Dave Craine's Blog

Building BerkeleyDB on Solaris 10

2007-11-12T07:51:00.000-08:00

This may be a running blog entry. So far the first problem I ran into was getting the 'configure' script to run correctly. The error I kept getting was that my C compiler did not create executables. The problem was that Solaris has a native 'cc' compiler in the /usr/ucb/bin directory. Apparently Berkeley DB configuration always looks for the native compiler before looking for 'gcc'. So the answer was to set the CC environment variable to 'gcc' and then everything worked. Of course this presuemes that gcc is installed. I have been amazed at the amount of 'stuff' I had to install on Solaris after the initial install. The Solaris package management system leaves much to be desired (as far as I can tell -- maybe I'm just missing something). I was reduced to the old method of trying to install a package, check the dependency errors, then tracking back to install the dependicies first, etc. It took a while to setup all the tools that I was used to getting when would work on a clean RedHat install.

Crysis Demo...Oops

2007-10-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

I preordered the Crysis video game from the EA store so I could get the demo a little earlier and not get bogged down with swamped file servers, So I downlaoded the demo last night. I was able to decrypt it this morning. I then ran the installation...so far so good...and then I tried to run it and.....wham! You need to be logged into the EA Download Manager to authenitcate your copy of this game. The only problem is....I was logged in. I logged out and logged in, I shutdown the download manager and restarted and logged in, i rebiooted my whole computer and relogged in. But all in vain...ah well. I develop software for a living and so I'm spympatheitc to all the difficulties of developing software. But I can say from a developer stand point that there's not many things more frustating than to spend months and months developoing some very difficult code only to have the final product experience "screwed up" by a third party distribution mechanism. So, I feel sorry fopr Crytek but not for EA.

So until I get my demo working...here's a video to help alleivate the frustration.

An interesting perspective on life

2007-09-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

I'm always intrigued by how people handle dying...especially since we all have to do at some point.

Could this be the Lost City of Atlantis?

2007-08-31T11:10:00.001-07:00

It's always fun to theorize about these types of discoveries

Bill Walsh was a class act and he will be missed

2007-08-07T20:54:00.000-07:00

Thieves located by using the GPSs they stole

2007-07-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

I think this is pretty funny and definitely a candidate for "The World's Stupidest Crooks" award.

A ship made of lollypop and ice-cream sticks

2007-07-15T12:31:00.000-07:00

This is actually a pretty interesting story. It definitely gives you a sense of what people can do with enough determination and vision.

Copying tables between mysql databases

2007-07-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

I found a quick way to copy tables between mysql databases:

mysqldump -u(username) -p(password) (source database name) (table names...) (pipe) mysql -u(username) -p(password) (destination database name)

I used to dump tables to a file and then "source" the file into the new database. This new process goes a lot faster.

Paris Fatigue

2007-06-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

iPhone....will you be able to get one?

2007-06-22T22:05:00.001-07:00

I think the big question with iPhone is: how long will it take to get my hands on one? Yeah, sure it comes out on June 29th; but that's for the "special" people (read insanely rich folks who can afford to pay other people to wait in line for them). I'm talking about for us normal shmos. The guys who just think it's cool and are willing to sacrifice a month's worth of meals in order to afford one. All I can say is I'll proabably be eating well for a while.

Tiananmen Square Revisited

2007-06-09T06:29:00.001-07:00

It's been 17 year since the Tiananmen Square massacre, and apparently there is a renewed interest in it as a result of Chinese government officials trying to publicly deny that it ever happened. Here's some interesting pieces on it.

This BBC video regarding the Tiananmen Square massacre has been classisifed as M due to some of the violent content and adult themes.
17 years since the Tiananmen Square Massacre: The Tank Man

Here Kitty, kitty, kitty!

2007-06-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

OK, I don't know what I would do if I woke up to find a leopard in my bedroom, so I have to give credit to this guy for keeping his head in a crisis.

Turkish PM denies crossing border into Iraq

2007-06-06T19:53:00.000-07:00

Wii - A pretty incredible little device

2007-06-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

I bought one of these a few weeks back and have been very impressed with the versatility and useability of this device. I found the main interface to be very intiutive and have used the online content (news, weather, etc) many times as an alternative to browsing the web. Certainly the most innovative aspect of the device is the remote, which definitely changes game play and makes it far more engrossing (IMHO). All in all I think the Wii is a huge winner and the way it is selling in contrast to the PS3 I think it also shows that innovation can trump raw power when it is done right. To me, the PS3's selling point is that it does basically what the PS2 did only faster and more detailed (of course there's more to it than that but that's the message that comes across to consumers) whereas the Wii has been marketed as a new kind of console and I gthink people are, by default, curious about it and when they actually use it they are impressed with it (i.e., it lives up to the hype).

How you know when you're getting old...

2007-06-03T19:13:00.000-07:00

I remember when I was a teenager watching Tony Dorsett play for the University of Pittsburgh. Now his son, 33 year old Anthony Dorsett, is trying to relive his NFL glory days by playing for the CFL. Nothing against Anthony, I hope he does well. But this makes me feel ancient!!

Go Fred Go!!!

2007-06-03T07:31:00.000-07:00

I love the idea of Fred Thompson getting in the race. I don't know if he'll get the nomination, but I think he brings a little bit more "conservatism" into the mix of main players. I think that currently there are only really three main candidates: McCain, Giuliani, and Romney. If Thompson enters into the race, I would rate him and Romney as the two top "conservative" candidates. I think of McCain and Giuliani each have their own "liberal" baggage. Primarily, McCain has the whole McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform issue that I don't think hwe'll be able to shake. Too many conservatives regard this, and rightly so I believe, as an attack on free speech and McCain's name is right on the top of it. As far as Giuliani goes, he's got a whole hose of social issues (gay narriage, abortion, etc) in which he leans pretty far to the left; much farther than most conservatives will be able to deal with I think. He even has problems with some hot-button political issues, like gun control, which will be an even greater drag on his candidacy. If I were to prognosticate at this point, I would say that either Romney or Thompson will get the nomination; although I admit that such predictions are about as reliable as hurricane season forcasts a year in advance. Still, it's fun to guess.

Spam...what can you do?

2007-05-31T18:42:00.000-07:00

Here are some interesting articles on the problem of spam email. The first one below talks about how 70% of all email coming from Asia is spam (not something to be proud of).
The seond deals with a major spam arrest which just recently occurred. I sure hope we can make some headway against this problem.

I knew postage had gone up, but this is ridiculous

2007-05-31T12:21:00.001-07:00

An over 4 trillion dollar charge from the post office. I think you could send a package to another galaxy for less than that.

iTunes DRM Free

2007-05-30T19:23:00.000-07:00

I think this is a neat idea and I'm curious to see how well it catches on. I am an avid iTunes customer, but I pretty much stick to my computer and my iPod. But even for me the main benefit would be that, hopefully, iTunes would not have to validate the digital rights on my purchased content before syncing my iPod. I don't know how many times I've gone to sync with iTunes and it ended up deleting all my purchased content from the iPod because it said that I wasn't authorized access the material. Of course I was authorized but I had to re-authorize in order to get it to resync back to my iPod. It's not so bad if you only have a little bit of data, but I store TV shows on my iPod and each one is almost half a gig. So resyncing can take a while. Anyway, this non-DRM material may be worth getting just to avoid that problem. I'm also interested to see how it affects the piracy market. From what I've read, the name of the purchaser of the content is still encoded in the file so haphazardly sharing these non-DRM songs around will not be an anonymous escapade.

Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii is the most active on earth

2007-05-30T16:33:00.000-07:00

I wonder how much pollution this volcano puts out per year. Perhaps Al Gore should make the state of Hawaii fork over some carbon credits for this baby.

Microsoft Touch Table -- this looks like something Apple should have done

2007-05-30T11:08:00.001-07:00

Yet another flaw in a Microsoft product

2007-05-30T04:57:00.001-07:00

40 Years of Star Trek

2007-05-29T12:52:00.001-07:00

If you like motorcycles, these are the guys to know

2007-05-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

Someone needs to redefine the word "controversy" if this actually qualifies as one

2007-05-22T19:15:00.001-07:00

Rush Limbaugh has been playing some parodies that center on Barak Obama and Al Sharpton. John Fund of OpinionJournal.com discusses (and pretty much dismisses) what is supposed to be a brewing controversy over this. Some people are apparently trying to compare this to the Don Imus episode. As far as the comparison goes, there is none. Which is about as much as I can say for the controversy as well. It seems more like a bunch of neerdowels who've appointed themselves as the Speech Police and decided they're going to try an take down anyone who says anything that they might find objectionable either now or sometime in the future. All I can say is that if they're going after Rush, I hope they've got extra rations of their antidepressants; they're going to need them when their dreams come crashing down on them. Anyway, I've heard these parodies and frankly, they're pretty funny. If nothing else, I've learned some new "Your mama is so fat..." jokes.

It's Blake and Jordan in the American Idol Final

2007-05-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

Although I personally believe that Melinda and Lakisha were the two best singers in the competition by far, I wish the best of luck to each of the finalists.

Malaria and DDT

2007-05-21T08:28:00.000-07:00

Since April 25th was Malaria Awareness Day, many people are quick to criticize President Bush and the United States for not doing enough for addressing this serious problem. But a little investigation of the issues involved reveals a much different story. Here is a link to an article regarding Malaria and the restrictions placed on the use of DDT as a means to combat malaria by the environmentalists. I think if there ever was an example of the consequences of ideas (particular malformed ideas) it is in this area of the use of DDT to combat malaria. Millions of people have died as a reult of some very wronly coneceived policies.

When Politics Kills: Malaria and the DDT Story

OK You "Heroes" Fans...here's a sneak peak at the final episode

2007-05-21T08:07:00.000-07:00

I'm looking forward to this one.

Religion and Tolerance - A Balancing Act

2007-05-20T09:18:00.000-07:00

This is a very thoughtful article on religion and the concept of tolerance. I can appreciate much of what this writer says. Almost all reglions claim to have found the truth and in many cases that truth is exclusive of other belief systems in one form or fashion. Also, many of these "truths" are contradictory thus demanding that they cannot all be true. The answer that many are tempted to seek is to embrace contradiction in the name of "Tolerance"; but by doing so they only destroying any notion of Truth whatsoever. To accept two contradictory ideas as true does not render to the believer an additional truth but steals from him all truth. We must use our minds and our hearts when evaluating belief systems.

Finding the kidnapped soldiers

2007-05-19T17:50:00.000-07:00

If any of the kidnappers are captured alive they should be tried, and if found guilty, executed. The penalty for kidnapping a soldier has to be so severe that others are deterred from trying it as well. Just as in the US we have more severe penalties for attacking policemen, so it should be when our soldiers are essentially trying to perform the same function in Iraq. I realize that these terrorists have no regard for law, life, or freedom; however, I think a public showing of our determiniation to enforce a real peace would be useful.

Global Warming Scare Update

2007-05-18T11:59:00.001-07:00

Check here for your latest global warming scare videos:

Mitt Romney...he's becoming more interesting to me

2007-05-18T11:57:00.000-07:00

Although his name is not as well known, I think Mitt Romney looks and sounds very presidential. I believe he has a real good chance of winning the nomination.

This is so cool...a real life treasure hunt that pays off big time

2007-05-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

I just think that this is such a cool deal. Imagine finding half a billion dollars worth of gold and silver coins. But beyond the sheer monetary value is the historical value. I'll be really interested in hearing more about the types of coins, where they come from, and when they come from. Very neat.

New Immigration Bill...Is it good or not?

2007-05-18T07:34:00.000-07:00

I personally have nevery really had a problem wth providing some mechanism for allowing illegal aliens to stay in the country legally as long as the mechanism was controlled and aggressively weeded out the "bad eggs" among them. It has just always seemed unrealiistic to me to deport upwards of 12 million people. Having said that, however, I also believe that the border security also has to be enforced aggressively to prevent a massive influx of non-conributing illegal residents who will drain the social benefits system dry. Regarding the amnesty question, as far as I can tell this bill both IS and IS NOT amnesty depending on how you want to frame it. I think in the strictest terms it is technically NOT amnesty because it does impose a penalty on those who fall under the jurisdiction of this bill; however it also provides a mechansim for those who entered this country illegally to avoid the current penalty for their actions, namely "deportation". So I really can't find fault with those who espouse either position. This video is a pretty good summary of what the current immigration bill proposes.

It's about time for Halo 3

2007-05-17T19:58:00.000-07:00

Here's a video regarding the relase date for Halo 3. It's about time this thing came out. Sounds like September 25th is the magic date...for now. I just hope it's worth the wait.

Is this really a scandal?

2007-05-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

In light of all the scandals in the Clinton Administration regarding things done to/for members of the opposite sex, can anyone really believe that this a scandal? So he helped his girlfriend get a job, so what? Did he lie about it? Did he bomb another country to distract attention from it? Oh wait, I forgot, he worked for George Bush!!! Well in that case let's crucify him (sarcasm intentional).

This is an unusual police chase story

2007-05-17T12:55:00.000-07:00

"Truthers" - What a Joke

2007-05-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

James Taranto pretty well summariszes the insanity of the 911 Truther movement.

Time to whiddle down the field

2007-05-16T11:31:00.000-07:00

I think that the time has come that the Republican debates start paring down the participants. As entertaining as some of these people are, there is just no way they are going to make it to the top 5 let alone become the nominee. After this point they'll just be sucking up air time that will be better spent listenting to the people who actually have a chance of winning.

Fred Thompson....is he going to run or not?

2007-05-13T20:22:00.001-07:00

Fireworks are cool

2007-05-11T10:33:00.001-07:00

Here's a great little video describing how fireworks actually work.

Halle Berry video....She's a star

2007-05-10T11:13:00.000-07:00

Global Warming Scare is Out of Hand

2007-05-04T15:25:00.000-07:00

Even if these future "climate ambassadors" are right and that the North Pole was a topical environment 50 million years ago, how can they then possibly think that any current rise in global temperatures is due to man's activities. Obviously humans weren't driving around in SUVs 50 million years ago and "stinking up the planet", and yet "somehow" the earth still managed to acheive a tropical climate at the North Pole. Why on earth then do these people think that there's anything that man do to make even a dent in the global warming trend. And I don't even necessarily agree with their supposition that the North Pole was a one time tropical, but the complete incoherence and self-contradictory nature of the global warming movement is way out of hand. These people need to step back, take a deep breath, plug their brains back in, and start thinking this stuff through.

She's Back!!!

2007-05-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

I had hoped that Brittney's recent "episodes" would have convinced her to scale back on the explicit nature of her performances; which lead to only a temporary and ultimately hollow thrill. But...I guess that's not the case

this guy is cool

2007-04-28T17:25:00.001-07:00

Could he be the next President of the United States?

2007-04-11T20:17:00.000-07:00

'Dresden Files' is one of the bright lights on SciFi Channel

2007-04-11T16:44:00.000-07:00

Ruby on Rails Gets Some More Help

2007-04-11T16:31:00.000-07:00

Get indi!!!

2007-01-17T10:54:00.000-08:00

The beta 3 product of indi is now available. indi is a great tool for communicating with friends and groups in a simple, easy, and fun way.

Debugging with large integers

2006-11-24T23:39:00.000-08:00

This is just a testimony to my ignorance; but I spent a lot of time trying to debug an OSX application that was using large unsigned integer (UInt64) values. I was trying to printf the values so I could see what they were at specific points in the application and I was always getting 0 as the result. The problem was that I was using a %d in the format specifier string which is desigated for integers; but since these were 64 bit values, that designator was unable to format them properly. Using the %lld specifier was what did the trick. In addition to requiring different format specifications for printing, 64 bit values also require different methods for performing other seemlingly simple operations. For example, to compare two unsigned 64 bit values it was necessary to use the U64Compare() function. There are various other functions for working with 64-bit integers. This was probably obvious for a lot of other folks, but it was a good lesson for me to learn.

Managing Z-Order of windows on OSX with groups

2006-10-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

I was recently working on an application in OSX that required me to use multiple WebViews in an overlay configuration. This problem ended up being more difficult than I first anticipated because of the way OSX manages windows. After unsuccessfully trying to order multiple views in the same window, I decided to approach the problem using window groups. After searching the web for a while, I hit upon the following combination of commands that allows you to group multiple windows together and have them retain their Z-order

WindowGroupRef parentWindowGroup = GetWindowGroup (hostWindowRef);
CreateWindowGroup (kWindowGroupAttrSelectAsLayer | kWindowGroupAttrMoveTogether | kWindowGroupAttrLayerTogether | kWindowGroupAttrSharedActivation | kWindowGroupAttrHideOnCollapse, &windowGroup);
SetWindowGroupParent (windowGroup, parentWindowGroup);
SetWindowGroup (hostWindowRef, windowGroup);
SetWindowGroup (childWindow1Ref, windowGroup);
SetWindowGroup (childWindow2Ref, windowGroup);

It is important is that you create your childWindows with the following attributes:
kWindowNoActivatesAttribute | kWindowDoesNotCycleAttribute
and that you set the ActivationScope :
SetWindowActivationScope (childWindowRef, kWindowActivationScopeAll);
Also using the kOverlayWindowClass for the "child" windows seems to help.

The full text of this post can be found at:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1057433

Vista on VMWare is Very Vivacious

2006-09-04T05:26:00.000-07:00

I just installed the 32-bit version of Windows Vista Beta 2 on VMWare Workstation 5.5.1. So far things have worked great. The installation was actually very easy (at least compared with what I've read about Beta 1). I simply downloaded the vista beta 2 iso file from Micorsoft (3.13 GB), created the new virtual machine using the Windows Vista (experimental) selection in VMWare , configured the virtual machine to use the iso image as the CDROM drive and gave the virtual machine a 30GB disk size and 1GB of memory, and then booted the machine. The Vista installer launched, installed everything, and that was it. The installation process all occured in 16 color, which is kind of ugly, but after I rebooted the virtual machine I installed VMWare Tools. After rebooting the virtual machine again, the VMWare SVGA driver kicked in and the interface went to 32-bit color mode. It looks good. So far VMWare has performed wonderfully. I'm just getting into Vista to see the differences... a lot of cosmetic ones so far, but it seems to run well.

Semi-Universal Binaries

2006-09-04T05:25:00.000-07:00

I ran into an issue a few months back when trying to get an OSX app to run on the new MacTel boxes. Although XCode now comes with the ability to construct universal binaries from the same source code, there are still issues when you link in 3rd party libaries. This was my problem. My application used Berkeley DB, and although the souce is available (I used to to build the static libarary I linked to on the powerpc version of my software) I wasn't sure how a Universal Binary version of this library would work. I didn't want to take the chance on breaking my existing version of the software to accomodate the Universal Binary version. So, my solution was to build two separate versions and use a bootstrapper application to launch the appropriate one. Essentially, I have a powerpc version of my app that links in the powerpc version of BerkelyDB and an intel version that links in the intel version of BerkeleyDB. Each version is loaded into the Resources directory of the bootstrapper application. When the bootstrapper (which is a Universal Binary) launches, it simply detects the architecture that it's running on an then launches the appropriate version of the application. This approach is a little awkward, I know, but it has the advantage of letting you keep using the code that you know works while at the same time supporting a new platform.

Not all servers are created equal

2006-09-04T05:24:00.000-07:00

I recently constructed a server using the Intel SR2400 2U chassis and Intel SE7320VP2 motherboard. This was an interesting experience in that it deviated from my past experience in buidling servers. In the past I've built servers by mixing and matching parts to get the best price/performance ratio. In this case, I was looking explicitly for a 2U rackmountable case that would support 6 drives. The SR2400 was one of the few choices available to me (I'm not a professional server constructor so I don't have access to the suppliers that those type of folks do). In any case, by choosing the SR2400, I locked myself into a "mostly Intel" solution since this chassis required one of two Intel motherboards to be used. This was my first experience with what I will call a "professional-grade" server chassis. What I quickly learned was that it was not enough to simply acquire the chassis and the motherboard; but it was necessary to separately acquire a riser module, a backplane, a control module, a rails kit, and a custom slimline cd/dvd drive. Although the modular nature of this design makes the initial acuisition of parts a little more difficult (at least for me, I had to go to two different vendors to get everything) it is great to have the flexibility to construct various kinds of servers from the same chassis. I know this is nothing new for people who build these things for a living, but for me it was an important lesson to learn. My final setup, besides the motherboard and chassis, was a SATA backplane to support 5 hot-swappable drives, 5 250GB drives with 4 in a RAID 5 configuartion and one as a hot spare, dual Xeon 3.0Ghz CPUs (single core), 4GB system memory (expandable to 16GB), and 3Ware 9550SX SATA II RAID controller.
Also interesting is the difference between constructing a 2U server versus a 4U server. I'm guessing that 2U chassis are probably more tailored to specific hardware due to the space constraints. For example, the SR2400 chassis came with baffling that directed airflow from a set of fans near the front of the chassis, over the CPUs and DIMM modules, and then out the back of the chassis. Because of the size of this baffling, it was necessary to remove the fans from the heatsinks. But the airflow from the chassis fans was more than sufficient to compensate for the airlfow from the CPU fans; plus the CPU fans vent air upwards whereas the chassis fans vent air along the length of the chassis and out the back.
Anyway, I've come to better appreciate some of the engineering that goes into constructing these professional-grade server components. I've also learned that a server by any other name does not necessarily smell just as sweet...