do not adjust your mind

Nexus S echo problem - a dead simple solution

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 07:25:00 +0000

The Nexus S can have a slightly annoying echo problem during calls.

It's really easy to fix, I'm kicking myself I didn't try this earlier...

take the back off your phone
grab some printer paper, (a slightly heavier weight is better)
cut out a piece which is big enough to wrap around the battery
fold this piece over three times
place on top of the battery
replace the cover
enjoy!

I used the same trick with my N95 when the battery used to come loose

There's so much Astroturfing Down Under, it's un-australian

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 03:16:00 +0000

Just a quick post, my friend Tom who is a passionate anti-pokies blogger and campaigner wrote a great piece
over on ABC's The Drum about how Poker machine reforms won't work? Don't bet on it

Reading his piece, I was reminded of this video which puts it all in perspective

How I got started in ColdFusion

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 08:50:00 +0000

Just a quick post, on today's Coldfusion meme - How I got started in ColdFusion

I first started with Coldfusion 2.0 back in 1996 whilst working in my first IT job
at a recruitment agency. I had been playing with assembler, basic, html and C on all sorts
of platforms from CP/M, SunOS, Linux and PC's.

I was tasked with developing a website for the company, to post available jobs and allow
candidates to upload resumes. I had started working with Perl, but soon was getting
annoyed at Perl as it wasn't a great solution for building websites.

One night I was at home, surfing on dialup and I found a link to Allaire Coldfusion 2.0
on a shareware website. It was amazing stuff compared to Perl. Wanna send an email,
wrap it in CFMAIL, wanna do a query, wrap the SQL in CFQUERY. I was sold.

After I left that company, I signed up for an Advanced Coldfusion course which turned
out to be more like a Coldfusion 101. I filled out the feedback form afterwards with some
pretty strong but expletive free language.

About a week later, the Australian Distributor for Allaire, called me up while I was at a friends
place and told me I had been given a full refund and the offered me the Job as the Australian
ColdFusion Trainer. I contemplated it for a while and decided I'd rather cut code and build
apps than train people.

I'm still using it all these years later!

Update: I just remembered, Google even evaluated CF back in the day,
but didn't like the <CFELSE> tag coz you couldn't parse CFML with an XML parser...

Paul Keating on Economic Reform, Pricing Carbon and Tony Abbott's so called "Direct Action" policy

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 04:22:00 +0000

Solipse 2001, Zambia, 10 year Anniversary, Digital Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:09:00 +0000

Tony Abbott supports a Carbon Tax!

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 03:11:00 +0000

Say Yes Rally 5 June 2011

Sydney: Prince Alfred Park, 11 am
Melb: Outside the State Library, 11 am
Adelaide: Victoria Square, 11 am
Brisbane: Riverstage, 1pm
Perth: Perth Cultural centre - Wetlands stage, 11am
Hobart: Franklin Square, 11am
Canberra: Regatta Point
(near the bridge), 1.30pm

Coldfusion: Slow ImageResize problem SOLVED

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Thu, 26 May 2011 05:48:00 +0000

Sometimes, the built in Coldfusion Image functions can take a very long time to resize a jpeg image, like 20-30 minutes.

This is caused by ICC colour profiles, which really should be supported by an Adobe Product.

The quick solution is to use Imagemagick to strip out the ICC colour profile.

It's also a good idea to force the RGB colour space, as CMYK is also not handled.

C:\Program Files (x86)\ImageMagick-6.7.0-Q16\convert.exe
src_with_icc_profile.jpeg -colorspace rgb +profile 'icc' icc_stripped.jpeg

You can also use identify.exe with the -verbose option to detect ICC profiles, although it is a bit slow, 2-3s.

Adobe Coldfusion Builder 2 pricing down under is a JOKE

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Tue, 03 May 2011 05:36:00 +0000

Adobe announces they have released Coldfusion Builder 2 today, but the Australian pricing is a sick joke.

List price in the US is $299, but in Australia for download only is $407 ex GST.

Now I'm not sure if the Adobe folks realise, but our dollar is worth more than USD!

Today, via xe.com USD $299 is actually only $274 AUD

Adobe has a loyal group of Australian CF developers, treating us like this is a sick JOKE

MapGuide 2.2 has been released

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Tue, 03 May 2011 03:11:00 +0000

Just a quick post, Trevor announced on the MapGuide-Users mailing list that 2.2 has been released.

Release notes and download links

Builds are available for Windows 32 bit & 64 Bit, CentOS 5.4 / RedHat 5.4 / Ubuntu 9.10 32 Bit

It was a very long release cycle, but we wanted to ensure a high quality release.

I encourage anyone using an older version of MapGuide to upgrade.

Also, please don't ask support questions on my blog, direct them to the MapGuide-Users mailing list
*AFTER SEARCHING THE ARCHIVES FIRST*

MapGuide 2.3 optional subversion install for web tier (RFC 111)

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 08:26:00 +0000

Thanks to the 25 people who answered the MapGuide Source Control Survey Survey, the results were considered by the last Mapguide PSC meeting where RFC 111 was discussed and voted on.

RFC 111 was adopted, a subversion checkout will be available as an option in the installer for the next major release 2.3. This allows quick deployment of new features/bug fixes for the MapGuide Viewer web apps.
This will be all managed by the user, so if you don't want to use this feature, you can either simply choose not to install it, or just install it anyway, but never do a subversion update.

Here are the survey results:

Q1:Which versions of MapGuide are you using in production?

2.2 (MGE 2011)	13	41.94%
2.1 (MGE 2010)	12	38.71%
Classic 6.x	3	9.68%
2.3	2	6.45%
2.0 (MGE 2009)	1	3.23%

Q2:What is you background with GIS?

I'm a programmer who uses GIS	16	64%
Other Option	4	16%
I studied Geomatics	4	16%
I'm a novice with no programing or spatial background	1	4%

Q3: What source control systems have you worked with?

Subversion	14	46.67%
CVS	8	26.67%
What is source control?	4	13.33%
Git	3	10%
Other Option	1	3.33%

Q4:Which MapGuide Viewer do you use?

AJAX Viewer	13	54.17%
Fusion / Flexible Layouts	6	25%
Other Option	5	20.83%

Q5: Have you modified the viewer code in your installation?

Yes					17	70.83%
No					7	29.17%

Q6:Would you like to have minor bug fixes and improvements available via Subversion?

Yes	19	79.17%
I don't care	3	12.5%
No	2	8.33%

Q7:Have you ever manually deployed a bug fix for MapGuide?

No					14	58.33%
Yes					10	41.67%

Q8:Have you ever upgraded Fusion using a version from the Fusion Website?

No	15	60%
Yes	7	28%
I wanted to, but it was too hard	2	8%
Fusion has a website?	1	4%

Q9:Finally, have you ever avoided upgrading to the latest MapGuide release because of your customised code?

Yes	11	45.83%
No	11	45.83%
I have never customised any MapGuide code	2	8.33%

Oracle Reserved Words System Table

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 05:11:00 +0000

If you ever need to check if a column name is a reserved word in Oracle, you can get the list using this query

select keyword from v$reserved_words

Oracle Grant Sequence Syntax

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 02:06:00 +0000

It's dead simple: GRANT select ON schema.sequence_name to schema

Amazingly, Google's results for this are shocking at the moment, dead end unanswered or confusing results

MapGuide End User Survey - RFC 111 Subversion

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 02:10:00 +0000

I put forward an idea for a RFC for Mapguide, which involves deploying the MapGuide web viewer apps
(Fusion and AJAX Viewers) checked out from Subversion.

The initial proposal is MapGuide RFC 111 - Deploy Viewer Code with Subversion Attributes
with the follow up discussion over on MapGuide-Internals

There have been some questions over how the end users of MapGuide would find using this
solution. Of course it's entirely optional solution for keeping your MapGuide Server running
with the latest bug fixes / improvements for the web viewers.

So I have put together this Quick Survey to get some background on our user base.

http://zackster.polldaddy.com/s/mapguide-source-control-survey
(Poll is now closed)

SQL Server 2008: ARITHABORT error with Spatial data

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 06:08:00 +0000

This is a nice cryptic error:

UPDATE failed because the following SET options have incorrect settings: 'ARITHABORT'. Verify that SET options are correct for use with indexed views and/or indexes on computed columns and/or filtered indexes and/or query notifications and/or XML data type methods and/or spatial index operations.

If you get the following error with a SQL Server 2008 database when your trying to update some spatial data, the solution is to check the compatibility level for the database, I was working on an application which has been around for a while and it was set to be compatible with Sql Server 2000, hence the error.

I was a bit stumped initially, as this was my first look into spatial data with MS SQL Server, luckily Jackie Ng sits next to me and he found the solution pretty quickly.

Overall, my initial impressions of the Spatial support in SQL Server is that it's pretty basic compared to Oracle which is a much more complete implementation, but I'm glad spatial is finally a standard feature. I am rather surprised that re-projection is not part of the standard feature set.

I really loathe Oracle for it's recalcitrant attitude to Oracle Spatial licensing, but having seen what Sql Server offers, I understand why Oracle still does what it does, as SQL Server is not nearly equivalent.

Of course, IMHO anyone starting out on a new project requiring a spatial database should use PostGIS period.

Some Android Market Improvements I'd like

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 08:06:00 +0000

I just this story Hands on: Android Market website a step forward, still lags AppBrain and it's a pretty good review.

There's a few basic design things I'd like to see changed on the Android Market.

Use a different colour for the INSTALL and INSTALLED buttons, while your at it, pick another word, it's too confusing only differing by '-ED'
Offer list views with more content per page, paging 12 apps at a time is very 1990's
Allow users to filter out installed from the listings
Continuous scrolling rather than tired old paging
The ability flag individual apps to be hidden from the listings, i.e. hide this app

Other Android observations ...

I've had a Nexus S for a while now and I'm really enjoying it as a phone, it's much smoother than my previous N1.
Battery does take ages to charge, thankfully I got two (more) chargers when I bought the phone.

Alas, the Gingerbread phone reboot bug has occurred a few times, otherwise the phone is really sweet.

The Gallery app is still a bit slow and the amount of time it takes to open a photo straight after taking it is a joke.

Tweetdeck is great, but it's started crashing all the time. The fancy scroll to the
top animation will crash it every time I jump back into the app after a few hours.

Perhaps a long press on the title bar bypass the scroll animation?

MapGuide 2.2 RC testing with PostgreSQL (Success)

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 11:06:00 +0000

I tried out the newer FDO PostgreSQL driver for PostGIS in the latest MapGuide 2.2 RC2 beta
with a local PostgreSQL db on Windows 7 64-bit (32-bit version of MG),

result? it works really well

Just make sure your not using version 9 of PostgreSQL , FDO 3.5 doesn't
support v9 yet, FDO 3.6/ MapGuide 2.3 will

I ended up downloading and installing the db twice as I forgot about
the lack of support for 9.0 with FDO 3.5

Remember! you need to make sure the libpq.dll's are in your system path

http://trac.osgeo.org/fdo/wiki/FdoPostgreSQLNotes

My testing was with some OSM (openstreetmap) data for Victoria, Australia
which I downloaded and loaded with osm2pgsql (use -s if you don't have lots of ram)

http://downloads.cloudmade.com/oceania/australia/victoria

IMHO, the OSM shapefile's have a nicer data structure than how the
OSM files get imported by default into PostgreSQL

Alas, the shp files have ":" in the column name which breaks SHP FDO,
PostgreSQL FDO works fine with these, translating them to _

but you can load the shape files easily into Postgres

lack of ordering support in MapGuide does still leave proper road rendering
rather inanely complex, http://trac.osgeo.org/mapguide/wiki/MapGuideRfc69

PostGIS rocks, faster than Oracle and free! Oracle's spatial licensing is so like 1990's

I wrote this, coz I figured it's important to tell some software success stories,
often people only post about problems, which can be depressing when your searching

http://mapguide-central.ennoble.com.au/

New Explore Australia website with expanded content

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 07:44:00 +0000

Explore Australia recently relaunched their website with a new design (by Thirst Studios) and heaps
of new content, including Fishing Spots, National Parks, Campsites and Caravan Parks.

So next time your going travelling anywhere around Australia, remember your Explore Australia Travel Guide !

Behind the scenes, the website was developed by Ennoble Consultancy Australia. It's powered by Coldfusion
and Oracle, with Maps produced via MapGuide Open Source and statically served using Amazon Cloudfront
and Openlayers.

Firefox Page Zoom problem with the Numeric Keypad Solved [Ubuntu]

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 08:51:00 +0000

Ubuntu by default doesn't work with the numeric keypad because of
n annoying system default. So in Firefox, page zoom using Ctrl-Plus and Ctrl-Minus with the
numeric keypad doesn't work. Grrr

solution: under System, Preferences, Keyboard, Mouse Keys (tab)

simply uncheck the "Pointer can be controlled using the keypad" checkbox (i.e. like the above)

CFIMAGE: Invalid image format - solution

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 04:17:00 +0000

Sometimes when you try to read an image with CFIMAGE using the filename,
it will fall over with "Invalid image format" using Coldfusion 8.0.1

The solution is easy enough, just read the image into a variable
and Coldfusion inspects the binary file contents rather than just being annoying


<cffile action = "readbinary" file="d:\inetpub\wwwroot\test.jpeg" variable="tmpBin">
<cfimage action="READ" name="tmpImage" source="#tmpBin#">

Australian Election 2010, Did Australian's dream thru the recession

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 13:58:00 +0000

Tony Abbott is spinning bullshit about debt like Australia Emits CO2, ie chronically.
I saw a banner in the Melbourne CBD about the $100 million a day the government is borrowing.
As mentioned on twitter, that is for each Australian (22,416,196) that's roughly $4.46 per head per day.

This video has better stats... and explains itself unlike the Liberals spin.

Other places to find interesting stuff about the Australia Election 2010 are:

I have a political list on Twitter has lots of interesting (political) wonky stuff http://twitter.com/zackster/politics,
it's not quite as rabid, scary and wonderful as the full raw ausvotes hashtag moshpit.

Crikey Blogs and Grogs Gamut are some of my favourite political blogs and has been
providing a great commentary of the election.

MapGuide: Using Fusion with Selection Events (aka reports)

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:40:00 +0000

Sometimes, you just want to do simple things and it seems frustrating. I was
frustrated and I solved it, here's my contribution back!

Having come into the geo-spatial world with Autodesk MapGuide in the 6.x series (aka classic),
the world was a lot simpler. The MapGuide Open Source Classic (or
Basic Viewer) made things easy to make a url launch from a selection. Fusion is a
little different, here's some pointers :)

MapGuide Fusion (aka flexible layouts) is a bit more technical to use, but is also
far more powerful, being based on OpenLayers.

If you want to launch a report, or popup window form a selection you need to
register an event to handle the selection.

The answer is pretty simple, as this mailing list post explains.

It's all you need to know to get started and hacking.

If it doesn't work, flip into Firefox, with Firebug enabled and dump
the sel inside the function selectionCallback(sel) and add a line to
window.console.info(sel); and see what your dealing with!

Learning by trying is the best way to learn

MapGuide Central for a good starting point for playhing with MapGuide, Openlayers and Fusion.

MapGuide 2.2 Beta Release (Linux Binaries Woot !!!!!)

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:50:00 +0000

2.2 Beta Binaries for Windows and Linux (Redhat/Centos 5.4 & Ubuntu 9.10 ) have been posted to OSGeo.

This is the first time we have provided compiled linux binaries for MapGuide Open Source!

MapGuide 2.2 Beta Server Release Notes and Binaries and the complimentary MapGuide Maestro GUI/IDE/Authoring Tool

Please follow up any issues on the Mapguide Users Mailing List

I've joined the MapGuide PSC

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Thu, 13 May 2010 11:35:00 +0000

As of last Monday I am now offically part of the MapGuide Project Steering Committee , along with a fellow Melbournian Jackie Ng. Thats some serious Canadian and Australian representation :)

Which means I get to help shape the future of MapGuide and help improve the project with the rest of the PSC team.

Having been an active member of the community for a couple of years now, it's nice to be recognised and join the rest of the PSC.

My main focus will be, as it has been for a while is to help get other developers on board with the project, continue to iron out the rough edges, advocate linux as a platform for MapGuide and help users on the mailing list, especially the ones who take time to ask pertinant questions after firstly doing some research themselves.

As a long time advocate of standardising FDO naming conventions and also maturing the tiling support with MapGuide, I hope to make a difference!

One of my long time bug bears with MapGuide is the problematic GDAL Raster Support.

BTW, I am proud to announce some further funding from my company for Trevors GDAL Initative, anyone else care to chip in towards making reliable free raster support for MapGuide a reality?

Shameless Plug Plug, Hint Hint :)

Digital Photocopiers Loaded With Secrets

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 00:50:00 +0000

This story is a must read for anyone responsible for office equipment, as it turns out, nearly all photo copiers made since 2002 stores a copy of every page they scan on an internal hard disk.

This is a terrible privacy problem. I doubt i would ever use a public photo copier ever again.

Next time you upgrade or replace a photocopier, you MUST ensure that this hard disk is wiped.

Otherwise, your old second hand photocopier is going to be out there in circulation with untold thousands of sensitive documents sitting their waiting for someone with nefarious intentions to get hold of the hard disk and potentially capture a treasure trove of private and/or commmerically sensitive information.

Scary stuff indeed, especially considering how much we rely on secret 12 digit numbers (plus a four digit bank code) to make the credit card system work, not to mention identify fraud.

Autodesk Sponsors MapGuide LiveDVD Project

noreply@blogger.com (Zac Spitzer / Fastmovingtarget) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 23:57:00 +0000

As part of its ongoing commitment to the open source community, Autodesk has
subcontracted OTX Systems to place MapGuide Open Source on the OSGeo LiveDVD 4.0
in preparation for FOSS4G 2010. Including MapGuide on LiveDVD 4.0 will make
MapGuide more accessible to individuals interested in Web GIS technologies.

The LiveDVD project also includes Ubuntu packaging for MapGuide, Maestro,
and a subset of FDO Providers. The entire package set will be available on the OSGeo
downloads site with corresponding installation scripts. This will make MapGuide,
Maestro, and FDO easily accessible to the Ubuntu GIS community.

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