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Weblog • Archive • Cutedge

by: Bernard Teo

Fri 09 Sep 2005

The Cliff Walk

Category : Commentary/CliffWalk.txt

I ought to be working. But I came across this book, The Cliff Walk (about a literature professor who's lost his job, who couldn't find another one even after a year, and how he's finding his way back as an unskilled labourer). I can't stop reading it.

"In all the jobs I had held across the years, from the first, picking vegetables when I was thirteen, I had never been fired. My first reaction was that some mistake has been made. They got the wrong guy. They don't know that Colleen has just finished making curtains for the house and painting the kids' rooms and we've just drained our savings account of its last nine thousand dollars to replace the cast iron pipes with copper and to strip the basement of asbestos. They got the wrong guy. They don't know that we've got a new baby coming, and that my father has a brain tumour that is taking over his life.

"But when it came to telling Colleen I had been fired, I never could seem to find the right time, or the right room in our house. There was always her with her pregnant belly and her faith in me, and there was me with my pink slip."

I read the reviews on Amazon - "Why didn't he have a sense of urgency, why did he cast all his hopes on finding another teaching job, why didn't he let his wife work?" - I think some of the complacency in the tone of some of the reviewers would disappear if they, themselves, were out of a job for some time. Because all these are just theory. In real life, you're like a frog being slowly boiled alive, and it takes all your strength just to wake up and jump out of the way.

I remember this guy, Bruce Whitred, that I met, who feels that we ought to live our life to the full, like it's a canvas on which we create the best that we can be - if only to show thanks to our Creator for having given us our life. But what if we're out of a job? And that there is nothing more important now than having the money? Do these ideals go out the window? Or do they get strengthened because they're being put to the test?

I think I can understand why the author, Don Snyder, didn't want his wife to find a job, why it can take him so long to find his way, and much else also of what I've been reading. The family becomes the one remaining constant when all else is changing, and you need to build your life back from it.

I think this is going to be an important theme in the years ahead. Losing a job, joining the "free agent nation". How do we accept the hand that we're dealt and still find the belief to be the best that we can be?

Posted at 12:27AM UTC | permalink

Tue 06 Sep 2005

Updates ! We have updates

Category : Technology/UpdateFlurry.txt

There are updates to DNS Enabler, WebMon, and Luca. They're all out.

DNS Enabler adds support for setting up backup, slave name servers (which I haven't yet described how to use, but never mind, there's always tomorrow).

WebMon's WebDav folder now works like a .Mac iDisk.

And Luca gets a bug fix.

Me? I need to sleep now.

Posted at 5:41PM UTC | permalink

Sat 03 Sep 2005

DNS Enabler will work on OS X Server

Category : Technology/DNSEnablerForOSXServer.txt

Just a note about DNS Enabler and OS X Server. Yes it will work on Server.

This is not like Postfix Enabler, which couldn't work on Server because Server is wired to Cyrus for IMAP and POP while Postfix Enabler uses UW/IMAP and I'm afraid (no, I'm sure) I will mess things up for a Server mail user.

OS X Server is short of a good DNS set-up tool. So I'll be happy if DNS Enabler proves to be useful to all those Xserve administrators out there.

I'll have a new release of DNS Enabler with support for setting up slave backup name servers by tomorrow. It's almost done.

Posted at 4:43AM UTC | permalink

Wed 31 Aug 2005

"Now, sir, this register makes the entries."

Category : Technology/LucaObjC.txt

"This, Mr. Merchant, is a National Cash Register of the most approved pattern.

"To appreciate what a help it would be to you, we must see what things you do in your store of which you keep a record. I think the ordinary daily transactions with your customers may be arranged in five classes, thus:

1. You sell goods for cash.
2. You sell goods for credit.
3. You receive cash on account.
4. You pay out cash.
5. You change a coin or bill.

"Am I right?

"Now, sir, this register makes the entries. The indication of the transaction shows through this glass. The amount of the last recorded transaction is always visible, and the records are made by pressing the keys."

- "The Birth of a Salesman" - Walter A. Friedman

A National Cash Register nowadays is hard to find. You can use Luca instead to make all the entries. Luca 2.0 is out. It's totally rewritten in Objective-C and uses an embedded SQLite database. No more messing around with MySQL and Java. Download and use the trial version today.

Posted at 7:33AM UTC | permalink

Sun 28 Aug 2005

DNS Enabler and Slave Name Servers

Category : Technology/slaveNameServer.txt

I'm almost done with this. This is DNS Enabler setting up a slave (secondary) name server :

Everything works exactly the same as before except that the radio button allows you to indicate that this is going to be a back-up (slave) name server that reads its zone data from a primary (master) name server.

Hit the Run DNS button and this slave will keep itself synchronised with the master, updating its zone data files whenever the master changes.

Neat. If your primary name server goes down, there's still this backup.

Except that the slave saves the zone data in the "shortened" $ORIGIN format, below, and I've been using the "long" (probably archaic) format up to now.

So I've had to re-write a large chunk of code to parse the data in this $ORIGIN alternate format. I decided I might as well as standardise on this one format when I'm writing out the zone files for the primary name server. That's why it's taking a little bit longer than I thought. But it's better for the long run.

I can't wait to get this over with to get back to Postfix Enabler Part 2 (or whatever it's going to be called).

Next week, we'll also have the SQLite/Objective-C version of Luca ready. (Luca rhymes with lucre. Apt for an accounting system? Hopefully not in a pejorative way.)

It's only 1/8th the size of the current Java/MySQL-based version, yet with all of the same features. In fact, it may work even better. Is Objective-C more productive than Java? I'm starting to believe this is so.

DNS, Web, Mail, and an accounting/financial management system that integrates with all these. They form the foundation of every modern-day business system. We're going to make the Mac the ultimate business machine by the time we're through. Or die trying? In any case, it won't be for want of trying.

Posted at 2:14PM UTC | permalink

Sat 27 Aug 2005

Immortality

Category : Commentary/immortality.txt

I was returning the car so my wife could use it. I was listening to Jim Croce ("I've Got A Name", "Lover's Cross", "Operator" from the Photographs and Memories album,

Photographs and memories
Christmas cards you sent to me
All that I have are these
To remember you

and also John Denver ("Sunshine on My Shoulders"), Minnie Riperton ("Lovin' you"), and Andy Gibb ("Our Love - Don't throw it all away")

This happy room
Would be a lonely place when you are gone
And I won't even have your shoulders for the crying on

- from my iTunes collection.

One short trip. So much great music. All these people are gone. But their music lives on. Fresh, like when I was sixteen. (Am I growing old or what?)

Like the pine trees lining the winding road
I've got a name, I've got a name
Like the singing bird and the croaking toad
I've got a name, I've got a name
And I carry it with me like my daddy did
But I'm living the dream that he kept hid

Posted at 6:24AM UTC | permalink

My New iBook G4

Category : Commentary/iBookG4.txt

This is my new iBook. You can be sure that iTunes was the first thing that went over - even before the project files, DNS Enabler and all that. Shows what is more important ;-)

But seriously, with WebMon, DNS Enabler, and Postfix Enabler, I've got my complete development environment set up in five minutes. Mail server, PHP, SSL, remote access to my main server - they all work, fresh out of the box. I used to email Hai Hwee (what're those Unix commands needed to set up auto-login in SSH?) because I never bothered to remember them. Not any more.

Posted at 6:23AM UTC | permalink

Wed 24 Aug 2005

Work in Progress

Category : Commentary/wip.txt

For DNS Enabler, I'm going to include the ability to set up a secondary (slave) DNS Server.

I was going to add to DNS Enabler the ability to notify slave name servers (when something changed on the master server) when I realised that BIND 9 (that OS X uses) does that automatically. So the time would be better spent doing something that sets up those secondary name servers themselves.

For Postfix Enabler, I'm going to do these : mail queue management, RBL sites (though I hate it when they block mail from dynamically assigned IP addresses so I won't suggest those that do), SMTP authentication over SSL between mail servers, enforce SSL for SMTP authentication, alternate port numbers to contact the mail server, default mynetworks_style to "host" (i.e., allow mail to be relayed only if it originated from the server or if it has been smtp-authenticated) and let the user choose to relax that restriction to include mail from any machine on the same subnet, and also support for Fetchmail.

Posted at 2:57AM UTC | permalink

PFE works in Bangalore

Category : Commentary/bangalore.txt

I got this mail from Tom Gilb. "Thank you it works right away here in bangalore at Sheraton hotel and they could not figure out how to get my mail out after 3 days!"

It feels good to get stuff like that.

Bangalore. I'd like to go where all those Postfix Enabler bits are going. One day soon, when the kid's able to take all the walking, we'll get on the road again.

Posted at 2:24AM UTC | permalink

Thu 18 Aug 2005

The Chocolate Factory

Category : Commentary/wonka.txt

Well, what do you get when you cross Steve Jobs with Michael Jackson? Willy Wonka, as played by Johnny Depp.

Posted at 4:24PM UTC | permalink

Tue 16 Aug 2005

Drag and Drop

Category : Technology/draganddrop.txt

I've released new versions of DNS Enabler (1.1.6) and WebMon (1.1.5) with drag and drop support. This will allow a DNS Enabler user, for example, to re-arrange the DNS entries in any order that he wants.

I've also figured out how to add a toolbar to our applications. And to start working with icons.

In a couple of weeks, I think we would be ready to release Luca with an embedded SQLite database so that it'll be really easy to set up and run an accounting system. Hopefully we can evolve it into something more like a financial management tool.

And I'm working on a new version of Postfix Enabler (which won't be called Postfix Enabler). So things are moving.

The whole point of going through this litany of works-in-progress is to reflect on how very productive the Cocoa development environment is. If you've gone through the dark ages when one vendor after another abandoned the Mac platform, you may have a sense of how liberating all this feels to me.

I used to work with an EIS/data mining tool called GQL and also something called Data Prism. They were a revelation because they were so much cheaper than the incumbent host-based systems. Data Prism and GQL cost hundreds or, at most, thousands of dollars but not the hundreds of thousands that the IT industry, then, assumed that decision-support tools have to be.

And they ran on the Mac. At first, only on the Mac. And they were a revelation because they showed how a GUI could help you visualise the relationships among the data. Remember then that the host-based systems (by that I mean those running on DEC and HP minicomputers, etc) were all character-based. So, for a while, people saw the Mac in a different light.

Then we went into a tailspin (Sculley, Spindler, Amelio) when one product after another dropped support for the Mac and became Windows-only. When GQL became Hummingbird, that was the end of the Mac version.

Nowadays, I feel we can build all these ourselves. The drag and drop needed to implement a data mining GUI - one that will allow you to pull the pieces together to construct a database query - that's there. The access to a wide range of databases - Oracle, MySQL, and SQLite. That's also there. The ability to work with tables, sorting them, rearranging column order, hiding and showing columns on the fly. These are also there in the Cocoa toolset. The ability to simply drag and drop the result into a spreadsheet, a presentation tool, or a publication tool - they're already there.

It's a waste to use all these capabilities just to build graphic tools or Final Cut Pro, etc. There's a wealth of business tools waiting to be built. So we can drag and drop them into our businesses.

Posted at 3:04PM UTC | permalink

Thu 11 Aug 2005

WebMon 1.1.4

Category : Technology/WebMon114.txt

This is WebMon 1.1.4.

I've re-arranged the workflow so that WebMon works like Postfix Enabler and DNS Enabler, at least initially, where you work locally on the server.

It takes only a couple of minutes to turn on PHP, WebDAV, and SSL on the server. And to check that WebMon's web server monitor feature works.

But unlike the current versions of Postfix Enabler and DNS Enabler, WebMon works across a network.

This is potentially very powerful but it may not work for everyone because many things could go wrong while setting up the remote connection.

Re-arranging the work flow this way allows me to unveil the remote admin capability in a couple of steps, and hopefully I can take the user across safely, while offering him or her useful things that work at each step of the way.

It may need a little bit more work and the interface needs to be a little bit less harsh but I think I'm getting there.

A lot of Cocoa's appeal as a development platform is the way you can use Interface Builder like a storyboard without worrying about program code, i.e., you can keep on arranging and re-arranging the pieces of the interface and concentrate on telling the story without the technology getting in the way. In other words, you can be the artist when you want to be and the geek at other times, depending on the task at hand. Art and Technology - a new unity. Now where have we heard that before? Right, the Bauhaus.

Posted at 12:45PM UTC | permalink