Category: Software

Spring SystemPropertyInitializingBean

2008-07-23 rolfje 8 Comments

When using POI in any of your projects, and the application you’re building is a web application, you probably have it running on a Windows machine. If not, you know all about the struggle with the “headless mode” environment setting to tell the JVM how to handle graphics rendering.

I always like to keep my applications as clean as possible to the users. The system administrator is also a user of the software (during installation at least). So I wanted the application to set the environment properties itself, In this case, I built a nice little Spring bean to handle this. The solution is so simple, that it is almost a brilliant display of what Spring can solve for you. Suddenly, all these environment setting problems turned into a simple Spring configuration problem. Here’s how:

Software

Tomcat, UTF-8 and the RequestDumperValve

2008-07-20 rolfje No Comments

A week ago, we encountered a funny problem where our Tapestry 3.0 application seemed to screw up the encoding of form posts. Every time we tried to post a form with diacritics in the input fields, the data got mangled before reaching the application code.

As it turned out, somebody had turned on the RequestDumperValve in the Tomcat configuration file. The request dumper does not only dump the request, but is also kind enough to mangle the data before handing it over to the servlet for further processing:

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Software

Conform Specs is not enough

2008-07-12 rolfje 3 Comments

Like any good software company, when a project starts, we sit down with the client, and talk about what we can do to help. The result is usually a more or less complete SRS (Software Requirement Specification). The SRS serves as input to the design fase (we usually already have an architecture sketch when the SRS is made) and those two documents are used to brief the developers and keep everybody posted on what to build. If all done correctly, this should then result in a perfect piece of software right?

Software

Hacking Your Way Through Codebases

2008-07-02 rolfje 1 Comment

I found a nice blog post which describes how it is after you leave school and start programming for a real company. You discover that programming is more like 80% reading and 20% coding.

Read the article at the Tired Architect’s blog titled “Hacking Your Way Through Codebases”.

Software

Migrate from Windows to OSX

2008-06-18 rolfje 1 Comment

My wife got tired of her Windows/Compaq laptop. So 2 weeks ago, she decides to go out and buy a 15″ macbook pro (an excelent choice I might add). She was a bit worried about getting used to the new machine, but decided to take the risk. After no more than 3 days, with surprisingly little help, she figured out how to do everything she did on the Windows machine, and even installed her own software.

The last thing to do was to migrate all the stuff from her old Windows machine to her new “lappie” (yes, she actually gave this one a nickname 🙂 ). Although Microsoft tries hard to keep Outlook Express users locked in, I did find a tool that solved the problem completely for me.

Apple, Microsoft, Software

Clone Windows HD on Apple OSX machine

2008-06-06 rolfje 21 Comments

Last week, lightning struck at my parents apartment building (literaly). Other damages aside, my dad’s PC also died.

The guy at the PC repair shop warned my dad that “we may need to wipe the HD, do you have a backup”? Ofcourse, all data was backed up daily and “off-site” at my house so all important data was safe. But just in case, we wanted to make an exact disk image of the drive, so that we could easily restore it when the PC returns from the store

Apple, Microsoft, Software

Difference between Windows and OSX

2008-05-27 rolfje No Comments

Another great example showing the differences between OSX and Windows. Bot applications synchronize your phone over bluetooth. Both applications are simple to use, but one is simpler. And contrary to expectations, this time the Windows version (left) will cost you money, and the OSX version (right) is free.

Although you’d expect the Windows version to do more with all these bells and wistles on the screen, but it’s actually iSync that also synchronizes the calendar to my phone, and back. Automatically. No configuration needed, it does what is considered logical to the sensible mind.

Apple and OSX are just like a Volkswagen New Beetle. Either you like it, or you don’t. But either way, it’s good that it’s here.

For the record: I don’t like the Volkswagen New Beetle, and I do like OSX. My Mac Mini is absolutely by far the best computer I have bought in the past 5 years, maybe even the best computer I’ve bought ever. No kidding.

Apple, Microsoft, Software

No more www.localhost.com

2008-05-06 rolfje 6 Comments

I’m using a few development servers over SSH, and for that I have used myEntunnel to tunnel a few remote ports to my local machine. When I screw up my configuration or forget to start myEntunnel, Firefox is “smart enough” to change “localhost:9090” into “http://www.localhost.com:9090” when it can’t reach the local port.

More people are having this problem, and apparently there is a configuration trick to stop Firefox from adding “www” and “com” to the URL when it can’t reach the site. Read more about it at the latenightpc blog.

In FireFox 2, do the following:

Type about:config in the address bar and hit return.
find browser.fixup.alternate.enabled
double click the “true” value. The line will become bold, and the value will change to “false”

That’s it. Happy browsing!

Software

BusySync vs Spanning Sync

2008-05-03 rolfje 15 Comments

Google calendar is the new “Cool” in the calendar world. Or at least, the guys at work seem to think so. For me, a 100% online calendar is not always a good solution, because I can’t take it with me. Getting Google calendar to sync with iCal would help, because that syncs to my phone and iPod. I tried BusySync and Spanning Sync to do this. One of them succeeded.

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Apple, Software

Seemless Bluetooth iSync

2008-04-27 rolfje 1 Comment

In my last post, I wrote about how I got HomeZone to detect my bluetooth phone, and automatically start iSync. While I was playing with it, I noticed how HomeZone opens the Address book application and iSync, and doesn’t close them. To make it more seemless, I used a script I found at The Technocrat to start and stop iSync without interfering with your work. Here’s how I did that.

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Apple, Software