Timothy C. Fanelli

The nightmare of server migration

tim@timfanelli.com — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:41:59 GMT

Well this week began "re-registration" week at Clarkson, where they randomly and repeatedly delete MAC addresses from your NetReg registration list and make your life miserable.

I leased a VPS from SliceHost and am in the process of moving all my sites there -- which is turning into quite the process... I've decided to clean things up a lot to make my life easier, as well.

Unfortunately, that means my websites are only partially up at the moment... please bear with me as I work through this. It's difficult to migrate off a server, when you can only access it intermittently :-\.

Meantime, I'd like to say "Thanks, OIT, for creating yet another debacle that just makes our lives more difficult. Aren't you supposed to support the faculty and staff? What the hell?"

Entrepreneur Survival Guide - 10 Apps/Tools Every Entrepreneur Should be Using DAILY?|?Listropolis

timfanelli — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:34:56 GMT

http://www.listropolis.com/2009/07/entrepreneur-survival-guide-10-appstools-every-entrepreneur-should-be-using-daily/

Installing SystemC on Ubuntu 9.04

tim@timfanelli.com — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:54:17 GMT

Spent some time today getting SystemC setup on my workstation at Clarkson, for a course I am taking: Hardware/Software System Design and Verification. SystemC is, in short, a C++ class and macro library with a simulation kernel that allows you to describe a hardware system using C++ syntax and language features... or something.

In any event, installation on Ubuntu 9.04 wasn't quite as straight forward as the instructions would have you think. Jaunty uses GCC 4.3, which is more strict in certain aspects than GCC 4.1, which is the version tested by the SystemC people. Compilation will fail, because the src/sysc/utils/sc_utils_ids.cpp doesn't have the proper includes. Simply add:


#include <cstdlib>
#include <cstring>
using namespace std;

to the file, right below the existing #include "systemc.h" directive, and everything will compile and install without problems.

For detailed instructions, and a sample program to test with, check out: Installing SystemC On Ubuntu 9.04 on phWikid (where the learnin's at).

Fixed Atom and RSS Generation

tim@timfanelli.com — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:23:30 GMT

Just implemented a quick RSS and ATOM renderer in HawkEye... my feeds were being generated by some legacy code that used to host my website. Once I'd began hosting several other blogs, including my girlfriend's yoga journal, in the same database - everything got fed into the same generator.

The error appears to be fixed, and as a consequence, Josephine's site now support's RSS and ATOM feeds as well!

Thanks for bearing with me... keep the feedback coming!

Sorry Planet Cosi

tim@timfanelli.com — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:57:38 GMT

Sorry, Planet COSI and anyone else who pulls my RSS feeds.

It just came to my attention that all of the blogs hosted in my database are being read into the same RSS feed... which is an unintended consequence of some design changes I've been going through.

I'm going to reimplement my RSS support now, and should have this problem fixed shortly. Please bear with me!

Importance of Legacy URL Support

tim@timfanelli.com — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:31:46 GMT

I've received several notifications over the past few weeks about dead URLs on my website. Notably, from places where I have linked my own articles, such as in my Best of 2003 roundup. All the links in that article died suddenly, because I'd migrated my blog software from one system to another. Given the date on that post, I'd guess I migrated from pyBlosxom to blosxonomy back then.

Anyway, I'm making an effort to resurrect those dead URL's using some apache re-write rules. Specifically, all the links on my Best of 2003 now work again.

Note to web site maintainers: it's important to pick a URL scheme, and be consistent... it will bite you in the butt later.

Mashed up website...

tim@timfanelli.com — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:15:34 GMT

Spent some time working on the website this afternoon... with Matt and Josephine both interested in running the software, there's been a ton of development work going on.

As of this afternoon, my website runs a mashup of two versions of Blosxonomy-J... the version that drives the front page, tag searches, and item permalinks is the current development version. My old beta software still hosts my about page, and the page that supports posting new entries.

Note: comment support is broken for the time being. It should be back up sometime this week. In the meantime, please e-mail me your feedback: tim@timfanelli.com.

The new code is essentially a web-service mashup, called HawkEye. HawkEye pulls "stories" from any number of webservices - which right now includes Radar, the blogging engine behind HawkEye, and Twitter. Matt is developing a del.icio.us plugin, and flickr plugin as well - though that code isn't checked into SVN yet. I also plan on developing a generic ATOM and RSS consumer, making HawkEye a consumer of virtually anything.

My upcoming major undertakings include an event-notification system, allowing modules to react to events in HawkEye. An event would be anything new that posted in any of the story sources. This would allow you to things like tweet new blog posts; blog new tweets; udpate facebook with links to flickr photos; and any other such inter-operable nonsense that has become part of our daily routines -- all without thinking about it. HawkEye should become the basis around which your social networking life revolves.

Ofcourse, every good piece of software needs a name, and all you children of the 80's and earlier will have picked up on the theme already. In fact, at Matt's request, the project's admin console will be called "Hotlips." So what we need now is a clever name that matches the theme. Suggestions are desperately needed!

Also, if you are interested in using the code, or helping to advance it, please get in touch... the platform is growing quickly, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

Replacing substrings in PostgreSQL text fields

tim@timfanelli.com — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:40:11 GMT

In my previous post I made a small typo. I used the word 'direction' instead of 'directory'. Since I'd already tweeted a link to the post, deleting the entry and recreating it wasn't an option. So I did some quick digging into the PostgreSQL reference and found this handy function:

replace(string text, from text, to text)

This replaces all occurrences in string of substring from with substring to.

I used this to fix the typo in my blog post, by executing:

UPDATE entry 
SET content = replace(content, 'direction', 'directory)
WHERE ID=1401;

In the event that the word 'direction' had occurred multiple times in the post, I could have used a larger substring, such as the whole sentence, to identify the specific occurrence I wanted.

Disable Security in WebSphere Application Server Deployment Manager

tim@timfanelli.com — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:11:57 GMT

Have you forgotten the password to, or messed up the security configuration of, your WebSphere Application Server's Deployment Manager? Here's a quick tip on how you can disable security, allowing you to log in again, and reconfigure.

Log into the system that hosts your deployment manager, and change to the deployment manager's profile's bin directory. Then execute:

./wsadmin.sh -conntype NONE
WASX7357I: By request, this scripting client is not connected to any server process. Certain configuration 
and application operations will be available in local mode.

WASX7029I: For help, enter: "$Help help"

wsadmin>securityoff
LOCAL OS security is off now but you need to restart server1 to make it affected.


wsadmin>exit

Then, shutdown and restart your deployment manager. It should come up with security disabled on the admin console.

An Elightened Zombie with a Plan

tim@timfanelli.com — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 02:48:59 GMT

I'm trying to rectify my personal feelings towards that statement, "An enlightened zombie with a plan". Let me give you some context: Today I was accused of being an "Obama Zombie" by an anti-Obama activist, in reference to my RFID implants.

While this made me laugh hysterically, I replied back nicely, providing my point of view on the technology. I certainly do not think RFID chips are secure, safe, or should be tied in any way to anyone's personal information. I do not believe the government is planning to use RFID as a tracking technology -- not because it couldn't be, but only because they already can track us. Personally, I carry two GPS enabled cell-phones, tied to my personal information, and almost never use cash which means my every financial transaction is recorded. The government does not need to build any more infrastructure to track its citizens... they already can. However, I have joked several times that, when it comes time, I'll remove my implants and go underground knowing more than most people about the technology... joked in the morbid sense that it's a plausible, though unlikely, scenario.

In any event, the final tweet in the conversation is duplicated here, for your enjoyment (link to actual tweet):

lvrkmbI retract my statement saying @timfanelli is a zombie- if he is one at least he is an enlightened one with a plan....

Tweeted Aug 08, 2009 at 08:36 PM

So now I'm stuck trying to rectify my political views, which can loosely be described as "left", against being an "Obama Zombie". A blind, mindless, braaaaaaaains-eating follower I am not! Sure, I voted for the man. Do I agree with his every move? Of course not. Do I object strongly to many of them? Not really. I guess I'm conflicted... but will say I'm glad he's doing something... even if in the end it may not be the right thing. I don't have the answers - but I know that no decisions would ever be made if the President wasn't the kind of person willing to make them. Not everyone is going to be happy with any one decision, but noone would be happy with no decisions. And that's all I've got to say about that.

Elevator Simulator

tim@timfanelli.com — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:28:56 GMT

Blast from the past... Back in the day, during our time as undergraduates at Clarkson University, Pete and I used to be an unstoppable software engineering duo. When tasked with designing an elevator simulation for our algorithms course, we laughed and then went WAY overboard.

Today, while going through some archives on The Way Back Machine, I found our elevator simulator - and thought I'd post it here.

I haven't looked at the source too closely yet, keep in mind we wrote this in our early days of experimenting with event-driven programming, XML parsing, and API design. You can download it here. Enjoy!