Assembla packages SVN hosting, Trac, Wikis, Real Time Chat, Ticketing, and emails on repository commits. “It’s too hard to set up” is usually an excuse to not use SCM tools… but Assembla gets you going quickly. We now use it on BibleShark. Ask me if you want to take a look at our setup on Assembla.

Here’s a screenshot of a commit I did a while back for Google Analytics ga.js update:

RescueTime tracks what application has your focus and for how long. I can’t wait to see this product grow, they got their initial funding by YCombinator.

Here’s a screenshot of a recent RescueTime:

Xobni adds message sender/context, a better search, and email analytics your Outlook.

Here’s a screenshot of the pane it adds to your inbox:

Here’s a screenshot of inbox analytics from Xobni:

Comment if you want an invite, I’ve got a few left.

Got to take a half day at work today. WOO!

My rest included:

• Registered my car (~$135)
• Registered to vote ($free)
• Renewed my driver’s license ($20)
• Paid the electric bill ($97)
• Got Groceries ($30)
• Sent in my measurements for Clayton’s wedding ($30)

$312 total. ARG, but at least I’m not nervous about getting pulled over.

andy@frostbite:~$ uname -a
Linux frostbite 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Feb 12 07:42:25 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux


andy@frostbite:~$ history | awk '{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’ | sort -rn | head

64 sudo
61 vim
36 mysql
34 ls
33 sed
23 cd
20 cat
19 clear
13 netstat


And it’s going to be awesome.

• DAVE MATTHEWS BAND
• WIDESPREAD PANIC
• JOHN MAYER
• 311
• PHIL LESH AND FRIENDS
• PRIMUS
• THIEVERY CORPORATION
• SNOOP DOGG
• MODEST MOUSE
• MICHAEL FRANTI AND SPEARHEAD
• GOV’T MULE
• SLIGHTLY STOOPID
• STS9
• COLBIE CAILLAT
• RODRIGO Y GABRIELA
• THE BLACK KEYS
• KELLER WILLIAMS WITH MOSELEY, DROLL & SIPE
• YONDER MOUNTAIN STRING BAND FEATURING JON FISHMAN
• GOGOL BORDELLO
• CITIZEN COPE
• THE DISCO BISCUITS
• MEDESKI MARTIN AND WOOD
• DEREK TRUCKS AND SUSAN TEDESCHI SOUL STEW REVIVAL
• SAM BEAM OF IRON AND WINE
• DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS
• MICKEY HART BAND FEATURING STEVE KIMOCK AND GEORGE PORTER JR.
• OF MONTREAL
• ETOWN RADIO SHOW
• THE DRESDEN DOLLS
• GOMEZ
• ATMOSPHERE
• BRETT DENNEN
• TAJ MAHAL
• MIKE GORDON
• ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA
• CRYSTAL METHOD DJ SET
• STATE RADIO
• JJ GREY & MOFRO
• THE GREYBOY ALLSTARS
• THE SECRET MACHINES
• RAILROAD EARTH
• STEEL PULSE
• BETH ORTON
• THE WAILERS FEATURING ELAN
• PERPETUAL GROOVE
• JAKOB DYLAN AND THE GOLD MOUNTAIN REBELS
• A3
• BETTYE LAVETTE
• EMMITT-NERSHI BAND
• INGRID MICHAELSON
• LOTUS
• KYLE HOLLINGSWORTH BAND
• EOTO
• PANJEA WITH MICHAEL KANG
• YARD DOGS ROAD SHOW
• THE BEAUTIFUL GIRLS
• SAGE FRANCIS
• TEA LEAF GREEN
• BASSNECTAR
• PNUMA TRIO
• BROTHER ALI
• DIPLO
• BOOMBOX
• FLOSSTRADAMUS
• THE JUAN MACLEAN
• THE DYNAMITES FEATURING CHARLES WALKER
• GREENSKY BLUEGRASS
• DJ REKHA
• DEAD CONFEDERATE
• TRAMPLED BY TURTLES
• FOUR FINGER FIVE
• MOTION POTION
• DJ ROOTZ
• SOJORN
• BUSDRIVER

Step 1: Go to Events on Facebook.

Step 2: Click to ‘Export Events’ at the top and Copy the URL.

Step 3: Log in to Google Calendar, Select Add, and Add by URL.

Step 4: Paste the URL into the Public Calendar Address Box and Press Add.

Enjoy.

There’s my left elbow after today’s bike wreck. The left pedal fell off while I was riding it back to work.

[whitewhine] Never again am I buying from MSURacers.com classifieds.

I’ve been working on a variety of databases/programming languages/operating systems over the years and I’ve had it with IBM.

IBM doesn’t want you to learn how to use their products. Never ever have I been so frustrated at a company for making such poor product documentation. Then it dawned on me. IBM deliberately makes their documentation/website unreasonably difficult and verbose to tout their support/service business.

I don’t mind IBM hardware very much. The laptop I’m on is a Thinkpad and it works pretty well. A lot of our servers are IBM — and we haven’t had too many issues.

IBM’s software documentation is a completely different story.

Exhibit A: DB2 DECLARE STATEMENT SYNTAX

From IBM’s site:

The DECLARE VARIABLE statement defines a CCSID for a host variable and the subtype of the variable. When it appears in an application program, the DECLARE VARIABLE statement causes the DB2® precompiler to tag a host variable with a specific CCSID. When the host variable appears in an SQL statement, the DB2 precompiler places this CCSID into the structures that it generates for the SQL statement.

That didn’t help me very much. All I want to do have a stored procedure with some local variables.

From vendors that aren’t actively trying to piss me off:

* SQL Server: DECLARE
* MySQL: DECLARE

Exhibit B: Redbook “Linux Connectivity with IBM i5/OS”

This is a 100+ page document. A while ago I wrote a blog post telling anyone who needed this how to do it in about 200 words (minus the background info I provided)

Exhibit C: IBM Director 5.2: Hardware and Software Support Guide

In order to answer the question “Will this product work with our infrastructure?” you have to sift through a 50 page PDF, and oh-so-attrocious Table 6.

Table 6 is lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng:

Who cares? As long as the job gets done…right? Wrong. Solely relying on IBM makes your IT department reliant on IBM, locked-in, and intellectually crippled. Why have pay highly skilled workers if you’re just paying them to be IBM liaisons?

IBM: There’s a better way. Start by ditching the PDFs.

MySQL’s Fulltext Index is very useful. I’ve written a little about it before.

With Bibleshark, we want to provide a text search and a Concordance. We tried reinventing the wheel using PHP, but this is going to be a much easier / more maintenance friendly task.

shell> sudo myisam_ftdump -dv /var/lib/mysql/database/table_name.MYI 6 > words

myisam_ftdump can take all of the words that were indexed by the fulltext index and give you a list similar to this one:


ee6818 0.8787346 zuzim
12981f0 0.8787346 zuzim
175856c 0.8699434 zuzim
20d9e44 0.8787346 zuzim
258c91c 0.8699434 zuzim
2a984c8 0.8877053 zuzim
3023d3c 0.8787346 zuzim
35cd580 0.8787346 zuzim
c0e8 0.8787346 zuzims
1c1d43c 0.8787346 zuzims


Unfortunately, the hex number on the far left does not have any meaning to our database.

Here’s how I got it working:

• Import the words into MySQL.
• First I took the text file from my system, imported it to Excel and exported it as a CSV. (Hint: It’s fixed width.)
• Then, I used SQLyog to import the words into MySQL.
• Next, I ran this php script:

<?php
/* table: scripture_words was the imported table from myisam_ftdump.
site_scripture is our existing scripture table */
mysql_connect("host", "user", "password");
mysql_select_db("database");
$word_sql = "SELECT scripture_word from site_words";
$word_result = mysql_query($word_sql) or die(mysql_error());
while($data = mysql_fetch_assoc($word_result)) {
        $match_sql = "SELECT id FROM site_scripture WHERE
                 MATCH(scripture) AGAINST('" . addslashes($data['scripture_word']) . "')";
        $match_result = mysql_query($match_sql) or die(mysql_error());
        while($match_data = mysql_fetch_assoc($match_result)) {
                $insert_sql = "INSERT INTO scripture_word(word, scripture_id)
                        VALUES('" . addslashes($data['scripture_word']) . "', " . $match_data['id'] . ")";
                @mysql_query($insert_sql);
        }
}
?>

Now the data is built and in a useful format for us to let Django to take care of the rest.

Decent ideas that will fail because most of the people that support them are not “cool”:

• Exhibit A
• Exhibit B

Note: I am not cool.

The IRS has published the Economic Stimulus Payments Information Center [irs.gov - legit source]

There’s a lot of scamming/disinformation going around about the Economic Stimulus Payments.

Here’s what you need to know:

• You can find out when to expect your payment
• You can get a good idea on how much money to anticipate - you can also use the IRS payment calculator, but it requires you have some tax forms

What are you going to buy? I’m strongly considering one of these.