daden's blog

MindMapping Pretension

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:55:00 -0500

I've been playing with MindMapping software again in the last few days, trying to find one that will do things that would be helpful but so far none of them seem to fit the bill exactly. In any case, they key thing I wanted to note is the patent absurdity of the mind mapping PR BS. Don't get me wrong, I actually like them and have found them useful for some things but the pretensionness of claiming that they reflect "how you think" absolutely drives me crazy. Mostly because it is so stupid. They may provide a way to help organize data and sort through some things but to say they are the way people think is either a) ridiculously overblown or b) pitifully ignorant. Or, the people who write that drivel actually do think that way and we should pity them -- and certainly never take their investment recommendations (assuming that if they are incapable of thinking in one area, other areas might be affected). Promote your software as tools, as organizing devices and such but don't insult your audience by saying your tool is the way they think.

Bugzilla Windows installation problems

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:50:00 -0500

Spent a good chunk of the day installing Bugzilla onto a Windows box -- was a bit of a pain in the ass -- but the real problem was getting to the end and seeing how crappy it looks. Perhaps that is unkind to say since many someone's have spent their time for free building it, but at some point along the way it might be nice to encourage someone with an ability to lay out pages and forms to get involved (that would not be me, btw). The forms are ugly and incomplete. For example, to assign someone as the default assignee for a component, you have to type in the email address accurately. Why not a drop-down of the people in the database? The display just seems like a wireframe of what the interface should be rather than a real app. Likely the work has been in the backend and setting it up to do many things but it would be nice if the interface was given just a bit of attention. Again, perhaps I'm being snide because I'm tired, having spent so much time trying to get it to work and realizing that I don't really want to work with the interface or have clients work with it. But, here's some notes and info on what was involved: 1) Basic directions are at: Windows Install 2) I was using IIS, those basic directions are at: IIS Confiuration 3) Problem 1: The direction say Perl 5.8 or higher. I got 5.10 by default but the various packages you're supposed to install wouldn't even show up when I managed to figure out how to add the repository they are in. Only by putting in the full path to a package I wanted to install ("http://....") and running from the command line (the "ppm" command) did it tell me that the package wouldn't work on my "platform." Another hour or so to figure out WHICH platform it was talking about, i.e. ActivePerl 5.10. Uninstalled 5.10, reinstalled 5.8 and the installs pretty much occurred as described in the directions. 4) Problem 2: IIS configuration. IISPassword was installed on the server I was on and it was preventing access to the directory due to the .htaccess file. Moved .htaccess out of the way just to get it to work. 5) Problem 3: IIS configuration. IIS refused to see index.cgi and run it despite following the directions in the reference above. Was getting a 404 File Not Found error which made no sense. After a bunch of head pounding and testing, I realized IIS was only serving up files with extensions it recognized and figured that must be configured somewhere else. Sure enough it is, you have to go into: "Web Service Extensions" in the IIS management console and fiddle with the allowed extensions (many of which are prohibited by default). Turned on CGI there (Perl CGI didn't work for me) and the Bugzilla site at least came up. As I said, the interface is ugly, somewhat non intuitive so I'm going to take a look for some other option. In the meanwhile, hope the above helps!

Creating a Win98 virtual machine (vmware)

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 11:59:00 -0500

Probably thanks to my stubborn nature, I just went though a rather interesting adventure trying to get Win98 installed into vmware. It was for a friend and not really what I needed to be doing today, but there it is, so be it. After all I went through, I wanted to write up the steps involved in case (for some ungodly reason) I needed to do it again or in case someone else comes across the same problem. VMWare Workstation gives you the ability to create a virtual machine for Win98 ? so does the online site for making a VM (http://www.easyvmx.com). The problem I had is that the disk I had for Win98 was not bootable ? it had Win98 as well as an update to it but cannot be used to boot and the VMWare process for installing an OS is to use a bootable disk. Instead of being bootable, the CD simple had a Win98/setup directory with setup.exe in it. Perhaps there is someway to get vmware to run that directly, but I didn't find it. I looked for ways to try to make something bootable out of the CD, but got nowhere. However, I did find a way to do get it installed, though it depends on having a floppy drive which is more than a little unusual these days. I happened to have a USB floppy drive I could use for this. So, here is the outline of the process: 1. Create a bootable DOS floppy. I did this by doing the following: (a)http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm: Downloaded the Windows 98 bootable executable. (b)Got a clean floppy and put it in the floppy drive. This is done by running the executable downloaded from the above page and letting it install a bootable image onto the floppy. 2. But, for whatever reason, when I set my VM to go to the floppy drive, did not recognize it ? I'm guessing because the floppy is a USB though I couldn't swear to that. 3. Since I couldn't go directly to the floppy ? and so the VM would not boot from the floppy -- I downloaded a tool to create an image of a bootable floppy: http://www.towodo.com/products/floppyimage/ I used that to create a floppy image and then pointed the VM's floppy drive to that .img file. This got me to the point of booting to an A prompt though I couldn't see the CD yet in order to run the setup.exe. You point the VM to the floppy image in VMWare Workstation by specifying the image file in the Virtual Machine settings. I used: F:\temp\win98floppy\win98.img though you might need to make the change in the VMWare confi file (.vmx) if you're not VMPlayer: floppy0.fileName = ?F:\temp\win98floppy\win98.img? With this in place, I got to the A prompt. 4. Once I got the the A prompt, the next problem was that I didn't seem to be able to get to the CD drive, though in fact it might have worked ? it might have appeared not to work because I didn't try the right drive letter (which I realized later seems to have been set to ?R?). Look in the autoexec.bat file on the actual floppy and look for the line that invokes MSCDEX.EXE which sets up the CD drive to be viewed. Check for the /L flag which I believe seems the drive letter for the CD. The default was set to R which I never checked. 5. Because I couldn't get to the CD drive, I went looking for info on how to get there and found the following: http://www.onecomputerguy.com/install/floppies.htm#standalone The steps from here are to: (a) Copy the OAKCDROM.SYS (41 K) file to your floppy disk (b) Add the fillowing line to the CONFIG.SYS file DEVICE=OAKCDROM.SYS /D:mscd001 (c) Add the fillowing line to the AUTOEXEC.BAT file MSCDEX.EXE /D:mscd001 (In the section on adding a generic CD ROM Driver.) That's what I applied. Note: Interestingly, the info right above this on that page concerns creating a bootable CD. That might also work instead of downloading the bootable Win98 image I named above. 6. Of course, once I made changes to config.sys and autexec.bat as per the reference to get to the CD above, I needed to re-create the floppy image. 7. With the floppy image and the CD ROM handled as per the above, I was able to boot the VM to the A prompt, then go to the CD, but trying to run /win98/setup/setup.exe ran into an error that there was no DOS Disk to install onto. 8. To handle this, see: http://biberdorf.com/linux/thinkpad/win98boot.html in particular the ?Use the CD? section which gives instructions on how to run FDISK to partition the virtual disk for Windows and then run format to format the disk. (NOTE: The instructions on this page might also be able to be used to create a bootable CD by using some of the other pieces I described above including creating the bootable floppy image.) In short, from the A prompt run: FDISK then, FORMAT C: /s 9. With that done, you'll then be able to navigate to the CD's /Win98/Setup directory and run setup.exe. At various points in the install, the VM will need to reboot. In order to make this happen, change the VM's configuration so the floppy no longer points at the Image file ? set it to ?Auto detect? so that it fails and goes to the virtual C drive to boot. I think the above are the key pieces of it ? with that done I actually got a Win98 VM set up and running. I must say, it looks pretty primitive after running on 2000, XP and a bit of Vista for the last few years. It is also remarkable small ? only taking up about 170 meg on the hard drive (oh, for those days!!!).

Windows Vista sucky error message

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 11:40:00 -0500

Just got a new box which had Vista Home Premium on it -- I'm trying to upgrade to Vista Ultimate which I already had. (Would have preferred XP Pro but it wasn't available on the machine.) In any case, after going through the long process, the error message that shows up is something like: "One or more services couldn't be installed. Upgrade failed. Restart computer and start installation again." Message to Microsoft -- warning messages like that are bush league, they suck and appear to be designed to piss people off (perhaps you should see who is advising you to use such stupid error messages). At the very least, there should be an option to see more data on the problem. Vista OBVIOUSLY knows which services it couldn't install -- perhaps a list of them might help. Why the hell a company like Microsoft can't think about providing useful data instead of apparently just trying to protect us poor users from some underlying complexity is beyond me. And, by the way, I like MS products -- I am not an MS basher like some people I know. But, this kind of stupid message is absurd!

CSS

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 10:26:00 -0500

I wrote the following to a friend about a site he has that made it hard to update colors. This is NOTHING new, and probably leaves out other important reasons for doing it, but figured I'd post it anyway. ---------------------- you'd said you had gone through or were going through color changes on the site and that was taking quite a bit of time. You might want to talk with you developer about converting the control of colors to either: 1) php variables that can be changed one place or 2) cascading style sheet items/settings Of the two, the second is preferable long term if the site can be moved to a point where everything is being controlled through CSS. See: http://www.csszengarden.com Click on the links -- the content is all the same, the look and feel totally different. Every one of the versions of the site you access through that URL is controlled with CSS. Ultimately, the way to go is to have the entire site look and feel controlled through CSS. One of the first things this means is to NOT use the HTML "table" tag for anything else except real tables of data, insteading using it for layout and formatting (which is how it has been used for years). Some advantages are: 1) Generally reduces the amount of data that needs to be downloaded to render pages 2) Look and feel can be totally changed by changing one file (the CSS) only, thereby staying away from having to muck with code to change the look. 3) Separation of data and look and feel is a good design principle. 4) By separating data from look and feel, it tends to result in data that is better structured and, therefore, may be easier to share with other sites and applications. The full use of CSS this way is something relatively new. CSS wasn't up to the task for a long time, other approaches were developed and it does take learning to master, but it is being more and more and so there are resources out there.

For what it's worth

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:16:00 -0500

A little while ago for a proposal we did, I wrote up some ideas (not original to me) about doing application development. Thought it might be worth posting though, again, there is no implication these ideas are original: a) Elegance is always worth the effort. Elegance is about doing things right, doing them efficiently and doing them in a way that allows for expansion and easy maintenance. b) Solve the general problem first; then use that solution to solve the problem to hand. In other words, don't hack together one-time solutions; instead when confronted with a single problem or requirement, figure out what the general problem is and build a generalized solution to that problem. Make sure that general solution fits with the rest of the architecture and, in fact, expands or improves the architecture. Then, use that high-level solution to take care of the specific problem (if the specific issues even still exists). c) A well-designed architecture anticipates and accommodates future problems including currently unknown problems. If every time something new surfaces, you find yourself struggling over architecture or fighting with your infrastructure, you have bigger problems than you think. Step back and revisit the overall architecture to improve it ? doing new things shouldn't be that hard! d) Technology is there to serve business strategies and needs. Technology for technology?s sake may be fun, but it isn't the way to get work done. It is okay to use cutting edge technology when it fits the business need at hand, but don't use it just because it is "cool." e) End-users are important; technology is not. The importance of the end-user doesn't only surface when it's time to deliver or support an application. The end-user should be involved from the beginning, helping to shape the application's features, interface and outputs. It is, after all, the end-user who has to live with the end product every day. They should have some say from the beginning. f) Technical implementation is at its best when it doesn't bring attention to itself. Getting the job done in such a way that the user doesn't notice or have attention on the technology is a key element of success. Unless the application is intended for developers or other technologists, end-users shouldn't have to know or care about anything technical. g) Don't assume current limitations will last forever. Quite the opposite, question every limit and constraint, assume they will be exceeded or surpassed and see if your design still works. Too often, either one day before or one day after the application has been put into production, someone will want to exceed a limitation they earlier swore would "never" be reached.

system architect group

Sat, 01 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Just a quick note that an online group exists for information on System Architect, a product I've worked with quite a bit over the last couple of years. It's at: http://groups.google.com/group/SystemArchitect Not a ton of traffic there, but there are people who watch and post to it.

persona non grata

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 09:48:00 -0500

Finally figured out what my problem was with getting to this blog or anything connected with the machine it is running on. I'd been trying to get here for a couple of days, but couldn't make any connection from home. It took me awhile, but I finally realized that the problem was related to connecting from home and nowhere else. So, after eliminating any issue at my end and having encountered this kind of problem a couple of years ago, I took a guess that it was at the ISP's end. Sure enough, my IP address had been flagged and I was officially a persona non grata. The ISP responded quickly and restored me to good standing. Something to keep in mind, though -- some security software will notice what it thinks is something odd and automatically throw the offending IP address into a list that cuts out all future connections. I guess that's one of the prices we all pay for idiots who aren't creative or constructive enough to build something positive, instead using technology to destroy. I'm obviously not talking about security experts who help to uncover and patch holes, but the criminals who abuse security problems to destructive ends. Another example of the 2.5% who make life tougher for the remaining 97.5.