I Cannot Wait to be a Hacker...

Ok, so when I was growing up I never knew what a hacker was until the initial days of AOL dial up internet, but even then the term hacker had a negative vibe. I also never expected to become a programmer. I had aspirations to become an engineer, I think more so because I thought that people would respect me. While in school I took C++ for engineers, and hated it, thinking I could never be a programmer.

So today, I am a programmer. I now also know multiple answers for what a hacker is. Ironically enough, I fit one of them and hope to become another. From pursuing the life of a serial entrepreneur, I have come to terms with being a hacker, someone who is a programmer / entrepreneur hacking away at code and business concepts to create something great. Which is what I am trying to accomplish with my startup, property management software. I am trying to create something great.

I recently finished reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Feriss, let me say that this book is an absolute must read. As I read the last page, I realized that I wanted to make a change in my life. I realized that I wanted to become a new type of hacker, someone who travels to new lands and not just embraces the native culture, but injects themselves into it. Learning the language, eating the food, and living the life of that native land. The best part is doing it all inexpensively.

In the book, Ferriss, encourages you to free your mind of the norm and embrace the principles and lifestyle of the New Rich(NR). The NR is not about having more money, but about having enough money to support a specific lifestyle. This lifestyle is ultimately defined as a liberation from the norm, being free to travel and try new things while the rest of the world is on the clock 9-5.

Ferriss enlightens you to the possibilities, he does this by teaching you some very key principles. All this from a man who is in his low thirties and travels the world for months at a time annually. I extremely recommend this book for anyone who wants a new perspective on lifestyles and wants to break free from the norm.

The results are in, Firefox 3 is in the lead

The Inquirer posted the results of a memory benchmark test where they tested 5 windows web browsers under average browsing conditions for 3 hours. The results were the following:

1. Firefox 3 - 111.8MB
2. Opera 9.5 - 190.6MB
3. Flock 1.2 - 191.9MB
4. Internet Explorer 8 - 194.4MB
5. Safari 3.1 - 636.9MB

The MB values represent the memory-set usage after roughly 3 hours of web browsing. Firefox 3 climbed on pace with the rest of the browsers until it plateaued at around 111. Safari just kept going, Internet Explorer also seemed to be on a path up. Opera and Flock plateaued as well. The Inquirer concluded that they felt Safari and Internet Explorer would have continued to use up all of the available memory if they were left open.

Last note, the machine used had 3GB of ram and was running Windows Vista SP1.

HowTo: Create a Text File with SQL Server 2005

I recently had the need to create a text file from within SQL Server. I have never heard of anyone doing this before, but since I started developing with SQL Server, it keeps amazing me on its capabilities. So when I decided this is what needs to happened, I put in the research to figure out how to do it.

It is actually much easier than anticipated. The first thing we had to do was to enable the xp_cmdshell stored procedure by executing the following (courtesy of Microsoft):

-- To allow advanced options to be changed.
EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1
GO
-- To update the currently configured value for advanced options.
RECONFIGURE
GO
-- To enable the feature.
EXEC sp_configure 'xp_cmdshell', 1
GO
-- To update the currently configured value for this feature.
RECONFIGURE
GO

Once we had enabled xp_cmdshell, we could utilize the built in stored procedure that allows you to perform external processing. Basically you are performing a Windows command to create / append a text file. The syntax to do this is:

xp_cmdshell { 'command_string' } [ , no_output ]

I created a stored procedure to use when writing to a text file:

create procedure dbo.writeToFile
@msg VARCHAR(7800) = null, @file VARCHAR(200) = null, @overwrite BIT = 0
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @execStr VARCHAR(8000)

SET @execStr = RTRIM('echo ' + COALESCE(LTRIM(@msg),'-') + CASE WHEN (@overwrite = 1) THEN ' > ' ELSE ' >> ' END + RTRIM(@file))

EXEC master..xp_cmdshell @execStr
END
go

HowTo: Stop ColdFusion Cookies From Vanishing

I encountered this problem recently in my exploration of ColdFusion where I set cookies within the session start function of the application.cfc to track information about how a user found our site, what browser they are using and their general locale.  Using debugger, I could tell that the cookies set properly when I first entered the site.  Once I navigated away from the first page the cfcookies were dropped or missing.

It was driving me nuts.  I did about 20 minutes worth of research before I found a solution.  Basically if I had not set client cookies to no, ColdFusion would try to automatically handle cookies being set on the users machine and apparently it just causes problems.  So I set this by entering the following line of code into my application.cfc.

< cfset setclientcookies="no" >

After I set that, closed and opened the browser and the cookies worked properly.  Hopefully this helps others who have experienced the same thing as me.

Chris

Mozilla Firefox Turns 3

Today at 10am PDT, the extremely popular web browser, Mozilla Firefox, turns 3 today. This has been a long awaited event for fans of the sleek browser, which has been growing quickly in adoption as an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The new version touts new features making it more secure, easier to use and quicker. Lets hope they are successful.

The team at Mozilla is trying to make Firefox be the number one software for the most number of downloads within 24 hours of launch in the Guinness Book of World Records. The target is 5 million downloads. You can help them out by visiting http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/ and making a pledge to download the new web browser.

Chris

ColdFusion

Well I have been working for a new company now for almost a month. Part of the job requirements were for me to learn how to program web applications using Adobe's ColdFusion. So far I have to say that in just a few weeks I can now develop database driven applications with AJAX components. Not bad.

My initial thoughts were that I would hate programming in ColdFusion. But after building my first mini application and redesigning their commercial website using ColdFusion components, I am quite impressed.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with ColdFusion, it was one of the first application servers to allow developers to provide dynamic content using back end databases. It is very similar to Microsoft's ASP.net, Java Server Pages and PHP. It has a simple syntax that is similar to HTML and provides for ease of use programming. The latest version, version 8, has built in functionality for AJAX or dynamic interaction components, like popup windows, dynamic menus, and pods. Find more information about ColdFusion at wikipedia.

I am mid/senior level programmer using ASP / PHP, so learning ColdFusion has not been much of a challenge, not to mention it has been kind of fun. It is like driving a 10 year old Camry your whole life because of costs and then getting to see what it is like to drive a Cadillac. Not that I am comparing ColdFusion to a Cadillac, but it is nice to use a for profit application server that has quite a bit of built in functionality that does a bunch of work for the developer. But with every tool, there are pros and cons. The biggest con in this instance is the fact that ColdFusion is not cheap.

If you are interested in taking it for a test drive, Adobe has made available a development version of ColdFusion that is free to install and use. You have all the bells and whistles of the full blown version, except it is for development use. I recommend that if you have the resources to go with ColdFusion in a production environment, then you should definitely consider it as an option. It is powerful, easy and robust.

HowTo: Get Files From Mac OS X Leopard to Windows Vista

I started new work this passed week and the machine provided to me had no music on it what so ever, so I brought in my personal laptop. I have never attempted to copy data from Mac OS X Leopard to Vista before so it took me a little bit to find a method that worked. This is what I did:

1. On your Mac: System Preferences --> Sharing.
2. Check the box that says File Sharing.
3. Click options, I enabled FTP.
4. Make sure you have the permissions setup for your user account to read & write, as well as a password.
5. I used FileZilla, but you can use any ftp client.
6. Type into the host field the ip address of your Mac OS X computer.
7. Then for the username and password, use the same ones that you use to login to your Mac.
8. Once connected you are good to go. Download or upload as many files as necessary.

Hope this helps.

chris

Twitter Abandoning Rails? Is RoR Destined for Non-Enterprise Apps?

Ruby on Rails has gained in popularity since its creation by David Heinemeier Hansson back in 2004. It proved to be an intuitive web development framework. But in the last few years, critics have come to believe that RoR is incapable of powering enterprise level applications.

It appears that there may be some current rumors that would back up this claim. TechChrunch posted on May 1st that "Twitter is Said to be Abandoning Ruby on Rails". Twitter has been having quite a bit of performance issues as of late. It is probable that the poor performance can be narrowed down to increase in popularity and companies creating twitter accounts and spamming users to boost traffic. I hope that this is not the image that is perceived for our Property Stampede twitter account.

GigaOm recently posted that Ruby on Rails will be getting some Enterprise-Level Support. Benchmark Capital is in investing $3.5 million in New Relic Inc, which plans to use the funds to incubate RoR to a Enterprise-Level framework. It should be interesting, but I am rather skeptic. Lew Cirne hopes to boost the adoption of RoR like he did with Java, but Java had the support of Sun and IBM, which RoR is growing without any corporate support. It should be interesting none the less.

Chris