Raphinou's blog

Parking in Brussels

2010-02-22T21:46:00.003+01:00

Here's how they do it:

This was taken in Sint-Agatha-Berchem on monday 22 feb 2010 at about 21:35. If someone know what happened, please explain in the comments. I cant figure out an explanation, as these cars are on the parking lane!

IE the time sucker

2010-02-08T14:18:00.002+01:00

Just lost time with IE again. I hate when things work fine in FF and not in IE, even when using a cross-browser library as YUI3. For those interested, here was the problem and its solution.

Lyx pour auteurs: un premier post

2009-12-21T14:04:00.003+01:00

J'ai aidé récemment une auteure à utiliser Lyx pour la rédaction de son roman, et son expérience a été si positive qu'elle a commencé une série de post à ce sujet à destination d'auteurs (non informaticiens). Le premier post vient d'être publié, mais d'autres suivront!

Juegos Suramericanos using MyOwnDB!

2009-12-17T08:20:00.001+01:00

The 2010 edition of South America’s Games (Juegos Suramericanos) will take place in Medellin from 19 to 30 march.
They are using MyOwnDB to collect volunteers applications and I have of course posted it on the MyOwnDB blog :-)

Create and deploy a Jekyll site to Github page in 5 minutes

2009-11-26T16:11:00.003+01:00

As I was looking for a simple way to publish documentation but still ensuring a long term availability and full control of the content, I went for a self-developed solution based on Jekyll and YUI Grids.

If you're looking for a solution to rapidly be able to deploy content on Github pages with Google Analytics and Google Search integrated, Jekyll Base might be for you.

All reasoning and information on Nsa.be, and code available on Github.

About Virtualbox, S3, time drift, 403 reponses

2009-11-19T18:38:00.003+01:00

I was working on the FileAttachment code of myowndb.com in a virtualbox debian guest, when all request sent to S3 got the 403 Access Forbidden reponse, even code that was working fine in production. The good thing was that the production server still worked flawlessly, but I really asked myself what I had changed to break my code.

After checking my credentials, the code, trying with S3cmd and getting the same problem, I found a forum thread where having the wrong time could cause that problem.

And that was indeed the problem! My time had drifted 15 minutes, so I was sending out request with a timestamp in the future.... An ntpdate later, everything was working fine. Phew!....

From OO to List style: my notes

2009-09-04T17:45:00.002+02:00

I've continued development with Clojure and Jwt, and I got stuck: how do I implement my app without class definition and instance variables? It's not hard, but I had to get used to it. You'll find my notes here. Feedback welcome!

Nokia N900: I'm not sure I want it

2009-08-27T20:30:00.003+02:00

Today Nokia unveiled specs of their next internet tablet: the N900.

No, I still haven't found my PDA-phone, or do they cal that a smart phone nowadays? But I've bought the N810 in the meantime, and that was a big disappointing experience: the addressbook application was horrible. Of course, Nokia calls it an internet tablet, and for a good reason. But sadly Nokia seems to think that an internet tablet is not made to help contact managment.

When you see the N900 page, there's a lot of talk about internet and network technologies, but not a word about contact management or calendar. That a bad sign, and I fear the situation has not improved a lot.

I'll wait a bit more to see how Android phones evolve. They seem to have very interesting stuff going on....

Jwt and Clojure

2009-08-26T15:25:00.002+02:00

I've experimented with Jwt and Clojure, and put my findings on the web at
http://www.nsa.be/index.php/eng/Blog/Using-Jwt-yes-it-s-a-J-with-Clojure. If you're into web development you might be interested!

Interested in a 100$ gift card at Amazon?

2009-08-05T12:37:00.004+02:00

Check here for details. Winner should be know soon. If you wanted to order a book one of these days, it could be a way to get it for free!

Tmdtc Interview from this morning

2009-08-03T12:09:00.003+02:00

Here is the radio interview (in french) I did this morning:

The Million Dollar TagCloud on the radio

2009-08-02T12:03:00.003+02:00

Tomorrow, monday 3 august, I'll give a short interview about TheMillionDollarTagCloud.com on PureFM, a national french-speaking radio. It will be a short interview of about 3 minutes. Even though it is the holyday period, this should give a boost to the project.

If you want to have your tag online before the interview, book it now and I'll put it online in time.

Facebook App for TheMillionDollarTagCloud

2009-07-30T11:21:00.009+02:00

I have finally finished the TMDTC Facebook App for TheMillionDollarTagCloud.

For those who don't know, TheMillionDollarTagCloud ( aka TMDTC) is my attempt at selling for $1 million worth of tags, and I'll distribute $100.000 if this works out.

To make a chance to win these $100.000, you just need to register and then click on tag, or publish a tagcloud on your own page (like I did on this blog, see right column) and encourage people to click on your tag cloud.

Each click recorded gives one chance to the clicker and to the publisher of the tagcloud on which the click occured to win the 100.000$.

And now, there's one more way to augment your chances at winning these 100.000$: the TMDTC Facebook app, which lets you publish a tagcloud on your Profile, and share it with your friends.

I hope you join and spread the word around. I really want to distribute these 100.000$! :-)

Screencast recording script

2009-06-03T16:17:00.002+02:00

I have published a script I use to record screencasts here (my website about my professional activities). It is simple, efficient, written in ruby and using ffmpeg.

Hard times for events despite interesting topic?

2009-04-23T10:37:00.002+02:00

Next week will take place the Profoss event on legal impact of open source licenses and despite a very interesting that should make it one of the most interesting Profoss event until now, registrations are in the low-end of what I hoped.

Is this a consequence of the economic crisis we know? I'll try to answer that question later as I'm still focusing to bringing people to the event. If you want to help me, here is some promo text. Don't hesitate to send it around you!

EN

Understand the impact of open source licenses on your business.

Profoss (http://www.profoss.eu) is organising an informative event on 28 april 2009 in Brussels about open source licenses and their impact on businesses.

Speakers are all specialists and will share their knowledge with you during their talks covering these topics:

* Understanding Free and Open Source licenses (Ywein Van den Brande)
* Impact on business conduct: liability, due diligence processes Benjamin Docquir
* Problems encountered by a FOSS developer (Bruno Lowagie)
* code auditing tools , fossology
* EUPL: Why it exists and why it matters (Philippe Laurent)
* Impact on contractual documents (Benjamin Jean)

All details about this event and the registration form are available at the Profoss website at http://www.profoss.eu

FR

L'impact des licenses open source sur le business

Profoss (http://www.profoss.eu) organise à Bruxelles le 28 avril un événement couvrant l'impact des license open sources sur les sociétés.

Les orateurs sont tous des spécialistes qui partageront leurs connaissances durant leurs préentations (en anglais) couvrant les sujets suivants:
* Comprendre les licences libres et open source (Ywein Van den Brande)
* Impact sur les affaires: responsabilité, principes de précaution (Benjamin Docquir)
* Problèmes rencontrés par un développeur libre (Bruno Lowagie)
* Outils d'audit de code , fossology
* EUPL: Pourquoi elle existe et pouquoi elle importe (Philippe Laurent)
* Impact sur les documents contractuels (Benjamin Jean)

Tous les détails à propos de cet événement et le formulaire d'enregistrement se trouvent sur le site web de Profoss: http://www.profoss.eu

NL

Impact van open source licenties op bedrijven

Profoss (http://www.profoss.eu) organiseert op 28 april een evenement over het impact van open source licenties op het bedrijfswereld.

Sprekers zijn specialisten die hun kennissen zullen delen tijdens hun presentaties (in het engels) die de volgende onderwerpen zullen dekken:
* Vij en Open Source licenties begrijpen (Ywein Van den Brande)
* Impact op de business: verantwoordelijkheid, voorzorg maatregelen (Benjamin Docquir)
* Problemen ondervonden door een vrije ontwikkelaar (Bruno Lowagie)
* Code audit tools , fossology
* EUPL: Waarom het bestaat en waarom het meetelt (Philippe Laurent)
* Impact op contractuele documenten (Benjamin Jean)

Praktische details omtrent dit evenement evenals het inschrijvingsformulier zijn beschikbaar op de website van Profoss op http://www.profoss.eu

My new professional website

2009-04-22T13:17:00.003+02:00

It's been one year now that I started work as self-employed, as you could read on this blog. And now I finally took the time to make a website to present my professional activities: http://www.nsa.be is now my online vitrine.

The content of the website is currently available in english and french, with the dutch version to be finalised next week.

I expect most of my future blog posts about FOSS to be made on the website's blog.

NSA.be is a domain name I've had for years without using it, and those three letters actually have links to what I do: Networking, Software, System Administration, Advising, Support, Solutions, Applications. Yes, I know, I'm not a good salesperson.... Forget about the meaning, just remember the address ;-)

My take on short URLs

2009-04-21T12:10:00.003+02:00

Shortening URL services are all the rage these days. Reading Robin's report yesterday on again new services made available, in which he mentions a service developed over a week-end, I wondered what could be the next step....

As the fast-food services of URL shorteners are evaluated to be worth millions of dollars, I thought my service proposing hand-crafted URLs and developed in 2 hours wouldn't be more ridiculous than those valuations.

So here it is: http://hé.pl. Be sure to take a look to the added value of the service!

Oh, and I'm open to investments based on a proper valuation of this revolutionary service! Just let me know :-)

Linkedin: Locked out!

2009-04-14T10:38:00.002+02:00

It's been months now that I'm locked out of LinkedIn. their customer support say they're aware of the problem, but don't explain what is causing the trouble, nor when it will be corrected.

The problem is that I have requests to join the Profoss group waiting for approval, as wel as multiple invitations to connect. With an event coming in two weeks, it's a tool I could have used for promo!

If they hoped to make me a paying customer, well, it's not the good approach!

Anyway, if I don't answer to your invitation or approve your Profoss group membership, just know that's it's not because I don't appreciate you, it's because I am

Locked out of Linkedin

Generate a random string in Clojure

2009-03-10T20:17:00.004+01:00

In my quest to learn Lisp, I discovered Clojure, a List inspired language on the JVM. I really like it and hope to be able to use it more and more.
Here's a code snippet to generate a random string in Clojure. This is something I end up using a many projects. This is a version that is not made to be the shortest, but the most readable. And as you can see, access to Java's classes and libraries is very easy:


:use java's random generator
(def random (java.util.Random.))
;define characters list to use to generate string
(def chars 
   (map char (concat (range 48 58) (range 66 92) (range 97 123))))
;generates 1 random character
(defn random-char [] 
  (nth chars (.nextInt random (count chars))))
; generates random string of length characters
(defn random-string [length]
  (apply str (take length (repeatedly random-char))))

Suggestions to improve the code are welcome, I'm still a newbie in Lisp-style programming and Clojure!

Linkedin problems

2009-03-09T08:56:00.003+01:00

The last weeks I've had serious problems to access linkedin: I can't accept group memberships, send invitations, accept invitations, etc: when attempting this, the browser waits and waits and doesn't get any answer from the server. And today I can't even access their homepage:

Very annoying...

UploadForMe open to all

2009-02-18T20:43:00.003+01:00

I just lifted the need of an invitation to register for an UploadForMe account at http://www.uploadforme.com/a/signup.
With such an account, you can discover how the platform works, as you can upload files (one at a time currently) and then send them to Picasa, Flickr or Youtube.
Importing large number of files by sending a DVD is still limited to users contacting me about it.

Uploadforme open to beta testers with 4Gb of free transfer

2009-01-28T16:16:00.003+01:00

Finally, Uploadforme.com is opening the gates!

The idea of the service is simple: help you bring your digital content online. You send it on DVD, we put it online on our server from where you can then import it in the online service you want (currently supported: flickr, picasa, youtube).

Let me know if you want to be part of the beta phase, we propose to put online 4Gb of data from our beta test users for free.

Using the clipboard in vim

2009-01-23T14:57:00.003+01:00

How many vim users know that you can copy from and paste to the clipboard?
It's even very easy: use the register +
To use a register with a copy or paste command, you specify it by typing " followed by the register name.
So, to copy to the x register and the clipboard:
"+y
and to paste from the x register:
"+p

I think this would be best illustrated by a screencast. Anyone interested in vim screencasts? Should I take the time to do some vim screencasts? Let me know.

BDO darts world championship over

2009-01-11T21:40:00.003+01:00

The 2009 BDO Lakeside World Professional Championship, a one week darts competition, ended today, with the title going to Ted Hankey after a great and dramatic final, decided in the final set.
Tony O'Shea lost his 4th final of the year, sad for him :(

Before you laugh that I'm looking darts competition on television, did you ever watch a match? Everyone I've talked about it laughed at me first, but got caught when watching. I've started looking at it during my exams as univ, and try to follow the championship every year. I dont watch other competitions, so I can't comment on them, but the BDO world championship at the Lakeside is something you should give a try, usually on BBC2 around this time of the year. That will be for 2010 though!

Capistrano deployment for Jetty-Rails

2008-12-14T16:05:00.001+01:00

As I have developed the (soon to be available) UploadForMe application with Jruby on Rails, I have had to look at the best way to deploy it in production. In development mode, I was just running the script/server with Jruby, but I needed something better for production.

I had first tested the Glassfish approach of running an Java application server. And although it isn't hard at all, as illustrated by Charles Nutter in his post correctly titled "Zero to Production in 15 Minutes", it wasn't practical for me: just running Glasfish consumed 300MB of RAM and impossible to run on my development machine. So I had to look somewhere else.

That's how I found Jetty-Rails.The way to run your JRuby on rails apps is so simple I thought their documentation was lacking! But it is really as simple as installing the jetty_rails gem!

The only missing piece were recipes and scripts to start, stop and restart the application when deploying with Capistrano. It was a simple matter of writing 2 scripts and the Capistrano recipe, with some experimentation in between I must admit :-)

Anyway, here are the scripts. The pid of the running jerry_rails process is stored in the file shared/tmp/pids/jetty_rails.pid.

script/spin

script/stop_jetty

There's a config file shared by these 2 scripts, put in script/jetty_config:

Put this in config/deploy.rb:

Notes

The start recipe is overwritten to add the option :pty => true. Without that option the nohup command isn't effective.
Using the nohup command is needed because there's currently no way to send the process to the background as a daemon, nor to store the PID in a specific file. These scripts do both.