Chris Fogarty's Blog

Being washed with Notes

2010-10-03T17:49:00.003+13:00

Google has added Latin to their list of languages.

Now we can write "Romans go home!" without fear of correction from a pedantic centurion.

Interestingly enough Lotus translates as "being washed with"

XMarks soon to be ex-marks

2010-09-30T11:49:00.002+13:00

Terrible news. The Xmarks service will be discontinued.

I've found this to be one of the most useful browser add-ons I've ever encountered. I add a bookmark on my work PC and I can refer to it at home, I add a bookmark while on my PC at a customer site, I can refer to it at work and at home, I re-install the OS on my PC I can re-populate my favourites / bookmarks in a minute or 2.....and many more.

Anyway, here is a list of alternatives that the nice people at Xmarks have provided to help us all get over the pain and start the grieving process.

IBM OneUI Developer Documentation

2010-08-12T22:16:00.003+12:00

You may very well know about this already, but here's a link to the full OneUI developer documentation for your perusal and delectation

XPages training in Wellington

2010-08-12T21:30:00.004+12:00

Attending the Beginner's session for XPages with Stephan Wissel

I am loving it

Can't wait for the Advanced session tomorrow.

Free Domino Designer

2009-10-19T09:49:00.003+13:00

The headline is not a call to release Domino Designer from its shackles.

Domino Designer is now free, as in beer or the non existent lunch.

This is a bold move by IBM and will hopefully encourage sites to do more in the Domino development space without having to worry about the cost of licensing a Domino Designer seat.

Download it from here.

Notes 8.5.1 first impressions

2009-10-15T19:29:00.003+13:00

Just a few points:

It's faster.
The designer is much much faster.
It has a class browser (at last!!).
It has type-ahead for custom classes (nice).
Subs and Functions are alphabetically sorted (brilliant).

Ordinal Numbers

2009-10-08T19:53:00.001+13:00

Is it just me or has everyone forgotten how to refer to dates properly?

It's all "Yes I'll do that by November 13". Er no, it's November the 13th.

Why I oughta!!

Character Sets

2009-10-08T09:23:00.004+13:00

And now the exciting world of character sets.

I've been having a bit of bother lately exchanging encoded strings between web services

<kang>We are merely exchanging long protein strings. If you can think of a simpler way, I'd like to hear it</kang>

Anyway I eventually got to the bottom of it after reading this article by Joel Spolsky.

If you are a developer, I urge you to read it.

MS Word ban overturned

2009-09-04T23:02:00.003+12:00

Microsoft wins right to sell Word. Anyone surprised? Anyone?

Web Service Consumer with Credentials in Domino

2009-09-04T14:24:00.004+12:00

Over the last while I've been tearing what little is left of my hair out trying to authenticate with a web service using Domino.

I need to put it down here so I don't forget but hopefully it will be of use to someone else too.

When creating a Web Service Consumer, Domino creates the code for you based on the WSDL

The extra piece in the jigsaw is as follows:
//Code generated by Domino
Sub NEW
Call Service.Initialize ("somethingorother ", _
"somethingorother .Domino", "http://somethingorother/somethingorother?OpenWebService", _
"somethingorother ")
//Code generated by Domino
//Credential Code
Call Service.setCredentials( "Username", "Password" )
//Credential Code
//Code generated by Domino
End Sub
//Code generated by Domino

You can find this in the lsxsd.lss file

Looks like it's only for 8.5. I've tried to hack it to work in 8 but to no avail so far

Installing Eclipse on Linux

2009-08-19T21:18:00.002+12:00

Now, after a bit of a gap, on to the business of installing Eclipse on Linux. In my case I'm using Crunchbang but I assume the same is true of any Debian based distribution of Linux.

I suppose it's worth pointing out that eclipse doesn't need to be installed as such, just extracted to wherever it's going to live.

So, I have downloaded eclipse-jee-ganymede-SR2-linux-gtk.tar

Next, before installing eclipse, I opened a terminal window and ran the following command to install Java first sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

Next, extracted the eclipse-jee-ganymede-SR2-linux-gtk.tar archive to a folder of my choosing
Housed within this folder is an executable file called eclipse. Double click and Huzzah!
Easily the most straight-forward install ever (maybe not ever but you get the idea)

Now that that has lulled me into a false sense of security I know it's only going to get harder from here on in....

Generic NotesURL

2009-08-13T12:20:00.002+12:00

I found this info valuable the other day.

There are generic NotesURL values for launching standard databases in Lotus Notes.

They are:

User's mail file -- Notes:///0000000000000E00
User's address book -- Notes:///0000000000000E01
User's subscriptions -- Notes:///0000000000000E02
User's bookmarks -- Notes:///0000000000000E03
Current database -- Notes:///0000000000000000

So, for example, if I needed to create a generic table of links to these items, I wouldn't need to calculate the correct NotesURL for each user.

Where I found it useful is, creating a widget from current context and then replacing the NotesURL with Notes:///0000000000000E00/viewName?OpenView

Good OS + WINE = Domino Designer on Linux

2009-08-07T13:17:00.004+12:00

Being the easily distractable type, I was prompted to take a look at Good OS on the advice of one of my work mates.

It's rather shiny and apple-esque so I thought, why not?

My experience of running Linux distributions in the past is that I've grown up with Basic, MS-DOS and Windows so it takes me far longer to get anything done and there's a greater chance of me screwing up.

First impressions of Good OS is that it's rather easy to do stuff.

Beyond that, the most interesting thing by far is the fact that WINE comes pre-installed. This prompted a light bulb moment so I dropped the program directory for one on my Notes installs into WINE's "C Drive".

Hey presto, instant Notes Designer. I'm now getting closer to being able to throw Windows in the bin. Not just yet though

Crunchbang First Steps

2009-08-05T20:51:00.003+12:00

Ok, got Crunchbang installed. With its lightweight windowing system it certainly "feels" quicker but maybe that's because I want it to.

Everything seems to have been installed and provisioned, wireless card found in the laptop, WPA enabled. All good and fairly straightforward so far.

The only thing I've had trouble with is connecting to my NAS.

After a bit of digging around on the forums I found this post

So far I can't get the SMB browsing to be available on startup. I think it's something to do with the wireless connection being established after the startup script runs so...
...what I've done in the meantime is create a script with the line:
smbnetfs ~/network

I then run this script manually after my wireless connection has been established.

Not perfect but a good start.

Crunchbang Linux and Lotus Notes 8.5

2009-08-04T22:08:00.003+12:00

Andy Dennis has posted about installing Lotus Notes 8.5 on Crunchbang Linux

Crunchbang Linux and Lotus Notes 8.5

I shall use this for my own purposes, nefarious or otherwise!

Eclipse & Java for beginners

2009-08-04T12:16:00.005+12:00

Being able to gauge how much you know (and don't know) and matching that up with tutorials is difficult when you're relatively new to a product.

I've coded my way through Java agents in Lotus Domino in the past with my 2 best friends, trial and error, and have managed to get stuff to work mostly through determination rather than proficiency.

This is something I've been looking for Eclipse and Java Video Tutorials by dextercowley found at AaLDD to try and properly understand what I'm doing with the code and why.

It's a great jumping off point for someone who can code but doesn't really know Java or the Eclipse client very well.

I'm currently working my way through it and so far it's lifted the fog

Professional Development

2009-08-03T10:26:00.002+12:00

In the interests of professional development I feel that it's time to get more heavily involved in Java programming. Specifically plug-ins for the Lotus Notes 8.x sidebar. Moving on from this I'd like to get involved with frameworks, specifically GWT (Google Web Toolkit).

So I've earmarked an old machine that I can use for this purpose, the next thing to do is get it ready.

I've decided to go the free route so the software I've determined for this is:

Crunchbang Linux
Eclipse Ganymede
Lotus Notes 8.5 debian install

I haven't done anything yet bar downloading the packages.

Tonight I'll take Crunchbang, then I'll take Berlin...

Why Blog?

2009-08-03T10:20:00.002+12:00

I asked a friend of mine a while back, why he blogs. His answer was that if he posted something to his blog then he would be able to find it later on.

Good point I thought.

I've an additional reason.

If I say that I'm going to do something on a blog then I'm going to have to do it.
So, on to my next pet project.

Second attempt

2009-07-24T14:35:00.002+12:00

Hello to the none of you that are currently reading this.

This is my second attempt at a blog. My first attempt failed miserably as I didn't really have an idea of what it was all about (Alfie).

Was it technical, personal, insightful? No! None of these things.

I also attempted to host it myself and spent more time keeping the box alive then doing any writing.

So ....this time it's different.

I've decided to go with Blogger so someone else can look after the hosting, security etc.

I've still no idea what it's all about but hopefully it'll start to make some kind of sense........maybe.