Using Ubiquity for Retweets

In the category of an easier way of doing something easy, if you use Ubiquity, you probably know you can use it to tweet. I've found the if you want to retweet something, from the website before they update it to add retweets, you can select the original tweet, including the original authors name. Then trigger ubiquity and enter "Twitter RT @this".

Writing Unit-Tests for Java in Groovy: Great for Web Services

Update, moved to Just Thinking: Code

Written over at Closed Loop: Writing Unit-Tests for Java in Groovy: Not so brilliant after all?

I've been using Groovy to Unit test Web Services for several months now. Groovy WS allows me to quickly put together a Unit Test for a Web Service, saved in a text file so when I need to document my tests, I have it handy. Also, if I have to change something, I can test that change quickly.

My review of GF coffee cake

Here are my thoughts on the coffee cake my wife made. The recipe is here Gluten Free Coffee cake I from Betty Crocker GF mix.

When we first tried the cake mix, I had thought that the texture was very much like coffee cake. Sure enough, the mix does well by this.

A couple of things that I think may be worked out. It was a bit crumbly more or less right out of the oven. This may fix itself as it is allowed to sit. We saved some for later, so we'll know then.

It was a bit too sweet. I think it's because there was a little too much streusel on top (the recipe reflects this adjustment). Also, I think next time we are going to try brown sugar instead of granulated sugar. Toasted pecans would be a great addition to the streusel, but both kids hate nuts.

The kids had two pieces each and asked for more. Since the main goal of this was to try to find Gluten-free replacement foods for the kids, I would say this is a success.

The taste was quite delicious. No bad aftertaste, as some GF foods can have. As I said before, the texture was very good for a coffee cake.

Eating it with some protein or dairy will keep this low GI (and some coffee, just because) and you have a great weekend morning breakfast.

My wife, who does not have to be gluten-free, is wonderful for the work she did on this and all the experiments we are doing to go gluten-free.

Gluten Free Coffee cake I from Betty Crocker GF mix

This is the recipe my wife used.

For Streusel:

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup gluten free baking mix ( I used pancake mix)
2 T. butter (cold)
1 Teaspoon Cinnamon ( more to taste)

For cake:

Betty Crocker gluten free cake mix
2/3 cup water
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter - softened
1 teaspoon vanilla - gluten free
3 eggs

Combine streusel ingredients with fork or hands to crumbly consistency, put aside.
Combine cake ingredients.
Grease a cake pan, ( I line mine with parchment paper)
Pour half cake mixture into pan, sprinkle half of the streusel mixture on top of the cake mix.
Pour the rest of the cake mix on top of the streusel layer and top with remaining streusel.

Bake in 350 oven 45 minutes (checking at 40) or more until toothpick comes out clean. Cool a bit and serve.

OS problem update

I installed the 118 build of OpenSolaris last night and it still would not boot. I resent my request for help to the OpenSolaris Discussion list instead of the Help list. I got 2 suggestions to try this weekend. Hopefully, I will not have to change operating systems, at least until Oracle kills OpenSolaris.

Full Circle

Back in the early 90's, I really started paying attention to the industry that I made my career in. Windows 3.0 and OS/2 were both out and based on a opinion piece I read in PC Mag (no, not by Dvorak) I got my boss to buy a copy of OS/2 to work on. At the time, I had moved from being a operator on a Wang mainframe, to an administrator on a Novell network and a programmer and assisting the Wang staff.

Compuserve was the medium of choice for online discussions, especially technical ones (although I met two of my favorite sci-fi authors on Compuserve and I extremely regret not staying in touch with both of them).

The more I read about that Northwestern software company, both online and in PC Mag and such, the more horrified I became. One technique that I really thought was terribly egregious was to release an updated version of their software that has no effect but to break other software. When Windows went from 3.1 to 3.1.1, they said it was to refresh the drivers. However, OS/2 for Windows stopped working. How many times did they change their word processor document format so that import/export in other word processors were broken?

I was never a Apple fan during this time, just because their software did not work the same way I did. To this day, I open several software applications at once and switch through them as I need them. I did not find that easy to do on a Mac pre OSX.

So I used OS/2 until it just did not make any sense any more. In the late 90's, I bought a Dell and was suddenly running Windows at home outside a virtual environment for the first time. (I went from TRS-DOS to DOS to DR-DOS to OS/2). That survived for just under a year. A friend introduced me to FreeBSD, which I ran for several years. A few years later, I convinced my boss (different boss) to let me use a Mac at work because I wanted to try out the new Mac OSX because it was based on FreeBSD. A year later, using a bonus, I purchased 2 new Macs for home. Currently I'm running one of those Macs and OpenSolaris on a Gateway Laptop.

Although I'm still not a Apple fan, I really do like their hardware and OSX. I own an iPod, and if the iPhone was on Verizon, would probably own one of those (if Verizon gets a gPhone first, I may never have an iPhone).

Just recently Apple has put out a new version of iTunes that has, as far as I can tell, the single purpose of breaking the Palm Pre's ability to sync with it. Yes, Apple controls iTunes and it is very much in their rights to do so, but why do it? Not so much break the syncing, but why put out a version just to do that. It should be so beneath a mature, honorable company. Reminds me so much of that other company.

Will this, by itself, keep me from buying Apple products. No. But it does make me start to worry about where they are going and what kind of company will they be. It very much reminds me of where I started.

Changing OS's

Have not reformatted the laptop yet to change OS's. We have a test coming up at work that we need to hit the website from machines outside the firewall. I don't want to take a chance of the laptop not being working fully when that test happens.

Also, it's a lot of work to move to a new operating system. Now I know why most people really balk at that when I suggest they try a new OS, like BSD or Linux. When something works and it takes a lot of work to go to something that might be better, making the change is daunting.

Thinking of moving back to FreeBSD

I've been running OpenSolaris on my laptop for the last year. I've really liked several features a lot, but several problems have cropped up,and the latest one may make me look into going back to FreeBSD.

I upgraded from version 111b to 117 recently and when I rebooted, the boot failed. It appears to failing at the during the zfs initialization. Luckily the way OpenSolaris updates, the previous version is there to boot to (just select it from Grub during the boot). I've tried the update several times and get the same result every time.

It's not the failed upgrade that bothers me so much, although if the next one failed too, it would be a show stopper for me. It's the inability to get help. I think I've posted 3 messages to the help list for OpenSolaris for different problems over the last year. One time I got, "we don't support that and probably never will", and the other 2 (including this latest) were never responded to. If I can't find the answer online, and can't get an answer from the lists, it makes me nervous in running the operating system.

Yes, I know it's a free and I'm not paying for support, so I can't complain about it. However, if I can fix some specific problems, I can't use the operating system. I'm not even suggesting someone else not use it; quite the contrary, I often suggest it to people. And if I ever get another desktop with enough RAM, my plan is to run OpenSolaris against the metal and run a couple of Virtual Boxes all the time to do different work (programming in one, email and writing in one, gaming, etc).

Some things that are giving me headaches that hopefully FreeBSD will fix.

• Cannot run some programs, like Gnucash and TweetDeck, native. I have to setup a VirtualBox running Linux.
• Programs not updated to latest, i.e. pidgin.
• My wireless card is not, and probably never will be supported.
• Power management on AMD64 not supported.

Some things that I will miss, and are keeping me from just moving anyway.

• VirtualBox under OpenSolaris works really well.
• ZFS. By far the best way to format a disk. Snapshots are especially useful. I've seen posts that ZFS is now supported under FreeBSD, just not on the main drive. Hopefully I can setup a home directory with it.
  
• Java just works, and is relatively easy to setup (have you ever done that on BSD?)
• The update process. Using ZFS to setup a new mountpoint to install to, so that the previous version is not overwritten and can be booted to is brilliant. Really makes upgrading a no stress operation.

This weekend I will try to get everything backed up in a way that I can move it to any operating system. If I have time, I may reformat the drive and give half to FreeBSD and leave half to do OpenSolaris again so I can go back and forth.

CSV Export in Bugzilla

Bugzilla was incorrectly exporting CSV files so that Excel could not understand them. It was adding extra characters to the file.

The problem was because of the file format of bugzilla\template\en\default\list\list.csv.tmpl, which on Windows is Dos. Open the file in an editor that can change file format, such as Vim, change the file format to Unix and save the file.

Start work

I finished a podcast about one of my favorite authors (Jim Butcher) and you get a glimpse into his life and one again I am struck that no only do I find the prospect of a career as a writer appealing, the life of a successful author is very appealing. Yes, I realize you can say that the life of anyone successful would be "appealing". I really mean something different by that.

So how I've approached a career as a writer so far has not been successful. Basically hoping I feel better enough, have the time, and the stories come to me is not working. I can no longer blame depression from Gluten Intolerance on it.

Time to really get to work. And time to do it like the professionals do. Have to figure how what that is.

Complex elements in Groovy WS

Update, moved to Just Thinking: Code

I've been trying to use GroovyWS to test Web Services we are creating. Because of the way we coded the Web Services, I could not use the examples that are online, even the ones that are labeled "Complex objects".

If I used :
object.value = "value"
I would get an exception about not being able to convert the value to a javax.xml.bind.JAXBElement

I finally got to a point that I really needed to use some type of scripting language to access the Web Services, or create an entire application in Java to do it. I decided to take a good look at why I could use Groovy. Here is an example as to how I got it to work. It may not be very Groovy, so any suggestions as to how to make it more Groovy are appreciated. I hope this helps someone.

import groovyx.net.ws.WSClient

def getProxy(wsdl, classLoader) {
new WSClient(wsdl, classLoader)
}

def element(tagName, value) {
new javax.xml.bind.JAXBElement(new javax.xml.namespace.QName(tagName), value.class, value)
}

proxy = getProxy('http://localhost/ServicePort?WSDL', this.class.classLoader)
proxy.initialize()

def sampleData = proxy.create("com.sample.application.Sample")

sampleData.name = element("Name", "Item One")
sampleData.type = element("Type", "Misc");

result = proxy.store(sampleData)

println result.

No help from Celiac Community?

Well, I'm kinda bummed. I just read a scathing review of E Hasslebeck's new book and the posts basically say that if you have not been officially diagnosed Celiac or Gluten sensitive, that you better not go gluten-free until you do. Doesn't matter if you can't afford the test or do want to have the tests for whatever reason.

I wonder if I ever need any help from the official Celiac community, I'm going to told I'm not worthy.

I think I'll still pick up the book in a few weeks. It's a difficult lifestyle change and I can use all the help and knowledge I can get.

Gluten-free at Starbucks

The Gluten-free cake arrived at my local Starbucks (look here) for an initial look at it. I happened to go to Starbucks this morning and was surprised to find it, so I decided to try one. I was unhappy at first, because they had one unwrapped in the case, along with the other gluten-filled pastries (cross-contamination). I asked if they had one still wrapped and they did. Here is my review of it.

Having had gluten-free baked goods already, I was ready for it to be dry, dense, overly sweet, and have a funny aftertaste. Pleasantly I was wrong.

I found it to be very moist, almost too much. It was a little dense and the combination had me worried that it would become mushy in the mouth. It never did, but it will take some getting used to to "trust it".

It was not too sweet. I found that part to be very pleasant. The orange flavor was not overpowering, although I would not have minded that. The almond flavor was also not very strong, which would have been a deal breaker for me. I love almonds, but I hate almond flavoring.

The taste was great and there was no strange aftertaste. That's the biggest problem I've had with gluten-free pastries so far. It sounds strange, but I really enjoyed it not being there.

The shape really makes you think of a muffin, but the texture is all wrong for that. It is more cake like, but a dense cake. Almost like the types of cakes that are soaked in some liquid (I've never had a rum cake, but this is the texture I would imagine one to be). For a cupcake, and especially for a muffin, it was very dense.

Importantly, I would like this even if I did not have an intolerance to gluten.

If you are meeting a friend for coffee or picking up something quick for breakfast, this is a great addition to what Celiacs can choose. Just don't let them give you the open one in the case. Those of you that don't have gluten problems will like it too. I would like to see more companies think about the gluten intolerant, so give it a try. If you like it, support it by buying one occasionally and may be we'll see more of it.

Undiagnosed Celiac

Since this blog is about what's on my mind and the gluten-free/Celiac thing is on my mind a lot, I probably should cover it here. One thing I want to get into is whether to try and get Diagnosed or not.

Always start from the beginning.

For the last several years, my wife and I have been trying to figure out why I've been having several health problems. We did not think they were all related, so I seen the doctor about some of them, but not mentioned other ones during those sessions. Some of them were starting to get worrisome, especially the inability to concentrate (fuzzy brain). We had blamed everything from lack of sleep to stress.

About 8 months ago, a friend of Patty's was diagnosed with Celiac disease. Patty felt that her friend's symptoms were very close to my own. At that time, we did not have the money to pay for a lot of tests and or the time and energy to attempt to convince my doctor I was not becoming a hypochondriac. So we decide instead to just go on a gluten-free diet and see if that change anything. We also began seriously researching gluten intolerance.

After reading several books and online articles, the most helpful being Gluten-Free Living for Dummies. I had about 80% of the symptoms listed in the Dummies book. Also, a lot of the misdiagnoses listed were things we had thought I might have, including IBS, leaky gut, migraines, depression. Over the last 6 years or so, I was even developing a blistering skin condition, which I had no idea was connected to anything, but was named and explained in the book as DH.

And I improved considerably. It's has not been 100%, but many many improvements. The DH is mostly gone, only occasional small outbreaks. The fuzzy brain problem comes back occasionally, but the depression seems to be all but gone. My dry skin problems seem to be clearing up.

Meanwhile, I seem to be becoming a lot more sensitive to gluten. A few months ago, I forgot to say something to one of my Pastors and he handed me a communion waiver. Since it bothers me that I cannot partake that part of communion, I accepted it and ate it. I was incredibly sick for about a week after. Occasionally I get sick again, but can usually trace it back to something that MIGHT have gluten in it. Eating at a restaurant is no longer fun, especially eating out with friends or team outings from work. The responses I get vary between, "are you sure you can't..." to "oh that's just terrible, I'm so sorry". Some places I can't eat anything at all.

I did not see the doctor at the beginning of these because of high deductibles on my health insurance and I did not have the time or energy for the multiple tests to convince my doctor and because I did not want to go through a cycle of "try this medicine/treatment, no that didn't work...". Especially when what I've found so far seems to be working.

Now I have insurance that does not have high upfront deductibles (it's a Health Saving program, which I think is great), but after the initial amount my company has put in, I do have a large out of pocket cost (then regular insurance kicks in). Do I go ahead and go seem my doctor and see about getting an actual Diagnoses? From what I read, to get an actual diagnoses, I will have to start eating gluten again, so they have something to test. I can't do that, because of the fuzzy brain problem really effects my job performance. Would it be a waste of time to talk to the doctor without eating gluten?

If I go to the doctor, what do I do if she does some tests, they come back negative, and she says it's all in my head, go get a pizza?

What do I do if she says I have to eat gluten for a month so I can have a proper test?

Is it worth the time and (especially) the money going through a whole bunch of test for other issues, that I'm already sure I don't have?

Question on Twitter

Ok, I still have not found my "voice" on twitter, but I have noticed something. Since I've followed a couple of high profile twitters, I've gotten a lot of people following me now. Now I'm certain it's a case of them wanting to build followers themselves (for the most part). I have no illusions that is is because they are interested in what I have to say.

At first I followed anyone that followed me first. Recently I've stopped doing that and even unfollowed a few, because I'm just not that interested in what they have said and it causes me to miss others that I do want to follow. To little signal-to-noise.

So, should I be following those who simply follow me? It would be great if I could filter the tweets, and do so by default. Or hide those I don't want to see all the time.

What for Twitter?

I signed up for Twitter recently. Mostly it was to get the riksca account, although I don't believe it was at risk. Also, I occasionally run across some writer or such that posts on Twitter that I would like to follow.

Now that I'm there, what do I do? I don't really care to inform the world what I'm doing every hour of the day. If you want to know what I'm having for lunch, call me. Better yet, I'll meet you someplace and we can talk over lunch (has to have a gluten-free menu). It's not that I'm a closed person. Ask me how I'm doing and I'll probably tell you in details you aren't interested in. But I'm also not the type to go out and announce what's going on in my life, as if the world really cared.

I've talked already about being on Facebook. Facebook, for me, has become the "hi, how ya doing" forum. I can keep track of friends near and far, and throw out cool or otherwise pertinent things going on in my life. I had originally tied my Twitter posts to my Facebook posts so they would update each other. After being teased by someone for a rather technical post, I undid that. It will remain that way until I find what I want to write about on Twitter.

Which brings me to the reason for all these means of communication (Blogger, Facebook, Twitter), which is to get practice and time writing. My long term goal is to have a career as a writer (when I say long term, I really mean it. I'm talking 20 years). Yes, I know that time spent on these forums is time I'm not spending writing something I can sell, but it does give me practice writing something for someone else to read. Possibly (if anyone ever reads this), I can even get feedback on my writing.

So back to the point; what will I use Twitter for? Since it's more for me, and not to get a following in a way, I'll continue to post what I'm thinking about, especially if it's something that would benefit from feedback. Eventually, I'm sure I'll find my "voice".

Facebook black hole got me

I don't do computer games much partially because I'm usually in front of the computer for long hours each day programming or writing. Recently my sister got me to signup for Facebook so we can share pictures, etc., of our respective families. Since she still lives in the South and I've been in the Mid-West for a little more than 20 years, we have not kept up as much as I would really like.

I had resisted joining online social sites because of simliar reasons to why I don't do computer games. I'm on the computer a lot anyway, why do I want take more of my social relationships online.

After being on for a little while, I found that I could reconnect to people I went to high school with. People that were important to me more than 20 years ago. I could reconnect, find out how they are doing, what they are doing, and kinda track how things are going for them. It's been a good thing for that, but has really taken a lot of time away from other things I do on a computer. Since I can't give up time programming, as it pays the bills, it has cut drastically into time I should be writing. Hopefully I can recapture some of the time, while still keeping in contact with friends both old and new.

Back to Chrome, for now

Since I've found that Read It Later can be used via bookmarklets, and I've been having some proxy trouble with Firefox, I've tried using Chrome again at work.

I still like the fact that is feels much faster. Everything from launching to browsing to certain pages seems to be snapper than other browsers. However, I've found that a lot of things do not work well in Chrome. So I have to browsers open. I have Chrome typically running my gmail account. Firefox loaded to test my work and also to go to several intranet sites. The latter is especially good because I have IE Tab loaded, and several internal sites only work under IE. With IE Tab, I can load these sites under Firefox, with IE embedded.

What really surprises me is how many Google sites/apps don't work quite right under Chrome, although those seem to get fixed quickly.

Chrome is, for me, becoming a good appliance for several functions, including email and news reading. For a while at least, I will continue to run two browsers.

Sci-Fi => SyFy

As a blogger (somewhat) that is a Science Fiction Fan and wannabe writer, I guess I should comment on the news that the Sci-Fi Channel is changing it's name to SyFy.

In short and up front, I don't like it. Now you know my bias.

As much as I've been a fan of Science Fiction, both written, small screen, or big screen, I've not been a fan of the Sci-Fi Channel for sometime. I'm still irritated at them from years ago when I sat my 5 year old daughter down to watch Star Trek (the original) and a very explicit commercial for one of the Chucky movies came on. I had to dive across the couch for the remote to change the channel. For years after that, I did not watch Sci-Fi Channel without the remote in my hand.

I've never been a fan of horror. There are some exceptions. But, for instance, I liked Aliens much better than Alien. Don't like any of the slasher movies at all. Sci-Fi channel has said in the past that they are not just Science Fiction, but also include Horror, Speculative Fiction, etc.

The Sci-Fi Channel has done some things that I've really liked. Eureka is still one of my favorite shows; what ever happened to it? I liked the Dresden Files, even though it's nothing like the books, and was irritated when they canceled that at the last minute. Loved it when they picked up the Stargate series (and was irritated with how they treated that in the end). There seems to be a trend there.

For full disclosure, and this would probably get me in trouble if anyone actually read my blog, I've never been able to get into the new Battlestar Galactica. It's a bit too dark for me and is much more of a drama than a Science Fiction story. Every time I've tried to watch it, I get the feeling the theme is, how far can humanity fall under stress, as opposed to how high can we reach if pushed. You can get that type of story from daytime soaps, or watching politics.

Sci-Fi Channel used to be one of the first places I looked if I was looking for something to watch, I was often disappointed, but sometimes there would be gold. SyFy will be just another channel on the dial like WGN or USA Network. If I happened to find something good to watch, great. I will not be going out of my way to find it though.

Another thing I like about Virtual Box

In a previous job, I had to be able to VPN into work to support the applications I worked on. Occasionally I would even work from home by connecting my work desktop from my Mac at home via the VPN. I would be irritated that I could not access anything outside the Mac, except through the VPN, and they blocked some Internet access.

In my newest job, I also have VPN access, but so far can only do it from Windows. I don't run Windows on any of the computers I have in my house, except through Virtual Box. As I was setting things up on my OpenSolaris laptop, I noticed that I could continue to get my email, stream audio from Z95 on the Gulf Coast, and use my web browser normally in OpenSolaris, even though the Windows virtual machine was VPN'd into work.

The separation also protects the work network. There is no network traffic to the virtual machine that the VPN does not control, so it's effectively like two different machines on my home network.

I love it when I can multitask in a productive way.