a fab improvement enabling me to use regular expressions to strip out stuff i don't want

Windows: The Rest of the Stuff
Linux: VMWARE
Comment: i just works, even audio ripping tools like "sound taxi"

on the whole I'm very pleased, and have no wish to go back.

Posted by Mark At 21:12:38 Location | Permalink | Comments (2)