Too much, too fast

July 22, 2010 By 1 Comment

I haven’t had much free time now that I’m running Panoptic full time, but I just want to throw out what I can remember I’ve done just this week alone:

  • Filtered 2008 and 2007 Department of Labor data for Form 5500, creating Excel spreadsheets of the results for a client.
  • Clean up 19,000 splogs from a misconfigured WP MU 2.8 installation, dropping some 130,000 tables in the process. Upgraded to WP 3.0 afterwards.
  • Fixed a SEF URL issue in Joomla! using the sh404SEF component. The site has translations managed by Joom!Fish, which added some complexity.
  • Replaced a client’s Flash-based photo gallery with jQuery and the GalleryView plugin.
  • Started creating a completely customized theme for X-Cart based on provided designs. Got clean URLs working with X-Cart on Lighttpd in the process.
  • Upgraded a client’s WordPress to WP 3.0, scheduling some training hours to walk them through how to use it properly.
  • Migrated a client’s bbPress forum with 5,000 posts to Simple:Forum with InfusionWP. Had to write my own converter script to do the import.
  • Building a customized Amazon EC2 AMI that will run Oracle and AOLserver for a client.

And, it’s only Thursday …

I know I’m seriously under-selling myself at the moment but I need to build up a solid list of excellent testimonials and references before I can seriously charge market rate for the kind of skills I have. I’ll say this: Elance has been a fantastic resource for me, better than all the other freelance job websites out there.

Okay, enough of this. Back to work …

Filed Under: Panoptic 1 Comment

Annoying change in MacOS X 10.5+ Samba clients

July 16, 2010 By 1 Comment

So, my friend Jason asked me:

Why are my MacOS X 10.5+ Samba clients ignoring the “force create mode” and “force directory mode” settings for the share on my Samba server?

He was trying to setgid the directory and force files and directories to be group writable (i.e., “force create mode = 02770” and “force directory mode = 02770“), so that different users creating files and directories on the same share volume that belong to the same group can all write to to them. However, his MacOS X 10.5+ clients were able to ignore these settings somehow.

Turns out, this is a known issue:

The summary is that as of MacOS X 10.5 Leopard, its Samba client uses CIFS UNIX extensions to manipulate permissions, which Samba servers currently don’t enforce restrictions specified by the older “mode” settings. The work-around is to disable these CIFS UNIX extensions on the Samba server by putting “unix extensions = off” in the [global] section of your smb.conf file.

Filed Under: Open Source 1 Comment

Straight No Chaser at Harrah’s in Atlantic City, NJ

July 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment

One of the things that I do with my limited free time is sing in a Barbershop chorus, the Ridgewood Cavaliers of Harmony. I love a good harmony and a cappella music really brings that out.

Straight No Chaser at Harrah's

Last Friday, our friend Daniel Bauer treated Sam and me to the opening night of Straight No Chaser’s new show “With A Twist” at Harrah’s in Atlantic City.

While they don’t sing Barbershop, they’re an awesome a cappella group and seeing them perform live was just magical. They’re performing here in New Jersey through August, so don’t miss this opportunity if you’re in the tri-state area.

Filed Under: Music, New Jersey Leave a Comment

Charlie’s got her own blog

July 7, 2010 By 1 Comment

I can’t believe it … ten years ago, she was just a little shrimp on an ultrasound image, and now … my oldest daughter, Charlene, has her own blog.

Last night, she asked if she could have her own website, and I told her, “We can work on one tomorrow.” I figured if she wasn’t seriously interested, she’d just forget about it. This morning, she didn’t forget about it, and wanted to start working on it before heading off to camp! So, I set up the DNS and installed WordPress 3.0 and let her pick out a theme to start, and set her down to write her first blog post. She didn’t have more than a few minutes to write it before having to head out the door for camp, but I think she did great.

charlene.shiobara.com on 2010-07-07

I’m really excited for her! I think she’s going to have a lot of fun exploring the available themes and learning how to customize them. It could be a great opportunity for her to make the leap from playing around with Scratch to learning PHP.

Filed Under: Family 1 Comment

Using MySQL Meta Data Effectively at ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2010

July 5, 2010 By 2 Comments

Since Oracle owns MySQL through its acquisition of Sun, more Oracle conferences are providing MySQL content. This past Oracle Development Tools User Group (ODTUG) Kaleidoscope 2010 conference from June 27 through July 1 had a whole dedicated track for MySQL.

Using MySQL Meta Data Effectively - title slide thumbnail

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to speak on MySQL metadata, titled “Using MySQL Meta Data Effectively“. Here’s the abstract:

This presentation discusses what MySQL meta data is available including the ‘mysql’ meta schema, the INFORMATION_SCHEMA (I_S) tables first introduced in MySQL 5.0 and extended in MySQL 5.1, storage engine specific INFORMATION_SCHEMA tables, as well as techniques for writing your own INFORMATION_SCHEMA plug-ins. MySQL also provides a number of SHOW commands that provide easily formatted presentation of MySQL meta data. Dossy Shiobara will also discuss some of the limitations and performance implications of the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.

Paper first page thumbnail

You can download the materials from my session here:

Filed Under: Geeking out, MySQL, Open Source, Oracle 2 Comments