Raible Designs

What's the best way to setup networked printing?

I made the switch to my new XP box last night - swapping hard drives, CD Burners, etc. from the old to the new. In the process of putting 1.5 GB of RAM into my Linux box, I thought I'd upgrade Samba to 3.0 and setup a shared printer. Samba upgrade - piece of cake. Installing a printer on RedHat - no luck. I've tried it before, but I've never succeeded. I have a HP OfficeJet G85 that is a great printer. My main goal is to setup this printer as a shared printer on Linux or XP and I'll be able to print to it via OS X, Windows XP and RedHat 9. However, I can never get it installed on RedHat - even though I select the right printer (using printconf-gui). It does recognize it as a USB device, but it can't print to it. On Windows XP, the printer installs (and works) just fine, but I can't print to it from OS X or RedHat - it just doesn't work. Here's what happens on both:

• OS X 10.3: I select Windows Printing and I can navigate to my XP Box, but I can't connect. When I try to view the printers, it hangs for a couple of minutes - then I'm prompted for a login and my XP login doesn't work. This same login/password works just fine for connecting to shared drives. I think it's a bug in Panther.
• RedHat 9: I select Queue Type: Networked Windows (SMB) and my Windows box does not show up in the list (just the RedHat box and my PowerBook). If I try to manually enter my server, printer, etc. it just flashes and prompts me again.

I do have a wireless print server that I could probably use, but that's hooked up to our Canon 900 Photo Printer - which only seems to work well if it's plugged into the wireless print server. We've tried to plug it directly into a Windows box and print, and the quality just isn't as good - who knows why. I bought a USB hub for it in hopes of hooking up multiple printers, but that doesn't work either.

I wish I could just give my HP an IP address - then it would probably work for all of them, but alas, all it has is USB.

The fun part of all this switching hard drives? I thought I lost a 20 GB drive of important data this morning - I was up until 2 a.m. last night trying to fix it. Luckily, I got some assistance from Experts-Exchange this morning and didn't lose a thing.

Update: I got this all working using HPOJ and CUPS. I did have to uninstall LPRng and cups from Red Hat 9 - then re-install CUPS from source. I also had to install Ghostscript and all its fonts. Finally, to get it to share the printer via Samba, I had to tweak some Samba config files.

Run Multiple versions of IE on the same Windows OS

This is HUGE in my opinion. It's always been a pain to test multiple versions of IE - you either had to install VMWare, install multiple OS's, or use a separate machine. No longer, my friends. Joe Maddalone of Insert Title Web Designs, has figured out a way to run multiple versions of IE on the same machine. Awesome - thanks Joe!

Thanks to The Scobleizer for the link. I also found these standalone downloads for IE 5.1 and 5.5 from Ryan Parman.

[New Book] Art of Java Web Development: Frameworks and Best Practices

Manning has a new book in the works: Art of Java Web Development: Frameworks and Best Practices. Looks like good stuff - it covers Struts, Tapestry, WebWork, Velocity and Cocoon. Too many books, not enough time. I'm thinking that I should start taking a "studying sabbatical" every year. Maybe 2 weeks at the end of each year where I crank through a few books and solidify my knowledge. The other option is to quit contributing to Open Source and reading weblogs - that'd probably save me 2 weeks between now and the end of the year. ;-)

My Development Environment

To make is easier for folks to use AppFuse and Struts Resume, I put together a page for HowTo Configure your Development Environment. This is how I've configured my environment and it works pretty darn well for me. Really, none of the document is AppFuse specific - it just shows where I put J2SE, J2EE, Ant, Tomcat, and how to setup your environment variables. Comments or other suggestions are welcome.

Tomcat Issues

This site continues to puke and choke - and I believe it's 1) Tomcat or 2) my ISP. Why? Because all the other Roller installs seems to hum along just fine with no issues (i.e. Dave and JRoller). I get OutOfMemory Errors and too many connections open. As of last night, I'm thinking of a new strategy. Netcraft reports that this site is capable of running Resin 3.0.3. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it certainly seems like it to me. Now I just need to sit down and 1) figure out how to setup Roller on Resin and 2) do it. Knowing my luck, migrating to Resin won't solve anything, but it's worth a try!

Happy Birthday Abbie!

One year ago today, early this morning at 12:52 a.m. - the best thing that every happened to us was born. Abbie Loo - what a cool kid. I never thought life could be so much fun as a Dad. I knew it would be good, but I never thought it would be this much fun!

Cooking dinner in the Raible household

PowerBook for recipe, beer for motivation.

Sports, Sports, Sports

I've had quite a ride these last couple of days. I started my new project yesterday, and spent the evening at the Monday Night Football game at Mile High Stadium. A buddy and I had great seats thanks to another friend's season tickets - 6th row, 45 yard line. It was awesome - too bad The Broncos lost (24-23) - but at least it was a good game. Tonight, my companion from last night got (free) club-level seats to see The Colorado Avalanche at The Pepsi Center. It was another great game - went into overtime and resulted in a 4-4 tie. Professional sporting events sure are a good time...

Damn Again

I just started at my new gig today and I mentioned to my boss about the great conference next weekend: No Fluff Just Stuff. 10 minutes later we were talking about what days I needed off next week for our family trip to Missouri. And then it hit me - I booked two things on the same fricken' weekend! No Fluff, Just Stuff is next weekend and I'll be out of town. I've paid for both, and I can't cancel on family - so it looks like I'll have to (try to) cancel my attendance at NFJS. Damn - I'm never going to make it to this thing. I tried back in May and had no luck then either. I guess the whole "weekend conference thing" just doesn't work for me...

Pictures from Halloween and Abbie's Birthday Party

What a great weekend. On Friday afternoon, we took Abbie to the Denver Children's Museum for some trick-or-treating. Checkout the pictures of our little Winnie the Pooh. On Saturday, we had a Birthday Party (1st one!) for Abbie - and here's more pictures for your viewing pleasure.