I hate Windows Vista

That's it. I just hate it. I don't have time or patience to find out where everything is. The File explorer is completely messed up. I do not like it. Microsoft : "fix it " .. Oh wait, you created this, never mind.

Get Firefox FIRST!

We'll I ended up buying a new laptop for work.I figured that I can use the old laptop for Ubuntu and this new one for Windows.Yes, maybe I could use one for both, however I'm pretty sure my old trusty laptop won't be able to handle two systems, no matter what I do to it.It is from 2001!!.
So for now the old trusty is my Ubuntu play area and this new one is the one I'll be using for work from Bolivia.

It is a Toshiba Satellite L45-S7423, nothing fancy really. I don't do games or watch DVDs that much so I just went for the bare necessities. It has 1gb of RAM which I think would be good enough for the things I do.

Why a Toshiba? My sister got one a year ago, when my old trusty started failing on me, I borrowed hers for a while and I liked it. The price was also good.

One thing I don't like is that it comes with the over hyped Windows Vista, I'd rather have XP pro." No problem" said the 18 year old sales person at Circuit City we can downgrade it for you it will cost $350 though.

Anyway I feel weird using Vista, I don't like it. I don't need it. I think is too much make up for the system with nothing really beneficial for the work I do.
First thing I did is install Firefox, I don't care if IE has tabs now. I cannot use IE outside work (they pay me to use it). I got my Firefox installed and the first thing I'm doing in it is write this post.

Next thing? get rid of all the trial garbage they install on these machines. That's one really cool think about Ubuntu, install it, power up, get to work, simple as that.
After that Eclipse, and all the tools for development.

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NoDans Series on ModelGlue Reloaded Part 5

This was also a short entry. The main purpose here is to change the free form text for the Contact Types to a Select box. We do this by creating a MAP with ENTRIES in Coldspring.xml and then calling a method getContactTypes() on the ContactService bean. Once we have the collection of values we set the variable "ContactTypes" for later use un the final view (frmContact.cfm). Direct Link to MindMap of Part 5 (opens full Size)

NoDans Series on ModelGlue Reloaded Part 4

This was an easy and short one. Part 4 deals with the validation of the form. We have two main objectives here
  1. Check the values provided against our validation rules
  2. Display error messages if the values don't pass validation
Direct Link to MindMap of Part 4 (opens full Size)

NoDans Series on ModelGlue Reloaded Part 3

I'm finding Mindomo a bit of a pain to work with, there are some restrictions on the application that are starting to get me. However, I still think it is a good tool and has a lot of potential, not only that but I want to keep consistent with the MindMaps. I didn't want to recreate the first one I did and I didn't want to do this third part in some other system.
I think I'll just finish the whole series using Mindomo and then look for other more interesting options.

Anyhow, I went through part 3 of the series from Dan Wilson's blog and I broke all the information on 4 sections.
  1. Create the Bean that will hold data from the form.
  2. Create the Form that will gather data on the front end.
  3. Create the Action handler for the form once data is submitted.
  4. Something I called ColdSpring Magic. Dan creates a Service and wires the whole thing using Coldspring and Model Glue.

Dan uses a cool code generator called ROOIBOS.

I tried to put as much detail as possible but you can only go so far with mindomo.
Direct Link to mindmap of Part3 (opens full Size)

Apparently Mindomo has a set width and height, therefore if you open all branches at the same time some text will get cut off. I recommend keeping (2) and (3) open and then when you are ready for (4) collapse (2).
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I want to make something clear, I'm doing this to help me understand how a ModelGlue application works. I'm using Dan Wilson's series since it is easy to digest and covers all the basics. I don't claim to be an expert on ModelGlue, this is a compliment effort to what Dan Wilson has on his website. You still have to read the entries on Dan's blog but hopefully all the verbose will make more sense if you have a graphical way of connecting things.



If anybody has questions about the mindmap please let me know.
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NoDans Series on ModelGlue Reloaded Part 1 & 2

When I have to work on complex stuff,tackle a new project or learn a new technology, I usually create a Mind Map on a big piece of paper. I started looking for options on the Internet that I can use from anywhere and that can help me diagram fairly complex concepts. I found www.mindomo.com and I like it!! the fact that the application was created in FLEX is even better. Anyways, I've finished the series of 10 tutorials from Dan Wilson. I learned a lot of things related to ModelGlue and I decided to do the whole 10 exercises again and this time create my usual Mind Maps so I can absorb things in a graphical way. I'll start posting the different Parts and the related MindMap, hopefully this Maps will be a complement to anybody trying to learn ModelGLue and following Dan's tutorials. Here are the two first Parts of the series. If anybody has questions/comments about the Maps please let me know. Direct Link to Parts 1-2 (opens full Size) çB^]\..

Useful XML beautifier for ColdSpring and ModelGlue files

I'm following Dan Wilson's 8th entry on ModelGlue and after a while I noticed that some of my files, specially the ColdSpring.xml and ModelGlue.xml under the config folder were getting really big and ugly. I don't spend too much time trying to line up everything on the XML files, right now I'm trying to get through the series and start building my own small application. Anyhow, I saw that the XML files were getting messy, a little time on the Internet produced this great resource xml lint online converter. Simply navigate to the page, click on the Browse button, find the Coldspring or ModelGlue files that you are trying to beautify and voila!! You get a nicely formatted XML file for the viewing pleasure of human eyes. On the resulting page you can view the source and then copy/paste the whole thing back to your ColdSpring or ModelGlue files. As usual, BACKUP your files before doing this!! Even better put the files in favorite flavor of source control CVS/SVN and then try to make them pretty. çB^]\..

Giant steps on ModelGlue

It seems to me that I was over my head when I started looking at the Model-Glue Series from Ray Camden. I started looking for more information on the web and I found two great resources, Dan Wilson and Doug Boude. These two guys have great information on Model Glue. Right now I'm making giant steps on Model Glue thanks to the following Great video posting here, it explains a lot about the ModelGlue Framework and how things connect between Model, Views and Controllers. I recommend people trying to learn ModelGlue check the video. This series is just amazing, I had done the two initial parts and I liked them because they are easy to understand and the reading is simple but packed with a lot of information. I started following Posting #3 of the series and I was blown away by the reference to Rooibos Generator. Are you kidding me? I spent so much time doing the getters and setters before that now that I found this nifty app I don't know if I'll ever do it again. Great stuff, really great stuff. Once I get a good understanding of the whole thing and I'm done with the tutorials I'll have to create a small app from scratch and post here all the steps. çB^]\..

Coldfusion on Ubuntu 7.10

Update It seems I spoke too soon, and I Was too tired to think straight. I was able to follow the steps and have Coldfusion installed, however I can't setup Apache to listen to CFM requests. I've been trying to run the ./cf-connector.sh script and so far nothing happens, screen doesn't change and every time I try to open a .cfm page the server asks me if I want to download it.

wow, I've not been this excited about computers in a long time. 3:20AM and I'm still unable to go to sleep, even though I have to wake up early tomorrow (actually today, in a couple hours). Coldfusion was a little more tricky than the other ones. Most of the steps came from Installing ColdFusion 8 on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. But the trick with the correct paths to all the files came from Installing ColdFusion 7 on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn
Add web server Configuration Apache
  1. What directory contains your Apache configuration file: /etc/apache2
  2. Where is the Apache program binary file?: /usr/sbin/apache2
  3. Where is the control file that you use to start and stop the Apache web server?: /etc/init.d/apache2
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Ubuntu LAMP

I have no idea why I was so afraid to start working with Ubuntu as my development box. I was hesitant to install a LAMP server so I can start playing with Joomla and Coldfusion.Boy was I wrong!! Ubuntu is beautiful, I have to admit that initially I liked it just because of the pretty colors and the idea of answering 'yeah I run a Linux system' when asked what kind of computer I use, but little by little I'm finding new cool things about this system. by the way the steps I used to install the LAMP are here : Ubuntu LAMP for Newbies I was up and running and testing a new Joomla installation in a matter of 20-30 minutes, if that. Next, setup a Coldfusion server. çB^]\..

Model Glue and the MasterJedi Series

For the last two days I've been following the Model Glue Series from Ray Camden as a way to get my feet wet. I like Ray's work overall and I think that if I had followed the series from the beginning it would've been much easier to follow. Sadly I'm stuck and trying to figure out somethings on part 7, it doesn't help that I'm using Model-Glue 2.0 Unity and the series is written for an earlier version without any ColdSpring. I decided that at some point I'll start a website explaining basic concepts related to Model-Glue and Coldfusion in general in a graphical way. I like to code as much as the next guy but to me a graphic or a diagram can save a lot of grief and also helps me understand the big picture of things instead of trying to create the whole thing bottom-up. ShowMeCF.com , graphicalCF.com? çB^]\..

I'm officially running Ubuntu 7.10

Having seen what Edubuntu can do on my kids computer and having experienced too many blue screens lately on my trusty but old laptop ( we got in 2001) I decided to wipe out Windows from the laptop and install Ubuntu. The whole thing took me less than 30 minutes and I was up and running with no problems. I know there are certain things that I still have to figure out, like downloading codecs to watch and listen to music. All in time I guess, now it's not a matter of having time to do it. I just forced myself to work with Ubuntu and find solutions to my little pet peeves. This will be definetely a great learning experience. I just now have to find a way to create a developer's box on the laptop. Shouldn't be too difficult I guess considering that I'm using Apache, MySQL and PHP for my latest projects. çB^]\..

New project on the way

I started working on both projects and first thing I needed was to setup my development environment. I started installing Apache, and then MySQL and PHP. For some reason things didn't work out. I got so frustrated that I went and decided that since this is a development box, there was no need for me to tune the different pieces individually. I remember using XAMPP years ago, so I decided to look for the same package or similar one. I found XAMPP and also WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP) . I decided to go with WAMP. Install was quick, easy and completely painless, if you are trying to get a development box up and running in no time, I'd advice you get WAMP. WAMP comes with PHPMyAdmin, however I decided to try some of the apps provided by MySQl, so I downloaded the MySQL GUI Tools. I have to say that is a pretty nice set of applications. Speaking of tools from MySQL, the one I'm interested in, that is in Beta is MySQL WorkBench, which will include the DBDesigner software for data modeling. I've been using DBDesigner as a stand alon application from Fabforce.net for the other project related to Joomla. I initially stumbled upon this while looking for the ERD of Joomla and I have to say that for a piece of software that comes free is a pretty good application. çB^]\..

If I was a Simpson's Character

I played with the Simpson's website a couple months ago and ended up with this character. If I was living in Springfield I'd look like this.

That was a long snooze

Haven't entered anything for months, not that I didn't have anything to write about, just lack of time and too many things going on actually, one of them called Summer. It was a great summer, the kids enjoyed and so did we. Back to business. I've contacted people in Bolivia to start ( finish actually) a couple projects to get my Bachelors degree. I decided to finish things from college now that we've settled down, don't plan on having more kids and have a stable job. The projects are related to things I work with on a daily basis. One of them is an online game similar to Yahtzee created exclusively for my website www.LLAJTA.com. This will require PHP, MySQL and a good understanding of the Joomla framework. I've used the admin options of Joomla for over a year but never really got into messing with the code. This is my chance. The second project is a hybrid CRM system/Project Management System for construction companies in Bolivia. This will require Coldfusion 8.0 and MySQL. I'm excited about this one since I'll be playing with the new features Coldfusion offers and at the same time I'll get my feet wet in the Model-Glue waters. For those who don't know, Model-Glue is a development framework for Coldfusion apps. Lots of things happening. I guess I'll be posting more often now that I have projects outside work.

Two steps in the right direction

For a long time I've been trying to read more books in English other than those that have programming code or a technical subject. I remember reading quite a few books when I was in School in my junior and senior year back in Bolivia. Colegio San Agustin Por Siempre!! I remember enjoying reading those books, most of them were from Bolivian writers as well as some from Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa . By the time my nephew left after the Xmas holidays I decided to start reading more, I didn't know where to start so I thought that trying to pick up a book that I always wanted to read but never had the chance was a good idea. So I grabed myself a copy of 1984 ( George Orwell) and started reading it and so far I find it quite interesting, if anything reading fiction is waking up my imagination and my passion for the written word. Then a couple days ago I read "Chasing the Rainbow of a Thousand Books" from the WashingtonPost, I have to say that the article inspired me and at the same time brought memories from those years in high school. That same day I went my son to the library to pick up "The Cat in the Hat", Bob the Builder(DVD) and "One hundred years of Solitude" (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) . I now find myself going to bed reading either 1984 or 100 years. Is something that didn't happen for a looooong time but now that I started I don't plan to stop after these two books.

I'm a PLTB...

Today while reading the FullAsaGoog List I found a blog entry from Nick Tong talking about the type of programmer he is, according to the test presented here Doolwind's Programmer Personality Test. I obviously had to take the test and my result says I'm a PLTB kind of programmer.
Your programmer personality type is: PLTB You're a Planner. You may be slow, but you'll usually find the best solution. If something's worth doing, it's worth doing right. You like coding at a Low level. You're from the old school of programming and believe that you should have an intimate relationship with the computer. You don't mind juggling registers around and spending hours getting a 5% performance increase in an algorithm. You work best in a Team. A good group is better than the sum of it's parts. The only thing better than a genius programmer is a cohesive group of genius programmers. You are a liBeral programmer. Programming is a complex task and you should use white space and comments as freely as possible to help simplify the task. We're not writing on paper anymore so we can take up as much room as we need.

Linux is costing me $25.35 for now

I know it's been quite a long time since I don't write anything. Between preparing for my kids birthday party, cancelling due to snow and then resetting the house for a second birthday party we haven't had much time to sit in front of the computer. That and the fact that I didn't have a monitor for the Linux PC because I returned the monitor to my parents to build the second Edubuntu box. Well I finally got a monitor from Craigslist.com for $25 bucks. So far the whole computer has cost me, well $25 bucks. I got the PC from work when they were getting rid of a few PIII, the keyboard and mouse I got from my own scrap box, where I keep everything computer related, from tiny screws to Hard drives, CDROMS and even a DVD Writer. The initial network connection was, again, borrowed from my parents ;) . It was a Linksys External USB wireless adapter, now that I have returned all that I ran a cable from the main router in the house to the Linux box ( about 15 feet away). The best part of all, the software cost me about 35 cents. I'm just taking into consideration the cost of the CD where I burned the Edubuntu Image. Not bad, really not bad for a system that is great to play and work with. I have decided to reinstall Edubuntu from scratch on the same box, this time I'll pay more attention to all steps and probably write about the whole thing. The first time was a great exploring experience, but this time I'd really like to know what goes on as part of the installation. With some luck I'll be doing the third installation tonight.

Second Edubuntu System is a go.

I went to my parents' over the weekend. I wanted to install Edubuntu in their home PC an old Pentium III, 128MB and 500Mhz. I figured that instead of throwing that one out I would just try to install Edubuntu in it, after all every time my kids go there they want to play with the computer as well. My parents are not computer people by far. If anything they just check the news or the weather on the Internet. I haven't figure out how to take snapshots of the whole installation process yet but I will post them here as soon as I can find out how to do it. Installation was as the first time pretty easy, just select a few options and hit Enter. I hit a road block when trying to go through the step "Build LTSP chroot". The status bar just froze at 50% and nothing happened for a few minutes. Then I got a Screen showing all the steps of the installation and still showing the error message. I decided to try again so I turned off the computer and started the whole thing one more time. Same deal, when getting to the "Build LTSP chroot" step the whole process stopped at 50%. I started researching on the Internet what the LTSP was and how important was to have it on a stand alone PC not connected to a Linux server. Turns out LTSP stands for "Linux Terminal Server Project". Basically is an add-on package to the core Linux system that allows for a thin-client connection. From what I understand this is a way to run a network where the client has the bare minimum equipment and the heavy processing is done at the server. The Wikipedia article has a good explanation on this without going too technical. This website " LTSP, down by the sea: a 20-terminal Linux cybertent for education" provides a great example of the technology. Basically they connected a bunch of old laptops ( first generation Pentiums running at 120mhz) to a server and from there they have a running lab with access to the internet for everybody. In any case, having found what the technology was I decided not to go through that step since the PC was not going to be connected to a server as a "dumb-terminal".I proceeded to select the next step on the list. All applications got installed in little over 15 minutes and then Voila!! a new Edubuntu installation ready to play. So, if you are installing a stand alone Edubuntu system and get an error on the "Build LTSP chroot" step, just select the next step on the list and everything will get installed as usual. I figure that if I at some point need the LTSP package then I can probably install it later. Good stuff.

Edubuntu is great !!

I need to create a slideshow or a demo on how I did the installation, I've seen a couple examples on the web. I figure they are using something like VMware inside a previously installed OS where Camtasia can be run and grab the screenshots. I cannot see how else they would be able to grab the screenshots from the installation process. Something I like about this whole thing is that I'm learning new stuff and it's fun. I listen to Batanga all the time, however under Linux there is no Windows Media Player. There are some other options out there but I need to learn a couple more things to make things actually work. The thing is for now I cannot listen to music on the Edubuntu box but I see that as a challenge, I'll be posting information about some of the roadblocks I find with Linux. Some of the things I take for granted under Window$ are not as easy to setup ( for the moment) in Linux. I want to play poker also but the pokerroom.com website requires Java, guess what, for some reason that is not working either. I think that my first step in this whole trip is to actually start reading the documentation ;) . https://help.ubuntu.com/6.10/pdf/ubuntu/C/desktopguide.pdf main site: https://help.ubuntu.com/

Let's start the fun.

I had the idea of starting a blog long time ago. I actually started using my old grtfercho.blogspot.com site as a Internet Bookmark place. Kinda like del.icio.us before del.icio.us existed. I had 210 bookmarks on my old site that I cleaned and moved to my account in http://del.icio.us/grtfercho. My second take on blogging was @ cfblog.com/grtfercho, this eventually will become my official ColdFusion only blog, for now I don't have anything but the name. Too many things to do, a lot of things to organize. So what am I going to blog about? I have too many projects that I'd like to talk about and probably get some feedback. In the past I created my own wiki to organize my ideas and have all information in one place. It didn't work because there was no accountability. I was the only one with access to the wiki, therefore if anything was incorrect I wouldn't know about it because I put it there in the first place. Creating a blog and leaving the doors open for anybody to see makes me accountable of what I write, even if only a handful of people come to these pages I have to write thinking that from now on there's an audience. Blogging also makes me write, simple as that. Since English is not my native language I think that blogging will sharp my language and communication skills. Thank god for spell checker...!! The projects..... I have the domain programmingforkids.org reserved, I started looking for information related to teaching programming to kids and I really couldn't find a central repository. I decided to start my own. The website will help me understand and discover more about computer languages that I either forgot or haven't used in the past. It also gives me the chance to share and receive feedback. I think it will be a great experience. I also have the website LLAJTA.COM that I administer. A lot of things happening there, I'd probably blog more about the site on the site itself and not here. Only because the site is in Spanish and I plan to keep this blog (grtfercho.blogspot.com) in English. I may however write a couple things here related to the challenges found @ www.LLAJTA.com and to programming. What made me start blogging all of a sudden? I think the first step in all this was when I decided to teach programming to my nephew, he's 10 years old (Mar-2007). When I started looking for information about programming for kids I realized that at some point my kids were going to be in that same position and that I needed to start working on something so by the time they reach the appropriate age I can have a nice collection of data in one place. My son Ian is 3 years old now, he started playing with the computer when he was 2 , eventually after a few months he knew how to turn on the monitor (we never turn off the computer), select the bookmarks option from the menu and go to SesameStreet.com to play with Elmo. Now I decided to build a new computer for him. This time I didn't want to deal with Microsoft and Windows. I also wanted to start experimenting with Linux once again. I've done in the past and never successfully, there was always something else that pulled me away from Linux :( . I started looking around to see what distribution was the most acceptable for me and for him to start learning. I'm a Linux noooooobie (for now). After looking at some of them, Suse, Red Hat, Fedora, etc. I landed on Ubuntu and from there to Edubuntu. Needless to say I didn't look any further. Edubuntu is the perfect distribution to satisfy my kid's curiosity with computers and a good starting point for me to retake that lost and forgotten affair I have with Linux. It's been almost two weeks since the computer is up and running. I already found a few problems, no, not with the system, is just me. Since I don't know much about Linux I'm not familiar with the system and with the way to install and run things. I'll be posting my experiences about Edubuntu in this blog as well. cool enough for a first post. I have a lot of things to work on.