Hi all!

Yes, it’s been around a year since I last posted. But, don’t fear, for I shall post again. Right now in fact. I just performed a major upgrade to my Gentoo installation and also switched from Apache to the Lighty webserver. I will say that it is a bad idea to attempt two major changes in your system at the same time. I instantly had some tremendous errors that appeared to be the problem of the webserver switch, but in fact turned out to be a PHP linking issue in Gentoo.

I decided to switch to lighty mostly because I heard it was smoking fast, and I’m a systems guy that likes to try new stuff out every once in a while. I’d like to offer up some notes on the process and what I think about Lighty.

Lighty has a simple configuration approach. I suppose it isn’t too different than that of Apache’s, but I liked it a bit better. I should be careful in how I state why I liked Lighty because most likely all of the things I configured could be done in Apache as well. With that said I liked how the Lighty configuration file is parsed as though it were a programming language. In fact it appears as though the config file is/can be parsed as straight Lua code. This felt more intuitive for me as I set up the virtual hosts. Lighty uses something called conditionals to test the current requested host for matches. To set up a virtual host all one has to do is put code in like the following:

$HTTP["host"] =~ "nathanandaudrey.com" {
server.document-root = "/var/www/nathanandaudrey.com/htdocs/"
}

As you can see that is the vhost configuration for nathanandaudrey.com.

In migrating, I had to deal with two major problems. The first, was to deal with permalink issues and the second was a problem with a plugin, which I promptly deleted. It seems as though permalinks cause issues with Lighty because there isn’t an .htaccess file for access control. I’m not sure why this is a problem. It appears as though WordPress uses these in some way to control symlink following and such. To solve the issue I reviewed the solutions at http://blog.forret.com/2007/03/urlrewrite-for-wordpress-on-lighttpd/. I was unable to get the full site working, so if you find glitches please be patient as I attempt to figure things out.

Overall, I’m not using any complicated configuration or dealing with massive performance needs. Lighty does extremely well under heavy load, but will be left untested in my system.

::nathan::

Today I found some awesome blackberry apps. They are amazing! Pretty cool stuff. I also found a new blackberry blog that I will be following: http://blackberryrocks.com/

And the applications are…

Vlingo

The Vlingo website states:

Using innovative speech recognition technology, vlingo delivers a single voice interface that can work with any mobile application without training or other constraints. With vlingo access to your mobile internet applications is no longer held hostage by twelve tiny keys.

Vlingo is a sweet application that allows the usage of voice commands to perform several different tasks. Among these tasks include sending an email, send a tweet to twitter, update facebook status, make a call, google search, and several others. This is done by holding down the activation key and saying what you want to send. Visit http://www.vlingo.com/vbb-using_tasks.jsp#Raa57457 to view the available tasks that you can perform on the Blackberry. I think this is a really cool app because it interfaces with so many applications. Additionally, it uses some type of learning mechanism to better understand your voice. Meaning that at the start Vlingo  doesn’t get everything right, but it improves the more you use it.

Pandora

Yes yes yes! It is Pandora the amazing internet radio station. I love Pandora. I need to write up a comparison between Pandora and last.fm, but for now this is just a description about Pandora  on Blackberry because last.fm is not available yet.

I love that Pandora is available on the Blackberry because I don’t have a memory card, which leaves my music options limited. Pandora fills the music void by providing well selected music.

Visit to download: http://pandora.com/blackberry

Blackberry App World

For easy installation of new applications: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/appworld/?

I used this to install most of the applications on this page.

reQall

I haven’t used this one too much yet, but am currently testing it out. As the website puts it: http://www.reqall.com/about/reqall_bb

reQall for BlackBerry is a free, downloadable application that makes your BlackBerry the true hub of your digital life. reQall captures tasks and ideas using your voice, automatically organizes your information, integrates with your Outlook or Google Calendar, shares reminders with others and provides proactive memory assistance via the revolutionary reQall Memory Jogger.

It should be really cool.

After using this for a little bit the voice note taking does not work because you must have a memory card to use it, and I don’t have a card.

BuzzMe

This is a simple app that allows for simultaneous vibration and ringing on the phone. Download on phone here: http://www.bigtincan.com/misc/BuzzMe.jad

Buzz me FAQ: http://www.bigtincan.com/misc/BuzzMeFAQ.html

From what I can tell this should just work by default once installed.

Viigo

This is a sweet RSS reader and much more. After doing a lot of research this is one of the must have apps for all new Blackberry users.

Download and Info: http://viigo.com/home

myPoynt

This is a cool application that searches for businesses, theatres/movies, and other location aware places around you.

Download: http://m.mypoynt.com

Played with this one for just a little bit, but it is great! Really cool awesome application.

Well that concludes my list of newly experienced Blackberry applications. I will hope to write some reviews on these applications as I use them on a day to day basis.

–nathan

// Hello World in Java using Swing GUI

class HelloWorldSwing {
  static public void main(String args[]) {
    javax.swing.JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,"Hello world!");
  }
}

–nathan

I have had almost 10 days with my beloved Blackberry and I thought it would be a good idea to cover some of the stuff I’ve learned.

The first thing is that I love this thing. It is currently revolutionising my life. I am an avid reader of Life Hacker, and am all about the getting things done (gtd) lifestyle. I myself am preparing to embark on the crazy journey of being a grad student, which emphasises getting things done on time. The problem with life is that there is always so much to do.

In general I have a lot of trouble tracking my tasks because of a few problems (pre-bberry of course).

1. I don’t always have my pen and paper/organizer with me
2. Writing things down isn’t the only aspect to gtd, after you write it down you have to continually look at the list of tasks and prioritise the list so that you are doing the right thing at any given moment
3. I use several different methods to track gtd life: google calendar, remember the milk, filofax planner, and pieces of paper all over the place. There has been no way to centralise my gtd life tracking
4. There are so many things to get done I never have all the information in one space, so how do I know about that meeting in 15 mins if I didn’t make sure to see it somewhere else

In the past I have pretty much just written some stuff down and remembered what I could. The process was not streamlined at all. The reason why I say this is because the bberry answers all these problems. It does this in sevearl ways, but the primary function is that it allows me to centralize my gtd life. I have on my bberry my list of contacts, calendar, chat clients, internet radio, web browser, task list organizer, and several other things. The centralization of these aspects of my life are leveraged by the fact that the bberry is always with me. So when I’m sitting at school doing some research and I remember that thing that someone asked me to do I can add it into the bberry, give it a due date and priority and see it get into my list of things to do. This has streamlined my gtd process so much.

This leads into the fact that the bberry plugs into google extremely easily. I have my bberry calendar and addresses automatically synced from my google account as soon as there are updates. This allows me to input information into other devices like a desktop in google calendar and know that it will be on my bberry with not work done by me. In addition to google I have Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook applications installed that allow me to easily update each of the sites from my phone, and in the case of Facebook I get updates on my phone whenever I’m contacted by other people.

All of this connectivity has helped my life so much, but there is also a negative to this. When you get information as it is happening you have to learn how to ignore some of it. I am currently learning this process.

List of Basic Useful Applications I’m using now:

• Gtalk
• Gmail
• Facebook
• Slacker Radio
• Opera
• Flickr
• GoogleSync

This list will surely grow as I get more connected and learn how to work this process much more cleanly, but for now it has been an amazing upgrade to my gtd life.

Next steps: learn the shortcuts for the applications on the bberry so I can be faster! Check this out: http://www.bankersball.com/images/Blackberry-Shortcuts.pdf

–nathan

/*
 * Outputs "Hello, World!" and then exits
 */

public class HelloWorld {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
       System.out.println("Hello, World!");
   }
}

I have been (not so secretly) desiring to get a smart phone for a looooong time now. Well, today was the big day. Of course I wanted to get an iPhone, but I am a commited Verizon customer, mostly due to the free new phone every two years. So I decided that I would jump into the Blackberry phone club.

It turns out that the Blackberry is amazing! It has a lot more functionality than I imagined. I was extremely sceptical at first because the Blackberry is managed only by windows, or so I thought. This was a problem because I don’t use windows, I’m a Linux and Mac dude as you will find out the longer this blog exists.

As I started to dive into the Blackberry, I found several surprises. The first being that there is a Mac OS X client that allows you to connect and sync your Blackberry to the apple applications (pocketmac) like iTunes, iCal, and others. I have yet to try this out, but will do so within the next few days. I found an even better deal once I started researching how to install applications to the Blackberry device. It turns out that you can easily install new applications by going to specific websites via the Blackberry browser. In doing this I was able to download several important applications, of which the most important is the google stuff. Within minutes I had my Blackberry synced up with my google calendar, and installed gtalk and gmail.

Wow! Awesome, but I have promised my wife that this will not be a hindrance to our loving relationship. So I am being careful about the coolness of connectivity . This will not impede upon us!

Some aspects of the Blackberry that I still need to conquer are how to download different themes, potentially paying for the pro style of remember the milk account so that my Blackberry will also sync with it, and setting up a twitter account so that I can document life in greater detail. I’m sure all of you are counting on this so I will try and be expedient about the whole deal. Any help on the whole theme deal would be appreciated.

Also in the future this blog will be better enabled to handle the mobile lifestyle allowing us to document life better. Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a blessed day!

–nathan

Hello World- Groovy Style!

println "Hello Groovy World"

//A little more complex Hello World.

class HelloWorld {
   greet( name ){
      "Hello ${name}!"
   }
}
def hm = new HelloWorld()
println hm.greet("Groovy")