It was a great, if moist party. Many regulars I know did not attend this year. A few were there (Boucher, Elaine) and I made a few newfriends. There was rain each night, but nice days on Saturday and Sunday. As usual, the people were loving and friendly, the techno was prime and the sound systems were pumping. The recording went off nearly faultlessly. I recorded Elaine's set at noon(ish) on Friday, then the main stage for the rest of the weekend. I turned it on and let it go on Friday, which left much silence on Saturday morning. I was recording 16/44.1 WAV and it split it up into 2GB chunks. On Saturday night I used the line trigger, but it was set a little high, so there were many small files, but they seem to be close enough to be put back together. I dropped the trigger vol for Sunday, and the recording was fine. I left at ~3:30am this morning so as to pass through the Jasper park early enough to not have to pay $20 for 100k of road. I'm now in a lovely campground near Salmon Arm for a few days. They have wifi, so I'll be cutting code and soaking up the sun until Thursday.
Newest piece of tech around here is the Zoom H2 audio recorder which I picked up today. I'll be using it to record motion notion this weekend. It should work much better than last years failed laptop effort. Here's a brief overview:
The site is now being served using mod_proxy_ajp. This works better than the previous mod_proxy_http and mod_rewrite methods. I've described the integration of web applications with apache in the advanced section of the web tutorials. Subtle function of the site is now better.
I finished a very basic repository export and import application, which has allowed me to migrate object data from firebird to derby. It was a tricky little pig and is only just functional. It holds much promise, however. With a bit of effort it could more reliably move objects between databases supported by the object repository (firebird, derby and other jdbc databases). It has no key tracking or dependency checking now, but with a bit of manual sql massage, it was enough to move the site data into derby. The site is a bit faster, and the backend more up to date. The site is still, however, not as quick as I'd like it to be. I think the forum topic code slowing it down and might be a candidate for optimization... the whole thing should be cached anyway... but that's a bigger issue. The RepositoryIO migration tool is in the repository project.
I've installed Mantis Bug Tracker at bugs.benow.ca which will be used to manage bugs within the various benow projects. Sign up if you want to report or see changes.
A bought of the glitch has mostly been overcome. The menu is back, along with the projects. The codebase is making many strides, and this site was built on older iterations, so it's starting to become stale. I'm going to keep massaging it back to full function. It's still running on the firebird backend. Moving it to the jdbc derby backend should speed things up, but to do so, I need to finish the cross repository import/export code. Also, the method I'm using to map thru apache (mod_rewrite) is clobbering the server ajax error responses, but I think I can work around that with ajp13. The ipod/iphone formatting is fixed and no longer glitches (thx for the prod, Doug). Fun, fun, fun.
The web framework received a few new features over the last few weeks:
Autocomplete support added to the XSL control library. The facilitates presentation of completion choices for text boxes. Fetching of data can easily be done from a service method.
Tigra Javascript calendar control included in xsl libs. Easy to use.
Javascript table sorting by header also into xsl libs.
Custom menu creation facilitated. It's now easier to create and reuse different menu styles. Menus can be set site wide or for a specific page.
Performance optimizations.
The web framework should see continued luvin this summer.
I've added user invitation ability to the web framework. This allows for a user to invite someone else to join the site. The invited person is sent an email, which directs them to an invited user join page.
I've outlined the process in the following overview (click for full size)
It works quite well, and is another good piece of re-usable functionality. The framework is being used regularly in-house, but I've yet to hear anything from anyone else. Too bad... it's quite useful.
I've started sketching out the trip for the coming summer. I'm going to take a couple months and go down through the northern 'States to Detroit and back through northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. I'll be coding along the way, working for a month on work stuff, and the other on various enhancements to the APIs which I've been storing up. The preliminary schedule is this (click for bigger):
I've mapped it out on google maps (minus the train trek from Gillam to Churchill, which is unreachable by major roads). ~9,000km. Doing it counter clockwise allows me to hit the beautiful summer down south before heading up in August, at which time the bugs should be less. I think I've managed to make the schedule jive with some great events along the way. Here's a tentative itinerary:
There's not much up north, but I'm looking forward to seeing a small chunk of it. It should be beautiful, and a nice combination of the frantic and the far-away. It will be quite the trip.
The truck is in good shape. It needs new tires, but is mechanically sound. I found an actual RV mechanic who did a once-over at the end of last season. He fixed many issues with it, including alternator power not making it to the camper. I should now have plenty of juice for coding. I'm going to get a low power 32" LED LCD, as the 24" is a bit too far away. I'm also considering solar, as it would be nice not to disturb the neighbours. I'll have some time in the summer to test it all out before the long trek.
I've done some comparisons, and the trip is longer than driving to Sept-Iles Quebec and back, or roughly, from here to northern Peru.
More to come as plans solidify.
EDIT: pitchfork music festival is out and Toronto Indy (and touring Toronto) is in. This lengthens the trip a bit, but I've never been to TO... should be fun, if a bit crazy driving a big truck through the build-up.
I've committed many of the various projects. Several updates were made over the last months including
TV (jivo)
- channel images
Mail
- Support for ssl authentication (ie gmail)
- MailBuilder utility class
Java
- configuration api rewrite
- early library code update and synchronization routines
Web
- Development tools update (XSL lib autodocumentation, better page editing, etc)
- Much improved XSL libs (autocomplete, dirty/clear tracking, documentation, etc)
- Improved resource bundling
- Improved remote services (for easier javascript service requests, etc)
- Many javascript updates (DOM creation, Service submission, etc)
- Early internationalization support
- MailService for sending mail from webapps. Improved registration process.
- Updated libraries
- Improved documentation
- Tutorials and Walkthru
Repository
- Improved JDBC Shell and Derby repository
- field based join for multiple fields of same type
XML
- case insensitive unmarshalling, for unmarshalling from browser DOM (object submission over AJAX)
- fixes for better object unmarshalling
- security fixes
Security, Service
- minor updates
