blogs.4point.com

SpaceSniffer: Italian for "Ridiculously Good Freeware Disk Analyzer"

2010-02-21T21:09:16Z

Like many other people, I suspect, no matter how big my hard drive is, I somehow find a way to fill it up. Even if you have enough space, with the ridiculously large hard drives on the market these days, it can quickly become difficult for a human brain to recall everything that's on there.

In recent months, I've been slowly squeezed out of disk space by Torrent downloads and various installs (all of them necessary, of course.) On a number of occasions, I've tried going manually through my disk, deleting/uninstalling things as I go, but it really hasn't freed up much space. I needed help to find out what was leeching so much of my precious Gigs.

Enter SpaceSniffer

This weekend, I finally finished Half Life 2 (awesome!) after a long hiatus (my latest saved game was from April 2009.) I have had that game and the separate Episode Pack for well over a year but with the move to 4Point and all the exciting things going on I haven't had much time to sit at my PC for anything else than work.

Well, long story short, I finished off Half Life 2 this afternoon but had no room left to install the Episode Pack. Enter SpaceSniffer, a little Java-based freeware app that analyzes the used space on your Hard Drive and presents it in a visual way, in real-time no less. Now I finally know where all my Gigs have gone.

Intuitive and -- dare I say -- Kinda Fun

SpaceSniffer crawls through your directories, one at a time, doing an analysis of the directory tree and presenting its findings as it goes. It's a little difficult to describe how it looks, but the UI is slowly sub-divided into boxes representing the folders on the drive, from the top-level and on down. As the process crawls deeper into the tree and the visual boxes get smaller, SpaceSniffer begins to hide the overwhelming details, allowing you to concentrate on what's relevant. If you ever want to see those hidden details, you can just click on a box and it will be divided into sub-boxes representing it's contents. très cool.

So, if you are running out of disk space, or would just like to do a little disk clean-up, this is the program you've been looking for. SpaceSniffer runs on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and WIndows 7.

Thumbs up from here to Uderzo Umberto for creating such a polished, useful and focused piece of software. Grazie mille!

Your Subversion Repository - Treat it with Respect

2010-02-05T23:47:54Z

I learned a lesson this week: it's called good manners when it comes to the subversion repository. Apparently it does not like it when you just randomly delete files on your local system, add in new ones, and then try to check them in. It throws up its hands in horror and red flags go up everywhere. Go figure.

It all started when I started working on a revamp of our website. I copied my local website on my laptop, and then working from there, created an entire new website structure and design on my local machine. Fired it off back and forth with a design company working on our new home page and menu bar, and never gave a thought to my existing website that was merrily being checked in and out of subversion (using Coda).

When it came to uploading the new site and flipping the switch...I simply deleted the old site using Finder and added the new.

This was really the wrong thing to do. Really wrong. For a couple of reasons:

First of all, in doing this, I also deleted the .svn files (hidden). The removed files also had not been correctly deleted in the repository...so it thought they were still there, but had red flagged them as missing.

Secondly, about five months previously some other changes had been done to our site by another website company and the changes had been made on the server. I did not get a list of changes made to the site and I was unaware that certain folders and files had not been downloaded and committed to subversion, because I did not know they had been changed or added.

This means that when I copied my local folder to work on recreating a new website, I then missed these files. The local copy I handed off to the new website company for further changes and we all merrily went on our way not realizing that certain folders and files had not been downloaded and checked in.

In short, the entire thing was a mess and took about three hours to clean up in the subversion, plus another five hours tracking down the previous changes that had been lost in the process.

Lesson learned. Real good.

In the future, I will treat my subversion repository with a lot more respect. I hereby decree that from now on, I will:

not allow anyone to make server side changes without letting me know what they've changed and what I need to download and commit
download the entire site, if server side changes do occur and i'm unsure whether or not I've got them all, and carefully commit all changes into the subversion
I will no longer delete folders and files in my local copy using Finder
If I delete files and folders I'll do it in Coda, and appropriately delete them in the subversion
I will carefully monitor my subversion repository and address any red flags when they arise

In short, I promise to understand how subversion works and treat it with respect. I swear.

iPad: Plenty of Shine... but No Flash

2010-01-27T21:07:24Z

[Updated a few hours later to add a couple details I left out in the first draft.]

I just followed the live step-by-step blogging of the iPad release over at Engadget. The device looks pretty much like what I expected and its functionality is pretty much what I expected. It's basically... a giant iPod Touch. (I had expected a camera, though.)

I must admit, however, that its "low" starting price was a pleasant surprise: between $499 and $829. I had predicted something around $800 and hadn't figured on so many different models (6 in all).

According to the hands-on comments from EnGadget and Gizmodo, the iPad has plenty of power (1GHz "A4" CPU) for browsing the web, etc., but no multi-tasking (grrr) and... if you look closely at screen shots of Steve Jobs' demo, you'll notice... The Blue Lego Cube of Disappointment.

All iPhone/iPod Touch owners will recognize it instantly. What it means is that despite its size, power and (much-hyped) promise, the iPad's Mobile Safari has no Flash plug-in.

In his presentation, Steve Jobs called the device "magical". Well why don't you just whip us up some magic there Steve and get Flash to work on your freaking device? I'll bet you a Silicon Valley latté that Adobe will do it for free.

Anyways, enough from me. With your hopes mercilessly dashed once more, all you Flash Platform developers can now return to your regularly scheduled hand-wringing.

The Magic of Panic's Coda

2010-01-23T22:01:41Z

Currently I'm revamping our corporate website. Updating content, rearranging pages, actually doing a complete overhaul. I'm taking a momentary break to worship at the altar of Coda.

Coda, to be honest, was one of the biggest reasons I wanted a Mac. I had heard about it, read reviews, and envied those who had Macs.

But I didn't quite understand just how good it actually is. I'd set my standards low from working with multiple inferior products. The last time I revamped the website was pre-Mac. It was painful. I had limited access to pages, rearranging stuff was a nightmare, and modifying the HTML was a nightmare.

This time around, Coda makes everything easy. For example: I've got blocks of HTML I want to re-use, but not necessarily in a global search and replace (which is fast and easy with Coda too, btw). I need to make tiny modifications to it, but don't want to sit and retype it all each time. Nor do I want to go back to pages where it's been used and copy and paste it each time.

I was thinking, wow, a clipboard function would be really handy. Seems logical, I look around, see "Clips" on the bottom of the Coda UI and go: "hunh". Yup. It's a full clipboard with the ability to save clips of HTML in different folders, make them accessible global or just by site (I manage several sites...this is worth a lot to me), and even better than the average clipboard...I can EDIT the HTML at whim if I find that I'm making a particular change on a regular basis.

Best of all, it's an overlay clipboard that I can move around. I just drag it to my second desktop, let it sit there...and it's a simple double click to add the HTML to a page. I don't have to keep re-opening to access what I need.

It may not seem like much. But when working on a lot of pages with limited time...I have to say Coda has shaved hours, if not days off of my work.

Add to this subversion accessibility, the ability to share pages between users, terminal access through the main UI, and a host of other really important functions...and Coda offers everything I need to manage a website.

Thank you Panic.

Obscurity is not Security: Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones

2009-12-17T18:42:18Z

[Update:The security vulnerability has been fixed]

A word of caution to my fellow developers: if you think your software is secure because it's obscure enough that nobody would bother to hack it, then you might be in for an unhappy surprise.

Case In Point

Predator drone firing a Hellfire missile

(source: US Air Force)

According to the Wall Street Journal and a follow-up report from l'Agence France Presse, Department of Defense officials have admitted that video feeds from Predator surveillance drones were routinely intercepted by "Iranian-backed insurgents" in Iraq and Al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan.

Perhaps it would all make for a better story if I could tell you that it required a vast conspiracy of ex-KGB agents using supercomputers hidden in bunkers under the Urals to crack the video's NSA-level COSMIC Top Secret encryption, but unfortunately, real life is slightly less dramatic (and much more deadly). The UAVs streamed the video in an unencrypted form, making it possible for a rag-tag assemblage of insurgents often with no access to the Internet to intercept the feeds using a "commercial off the shelf" (COTS) satellite video capture tool, SkyGrabber (MSRP: $25 US) and laptops. The minimal effort it took probably didn't even distract them from their day job manufacturing IEDs and blowing up innocents.

From the WSJ article:

The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control. The U.S. government has known about the flaw since the U.S. campaign in Bosnia in the 1990s, current and former officials said. But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn't know how to exploit it, the officials said. (emphasis added)

The military remained unaware of the practice up until a laptop belonging to an "Iranian-backed Shiite militant" was captured on which Military Intelligence discovered intercepted video footage. (I'm frankly surprised it didn't show up on YouTube.)

The Lesson: Obscurity is not Security

It is supposedly unlikely that the video was of much use to the extremists and while the whole story seems a little ridiculous, it surely is no laughing matter. Here's hoping some heads will roll because "incompetence" isn't strong enough a word.

As software developers, we're usually required to think about security as a key requirement of any system. However, when you're tasked with developing software for a $3+ million unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), you'd better pay attention to these "details" because somebody very dangerous surely is. When that happens, it's a whole lot more than just data you're protecting.

Further reading

The original piece from the Wall Street Journal
Wikipedia article on Security through Obscurity

Cross-Compiling Java/C#/Ruby to iPhone

2009-11-30T15:10:05Z

(This is a posting I started a while back (on my brother's b-day in May) but didn't publish at the time... don't remember why.)

Cross-Compiling C/C++ to Actionscript using Alchemy

As you may well know, Adobe Labs has developed an exciting tool called Alchemy that leverages the LLVM open source project to cross-compile C/C++ code to a common run-time byte code. This byte-code is then cross-compiled to Actionscript code which is then compiled to Actionscript byte code (ABC). The earliest and most striking example of what can be accomplished with Alchemy was the port of Doom to Flash that Dave released on Newgrounds within a week of Alchemy's launch. He has now released the Doom Triple Pack which includes the bad boys Doom, Heretic and Hexen.

The good people of Automata Studios helped Adobe develop one of the first projects for demonstrating how Alchemy works. Here is their write-up on the subject.

Cross-Compiling to Objective-C (and more!) Using XML-VM

Another development that has come down the pipe is some research done by Arno Puder and his colleagues at San Fancisco State University. Their work involves using open-source tools to transform code from one language (e.g. Java, C#) to an intermediate XML format which can then be transformed to another language (in this example, Objective-C). The project is called XMLVM.

Prof. Puder presented how all of this works at the Google offices and the video of this presentation is available on YouTube. It is a very cool idea and demonstrates once again (as all software does, really) the potential aggregate power of using many small, simple constructs. Byte code statements are converted to an XML format which can then be transformed to Objective-C. While the final code might not be as optimal as the original, it will do the same thing. My guess is that the toughest part would probably be handling language elements that don't exist in both the source and target languages (i.e. garbage collection, loose typing/auto-boxing, annotations). Perhaps you'd have to do away with overly "native" parts of a language language when writing the "from" code. The good professor covers part of this challenge in his presentation.

While the target language discussed is Objective-C, as you can see from the diagram above, the XMLVM project allows you to cross-compile to and from a number of different languages.

]]> Enjoy the video. (Hat tip to DiamondTears for bringing this to my attention.)

Compiling Flash Apps to Native iPhone Apps in Flash CS5 (in Windows!)

At AdobeMAX 2009, new functionality for the Flash Professional CS5 was demoed showing that this upcoming version will allow Flash (and Flex) applications to be compiled directly to an iPhone application (i.e. an IPA). In fact, some apps developed using this functionality are already available in the AppStore. Info, video and more can be found here.

From what I've been told, this functionality is implemented using cross-compilation and therefore necessarily leads to somewhat bloated/un-optimal apps. Frankly, I think that should be expected. With time this can surely be improved, but for now, I think we'll take what we can get.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has thought to themselves: Will I finally be able to develop for iPhone/iPod Touch without having to shell out for a Mac!?!

Adobe plans to launch a public Beta of Flash CS5 later this year. Once I get to try it out, I'll let you know what I think.

Final Thoughts

One thing's for sure: watching these videos and reading the documentation gives me flashbacks of the more interesting classes from studying Computer Science in university. The beauty of working in this field is that even the coolest, most complex technology is not only within your grasp to use and understand, but also to implement.

As a developer, I have discussed with my brother what platform is most attractive: iPhone or Android? I own an iPod Touch already, but am unable to develop native apps since I don't have a couple grand to put down on a Mac (much higher priorities: student loan, big screen HDTV, next gen console). Android will support Java and (from what I've been told) Flash, but I don't want or need a cell phone. The jury's still out but it will be fun either way.

As always, I invite you to post any comments you might have on this subject.

Useful SQL Queries

2009-10-28T19:56:53Z

You might find the following queries quite handy for your day to day SQL operations:

1. Get the total number of records in a table:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM TABLE_NAME;

SQL User queries in Oracle

2009-10-28T15:16:47Z

Here are a few useful user SQL code snippets in Oracle:

1. To create a user

CREATE USER username
IDENTIFIED BY password
DEFAULT TABLESPACE USERS
TEMPORARY TABLESPACE TEMP;

2. Grant user privileges:

GRANT CONNECT, RESOURCE, CREATE SESSION, CREATE VIEW TO username;

3. Grant all privileges:

GRANT all privileges TO username;

4. Delete a user or to delete a user and the associated user schema

drop user username cascade;

SQL : Get a list of tables,views and sequences for a given user

2009-10-09T20:02:35Z

This SQL Snippet get a list of all the tables under a user:

select * from user_objects where object_type = 'TABLE';

This SQL Snippet will get you a list of all the sequences in a DB Schema for the user tables

select * from user_sequences

This SQL Snippet will get you a list of all the view in a DB Schema for the user tables

select * from user_views;

Happy Coding :)

Finding out the Oracle Version using SQL

2009-10-05T15:00:16Z

If you ever have to find out the version of Oracle using SQL, use the following SQL command and it will spit out all the details.

SQL
SELECT * FROM V$VERSION;

OUTPUT

BANNER
----------------------------------------------------------------
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Prod
PL/SQL Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production
CORE    10.2.0.1.0    Production
TNS for 32-bit Windows: Version 10.2.0.1.0 - Production
NLSRTL Version 10.2.0.1.0 - Production
----------------------------------------------------------------

Happy Coding :)

Changing the default port number in Apache Tomcat

2009-09-11T13:25:26Z

I had to run two webservers on my machine at the same time. Since both of them used port 8080 , the easiest way to run the two servers at the same time was to modify the port number on one of them.

Here is how we can change the port number in Apache Tomcat:

1. Navigate to : Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat X.X\conf

2. Modify the Server.xml file:

Modify this to another non-conflicting port ( I changed it to 8888)

Happy Coding

XML Manipulation in Flex and ActionScript

2009-08-28T18:03:18Z

There are lots of crazy ways of manipulating XML in ActionScript.Here are a few simple tips and tricks on manipulating XML in Actionscript.

Declaring an XML Variable: An XML variable can be created in ActionScript as follows :

                 var tempSearchXML:XML =
                                              023






2. Preview an XML Variable : An XML variable can be previewed in an Alert Box by converting the XML to a string object

            Alert.show(tempSearchXML.toString());

3. Getting the value of a Node in the XML:

           Alert.show(tempSearchXML.branchName.toString());

4. Setting the Value of Node in the XML : The following code sets the value of a node 'contfirstname '.

            tempSearchXML.contfirstname ="Armaghan";

5. Setting / Changing / Updating the Node Attribute in the XML: The following code snippet changes the name of a Node from 'contlastname' to 'lastname'.

            tempSearchXML.contlastname.setName("lastname") ;

5. Delete a Node in the XML: The following code snippet deletes a Node called 'contphone' in the XML.

            delete tempSearchXML.contphone;

6. Adding a Node in the XML: The following code snippet adds a Node called 'text' in the XML and sets its value at the same time.

            tempSearchXML.text ="Taylor" ;

Happy Coding :)

Dump the Ant build information to a log file

2009-08-10T20:18:56Z

If you ever need to dump the build information from the command prompt console into a log file, just add a -logfile .log parameter after your build file call in the command prompt console and you're good to go.

Happy Coding :)

Default Value in QueryParam Annotations

2009-08-07T14:37:11Z

In order to remove any null pointer exceptions while using RestEasy Annotations, you can always pass a default value and handle it appropriately in the Data Access Objects ( If you are using one. This ensures that there are no null pointer excpetions from the returning classes.

Here is a code snippet to do just this:

public StreamingOutput getUsersSummaryList(@QueryParam("active") @DefaultValue("0") String active ){}

PermGen space error (Hibernate, JPA)

2009-08-07T14:27:28Z

If you ever come across a PerGen space error in Hibernate or JPA...it refers to the java.lang.outfspacememoryerror (Your webapp is out of memory). PermGen is used to store the class definations ( and I do mean all the Loaded Classes ). This error refers to the heap space being full due to the large number of classes.

Generally you can recover from these errors by restarting your WebServer. If you want to really fix it, do one of the following 2:

1. Hibernate: Change the hibernate.properties file from "hibernate.bytecode.provider javassist" to hibernate.bytecode.provider cglib".

2. JPA: Change the persistance.xml file from to

Happy Coding :)