Author: robert

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Back To PHP!

The more things change, the more they stay the same.
First day on the job, and I have been assigned the role of “PHPUnit tester”

Looking up PHPStorm IDE, and PHPUnit integration. Trying to plan out how to write unit tests for this project.
It’s going to be challenging and yet super easy at the same time.

I’m kinda excited about trying to get Selenium integrated for automating functional testing.
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/how-to-use-selenium-2-with-phpunit/

 

https://github.com/sebastianbergmann/phpunit-selenium/blob/master/Tests/Selenium2TestCaseTest.php

 

PHP is still awesome. And here is whats new in PHPUnit 3.3

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rsync for server transition

So I am moving one of my websites off to its own dedicated sever.

Couple of reasons: mainly I wanted to use the 3TB drive I got, and also I need to put this domain up on its own IP for SSL security.

I’ve copied the code over and it seems to functioning fine. Now I just have to perfect the SSL cert install. Which I goofed up once already.

It’s something I do rarely. So its always ‘I gotta look it up’ situation. So in the mean time, I will keep the systems synchronized with an hourly rsync command.

sudo crontab -e
@hourly rsync -e ssh -a $HOME/ myuser@officeserv:

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Buying more insurance!

Thanks to KForce’s pain in the butt ‘rules’ and the fact that I really want to work at ABC, I had to fill out a nine page form to buy even more insurance. Man. I can’t even enjoy the downtime I have between jobs, because of the red tape and headaches of this industry.

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Had to setup ProxyPass in Apache2

I did some crazy stuff with ProxyPass in my development environment like:

Setting up a reverse proxy using Apache in Ubuntu:

1. Install reverse_proxy module

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-proxy-html

2. Install libxml if it is not already installed.

apt-get install libxml2-dev

3. Load the modules in apache2.conf file

LoadModule  proxy_module         /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_proxy.so
LoadModule  proxy_http_module    /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_proxy_http.so
LoadModule  headers_module       /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_headers.so
LoadModule  deflate_module       /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_deflate.so
LoadFile    /usr/lib/libxml2.so

4. Say you want to forward all requests starting with /foo to http://bar.com then add the following to your apache2.conf file

ProxyPass /foo/  http://bar.com/

5. Bounce Apache and you are good to go.

So far this the best I can do when it comes to preserving apache’s dominance of the port. But I haven’t been able to get the  some naming out of the URL, because proxy pass actually wants /something as the ‘gateway’ to the destination.

Anyway, I am trying to get contact campaigns up online.

I am pretty sure this is like the second or third time this blog came up in my search results.

I like it.

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Dell Suffering: A Scanner Darkly

lol. Okay that’s a dirty trick that should get me some traffic. 🙂

Anyways. The printer is finally up on the network and working great. I couldn’t be happier with that right now.
But I am stuck at a new problem. I can’t configure the scanner to ‘Scan to PC’ or to ‘Scan to FTP’ correctly.
Oh sure, there is a drop down in the printer’s web interface and tool box software.
But the drop down only gives you the choice of which do you wish to use, SMB / FTP, changing the selection doesn’t make input boxes appear or anything.
You would think the printer is not psychic, and needs to have host, username, and password information entered somewhere.

But alas, I am left in a Death Cap Daze, staring at the printer, my senses and cognitive abilities distorted, and like Keanu Reeves, all I can do is utter a: ‘Woohh.’

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Dell Suffering

Yes, I know.

I complain A LOT.

But when you waste like an hour trying to get your 1355cnw printer on the wireless network, what else are you going to do!
First, the printer itself:

I can’t make heads or tails of the experience / display / setup process. Its horrid. I feel like I’m using an interface from the 80’s.
Not just in design of the external panel, or buttons, or other hardware components. But the over experience itself. The constant restarts, the non responsive menu.
This is poor product design from the soul to the heart of the printer and even the external support for the product, the dell website, has a horrible user experience.

So second poor product from dell, their website:

I believe the dell team should realize that the first page result for the search query “1355cnw drivers” results as the product detail / buy page being the first result.
You would think that a product’s detail page would contain on it, all pertinent links to the product. Such as the drivers. The word drivers is no where easily found above the fold, but it does exist in the footer.

So having not found a direct link to the specific drivers, I clicked back, and went on to the second result.

But this was the download page for the Mac version. At least I am assuming its the mac version because it has ‘_Mac’ in the name. No where does it say for which type platform or version or processor type on the download page.

Wait, it gets worse!

So having to go to the driver downloads home, I try to search for the printer. I choose  ‘Select product from my products’ or a link to that says something to that effect.  The resulting page is a login form. I am thinking that once I login into dell, they will know what printer I bought. But the list is empty, even after I click on it, and login. I am stuck staring at a page with almost nothing on it. So I go back and select ‘Choose from product list’ and begin to refine the search down.

Finally I arrive at my product download page, select three items to download, which is also a f*king confusing page as list multiple drivers with confusing labeling system, and get prompted with an ‘INSTALL OUR DOWDNLOADER  ON YOUR SYSTEM’ prompt.

G*d Dang it.  Oh, man, I am just trying to scan a check so I can start my contract with KForce, and a routine printer installation has become a nightmare.

I have to download, before I can download. Dell, KISS my shiny metal a**.

 

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Apache Proxy for Tomcat

So I am working on this ContactCampaigns.com site in my spare time to keep my skills sharp.
Looks like I need to setup Apache as a proxy, even for development purposes.

Wish me luck, I’m playing around with the directions I found here:
http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/TomcatReverseProxy

________

Okay, I totally bypassed those directions and did this instead:

 

<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerName contactcompaigns.local

DocumentRoot “C:\Users\Robert\springsource3\emailcampaigner\web-app”
<Directory   “C:\Users\Robert\springsource3\emailcampaigner\web-app”>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>

ProxyRequests Off
ProxyVia On

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/$
RewriteRule ^/$ http://localhost:8080/emailcampaigner [P,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(css|js|swf|img|media|video|html|d2c-deploy)/.*|crossdomain\.xml$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://localhost:8080/$1 [P,L]

</VirtualHost>

______________

I have no idea what I am doing here, and starting to think about using http://tuckey.org/urlrewrite/.
The problem here is running Tomcat on port 80.

I much rather master the art of configuring Apache correctly.

 

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Contact Campaigns dot Com

Its Saturday,

And I decided to put my recently learned Grails Fu to the test. The concept: Email Marketing System.
I’ve been using SugarCRM to cheat around services like MailChimp and SurveyMonkey.

But I think an email sender is very similar in design terms to any other business process that can be automated.
Which is what I just finished working on, automating a business process in a web based app using Grails.

So I’ve quickly fired it up, everything at the latest version (STS 3.1.0, Grails 2.1.1) , installed spring-security-core for accounts management, and in about an hours time, I have most of the core internals designed.
Very RAD.

At this rate, I might be able to launch the site by next week.