RSS feed for InstantSpot site Dave Shuck's InstantSpot

Firebug with Firefox 3 in Ubuntu Hardy Heron

Tue, 06 May 2008 14:42:06 GMT

Several months ago when I first tried out Firefox 3, I found that I couldn't get Firebug to work. At that time, I was still on 7.10 (Gutsy) and just rolled back to Firefox 2 and carried on about my business. Once I upgraded to 8.04 (Hardy), where its default Firefox is FF3, I tried again. I still had failures and no matter which "fix" I came across, I still was never able to open Firebug in a panel, but only in a separate window.

That all changed this morning! I was looking through packages and discovered that there is a Firebug package in the Ubuntu repos. I promptly uninstalled Firebug from the extensions settings in the Firefox and closed my browser. I went to terminal and typed:

$ sudo apt-get install firebug

... I then opened up Firefox 3 and BAM! It works exactly like it should. I have no idea what the difference is in this version of Firebug, but for whatever reason, my problems are solved.

CF8 error after upgrading to Ubuntu 8.10 Hardy Heron - libstdc++.so.5

Thu, 01 May 2008 23:07:00 GMT

This afternoon I did an upgrade from Gutsy to Hardy on my main development environment. I experienced *almost* no disruption to my system, with one exception (so far!). When I instantiated a ColdFusion 8 application which instantiates a webservice onApplicationStart, I received the following exception:

jikes: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Jikes! Well fortunately the fix is quite simple. Go to a terminal and install libstdc++5 like so:
$ sudo apt-get install libstdc++5

Restart your application and carry on! I am not sure what changed between the distros, but apparently the libraries that ColdFusion uses for invoking webservices depend on this package.

Strange component path behavior with event gateway

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:41:00 GMT

I am working on a client project using an SMS event gateway using CF8. I had written out a proxy API to allow the SMS gateway to talk to the core application using a shared data model that is strapped together using ColdSpring. I had written a test harness cfm template during development and just kind of assumed that I could instantiate this proxy component from my event gateway without issue and carry on about my business. For some reason, however, I am seeing some behavior that I wasn't expecting. I have resolved this by way of using a ColdSpring mapping in the CF Admin. However, I am still curious why the following takes place.

Here is the general picture:

I have an app that sits in /www/myclientapp/www

The proxy components and event gateway component sit in /www/myclientapp/api/proxy and there is an Application.cfc in the "api" directory. I have a coldspring directory in both /www/myclientapp/www/coldspring and /www/myclientapp/api/proxy/coldspring.

When I run a testharness file in /www/myclientapp/api/proxy/testharness.cfm, I can instantiate the data model properly and there are no issues. However, when I talk to the event gateway component that sits in the ..../proxy directory, I get errors instantiating ColdSpring in the Application.cfc stating
"Could not find the ColdFusion Component or Interface coldspring.beans.DefaultXmlBeanFactory. --- path: /www/myclientapp/api/proxy/coldspring/beans/DefaultXmlBeanFactory.cfc".

So, digging into this a bit further I did a FileExists() test on that cfc and it returns true. HUH?

Here is my question. How can the following two statements be true:

1) FileExists(ExpandPath("coldspring/beans/DefaultXmlBeanFactory.cfc")) returns "true".

2) CreateObject("component","coldspring.beans.DefaultXmlBeanFactory") errors out with the error you see above.

Hopefully someone smarter than me can shed some light on this problem!

ColdFusion in odd places - using the directory watcher on my desktop

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 05:02:00 GMT

Since recently installling yet another distro on my laptop, I was unable to get the FTP functionality of my webcam software (Camorama) to work properly. The program will save snapshots locally, but bombs on transfer. Rather than troubleshoot it to death, I decided to whip out a quick and dirty ColdFusion directory watcher event gateway and have it watch for updated images, and then push them to my webserver via FTP.

For anyone interested in this non-earth shattering bit of code, here it is. First I created a config file:

WebcamWatcher.cfg

# The directory we want to watch. 
directory=/home/dshuck/Webcam_Pictures

# Do we want to recurse the directories?
recurse=no

# miliseconds between checks
interval=6000

# The comma separated list of extensions to match.
extensions=*

# component method for change events
changeFunction=onChange

# component method for add events
addFunction=onAdd

# no delete events for now
deleteFunction=

Now to create the methods in our WebcamWatcher.cfc. In short, either a changed file or an added file will trigger the putImage function which first creates the FTP connection, changes directories to my webcam directory, then pushes the file to the server. Here is the code:

WebcamWatcher.cfc

<cfcomponent output="false">
	<cffunction name="onAdd" output="false">
		<cfargument name="CFEvent" type="struct" required="yes">
		<cfset var Data=CFEvent.data />
	  	<cflog file="DirectoryWatcher" application="No" 
	     	text=" ACTION: #data.type#;  FILE: #data.filename#;  calling putImage()" />
		<cfset putImage() />
	</cffunction>
	

	<cffunction name="onChange" output="false">
	  	<cfargument name="CFEvent" type="struct" required="yes">
	  	<cfset var data=CFEvent.data>
	  	<cflog file="DirectoryWatcher" application="No" 
	      text=" ACTION: #data.type#;  FILE: #data.filename#; TIME: #timeFormat(data.lastmodified)# calling putImage();" />
		<cfset putImage() />
	</cffunction>

	<cffunction name="putImage" access="private" output="false" returntype="void">
		<cfftp action = "open"
	   		username = "joeuser"
	  		connection = "MyConnection"
	   		password = "mycoolpassword"
	   		server = "www.mywebserver.com"
	   		stopOnError = "true" />
		
		<cfif cfftp.Succeeded>
			<cfftp 
				connection="MyConnection" 
				action="changedir" 
				directory="htdocs/mywebcamdirectory" />
			
			<cfif cfftp.Succeeded>
				<cfftp 
					connection = "MyConnection"
					action = "putFile" 
					name = "uploadFile" 
					transferMode = "binary" 
					localFile = "/home/dshuck/Webcam_Pictures/webcam.jpeg" 
					remoteFile = "DaveWebcam.jpg" />
			</cfif>
	
		</cfif>
		<cflog file="DirectoryWatcher" application="false" text="file push to webserver...#cfftp.Succeeded#" />
	</cffunction>
</cfcomponent>

So, now the internet can yet again be graced with my "almost live" presence. I can almost hear the selective sigh of relief.

I have to consider this to be a somewhat odd place for ColdFusion and it got me thinking... What kinds of odd places do you or have you used ColdFusion?

Adding spell checking to Evolution mail client

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:41:00 GMT

I am not sure why I have never pusued this until today, but I for some reason have never spent the time to figure out why I didn't have spell checking in my Evolution mail client. I knew that Evolution used the packages aspell and gnome-spell, which I already had installed, so why wasn't it working?

When I went into my composer settings in the Evolution preferences, I saw a big empty box that was the list of dictionaries that Evolution was using. You would think there would be some method of adding them from there, but unfortunately it isn't quite that obvious. To add the English dictionary I had to install the package aspell-en. Once I added this I reopened Evolution and Bamn!

There it is. For the copy/paste inclined, try the following:

#sudo apt-get install aspell gnome-spell aspell-en

Gone cruising... see you on the 9th!

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 05:47:00 GMT

The bags are packed and we are heading to Galveston tomorrow morning at 5am to board the Carnival Conquest. We will be hitting Jamaica on Wednesday, Grand Cayman on Thursday and Cozumel on Friday, returning Sunday the 9th.

We're on the ColdFusion Weekly!

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:26:00 GMT

The latest version of the ColdFusion Weekly podcast was released yesterday. Matt and Peter were kind enough to have Aaron and I on to talk about InstantSpot. This was actually our second time to have this opportunity, although we had *much* more to talk about given our experiences over the last 14 months since the previous visit!

We covered a lot of areas from how it all came about in the first place, to some of our trials and tribulations rolling out the latest release and all points in between. If you would like to hear some of our experiences and the technology behind our network, I urge you to check it out.

Download Version 3.02

Playing with my new webcam under Linux - watch me work!

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:10:00 GMT

I made an impulse buy this past week ordering a Tripp-Lite clip-on webcam for my laptop. My wife and I are leaving next weekend to go on a week-long cruise without our kids, and I thought it might be fun to post some video blog entries for them while we are gone so they (and ultimately you as well) can see what we are up to.

I chose the Tripp-Lite camera due to pretty consistently positive cost/value reviews, although I was a bit worried that I couldn't find a single instance of anyone on the internet actually using one under Linux. Why should that stop me, huh? When it arrived I plugged it in and... nada... nothing! Although my laptop could see the device, I couldn't seem to get the drivers to work. After doing some digging around I found that it uses the Z-Star Microelectronics Corp. ZC0301 WebCam chipset, which seems to be very common in the cheapo-Chinese-made webcam space. There is an unbelievably awesome project out there where a guy named Michel Xhaard has written drivers for tons of webcam chipsets, and although mine was included I just couldn't seem to get it to work, no matter what I did.

Eventually it hit me that since I am using an Alpha version of Ubuntu (Hardy Heron), perhaps I should roll to a release version and see what happens. Given how easy it is to swap distros in Linux, I decided to roll back to a 7.04 (Feisty) remaster disc that was laying around. Upon plugging in my camera on the new distro it just worked natively! YAY.

So, now I am playing with the apps a bit. I found Camorama which does video captures and can FTP them to a server at regular intervals. I thought it might be fun to create a custom pod on my blog that shows a current picture of me working - or zoning out... picking my nose... whatever. So, the pic of me you see on the left is the most recent of those. The timestamp text is a little small when I resize the pic, but if you view it in full size (or pull out your magnifying glass), you can see the date.

As for recording video in Linux, I created a launcher that allows me to record AVI files with audio using mencoder. For those interested in doing that, you will first need to install mencoder:
$ sudo apt-get install mencoder

I then created a shortcut icon that starts the recording:
mencoder tv:// -tv driver=v4l:width=320:height=240:device=/dev/video0:forceaudio:adevice=/dev/dsp -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=64:mode=3 -o /home/dshuck/Desktop/webcam.avi

Then I have another shortcut icon to stop the video:
killall mencoder

Look for pointless videos in the near future...

Happy birthday to my littlest sweetheart

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:33:00 GMT

My baby girl turns 2 today....

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Interesting mashup - Selenium and CFCUnit testing tools

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 06:49:00 GMT

At last night's DFW ColdFusion User Group meeting, Tom Woestman shared an interesting project that he is working on in which he has basically integrated CFCUnit with Selnium to perform both component level testing and clientside testing at the same time in a single suite. I admittedly had a hard time grasping this a bit at first as I have always considered CFCUnit tests to be a completely different category than clientside browser testing. For example, when I create CFCUnit tests, I generally have 1-to-1 relationship between a particular test and a service component. (FooService.cfc and FooServiceTest.cfc).

He also showed how he is using Selenium-RC (Remote Control) which runs as a Java application and spawns the appropriate browser, peforms the test and returns results. Pretty awesome stuff!

He stated last night that he isn't quite ready to open this up to the general public yet as he feels that it is not quite polished. However, he indicated that he is going to start a blog and begin talking about his use of it in the near future. Expect some links from me as he does as I find this to be pretty interesting and valuable stuff!

Also, DFWCFUG member Derek Bumpas video recorded the presentation last night, so I will try to make that video available if he gets it compressed down to a reasonable size.

Yes ColdFusion fans... we are a ColdFusion site!

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:32:00 GMT

I don't know how pervasive this point of confusion is, but today a regular face in the ColdFusion community was making some remarks in this comment thread and further on his InstantSpot site that InstantSpot is not a ColdFusion-based application, with the insinuation that he won't support our efforts because of this.

Just to be clear, no matter whether or not you actually see ".cfm" in the URL, we are running InstantSpot on Adobe ColdFusion 8, using Mach-II 1.6, ColdSpring and other community tools. We are strong advocates for ColdFusion, work with our local ColdFusion User Group, try to be evangelists for it wherever we can, and we will continue to do so.

5 InstantSpot invitations

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:26:00 GMT

If anyone is interested in creating an InstantSpot blog, we are opening up 5 new Spots today and would love to see some more ColdFusion peeps! Enter your invitation code on the main page. As soon as someone uses a code it's gone:

~~k7Nh92Sw~~
~~GEAGGH7B~~
~~rs4DPq9a~~
~~OUWKCEgG~~
~~lepvefKv~~

~~Get 'em while their hot! :)~~

EDIT: All gone!

Apparently "bringing about real change" means spamming me to death

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 04:42:00 GMT

Here is a little free advice to those running for office this election year, considering the fact that you have no idea what normal people do or what makes them tick. People don't like spam. In fact, there are billions of dollars spent every year to stop people from sending unsolicited email to people that are not interested in buying (or buying into!) services. You have become part of the problem by sending me emails telling me about your "solutions".

If I am on the fence about a particular candidate - and I'm not - and you really want to seal the deal and drive me to making a decision, then by all means go ahead and send me more spam. I will remember that when I don't cast a ballet for you on election day.

Oh yeah... and about the "opt out" form thingie on your website that you apparently ignore. In the "internet world" that means that you are supposed to stop sending emails to the person that submits it. Seriously Senator, stop going out of your way to push me away. Your work is already done.

New pseudo-steampunk theme on my blog

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:13:00 GMT

I have a new addiction playing with the style editor for my blog... I hate to call this a steampunk theme, simply for the inevitable flow of hardcore steampunk people coming here and telling me about how I don't know what steampunk is... so let's settle for pseudo steampunk shall we?

Regardless, at my current rate I will change it again in a few days anyway! :)

I was also told this week that I look a lot different in my picture than I do in person. I decided to add a headshot that says "Hey look... Dave was up all night coding again." I think it is fairly true to life.

My notes on Adobe's Flex 3 presentation: D-Flex UG kickoff meeting

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:54:00 GMT

Last night was the kickoff meeting for D-Flex which is the Dallas Flex User Group. This meeting was planned in conjunction with the Flex 3 Launch and featured a presentation by local Flex guru Mark Pillar, of Midnight Coders, Inc who delivered a presentation that was created by Adobe. As he went through the presentation, I took some very high level notes in bullet point format.

One thing of note specific to ColdFusion - Not *once* in Adobe's presentation materials did they even give the slightest mention to CF and how gracefully it natively interacts with Flex. As a CF developer, I find this a bit troublesome and makes me wonder a bit about Adobe's commitment to promoting ColdFusion outside of the ColdFusion community itself.

Here are my notes...

Mark Piller - Midnight Coders, Inc

General demo of features of Flex Builder
- Design view
- Descriptions of XMXL & AS
Adobe RIA technology principles
- Deploy consistently no all browsers, and now on the desktop
- Engaging, highly interactive, expressive experiences
- Highly productive environment
Description of Adobe's stack of tools
Adobe reaches 700+ million PCs and 200+ devices
99% reach on connected PCs. 8 million installs per day
250,000,000 PDF Files on the internet
Discussion of the Designer Developer Workflow - Fw, Fx, Ps, Fl, Ai
- Thermo
Some interesting Flex implementations
- Buzzword - very cool web based Flex word processing app (url: http://www.buzzword.com )
- Small Worlds - Virtual 3d world written in Flex (url: http://www.smallworlds.com/beta/ )
Rich library of common UI Controls
- video playback components
- datagrids, date, controls, etc
- charting components
Extensible model
- CSS support
- skinnable components
price for Flex Builder - $249 standard, professional $649 (upgrade pricing: Standard - 99 plugin, 249 standalone... I may have recorded the upgrade pricing incorrectly as I was still typing when he changed slides)
Import Skin Assets into Flex Builder
- CS3 makes it easy to create custom skins, then use the Flex Import Wizard
New in Flex 3
- visual CSS editor
- view all component states in one view
Design view enhancements
- Enhanced Constraints Model
  - align components with edges of any vertical of horizontal coordinate
  - support for basline alignment
- Skinning Model Improvements
  - New skin states simplify styling
  - Enhanced control over individual components
- OpenType Font support
Advanced Data Grid
- New "Grouping" including multiple grouping in datagrids in Fx3. Looks like an expandable folder tree view
Charting enhancments
New list and detail enhancements
Working with Data
- Web Services Introspection
  - Generate client proxy classes from wsdl signatures
  - Includes support for complex types returned from web services
  - enables complete code hinting for service methods and custom types
- Introductory Data Wizards
  - generates crud, etc but is mostly only useful to those just getting started
AIR
- Previously named Apollo
- Cross-OS application engine that enables hybrid desktop-internet application
  - New capabilities
    - Native OS drag and drop support
    - multi-windowed apps
    - access local file sys
    - local database storage
    - complete rendering support for html
- Flex Builder support for AIR apps
- Platform evolution
  - Reduced application size
  - users only need to download the Adobe-signed F3 platform component once
  - Flash player cache stores it for use by any flex-enabled site
  - enter flex apps can no be as small as 50K (used to be around 250K)
  - Flex 3 RSL - runtime shared library
  - RSL is potentially pulled from any Flex app.
    - question about the case where someone might modify the RSL on their site? Handshake from the player maybe? No answer
Example of the Flex Builder profiler that allowed visibility to bottle necks & high memory spots in the application. Also shows how many instances of objects have been created.
JavaScript and Ajax Wrappers
Deep Linking
- updates browser URL to represent application state
- enables user to bookmark particular points in the app or share urls
- standalone web-tier compiler modules for IIS and Apache
- Mark questioned how usable it is in its current state and insinuated that there may be some issue with using this
AIR application stack
- walk through of Seamless install (after you have AIR runtime installed which makes this a bit less than "seamless" for first timers)
- web launcher
- AIR installer contans
- Privileges - AIR apps have full desktop application privileges
  - read/write files, background execution, network access
  - There is apparently some setting in the AIR runtime environment to limit this... (an operating system where the default user doesn't have admin rights is my personal suggestion)
- Window Chrome
  - use native OS window chrome
  - use custom chrome implemented by application
- Local File Access
  - create delete copy move, list directoreis, get system info on files, dirs
- Local database
  - SQL Lite
    - supports ACID transactions
    - zero-config allowing for embedded solution
- AIR desktop integration
  - install/uninstall
  - task manager or process list
  - application shortcuts, drag/drop
  - clipboard
  - app can run in background, can show on taskbar
- Adobe Reader integration
- AIR limitations
  - limited hardware accessibility
  - no access to native libraries/executables
  - no USB or serial port
  - limited support for accessibility,
  - limited printing support
  - limited localization
    - English only for 1.0
    - Japanese, German, French for 1.1
Flex Remoting, Data Management and Messaging
- Java,.NET, PHP and Ruby solutions... no ColdFusion in your preso Adobe???
- first connectivity for Java was FDS,
  - JAVA -open source on elater Granite Data Service, Red5, WebORB ***matches LiveCycle features***, BlazeDS
  - .NET - WebORB for .NET, Flourine, AMF.Net
  - PHP - WebORB for PHP, AMFPHP, SabreAMF
  - Ruby - WebORB for Rails, RubyAMF (*stronger than WebORB for Rails*)
- Introducing Open Source BlazeDS
  - Capabilites
    - Easily connects FLex and AIR apps to existing server logic
    - high performance data transfer
    - real-time data push over standard http
    - full pub/sub messaging that extends existing messaging infrastructure
    - publication of AMF3
- bottom line: there is a free connector for almost every solution
- Remoting performance example - significant performance with remoting vs http/web services - james ward google "Blaze Bench" ???
ILOG Elixir Components (charting)
- advanced charting components
Thermo - Convert Artwork to Functional Components

My pointless wish for ColdFusion 9

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:26:00 GMT

Before continuing, I am aware that the likelihood of this every happing is remote at best, but that won't keep me from dreaming. If I could choose 1 thing - just 1! - for ColdFusion 9, it would have nothing at all to do with new features. In fact, it would actually mean less features in way. What is this wish?

`c->xlib.lock' failed error on Java applications

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:16:00 GMT

I am currently using the Alpha 3 release of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. Considering the fact that it is an alpha release, I tend to not get worked up over little errors that might occur. However, I have found one that I just couldn't get around. I use Aqua Data Studio for my database client and since loading Hardy Heron, I have been unable to run it.

When I would start it from a terminal, I would get a dump that looked like this:

#0 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0 [0x90d00767]
#1 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0(xcb_xlib_unlock+0x31) [0x90d008b1]
#2 /usr/lib/libX11.so.6(_XReply+0xfd) [0x9039429d]
#3 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so [0x9063e8ce]
#4 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so [0x9061b067]
#5 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so [0x9061b318]
#6 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so(Java_sun_awt_X11GraphicsEnvironment_initDisplay+0x2f) [0x9061b61f]
#7 [0xb4cff3aa]
#8 [0xb4cf7f0d]
#9 [0xb4cf7f0d]
#10 [0xb4cf5249]
#11 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so [0x637338d]
#12 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so [0x64fd168]
#13 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so [0x6373220]
#14 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so(JVM_DoPrivileged+0x363) [0x63c90d3]
#15 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/libjava.so(Java_java_security_AccessController_doPrivileged__Ljava_security_PrivilegedAction_2+0x3d) [0xb7d1096d]
#16 [0xb4cff3aa]
#17 [0xb4cf7da7]
#18 [0xb4cf5249]
#19 /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.04/jre/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so [0x637338d]
java: xcb_xlib.c:82: xcb_xlib_unlock: Assertion `c->xlib.lock' failed.
Aborted (core dumped)

Considering the fact that I used the Ubuntu sun-java6-jdk package from the Ubuntu repository, I decided that I would try the self-extracting bin that is available on http://java.sun.com. After swapping to that JVM, I still received the same dump and abort. After doing a bit of searching, I came across a patch in one of the bug reporting forums that effectively patches your JVM and prevents this error from occurring. I ran the patch and now everything works as it should. If you are receiving this error, create a shell script with the following content and run it. Assuming that it runs successfully, you should then be able to open the Java application that was failing.

#!/bin/sh
# S. Correia
# 2007 11 21
# A simple script to patch the java library in order
# to solve the problem with "Assertion 'c->xlib.lock' failed."
# see bug http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6532373
LIB_TO_PATCH=libmawt.so
for f in `find /usr/lib/jvm -name "$LIB_TO_PATCH"`
do
echo "Patching library $f"
sudo sed -i 's/XINERAMA/FAKEEXTN/g' "$f"
done

Big thanks to "S. Correia" for getting me back on my feet!

Publishing blog entries with ScribeFire using XMLRPC API

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:37:00 GMT

On the most recent release of InstantSpot, we added in XMLRPC support so that blog administration can happen anywhere, using any client that supports XMLRPC. We are thinking it might be fun to create an AIR app for this purpose down the line (or better yet... someone else! hint...hint...), but until that time, there are a variety of clients that can be used, since we followed the MetaWeblog API standards.

I am actually trying this out for the first time on our live instance with this blog entry by using a *sweet* Firefox plugin called ScribeFire. Considering that we haven't really published this ability, I thought it might make sense to do a walk through of setting it up and using it.

First, let's walk through the ScribeFire Account Wizard. One you have installed the ScribeFire plugin (available here), click on the little text pad icon in the bottom corner of your browser window and start the Account Wizard. You should see a window that looks like the one below. Choose "Manually Configure" and continue.

You will then be presented with a number of options of various inferior blogging services. Choose "Custom Blog" and continue.

On the screen you see below, choose "MetaWeblog API" and enter this URL into the Server API URL input box: http://www.instantspot.com/gospot/remote.metaweblogAPI
Leave "Advanced Settings" unchecked and continue.

On the following screen you will be prompted for your username and password. Since the new release of InstantSpot, your email address is now used as your username.

That's it! If you did this correctly you should see your blog listed in the following screen like this:

Now, you should see a list of your categories (labeled in the interface as "tags"), blogposts, and in the future, saved "Notes" which are drafts stored locally by ScribeFire to the right of the ScribeFire window like this:

From here, the interface is pretty simple. One thing that is noteworthy is that we even support the ability for you to upload and insert images through ScribeFire. When you click on the image icon on the editor, you will see a window that looks like this:

Choose "Image Upload", then after browsing to your file, select "Upload Via API".

When it completes you will see the following window. Choose "Insert Image" and you will see your image inserted into your text.

Now you can start posting away to your heart's content!

Free as in money, not as in pain - InstantSpot moves to ColdFusion 8

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:28:00 GMT

InstantSpot moved to ColdFusion 8 last week after discovering huge threading problems using Railo.

Wow... rough move from Ubuntu to PCLinuxOS!

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 03:06:00 GMT

Seeing as it has been a few months since I tried out a new distro, I got a wild hair today and decided to give PCLinuxOS (Gnome version) a shot. The way that I keep my drives partitioned - specifically keeping my /home directory as a separate partition- swapping distros is usually a pretty painless endeavor and I can be back up and running within an our or so, with all my old apps in place and with all my preferences still in tact.

As I booted to the PCLinux Live CD, everything seemed to be business as usual. The only notable point was that I thought that PCLinux has a nice default theme and icon set in the Gnome version of the distro.

So without too much hesitation, I went ahead and began the install process. After choosing the appropriate keyboard and timezone settings, I was presented with the choice of how I would like my partitions setup, which by default uses the entire physical disk. By selecting the "do it yourself" mode, I expected to be able to choose my smaller /dev/sda2 partition as my / mount point, format it for the OS, and leave my /dev/sda3 alone mounting it has /home.

I entered what appeared to be a nice little partition configuration tool (Disk Drake I think?), which appeared to be exactly what I was needed. I then selected the /dev/sda2 partition as the place I wanted my / mount point, and chose /dev/sda3 as my /home mount point. When I chose the option to format my / mount point, I got a an error message that said that the partion could not be formatted. Considering that my plan was to wipe it out anyway, I went ahead and removed that partition, and re-added it using that utility. As I tried to move forward, I got a message that indicated that I needed to reboot, restart the installation process, then choose "Use existing partitions". Simple enough right?

I then rebooted to the live CD and entered the installation again. This time I was presented with a new option. "Choose the partitions you would like to format" and it only listed my larger /dev/sda3 partition with a checkbox next to it, with no mention of my /dev/sda2. I found this a bit interesting, and after carefully removing the checkbox I moved forward. As I entered the next step I went to a screen "Copying files...".... wait... huh? To where?

Apparently it now considered my /dev/sda3 (which I intended to be /home) as the only drive. I cancelled the process and opened the terminal. After browsing to that directory, I found new /usr and /boot directories in that directory, which confirmed my suspicions.

Things then began moving downhill and picking up speed....

I opened the partitioning tool GParted and was suprised to see that not only did my 15GB /dev/sda2 not exist anymore but that /dev/sda3 was now a 145GB partion of unallocated space. NOT GOOD, considering that about 110GB of it is *very* allocated with data that I didn't intend on losing.

Even with all the steps I have taken since, I have been unable to mount /dev/sda2. I even popped in Damn Small Linux to attempt some quick surgery and even it was unable to save me. I then tried an Ubuntu live CD and it didn't recogize anything on /dev/sda at all. At some point during this process I noticed that I was getting "bad magic number" and "corrupted superblock" type messages in relation to that device.

After putting the PCLinuxOS live CD back in, I was a bit relieved to see that it auto-mounted /dev/sda3 as /media/disk, and that I could at least access the files that were once safe and sound in my /home directory.

So.... here I sit waiting for GBs upon GBs of data to upload via FTP to various servers so that I can wipe the enter friggin thing out and start over. Tomorrow I get the fun of retrieving it all and piecing my laptop world back together.... <sigh/>

More to come....