joynalrab

[joynalrab]

Make it known

if you're working hard -- don't just assume it'll be noticed -- make it known and in writing. updating time sheets and billables for the month.

[joynalrab]

Contract bid accepted!

Just found out that the mock-ups and project estimate I put together for Scholastic was approved and we got the contract bid! The mock-ups were pretty extensive and took some time but they came out beautiful and I'm glad they liked them too. We're doing a whole redesign/overhaul of one of their core sites. It's going to be a lot of work but should open the doors to a lot of new things.

[joynalrab]

Outlook Web Access Support on BlackBerry Z10

Just got a Z10 last night and had some issues setting up emails -- really could be a lot easier to set up. But after it was all set up all I had left was my work email -- my company uses Exchange and OWA for web access.

Here's the cool thing about Z10 that didn't exist in the OS7.1 and below -- I used the OWA on the older Berry's and the syncing was SLOOWWWWW. Like at least fifteen minutes. I ended up using "redirecting" on those phones just so i'd get an "instant" feeling (redirection is basically forwarding to my [username]@tmo.blackberry.net).

With the Z10 I feared since there is no concept of official BIS support -- that i would be subjected to delays when syncing emails -- but let me tell you -- its INSTANT on the Z10. Tried and tested -- as soon as I received an email boom there it was on my phone -- AWESOME.

So anyways here are the settings I used with OWA:

Advanced Settings > Exchange ActiveSync

Description: Company

Domain: [BLANK]

Username: [company username -- we use a different username to login and NOT the alias of the actual email address]

Email Address: [alias]@companydomain.com

Password: [password]

Server Address: webmail.companyname.com

(Now here is the tricky part that got me for a while)

My company uses https://webmail.companyname.com/owa when accessing it via the web. All I had to write for the "server address" was webmail.companyname.com and NOT webmail.companyname.com/owa

Port: 443

Use SSL: On

Use VPN: Off

Push: On

Sync Interval: (Greyed out but manual)

Time Frame: 30 Days

And that's it -- got it up and working and sync contacts and all -- was GLORIOUS!

[joynalrab]

SSH Enlightenment

So going through with the whole server set up and SVN fiddling -- it got super tiresome to have to keep typing in [username]@[myhost.com] and then my password. And to top it off -- I had to do a -p [port] argument because I don't use the default port 22 (security reasons).

First to stay away from using a password -- set up public/private keys on your system and the server you are going to be logging into.

Oh and I'm a total noob -- so the following stuff isn't guaranteed.

Here's what I did:

ssh-keygen -t rsa

It's going to ask you to apply a name -- choose any name and save it. It'll generate two keys -- in my case mysvn_id_rsa and mysvn_id_rsa.pub. Then I moved both keys into my ~/.ssh/ directory:

mv mysvn_id_rsa* ~/.ssh/

After doing so I needed to set up the remote server to work with the public key (mysvn_id_rsa.pub). First I copied the public key using the scp command:

scp mysvn_id_rsa.pub [username]@[hostname.com]:~>

This will copy the file into the home directory of your ssh server. After that remote into the box:

ssh -p [port] [username]@[hostname.com]

Then when you are in the home directory, you are going to copy the contents of your public key (mysvn_id_rsa.pub) into the authorized_keys located under the ~/.ssh/ directory on the remote box.

If you don't have a file (or directory) already set up, just create the required files:

mkdir ~/.ssh touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

You are still going to be in the home directory -- so do the following to copy in the public key into the authorized_keys file:

cat mysvn_id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

With that copied in there, exit out of the remote box (you can also discard you .pub file).

Now being in your local box, if you ssh into the remote box, you have to use the -i flag with the identity file (~/.ssh/mysvn_id_rsa) in order to be able to ssh into the remote box without a password -- again its a hassle:

ssh -p [port] -i ~/.ssh/mysvn_id_rsa [username]@[hostname.com]

So how do we speed this up? Add the following to the file ~/.ssh/config -- if it doesnt exist, just create a blank file and start editing:

Host [remote host name.com] IdentityFile ~/.ssh/mysvn_id_rsa Port [port] User [username]

And then save it! So once that's saved just run the following command:

ssh [hostname.com]

and then BOOM! you're ssh'd into your remote box and never again do you have to type in a password, username or port!

Again, im a total noob at this and take no responsibilities for any mishaps -- so if I made a mistake my bad -- but hopefully it helped someone out !

[joynalrab]

Finally.

So on my path to reorganization and rekindling my computer roots. I just got my iMac so finally got the fire i need under my butt to get things started. The first thing I thought was to organize all my folders and then decided to set up an SVN to keep a repository of all my codes and do releases of applications the right way instead of willy-nilly'ing like I always have. This is something I picked up from my current job at Capturepoint. Joe had me working on an SVN with Triplefin for one of our projects. It was a great learning experience. We eventually applied SVNs to all of our client codebases.

To set up the SVN i decided to use my current webhost provider -- seemed like the best bet since it was "always on" and globally accessible no matter where I was working from. I had my initial repositories set up but then found a MAJOR set back. Turns out my current host is using HostGator. HostGator's policy is that they don't like their shared hosting accounts to use their servers as SVN. But since I am on a VPS it was fine. The major set back I found as I was going through the motions was HostGator has a throttle limit set on the number of SSH connections any given account can make. It is something around the ballpark figure of 3-5 connections per 90 seconds. I guess this was in place to prevent malicious attacks. The only problem is when you're doing SVN you are going to be making a lot of SSH connections when checking in and running other commands. I kept getting a "Network Connection Closed Unexpectedly" error. Even though these were legitimate calls, they were getting blocked every so often. This was super inefficient for my purposes.

My next step was to see where I can host SVN repositories but doing the math it was pretty costly compared to the $0 budget I had set up. Then I thought to myself, I have a pretty good internet connection at home -- why not set up a "server" of my own? Going further I can actually do some server related work and get my feet a little wet. 

The new iMac was off limits because it goes to sleep every so often and eventually stops the HDD. So it wasn't always on like I wanted. Then I remembered I had this super old Dell Inspiron 600m laptop from when I first started college. It was missing keys and was SUPER slow -- I mean this thing was running on 512mb ram and only had about  80gb of hard disk space.

But for my purposes this would be a fantastic option for a test server and SVN fiddling. So I went home to my parents house and dug up the laptop. Boy was it super slow. I backed up what I needed and proceeded to reformat the sucker.

I had a lot of options when it came to OSs to install on it -- I wanted to go the linux route because well it was the easiest and most stream lined approach for development. Out of all the distros I went with Debian. Got the best reviews and seemed like the easiest version to set up.

Then I ran into my first problem. The old dell laptop had a broken DVD Rom drive. I could replace it but again, didn't want to spend any money setting this thing up. Then I saw that you could use a USB stick to install Debian. I was saved.

I found a USB stick I got from BlackBerry Jam 10 from back in May of 2012. I was using it to back up a few things from the old dell before the final reformatting. During the process the system hung and I had to reboot. Then I found out it DESTROYED the usb stick. I mean it was unrepairable by the iMac and windows system I had. A few google searches on the error message revealed the drive was FRIED. Like how is that even possible?? Thank god I didnt have anything on there I needed.

But now I was left with a project that required a USB stick but no USB stick. You would think a computer guy had a ton of USB drives -- but alas with all the cloud storage stuff going on these days -- who really buys USB sticks anymore? But then i remembered I had a USB stick attached to my Roku for seeing videos from my laptop (back before I had the HDMI wire for the mac). Brought it over and installed Debian on it.

Rebooted the dell laptop with the USB and so began my install of Debian.

While installing Debian, it ran through all the steps and downloaded all the required files via the internet. Everything ran smoothly until it hit the Grub Install phase. 

For some reason it could not install Grub. Grub is used as a OS Menu for when your computer boots up. You select the OS and boom it loads it. Kind of like a Bootloader. Usually people dont have to deal with selecting an OS because they have just on installed and it's usually Windows or OSX and it loads instantly.

With linux you can do that too -- but you have to set a few things. Anyway it wouldnt install Grub so I went with the LILO boot loader option. It installed fine (or so it seemed). When the installation was completed it went into the LILO OS selection. I chose "Linux" and then when it went further it ran into a plethora of issues. Ultimately it gave me a initramfs command prompt. I tried EVERYTHING to get this thing to boot properly but it just wouldnt do it.

Then I tried to reinstall Debian and chose to do Grub install but again, it failed. Then I chose "no boot loader" and it finished the installation -- only now i got NO PROMPT to load an OS and just got a black screen every time I started the laptop. Woof.

Then I remembered when I formatted the USB stick with Debian, there was an option for "Super Grub" -- that was closely related to the Grub I needed so I went ahead an installed that onto the stick.

I booted the laptop up again and chose the USB stick as the booting device. Now there was all these options. Tried all of them -- tried and tried to fix Grub through it but nothing would work. Eventually I used the USB stick to load the OS i had installed on the Harddrive -- it worked and I was finally in the OS. YAY!

But now I needed that USB stick to load the oS every time after a reboot -- it just seemed so unnecessary. But it got the job done and I was happy -- but eventually the thought of such a dependency got to me -- so I kept looking for ways to fix the Grub install.

Eventually the next day after going through probably a million command line attempts I found this gem:

dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc

And holy cow. I went through the steps and it installed Grub. Rebooted and by golly (yeah i said it) it worked! I got the Grub menu to pop up without the USB stick. I was racking my brain for days but it finally started working. Now I have a "server" with debian and installed SVN. Still configuring it but so far so good. I'll keep you posted on that.

But for now I need some sleep -- but still i feel kind of good through all this -- it's fun failing so many times to eventually succeeding.

Till next time.

[joynalrab]

Subversion , Repositories, Oh My!

So I'm currently in the middle of a life and productivity overhaul. First step was to get a better workstation to do all my work on -- so I logically bought an iMac. They were released last year around  November but there is such a bad backorder that people are still waiting for one (those who have ordered in November). I finally ordered mine on February 14th from B&H and knew I had to wait no matter what. A week went by and then I found out that their computer return policy is terrible -- like if you were to buy a computer from their site you can't return it no matter what -- all sales are final. 

Don't get me wrong -- they are pretty reputable but saving a few bucks here rather than buying it directly from Apple and risking not being able to return a defective product was not worth it. So on February 20th I cancelled my order with B&H and ordered again through Apple.com -- even then the wait time was 3-4 weeks -- but at least Apple tells you that instead of giving you a "Backordered" status. I also found out that resellers (B&H, Adorama, etc) get last dibs -- meaning people who order directly from Apple get priority -- so just another reason why I jumped over.

So now like a week, then 2 weeks passes buy and I'm like dying waiting for it to arrive. Then I read somewhere that some stores have the "popular" models in stock -- Turns out the one I wanted is sometimes in stock. So I started to call around and finally found a store with a few of them in stock. Drove over there after work and then BOOM got myself an iMac. So rather than wait for over a month -- cut the line and grab one right away.

The first thing I did when I got home with it was run through the screen issues that iMacs are plagued with -- Yellow tinting, backlight bleeding, etc. Thankfully my system didn't have those issues -- as far as I can tell -- i'm a total noob.

So now that I had this super system, time to get to work. Yesterday I started doing some organizing and today I did some more. Today was a little more technical -- I set up a repository on my webhost so every time I make a change through the web on a project, I'll just sync my changes there so I can basically work from anywhere -- which is fantastic.

This fits really nicely with another piece of software I recently got -- Sublime Text 2. It is beyond amazing -- best code editor I've ever seen -- and it comes with a great plugins in too -- SVN / SFTP are the biggest ones.

I'm still working on this but can't wait to get passed the preparation phase -- hopefully this was the jump start i've needed for a long time.

[joynalrab]

BackBone.js

Learning some BackBone.js today -- theoretically should be applicable to both BBDev and stuff at work. The auto updates on data changes is what got back looking at the library. At work we are trying to figure out how to keep client side apps via Javascript updated and synced with other devices running the same app.

I've never honestly worked with any libraries since I found JQuery -- well I worked a little with HammerJS but it was only brief (awesome library btw). So this should be interesting.

So far I've learned:

(function ($) { window.AppView = Backbone.View.extend({ el: $("body"), events: { "click #add-friend": "showPrompt", }, showPrompt: function () { var friend_name = prompt("Who is your friend?"); } }); var appview = new AppView; })(jQuery);

Using this as a starting point: http://thomasdavis.github.com/2011/02/01/backbone-introduction.html

Good links for future reference:

http://ricostacruz.com/backbone-patterns/#sub_views

[joynalrab]

Sensible

So all I basically do at work, home and anywhere else is develop applications. So it makes sense to keep a blog of what I am doing / what I have been doing relating to it. So let's begin.

Biggest thing surrounding me is the rebirth of RIM -- sorry BlackBerry. They've been renamed not physically but also spiritually. A lot of things are changing with them -- and with them I intend on changing. Here's to a long life for both me and BlackBerry. Time to make some heads roll!

[joynalrab]

and here we go...