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Weblog • Archive • Cutedge

by: Bernard Teo

Sat 27 Oct 2007

Morning has broken

Category : Commentary/MorningHasBroken.txt

The sun's up and I've readied all three applications - MailServe, DNS Enabler and WebMon - for testing. Found a bug with DNS Enabler for the Bonjour setup panel and managed to fix that.

I've created new web pages for DNS Enabler for Leopard, and WebMon for Leopard. Only one more to go - the documentation for MailServe for Leopard.

I don't think I'm ever going to see the AppleStore delivery for Leopard this weekend. There were no apologies, and no phone calls for status updates. What's the chance the delivery guys will work over the weekend?

I think I'll drop by a physical store when they open in a few hours and get a copy. If the testing goes well, I might be able to do a release by the end of today, the 27th, my time, in about 16 hours.

Posted at 12:30AM UTC | permalink

Fri 26 Oct 2007

WebMon for Leopard

Category : Commentary/WebMonForLeopard.txt

Okay, I'm done with a version of WebMon for Leopard, as well.

It's been a long - sometimes discouraging - journey, getting all these applications to work again on Leopard because I often feel like I've been going over the same ground again and again. It has been so much work just to recover the same set of features.

But the ground has changed, underneath. There's much that we can now build on. I think I read somewhere Steve Jobs saying, this - Leopard - is the foundation for a decade of improvements and we will go on from here, polishing and improving the applications.

There's a lot I am looking forward to building, from here on.

With our son having begun his own journey through the (rather frightening) Singapore school system (my God, do we all think our kids are geniuses? I feel for the kids), a side-effect is that my wife and I getting more time to delve into our respective work. I love this work, so it's been a welcome change, and it's the kind of work where, beyond a certain stage, beyond a certain level of mastery, you feel like you can just do magic with your fingers, like a Druid. So, there's going to be more to come.

I'm now moving on to setting up the web pages for these new Leopard-ready versions. With any luck, I can get them done before the sun comes up again. Then I'll go to a shop and buy a retail copy of Leopard to test out. It's been a miscalculation, buying from the online store. So much for guaranteed delivery on the 26th.

I'm sustained by coffee and this amazing gamelan music by a (Japanese?) group called Jalan Jalan (Malay for going for a walk)- from the Bali and Bali Dua albums.

Posted at 6:22PM UTC | permalink

Leopard ships but where's my copy?

Category : Commentary/LeopardShipsBut.txt

Question : Just looked at your blog and saw that there is a new version of your software but I am not sure where I can download it and buy it. Could you please provide a link or let us know if they will be available later today or tomorrow?

Answer : I haven't received my final version of Leopard yet to test it against. It was supposed to be, latest, an hour ago. I ordered from the online store for guaranteed delivery on the 26th October but it's now 9.30 pm and there's no sign of the delivery man. It's been quite a let-down - that's Apple at its worst. No call. Nothing, even though I called AppleStore to confirm that it'll be delivered on time this morning. I will put up the MailServe and DNS Enabler web pages in a day or two after I've managed to make a final test against the shipping version of Leopard. Believe me, you'll be glad I did.

Posted at 1:48PM UTC | permalink

Leopard Ships

Category : Commentary/LeopardShips.txt

Any minute now, my copy of Leopard should be arriving at the door. I've just gotten MailServe and DNS Enabler for Leopard done, but I hadn't had much time to test the recent changes that I'd made to the applications to keep pace with the last developer release. And I can't quite believe there aren't going to be any further surprises with the final Leopard release.

I've still some way to go yet with WebMon and I have still to get all the web page documentation updated.

Plus, I've just sold my house and bought a shophouse that I'm planning to move to for the coming year. So it's going to make for a hectic final quarter of the year.

This is how MailServe for Leopard looks like :

and DNS Enabler for Leopard :

Got to get back to work now.

Posted at 12:05PM UTC | permalink

Fri 19 Oct 2007

Getting ready for Leopard

Category : Technology/GettingReadyLeopard.txt

I've been getting lots of mail about the status of the projects, with Leopard coming in only seven days. And I don't have time to answer them all because I'm deep into this thing. I've got MailServe almost ready. Then there's DNS Enabler. And I may hold off on WebMon for a few more days after Leopard ships, to see if I've hit anything that I hadn't foreseen, with the first two apps.

I can see one already - firewall. I don't have a firewall application, yet, that I can offer people, and Leopard's firewall panel looks strangely less usable than Tiger's - it takes us more than a few steps back - how is an ordinary user going to open ports 25, 110, 143, etc in Leopard? I'll leave this aside for the moment because I don't have time to solve it.

So this is what I have up to now :

MailServe/Postfix Enabler.

I'll probably be merging these two into just MailServe. Apple chose this latest developer release of 3 weeks ago to make a change as to how Postfix starts up. The launchd plist we used in Tiger doesn't work anymore. I managed to find a solution but, by having to do that, and having gone so far, I found that it opened up a way to put together a few things that I've been experimenting with over the last two years - like :

1) how to allow MailServe/Postfix Enabler to be configured from a non-admin account (a lot of requests for that), and

2) how to avoid using sudo so that it doesn't open up a security hole during the time MailServe/Postfix Enabler is running

3) how to configure Postfix and make changes to your system without touching a single one of the original system files, so that the system is left in its original pristine state if you choose to de-install any of my applications - also hope this will make it easier to get the mail server running for people who've messed up their original system files because I don't even need to look into these system files now

4) and how to give visual indications that the relevant mail-related ports are opened and working without getting people to do a telnet something or other on the terminal,

5) plus a few more that I forgot

Oh, yes, how to make sure that the passwords you store in MailServe's Smart Host list is not so easily seen in the clear in the app's preferences plist. I think I've also almost solved that.

And how to get Fetchmail to start up more reliably than the hack I was using on Tiger. I've solved this as a benefit of solving the original problem, posed by having to find a way to start up Postfix on Leopard.

And so I've put this lot in, only in the last three weeks, because somehow it has all clicked, and I'm furiously trying to get everything tested and ready for the new MailServe to be released also on the 26th.

I was watching this Google video - achieving your childhood dreams - and about how brickwalls are meant to stop "those other people". So, I couldn't bash through the problem that I had - it was too hard. But I could climb over the wall - to scale it - and in doing so, I saw connections that I hadn't seen before. And then it all clicked. Now, I love being able to switch to a non-admin account and being able to continue to configure Postfix.

DNS Enabler.

I made a version that will work with the changes that Apple has wrought on Leopard. What I had planned to do was to release this version that I am already using on the 26th, so that people who need to get their DNS running on Leopard, using DNS Enabler, can have something to work on immediately, and then I'll put in (and release) the rest of the things I'm working on in the following weeks.

I expect a lot of support load the first few weeks Leopard ships and so I'm wary of changing too many things at once since I've had so few weeks for testing them.

MailServe already has a boatload of changes to take advantage of the things I can now do on Leopard but these things might break - if they don't, then all the new techniques that I'm applying on MailServe will also go into DNS Enabler.

But, then, I've still some days yet. so I might still be able to get these changes done and hope the gods smile on me without any mishaps. (If they break, please be patient. This is really living on the edge.)

WebMon.

I've got a WebMon that will now work with the new Apache2 on Leopard. But I think I've got one more major thing to fix. I may not be ready on the 26th with WebMon.

Pricing

I plan to merge MailServe and Postfix Enabler into just MailServe and price it, like DNS Enabler and WebMon, at 15 USD. I won't be doing upgrades (because it costs significantly more to put in the backend administrative systems to handle all those upgrade permutations). I thought, if I charge upgrade-like pricing each time, it'll allow me to simplify my business and spend more time working on building these applications. I've got more planned - LDAP Enabler, Dovecot (if I get permission to bundle it), anti-spam stuff, iPhone! (I've got all the pieces to do a CRM-like system - contacts, accounting, email, address-book integration, and so on...)

PS : Luca is already Leopard-ready though I'm looking forward to improving its interface. Apple has bundled a nice new Xcode with Leopard. Whatever gives the developers more power will show up eventually in the quality of the applications. I think that's the one thing that won't be readily apparent to an end user - all those invisible improvements that Apple has made to the OS foundations with Leopard - it has made what was already a very productive platform even more conducive to the development of great apps. If we can get past the teething problems with Leopard in the first few weeks, I think we can all start to smile. This is a helluva of a good platform to build your business on, by far.

Posted at 1:38AM UTC | permalink

Sun 23 Sep 2007

Eye candy, rolling stone, and the man on the mountain

Category : Technology/sisyphus.txt

I'm now working on the latest Leopard release (9A559, 21st September). It's looking good, the first version I can stand to look at - or work on - for any stretch of time. The previous releases were all plain butt ugly.

Leopard's looking like a Mac again. Something people could like using even more than Tiger. Give me eye candy anytime - when you think we were that close to disaster :-)

But I can't even start up Postfix now.

I feel like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the mountain. When you finally get it to the top, you know you're going have to do it all over again, come tomorrow.

Albert Camus wrote a book - "The Myth of Sisyphus" - "a lucid invitation to live, and to create, in the very midst of the desert".

Posted at 6:51AM UTC | permalink

Wed 19 Sep 2007

Leopard Updates for September

Category : Technology/LeopardUpdatesSept.txt

I've finally managed to get SASL authentication working again with Postfix on Leopard. After tearing my hair out over the last few months, I used up one of my Apple Developer "support incident" credits to get help. And it turns out that it was a bug after all. I received a patch from Apple and everything's well again.

I've got to steer clear of breaching my NDA, but here's a review of how well (or badly) I'm shaping up to support Leopard :

Fortunately, Luca and Maven (including my database access frameworks for MySQL, SQLite and PostgreSQL) already work on Leopard and I can put those aside now for a while.

But there's a slew of changes - all good - in the underpinnings of the OS (e.g., updated versions of all the good stuff, like Postfix, OpenLDAP, BIND, Apache, etc.) such that MailServe/Postfix Enabler, WebMon and DNS Enabler got all whacked out of shape.

But that's eventually for the good of the end-user and I think I've finally managed to recover all the things that used to work, i.e., every single feature working on Tiger will continue to work on Leopard, though things have changed underneath.

So, that was the hard stuff.

Yet, that's not to say, knowing Apple, that things will continue to work right on to the final release. I'll only believe it when I test everything again with the shrink-wrapped version of the OS.

Plus, my experience with releasing my applications when Tiger first shipped was that lots of unforeseen issues are going to crop up. Things that can break will break. With luck, the support that people are going to need may be, maybe, just short of horrendous.

So, while I have a glimmer in my eye about the things I'm looking forward to building with this nice new OS (not so nice, the new Finder, Desktop and the Dock, which are pretty gaudy and you can see the screen shots yourself on Apple's site), I'll be a bit defensive this time with the versions that'll be released when Leopard ships, and introduce the new stuff gradually when people are nicely bedded in.

Posted at 4:51AM UTC | permalink

Tue 21 Aug 2007

About the down-time this morning

Category : Commentary/downtime.txt

This web site was down for about 6 hours from 3.00 in the morning, which should have been its busiest time since it's daylight then in the Western hemisphere, and that's where most of our users come from, by far.

Or at least until China and India wake up to the potential for using the Mac, or until they can afford to buy them, whichever comes later).

Fortunately, I have two Internet lines coming into the house and I switched the server onto the other line when I discovered something was amiss when I woke up this morning.

When everything was settled and the server humming again on the backup line, I prepared to call the ISP of the line that was down. And this is where I've found the most use for Boot Camp.

It's often self-defeating, when you're calling on the techies of a Windows-centric ISP, to let on that you're using a Mac. So I just start up Windows XP on my iMac, and follow through with all the steps - one, look for the DOS prompt and enter this (cryptic) line so that you can find out where the router is, and then open Internet Explorer to enter the location of that router into it, etc. and etc. And I do this, content in the knowledge I can get the Mac to work once the PC manage to get on to the network.

Of course, on the Mac, you can get that router location just by looking into Network Preferences. But you'll never get past hello, once you say you're using a Mac. It's always the Mac's fault.

Anyway, my line's up again and I've switched the server back onto it since that's the much faster line. I use the other just for backup, for times like this, and for testing the live connection and other development jobs.

P.S. : Some updates. I was having a heck of a time getting SASL-based authentication to work again on Leopard. The good news is that I've found a solution to half of the problem (Postfix authenticating with another server as a mail client). The bad news is that I'm still stuck on the other half (Postfix acting as the SMTP server and authenticating mail clients for relay). But I am making some progress. So, is that breaking the NDA? I'll remove this note if it is.

Posted at 9:24AM UTC | permalink

Tue 10 Jul 2007

Downloads!

Category : Commentary/downloads.txt

Within 5 minutes of my putting up the Address Book Plug-In for download, there were two downloads.

And I see a horde coming in from Version Tracker right now for DNS Enabler. I've just updated it three hours ago. How does Version Tracker know? Is it a manual system or do they have a way to automatically track that I've updated my DNS Enabler page with a new version? I don't ever update Version Tracker myself anymore. I'd rather stick my head in the sand than read the reviews there.

But the point is - how can one ever feel alone? I can go hide myself in a cave somewhere, and as long as I have Internet access, I can feel that I'm jacked in to this collective mind. The Matrix exists.

Posted at 7:09AM UTC | permalink

Singapore Maps Address Book Plug-In

Category : Singapore/SingMapsAddBookPlugIn2007.txt

I've also found the time today to update the Singapore Maps Address Book Plug-In. You can download it from here.

I wrote some documentation on this sometime back. It's outdated but I don't have the time to update that yet.

Posted at 6:40AM UTC | permalink

DNS Enabler updated to 2.1.1

Category : Technology/DNSEnabler2dot1dot1.txt

I've updated DNS Enabler, thanks to a bug report from Paul Ruffolo.

The bug occurred when there is a domain, e.g. called ABC.com, and there is another, e.g. called xyzABC.com, which contains the same letters as the first domain. DNS Enabler got somewhat confused when it had to process both these domains in the same list. This has been sorted out and DNS Enabler is smarter now about these things.

Download DNS Enabler 2.1.1 from here.

Ever since I was a kid, I've somehow intuited that the thing I most love to do was to build things. And that the best job was to be a craftsman, a person who takes time to build things right. But I grew up with the emergence of mass industrialisation, in the days of the military-industrial complex, and my father was an Organisation Man, a salaryman.

So, to think that, as technology became ever so much more powerful, it's brought us back to the point where you can be a craftsman again, working from your own home, which doubles up as your factory/studio/shop/warehouse/service centre. It's like if you walk east right across the world, you'll eventually come back to the same point. You've got to believe in the ying and yang of things, in the ebb and flow of life. And that things change and you never walk in the same river twice.

P.S. : Okay, now that I've got all philosophical, there's this book I want to recommend - "The God Delusion" - it does give a jolt to one's perspective. It's quite convincingly argued, and if you're persuaded that there's absolutely no chance there could be a god, or the One God, then what do you make of the trees, and the overhanging vines, and the smell of the earth, and the water lapping the boardwalk, when you go for that long run in the forest. If there is no God, why is there beauty and evident vitality? Or is it all random?

Posted at 3:42AM UTC | permalink

Thu 28 Jun 2007

Building MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite-based Applications - Some Sample Code

Category : Technology/MavenDBSourceCode.txt

I've done up an example project to show how a Cocoa Objective-C application can access all three database systems in a simple, uniform, consistent way.

It's meant to show how we can already do quite useful things with the databases we create using Maven, with just a few lines of code.

I have a lot more code, of course, that I've used to create Maven and Luca. So I'm seeing how, as I go along, I can expose more of the database access API's that I've been using, and possibly open-source those framework code as well.

I've taken a different approach from using Apple's Core Data. I believe database access is too important to be constrained using a black-box approach. There's a need for control - where you need to know exactly what is going on in the interface between the user and the database. And yet there's a need for simplicity - where you want to be able to grab at the data and do useful things with it, fast. I believe there's way to marry both objectives. Hence I've created these database access frameworks. You get access to PostgreSQL and MySQL databases. And you can get at them across the network. Today. No need to wait for Core Data to implement these.

The Cocoa project (containing the sample code and the database access frameworks) is available on the Maven page.

Incidentally, I'm using Maven to try out new ideas on how to lay out and present my documentation pages. It's getting harder to do all these on a single web page, as I have been doing them for Postfix Enabler, DNS Enabler, etc.

Posted at 6:35AM UTC | permalink