Sheriff's Personal Weblog

Ever since I left my blog’s comments system open to the public (as in, ever since I started the blog), I started receiving a lot of SPAM - Good News - I can probably boast that I attracted a lot of spam-bots with whom I don’t even talk to but somehow given an impression that I wanted to make friends with.  Wow, artificial Artificial Intelligence!

These bots are so curious to read my blog that they leave comments at least once a day and they can’t even wait till I complete my new black and shiny, self-designed blog.  This time the blog is being built not on Expression Engine.  Nor, Wordpress (I somehow feel taken away, non-developer-ish, when I think that I might have a blog on Wordpress with cool themes like otherrs do).  But its on Typolight - A Good Mix of Intelligence for Developers and Dummies and I LOVE Typolight!

So, to all my great, nice and humble blog readers and those curious bots, please keep holding on.  Until then, I am shutting off the comments system ( just kidding, its still on.  I just had to write that so I can fool the bots, in case they are smart enough to pass the captcha word test - I doubt if they will )

Adios!

The average man finds logic emotionally too soon.  That’s when the convincing factor becomes near to impossible!

I was just wondering if I could get a portable version of lighttpd but Google gave me more than I asked for. A complete stack of Lighty (lighttpd web server), MySQL, PHP on windows, given away free, again!

Just wow.  Here is where you get it: http://lighty2go.com/

Thanks to Jonathan Booth for hosting the following file with bells, whistles and SEO support.  This helped me get Subversion installed, up and running on my HostMonster account for netrcs.com

http://sharpstep.com/cgi-bin/code2html?filename=Articles/HostMonster-svn/svn-install.sh

Most of all the create svn user shell script is the best piece!

Later, the following section educated me a few things on how Putty, .ppk file, Subversion/config file, TortoisePlink and an empty passphrase —all play a significant role in setting up a smooth svn+ssh:// access.
http://www.sharpstep.com/Articles/HostMonster-svn/#client_install

I’m very excited with the value-additions SVN will give me in the development of my current project: TakeMyScreen.com

Right now, I’m looking for a way to change the svn+ssh:// based access to https:// - That would be lovely, won’t it?

Oh my, Oh my, Oh my godly Angel!
You bring me soberness out of nowhere.
Those tears dry, my lips widen,
My heart soars, and my eyes focus!

Black looks bright, reds become pure.
I no longer think and no longer rest.
I no longer eat nor drink to take cure.
Come to me - without you I feel lost.

My dreams show you, my mind speaks of you,
My face imitates your smile, my eyes motion to yours.
One love is what I was granted.
He hid it in you for me to be attracted.

Come to me, let me carry you to heavens.
Come to me, or let me.
Embrace me, you won’t regret later.
Embrace me, or I will ...

The Chief called me a Chief when actually I was just a boy!

The Problem

Last week, I was doing a self study on WSS, SharePoint Designer 2007 and their relatives, for one of our internal requirements.  With only a few customizations needed, there was one piece where WSS really got me mad.  For our internal Project Management Office dashboard, we created a great WebPart thats pulls custom field values created in the Projects List.  Creating Custom Fields are very straight forward and designing a DataViewWebPart (DVWP for short) in SharePoint Designer 2007 is much fun too.  But then, the custom fields that I created did not make their way to the View/Edit forms of the list (DispForm.aspx and EditForm.aspx respectively).

I fired open SharePoint Designer 2007 only to find that the ListFormWebPart is rendered at runtime that it doesn’t allow you to edit from within SharePoint Designer 2007.  That is disallowed at designed.  Either have it embedded in there or delete it entirely.  I was also not comfortable with using Custom List Web Part, as I expected SharePoint to detect the fields while I design it.

I wanted to test this behaviour for other lists as well.  I added a new custom field and I was able to see my new custom field work in the display and edit pages for all other normal lists.  But it didn’t make any sense on why custom fields don’t appear for “Projects List”.  Where are my custom fields gone from the display, new and edit pages?

As I was also working on a few customizations to documents related to the project, spending a few hours on webcasts, articles, research and all the possible distractions, I found that “Content Types” were a pretty interesting concept.  Only then i recollected seeing this term elsewhere.  In one of my attempts to duplicate the frozen WebPart, I made use of what is known as the “Custom List Web Part” that asked for three inputs:  1) The List, 2) List Content Type and 3) an option group for new / edit / display.

Getting back to doing the same, I figured that “Project” was listed (the only item listed) in the Content Type drop down of that dialog.  The question is where are these Content Types coming from.

The solution

OK, let’s jump right into the solution.  To get your custom fields show up on some of the list that don’t behave as you expected in regards to the custom field, the first thing you need to check and conclude is the Content Type attached to this list.  Content Types are site level columns definitions for consistent use in your lists throughout the site.  They provide a great abstraction to enforce consistency in the field design of your lists and workflows.

To check and redefine the content type attached to your list, get to your list and do the following:

List Settings->Advanced Settings : Turn on Allow management of content types.  (it’s turned off by default).

Click OK to get back to the list.  You should now see the section: Content Types.  In that section you should see at least one content type (in my case, it was “Project” as I was using a “Projects List").  Now this Content Type has a few column definitions and since this is the default content type for my list, the display, new and edit pages have dutifully obliged to restrict to only those column definitions. *Sigh*. Now go ahead and click to edit your content type and you should see options to add columns from existing column definitions.  TADA! and your next screen should have all your great custom fields (or columns) ready to be added as part of this content type.  If you do not like to tamper with the site wide content type, go ahead and create one, but remember, the new content type must manually be set as your default content type in order for display, new and edit pages to work.

Here is a good link I later found on this issue:  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101106061033.aspx

Hope this helps!

------ Other links ----

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spweb.availablecontenttypes.aspx
andrew_may’s “SharePointBeta2WhatAreContentTypes”
cliffgreen’s sharepoint-webs-web-service-createcontenttype-and-updatecontenttype

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa543576.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/lists.lists.createcontenttype.aspx

Why wouldn’t anyone come up something beyond Orbited.  Ajax and Comet have emerged to take over the Operating System platform.  Now one of the neat challenges in any lively business application, for that matter, is the networking possibilities and speed.  Due to issues such as Cross-site scripting, Ajax Architectural expertise, only a few Web 2.0 applications score over others.  Sites like LinkedIn, Meebo and a few more sites not mentioned here have a slick integration of Ajax but had there been a technology for the Web to contact as smoothly like any other Networking Chat application could, the Web 2.0 world would be full of great Social networking apps.

Ajane comes to the rescue.  Ajane will change the way you develop Web 2.0 sites that need communication to a Live TCP server, giving a different perception with just your existing, HTML, JavaScript/JQuery skills.  Suddenly, your small Web app could contact an IRC server from the browser without going through your own server.  With a good designer, (or an ExtJS developer), you could come up with a great Chat application with Ajane doing the networking work for you. Exciting and Enthralling to me!

More updates to Ajane are on the way. Look out!

XStandard Lite seems a good XHTML compliant WYSIWYG editor.  But I’m still looking for something that has rich features and the goodness of Table-less design in all accounts.  Content Management Systems like Typolight have a nice way of abstracting the flow, are a good option but then it needs quite a good visualization (unless you are a designer/programmer or such class) which requires a little bit of training.

The definition of success and failure depends from individual to individual.  According to me, Success comes from the joy of influencing my subjectiveness and/or being influenced by other’s opinions about a single objective truth.  Success is achieved from many different ways, that’s all.

Appearance, Actions, Words, Art, Science, Spirituality, and the list grows endlessly.

Starting from the ground up, you can influence non-living things - the very act of moving an object, juggling few bottles etc.  At that point in time, one may say that those objects are under influence.  As we move up, influencing people seems the trickier part.  This is again in relation to situation, on whom one is trying to influence etc.  Very subjective!

Now, it is in my opinion that we are in constant search of those whom we can influence, or we can eventually influence.  What are we trying to influence?  Truth!  A larger objective!  And, only in the most subjective form each one of us have experienced.  Einstein being one of the most successful person at that.  Darwin to an extent but most agree he failed.

The secret being in the mental act of not concluding things!  So the next time your opinions are not accepted, be patient until they are.  The answer to the question “how long should one be patient?” may/may not be answered before the results themselves are successful, however.  And sometimes, it might not be in the same form that we may expect as well.  Since it is a “may/may not be” situation on the answer and the results are subjective, I guess it is logical to keep one’s hopes quite high!

Thanks!

Here are some great links that I’ve found for personal development:

I find Steve Pavlina’s the most inspiring ones.  Simple on the outside, mind blowing when intuitively seen

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/04/30-days-to-success/
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/
http://jon.gaia.com/blog/2006/3/how_to_have_a_36_hour_day
the_four_best_ways_to_sit_at_your_computer

I stumbled upon Lori’s blog and love all the quotes as I relate them to my recent personal experiences.  One word: Lovely.

“In Love with Life”.
“I am living my heaven NOW and it is fabulous!”

http://inspire2act.gaia.com/

Life is supposed to be having fun with while we travel it!

Spreading Love!

As you might have known, my entire site runs on ExpressionEngine and my current setup is to have clean URLs both for human readability and SEO.  I have used the following approach to achieve this.

1. Do a normal install.  At the end of the install you will have URLs with index.php
2. Setup auto mode and check PATH_INFO value.  Since in my case PATH_INFO is empty, I have to use ORIG_PATH_INFO as provided by my hosting.
3. To remove index.php the first step is to configure your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?$1 [L]

4. The next step is to logon to Administration panel, get to System Preferences -> General Configuration and empty the index page setting (that is, if you see index.php, remove it)
5. Go ahead and thoroughly test your site with confidence! ( This is not optional j/k )

Tech Help: If you don’t understand any of the above steps, get someone with PHP & .htaccess knowledge and/or read this documentation link from ExpressionEngine: Remove index.php from URLs using File and Directory Check Method

Hope this helps in tweaking and hacking your site!

Imagine you lead a small custom apps team with 7 developers or less, with each representing a part (puzzle piece) as in a jigsaw puzzle.  On a project that has stern deadlines, the project tasks are broken down into iterations.  Each iteration would have tasks under them.  It is common that you assign many individual tasks divided to each team member.  This is distribution.  However, there is an even better way to get most out of your team members.  Just like how a single puzzle piece is so unique both by its shape and the part of the picture it contains, you should make each team member feel that their part/role is as important as the overall big picture.  Even if a single part of the puzzle is missing, the big picture isn’t complete.  This also means knowning each team member’s strength and weaknesses (as in a jigsaw piece).

On the technical front, it is usually the person’s overall technical knowledge and about the project.  Both may not be the same!  It is important that all team member understands the overall big picture and how it would eventually be solved.  For an individual member, it is the awareness about the surrounding pieces.  And for a leader, it is the awareness of placement of each piece in the puzzle along their adjacent pieces.  Scale this out to small teams to bigger operations as well.  Interestingly, anyone could practice/could’ve already been practising this model even if they haven’t played a jigsaw puzzle before though

The advantages are:
- Resource allocation is at its best.
- Depending upon the member’s potential, the same member can play the role of two or more (at very adjacent places in the puzzle).
- Each member knows what should be asked and to whom.

Things to remember in this model:
- Team Leaders/Managers must ensure each team member’s awareness of both the entire big picture and the person’s individual role at every single iteration/task allocation.
- Got to stay away from the distribution model as it is very easy fall for it at time-constraint situations (Distribution model saves the situation but ends up exchanging legs for hands, for example).
- A visual representation that is circulated to the team on top of written task allocation always helps!

Mind maps are a great way to store, organize your ideas.  With many commercial tools scattered around in the Web, I gave FreeMind a try and it satisfied most of the basic needs in Mind Mapping.  Mind Mapping software come with a multitude of features and one of the important feature that I love is the Calender.  They give you the ability to attach dates and reminders to any node in the Mind map tree.  I have stumbled upon on a few web based Mind mapping tools and seeking a way to attach Project Management features/tools that would help many folks out there.

Tony Buzan developed Mind Maps with the following key features in mind:
Key features are:
- Organization
- Key Words
- Association
- Clustering
- Visual Memory - Print the key words, use color, symbols, icons, 3D-effects,arrows and outlining groups of words
- Outstandingness - every Mind Map needs a unique center
- Conscious involvement

Following are some great useful resources to start with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_Mapping
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~charles57/Creative/Mindmap/

Some of the interesting tools out there:
http://www.mindman.com/
http://www.mindomo.com/
http://www.mindmeister.com/
http://www.comapping.com/

In continuation to my first trip, I made my second business trip that was perfectly planned and executed.  The requirement was to scale out a financial database that is fairly large.  After a two day research and Proof of concepting, we decided to go with SQL Server 2005 Mirroring feature.  While in the way, we overcame a few challenges such as SQL Server 2005 mirroring and permission issues. Later a day, we successfully started implementing Mirroring for one of the databases and continued with the others.  A snapshot was created for each of the mirrored databases so as to provide read-only access.  Its a great solution for anyone who owns a reporting application that only needs read-only access to OLTP databases.  A scheduler application was also developed in C# to take snapshots of the database at specific intervals, in order to keep the snapshots up to date to the principal database.

The entire project was completed in just 6 days.  We setup the scheduler and moved into production on last Saturday.  The team worked hard throughout the entire week.  Kudos!

On my way back to the airport, I had a chance to do a quick shopping on LandMark, bought myself a book and got myself a couple of lovely books gifted from the department head for Systems and Applications.  One of them is the International bestseller from Paulo Coelho titled The Alchemist.

Mumbai inspired me so much that I have also planned on a personal trip in the summer.  Good day ALL!