Raible Designs

Lightbox JS

Lightbox JS is a simple, unobtrusive script used to to overlay images on the current page. It's a snap to setup and works on all modern browsers. I dig it.

Media Center and Skype 2.0

Ever since we got our new HP Pavilion, I've been improving it and my "home office" setup as well. First off, I bought 2GB of RAM to boost it up to 3GB. Then I got a DVI KVM Switch, so I could plug Windows and Linux into the same KVM setup. Installing OpenSuse wasn't too hard, but configuring CUPS and Samba and adding a 2nd drive took a bit of wrestling. The best part, however, has been yesterday and today.

Julie got everyone in our families new webcams for Christmas. For the past week or so, we've been trying to get them to work. I've had an iSight for almost a year, and I've never been able to get it to work when talking with my parents. This time was no different, but we did get the Mac working with Yahoo Messenger. This led to getting Yahoo working on my Windows box, but the sound sucked and the video wasn't that good. I couldn't get any other IM clients to work either. Then I remembered Skype and thought "they must have video by now". Sure 'nuff, when I checked a few days ago, they had Skype 2.0 with video support. It worked great right away and I had a great "talk" with my parents last night.

Tonight, I got my sister hooked up on Skype and we talked for a bit. She's currently having lots of computer issues and Skype crashes (and quits working altogether) after working fine for about a minute. My dad had a few issues with his machine too - mainly due to Skype tacking out his 1GHz/1GB machine. Bottom line: Skype with Video works great if you have a new machine with plenty o' memory.

Lastly, I received a TV Tuner tonight from Amazon - thanks to a JavaLobby gift certificate (thanks guys!) Note that you need a card with "MCE" in the model name if you want it to work with Media Center. I plugged it in, configured it, and now I'm watching Law & Order while typing this. I setup Conan to record every night and life is good. It's a pretty cool setup - now I just need a new dual-core Intel-based PowerBook to get the best of everything.

Steve, PLEASE announce Intel PowerBooks

I totally agree with Dion. For the love of God, pppplllllleeeeeeeaaaaaaasssssseeeee announce Intel-based ass-kicking PowerBooks tomorrow!! I love my PowerBook, but I hate the speed. It's extremely frustrating developing in Java on it, especially when I spend 60% of my time on a dual-core AMD 64. If Apple doesn't announce new PowerBooks tomorrow, it's likely I'll buy a Ferrari instead.

J3Unit

Over the weekend, I learned about J3Unit - a new object oriented JavaScript testing framework.

J3Unit is an object-oriented unit testing framework for JavaScript. J3Unit runs JavaScript tests directly in the web browser and can be automated using JUnit and Jetty. J3Unit builds on previous work by JSUnit and Script.aculo.us to provide a better way to automate JavaScript unit tests. Object-oriented JavaScript unit tests are written using the Script.aculo.us Test.Unit.Runner object, which is in turn built upon the prototype JavaScript library.

J3Unit has 3 modes of operation: Static Mode, Local Browser Mode, and Remote Browser Mode

To me, this looks similar to Selenium. I'd definitely like to explore using this package or Selenium in AppFuse.

Currently, AppFuse uses Canoo WebTest, which is based on HtmlUnit. The current version of HtmlUnit doesn't support Prototype, or any libraries that depend on it. The good news is "This will be quite simple to fix".

AppFuse and Equinox get some FishEye lovin'

In addition to many other java.net projects, the Cenqua guys have been kind enough to add FishEye to both AppFuse and Equinox's CVS repositories. You can now view FishEye goodies using the URLs below:

• AppFuse: browse, search, changelog, rss
• Equinox: browse, search, changelog, rss

Later today, I'll see if I can hack java.net's browse CVS page to show FishEye instead of java.net. Thanks Cenqua!

Update: The hack is complete. IE gives a security warning b/c FishEye is only available at http (not https), but it works fine in Firefox. If you'd like to put FishEye into an embedded iframe in your java.net project, here's the JavaScript I used to do it. View source on any of AppFuse's java.net pages for more information. The JavaScript goes in your www/project_tools.html page.

function fisheye() {
    if (document.getElementById("browsesource") != null) {
        var fisheyeDiv = document.createElement("div");
        fisheyeDiv.className="app";
        var header = document.createElement("div");
        header.className="h2";
        header.innerHTML = "<h2>Browse source code with FishEye</h2>";
        fisheyeDiv.appendChild(header);
        var fisheye = document.createElement("iframe");
        fisheye.setAttribute("src", "http://fisheye5.cenqua.com/viewrep/appfuse");
        fisheye.setAttribute("border", "0");
        fisheye.style.width="99%";
        fisheye.style.height="700px";
        fisheye.style.border="0";
        fisheye.style.marginTop="10px";
        fisheye.style.marginLeft="5px";
        fisheyeDiv.appendChild(fisheye);
        document.getElementById("dirlist").insertBefore(fisheyeDiv, document.getElementById("browsesource"));
    }
}

Related: Fixing your java.net project's homepage.

Improving the Maven Repository

Brett Porter provides a few steps on how you can help improve the Maven repository. My advice? Convert your project to use Maven 2 as an experiment. That's what I did with Equinox 1.5. In the process I found 28 issues with POMs at ibiblio. If you're using Ant, you can use Maven 2's Ant Tasks to download your dependencies w/o going "whole hog" and converting everything to M2.

Yes, this is a somewhat twisted attempt to convince you to endure the same pain I went through. The best and worst part of Maven 2 is its transitive dependencies. If they can all be updated to be accurate by the project owner's - the problem will be solved. But how do you convince project owner's to do that? I wonder how good Ivy's metadata is?

Why is this whole debate important to you? Because Ant 1.7 is (supposedly) going to have a dependency download mechanism. It's likely you'll use it because it is a nice convenience. Steve Loughran is one of Ant's primary developers and he has this to say:

I do find the m2 tasks and repository hard to work with, and am debating a quick investigation of Ivy. Maybe focusing on one thing -library management- has let them do a better job than trying to be all of a next generation build tool.

The "best dependency downloading tool" debate is heating up. I wonder which one will win Ant Developers over? If it's M2, I can see the Apache folks smiling. However, if it's Ivy - at least we'll know it's not a political decision. It's because it simply does a better job. May the best tool win.

NOTE: I've yet to try Ivy, and don't know if I will. Especially now that I've fixed all the POMs I use at ibiblio.

OpenSuse 10.0 vs. Ubuntu 5.10

Ever since I got a new HP Pavilion, I've been planning what's next for my Dell Dimension 8300. I decided it's probably best to retire my somewhat hosed Fedora Core 3 box (Dimension 8100) and replace it with a new Linux server. After talking with a good friend, I decided to go with OpenSuse 10.0 or Ubuntu 5.10. Steve was a good enough friend to burn me DVDs of both. Yesterday, I bought a new 160GB hard drive and last night I tried to install Ubuntu. I went w/ Ubuntu b/c Steve tried them both and said he liked Ubuntu a lot better. I've never used Ubuntu, and I have used Suse a fair bit - so I figured I'd try something new.

When I started installing Ubuntu last night, I figured it'd be a breeze. I have a DVI KVM Switch hooked up to a Logitech cordless keyboard/mouse, and Ubuntu immediately recognized them both. However, at 44%, it failed to install gstreamer0.8-jpeg and the installation bailed out. I was able to login to the desktop and (seemingly) get stuff working, but I'm always a bit leary about a failure in the middle of an OS install. After an hour of futzing with it, I tried again and got the same error. Around 1 a.m., I said "screw this" and threw in the Suse DVD.

I had the same good results with Suse, where my keyboard and mouse were recognized. However, when I got prompted for the root password, my keyboard quit working and I was up shit creek. I started the re-install process before going to bed at 2 and picked it up again this afternoon - after a beautiful day of skiing at Copper. I got almost everything working on Suse this afternoon, and just as I was about to call things good - the keyboard problem came back. Pretty disappointing since I'd just gotten my Apple Cinema Display to work.

As I speak, I'm trying Ubuntu again, without the KVM switch. I suspect there's probably a piece of hardware I have that's causing the failure, so hopefully unplugging things will solve the problem. If I don't get it figured out in the next hour or two, I'll probably just go with Suse, setup VNC - and get a wired keyboard for when I need direct access.

24 hours later: It's interesting to see that almost the commentors on this post are recommending Ubuntu. After posting this, and receiving a comment from Brett, I tried the Ubuntu Live DVD. What I found was that Ubuntu recognized my cinema display, but it entered into a non-stop flickering loop that I couldn't solve. Therefore, I threw in the Suse DVD and tried again. This time, Suse recognized everything flawlessly (including my HP OfficeJet G85). So I'm sticking with Suse - mainly because it seems to recognize my cinema display, printer and DVI KVM switch the best. With apt-get working on Suse, it's been a breeze to get everything setup.

The Last Day

Today is my last day working for Starz on their Vongo project. While it's been a fun project, it's been painful commuting to South Denver everyday. I'm pretty pumped to start riding my bike downtown again. I rode downtown on Monday to help Max with some Drupal stuff and quickly realized the best part of Virtuas is riding my bike to work. Of course, there's many other good things about it, but that's #1 on my list.

Now is probably a good time to reminisce on other last days: in 2004 and 2003. I like working for Virtuas - where the last day at a client doesn't mean I have to find a new gig right away.

January Denver Tech Meetup

Hey Stephen, when's the next Denver Tech Meetup? I propose next Thursday the 12th. Whaddya think?

Vongo

It's not everyday that the project you've been working on gets announced all over the news (even locally!).

It's been a fun project to work on - with some pretty cool technology powering it all.