Dojo Cookie Example

I have added a Dojo cookie example to my Dojo Examples Page. Setting and retrieving the cookie is pretty straight forward.

The next example will also be with cookies. This time I stick some JSON text in the cookie and retrieve it.

A Little Behind on Posts

I have been a little behind on posts lately. I'm coaching an 8-9 year old volleyball team 2 nights a week and that is cutting into my reading/coding/blogging time. So posts may be a little thin the next couple of weeks, but I should free up again pretty soon.

Acer Aspire One boot time less than 30 seconds

Another reason to buy an Acer Aspire One is the quick boot time. In a recent New York Times Technical article: In a New Age of Impatience, Cutting Computer Start Time It is the black hole of the digital age � the three minutes it can take for your computer to boot up, when there is nothing to do but wait, and wait, and wait some more before you can log on and begin multitasking at hyper-speed.

PC manufacturers Dell, Lenova and HP will introduce a new generation of quick start computers.

Why wait for the next generation? The Acer Aspire One boots in under 30 seconds, if running the Linpus OS and booting off the 8GB solid state hard drive.

Even Microsoft, whose bloated Windows software is often blamed for sluggish start times, has pledged to do its part in the next version of the operating system, saying on a company blog that �a very good system is one that boots in under 15 seconds.� Today only 35 percent of machines running the latest version of Windows, called Vista, boot in 30 seconds or less, the blog notes. (Apple Macintoshes tend to boot more quickly than comparable Windows machines but still feel glacially slow to most users.)

The NY Times article continues with a quote from UCLA professor Gary Small,

Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles. �Our brains have become impatient with the boot-up process,� Dr. Small said. �We have been spoiled by the hand-held devices.�

USB Mouse on Acer Aspire One

I recently tested the functionality of a USB mouse attached to my Acer Aspire One (AA1). I attached a Microsoft Optical Mouse Blue USB and PS/2 Compatible mouse and started the AA1 without issue. Both the left and right mouse buttons worked as did the scroll wheel and center mouse mouse button (scroll wheel).

The output from from dmesg is:


ALC INIT<6>usbcore: registered new interface driver hiddev
input: Microsoft Microsoft 3-Button Mouse with IntelliEye(TM) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/input/input8
input: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [Microsoft Microsoft 3-Button Mouse with IntelliEye(TM)] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-2



Unplugging the mouse and reattaching while the AA1 is running again was no problem and produces a dmesg output of:



usb 2-2: USB disconnect, address 2
usb 2-2: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
input: Microsoft Microsoft 3-Button Mouse with IntelliEye(TM) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/input/input9
input: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [Microsoft Microsoft 3-Button Mouse with IntelliEye(TM)] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-2

Featured gadget: Radio Energy Z�rich

Name: Radio Energy Z�rich
Author: Andreas Horlacher
Description: Listen to online radio from Energy Z�rich

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Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer

Breaking the century mark

No, this post is not to celebrate my turning 100, though at times I do feel a hundred years old. No, this post is to celebrate the 1o1st country to join the viewing ranks of the kengell chronicles.

Ranked by number of page views, the top ten countries to visit the kengell chronicles are:

1. United States
2. Canada
3. United Kingdom
4. Norway
5. Spain
6. Austria
7. Germany
8. Netherlands
9. Denmark
10. Finland

The 101st country to join the kengell chronicle ranks is Malawi. Thanks to all who have read the chronicles.

Ranked by page views the continents are:

1. North America
2. South America
3. Europe
4. Asia
5. Oceania
6. Africa

I just need one person in Antarctica to read this blog and the continent list will be complete.

Create an .iso Image with OS X 10.5

For work I needed a burnable CDROM .iso image for use on both Macs and PCs. On OS X 10.5, this can all be done with your Mac, no special software required. Unfortunately, no one has written down all the steps. So, if for only but my own benefit, here are all the steps to create an image. Note: I am doing quite a bit of testing so if I run into any issues, I will post an update.

Create an .iso Image from Scratch on OS X 10.5 Leopard

1. Create a directory which acts as the root directory for your iso image.
   
   
   
   
   • For example, name the directory Source_Code_V1.
   
   
   
   • All the files for this iso image would go into the Source_Code_V1. directory.
   
   
   
   



2. Open the Disk Utility program. It is in the Utilities subdirectory of your /Applications directory.



3. From the Disk Utility menu, select File -> New -> Disk Image from Folder



4. Select the folder you created above. (i.e., Source_Code_V1).



5. A dialog pops up. By default the image name will be the same as the directory name.



6. You have options to select: Image Format and Encryption.
   
   
   
   
   • Image Format - Since this is a CDROM select the hybrid image (HFS+/ISO/UDF) option.
   
   
   
   • Encyrption - Select none.
   
   
   
   



7. Click Save. Your directory is now converted into a OS X disk image (with a .dmg extension). You should be able to mount this image and view the files.



8. Mount the disk image and make sure all the files are there as you want them.



9. To create the iso image, open a terminal window.



10. Navigate to the directory where your disk image is.



11. Type in the following command to convert your image into a cd image.: hdiutil convert Source_Code_V1.dmg -format UDTO -o Source_Code_V1



12. An CDROM image file is created with a .cdr extension.



13. To make the file an iso, rename the file.



14. mv Source_Code_V1.cdr Source_Code_V1.iso

That's it. You should have a shiny new .iso image you can burn to a CD or share with your friends.

Featured gadget: Precious Metals Spot Prices

Name: Precious Metals Spot Prices
Author: Rosie Ojo
Description: Gold, Silver, Platinum and Palladium Spot Prices, with live 24 Hour Spot Charts. New York - London - Hong Kong - Sydney - Zurich.

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Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer

Transfer files between a Blackberry Curve 8310 and an Acer Aspire One

It is easy to transfer files (e.g. photos) between a Blackberry Curve 8310 and an Acer Aspire One (AA1).

First a few background details: The AA1 comes with 5 usb ports (according to the dmesg output).



$ dmesg | grep 'new USB'
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 5



When plugging the Blackberry into one of those USB ports, two events happen; one on the AA1 and the other on the Blackberry.



$ dmesg
...
scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access RIM BlackBerry SD 0001 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4 CCS
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 3994624 512-byte hardware sectors (2045 MB)
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 53
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 3994624 512-byte hardware sectors (2045 MB)
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 53
sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through



The Blackberry warns:

USB charging current is not sufficient. Verify that your handheld is connecting to a powered USB charging source and that the proper USB driver is installed.


acknowledging that message, one is presented with:


Do you want to turn on Mass Storage Mode? You might not be able to access some media files in this mode.


Then one is presented with the option:


Mass Storage Mode is being activated. Enter your device password to grant access:

Finally after acknowledging the warnings and supplying the Blackberry password access to the USB storage on the Blackberry is available. It then can be treated like all other storage devices.

Surfing the Green Wave in Copenhagen

In Chicago we have what's known as the "Chicago Pace" (not to be confused with the PACE buses). Simply put, if you walk at the right pace you can cruise from intersection to intersection without stopping (not that jaywalking is unknown among Chicagoans). I've been able to walk from my office on the corner of Wacker and Adams to the Art Institute (Michigan Ave and Adams) in under ten minutes; a distance of about 1 km. The same applies when walking up Wacker Drive from the Sears Tower to the Wrigley Building on Michigan Avenue.

In Copenhagen they use the term "Green Wave". If you cycle (Danes cycle everywhere) into Copenhagen on certain high traffic streets (N�rrebrogade being one of them) and maintain a ~20 km/hr pace you will be into city center in no time at all. Colville Andersen has produced a neat little video capturing the 'green wave' in action. Have a look at and treat yourself to a little Danish 'bicycle' rock; Iben's Jeg savner min bl� cykel - (I miss my blue blue bicycle) and Tue West's S�t dig bag p� min cykel - (Sit up on the back of my bike).


The Green Wave in Copenhagen from Colville Andersen on Vimeo.

Notice, in the video, the street lights changing to green in the upper right hand corner. Also take note how the Danes have separated the main street (lowest level), the bike path (cyclevej) on the next level up from the foot path (highest level).

Ajax/JavaScript Ceritification - Need a few good geeks

If you don't know already, I work in Learning for Sun Microsystems. We are looking at creating an Ajax/JavaScript certification to go along with our existing Java certs. To do that, we generally use real developers developers to define the test objectives and write the questions. And right now we are looking for a few of those folks. So if you have always wanted to say in an interview "I don't have that cert, because I wrote the test." Now is your chance. :)

If you are interested, please add a comment to this post. Please include name, e-mail, your blog/company url, and a phone number so we can contact you. I will pass along your information to the project lead. Since the comments are moderated I will not post any of your information to the Web. This is a limited time opportunity as we need to hear back in the next couple of days. I will remove this post when we have enough people.

And now a word from our sponsor.

---

Need AJAX Experts

My name is Evelyn Cartagena-Meyer and I'm the Java Certification Program Manager. I create all the Java certification exams here at Sun.

I'm in the process of recruiting Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) for the Sun Certified AJAX Developer certification exam.

The two phases I need your expertise in, are:

1. Your expertise to help with the creation of the testing objectives for the certification exam. I will need your expertise to participate on con calls to ensure we are testing in the important areas. The con calls will be a one hour call and depending on how far we get, we will proceed to have other calls.


2. A one week item development workshop, which consists of 10-11 top-notch AJAX experts (SMEs). I fly and pay for all the expenses for all SMEs coming to Colorado for the workshop.

The week will consist of writing questions for the certification exam using the testing objectives. Each SME will probably write 8-9 questions per day, so Monday thru Wednesday and then on Thursday and Friday we do a technical review and review all 300 questions created by the SMEs.

Past participants have found this workshop to be an extremely rewarding experience where they get to interact with and learn from other top-notch peers and build relationships that lasts beyond the workshop.

The workshop will be the week of December 8-12 here at the Broomfield Colorado campus.

It would be great to have an expert like you on our team for that week.

I hope you are interested in participating and if you know of any other experts that can participate, can you please send me their names or send them my email?

Please let me know.

Thank you.

Evelyn Cartagena-Meyer

Java Certification Program Manager

---

PC-BSD on a USB memory stick

My goal was simple: create a bootable USB memory stick and copy the install image of PC-BSD onto the USB memory stick.

This was achieved w/o much trouble using my FreeBSD server at work. I performed the following operations logged in as root.

The USB image was downloaded from the PC-BSD website


Assumption: the USB memory stick is plugged into the server at /dev/da0

# fdisk -BI /dev/da0
# bsdlabel -w -B /dev/da0s1
# newfs /dev/da0
# dd if=/usr/home/kengell/PCBSD7-x86-USB.img of=/dev/da0 bs=1m

Featured gadget: Persian Calendar

Name: Persian Calendar
Author: Mehdy Bohlool
Description: Persian Plus Georgian Calendar

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Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer

eee 1000 Swapping Up Arrow and Right Shift

One of the most annoying things about the eee 1000 is the location of the right shift key. Its small and very far to the right. If you are a touch typist, this makes typing very difficult. Well I have read some blog posts that discussed remapping the keys, but they all seems to mention Windows and not Linux. Since I have the Linux version of the eee 1000 it was time to do a little research.

Googling around I found this really good article on Linux utilities for remapping keys in XWindows. The article only covers remapping the Caps Lock and Control keys. But, playing around with xmodmap and xev I was able to figure things out. So here is the result, two shell scripts. The first scripts swaps the up arrow key with the right shift key. The second resets the keys to their original values.

keyswap

#!/bin/bash
xmodmap -e "keycode 98 = Shift_R"
xmodmap -e "keycode 62 = Up"
xmodmap -e "add shift = Shift_R"

keyreset

#!/bin/bash
xmodmap -e "keycode 98 = Up"
xmodmap -e "keycode 62 = Shift_R"

The scripts seem to do the job. But if you have any suggested improvements please pass them along in the comments.

Dojo Examples Page

I started a Dojo Examples page here. Currently there is just an example of the forms ValidationTextBox control. Which I gotta say, is a pretty neat tool. I couldn't find anything nearly as easy to use or with as much functionality in the JQuery world.

There will definitely be more to come.

Featured gadget: Communicator

Name: Communicator
Author: Andreas Horlacher
Description: Communicator translates from and to a few languages using Google translation services. It comes with the popular 'communicator' design, as seen in Star Trek.

More information | Download gadget

Each week this blog features a recently added Google Desktop gadget that looks promising. If you'd like to see all new Desktop gadgets as they're published, subscribe to the RSS feed.

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer

jEdit and Java Apps no Longer Start on OS X 10.5 Leopard

I tried to run jEdit this morning and it would no longer launch on my MacPro. Recently, Apple updated Java on OS X 10.5 and that appears to have broken Java apps. So after Googling around a bit, I found a solution on the support forums.

The jEdit executable is defined as a symbolic link in /Applications/JEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/jedit, which points to /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/A/Resources/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub. This seems to be the problem. To fix it, copy /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/A/Resources/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub to /Applications/JEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/jedit. The jEdit app should now start correctly.

The problem does not affect all systems. The jEdit on my MacBook works just fine after the update. No changes needed.

A little house cleaning

I'm doing a little house cleaning on the web site this weekend. Some directories are gonna be moved around to make the production site and development sites a little more consistent. I'm planning to use xampp for a little consistency between my macs and my linux laptop. Been thinking about using GeShi to render my code samples. However, the JEdit syntax highlighting plugin seems to do a nicer job. Plus, I'm not sure the nature of the data really requires dynamic processing. Once a code sample is written, its pretty much written, it seldom needs to be touched again. So static files may be a better way to go.

Anyway, if any of my pages are broken over the weekend, please bear with me. :)

CSS Shorthand for Margins and Padding

I have been trying to incorporate some of the 10 CSS tips I posted about a few days back. When it comes to using shorthand for margins and padding I always get confused. I know you can put in 4 values in one margin statement, but I can never remember what order the 4 values are in.

So to help myself out, I wrote up a page on CSS Shorthand Properties.

So to summarize, when you are defining a margin with 4 values, CSS starts at the top of the box and then moves clockwise around the box. So for example:

h2{ margin: 5px 20px 5px 30px; }

This rule defines a top margin of 5px, a right margin of 20px a bottom margin of 5px, and a left margin of 30px. Start at the top, and move clockwise: top, right, bottom, left. Easy! :)

For more information and examples just click on the link.

Saying It != Learning It

I have been running into this problem a lot both at work and with various web sites. You can't teach your audience anything simply by making a statement.

For example, I am going to teach you the theory of relativity and everything you need to know about relativistic physics:
E = MC2

Got it! Good. Let's move onto the next subject.... :)

Are you an expert on relativity? Of course not. Without doing the real math behind the equation, you don't really understand anything. There cannot be learning without practice.

Or let's take riding a bike. I could have you read a book on bike riding. Show you videos demonstrating bike riding. Watch a bike race. Any number of things. But you will never learn to ride a bike until you climb on and pedal.

So when you are writing content, at a minimum, include examples your audience can look at, download and explore. Saying it != learning it.