Well I told myself I’d regularly keep a log of what’s going on in my tech life – and clearly that hasn’t been happening. Basically due to the school term and a web prototype called GISH-N (Georeference Information System for Horticulture and Nature (a good use of acronyms)) which finally had given me a cause to try out CodeIgniter.

As I close up my books for the beginnings of summer, I plan to open up my laptop and bring you:

• Team Development and CodeIgniter – 6 people, four months, and countless hours of code
• ResNet Quota Monitor for UBC, v2 – meaner, cleaner, and slicker than before – will be available for Windows/Mac/Linux!
• Distributed Computing Framework – working on a system to easily make your Java App rise into the clouds
• Source Version Control – could  Mercurial be replacing SVN in my future?
  Can’t wait to learn about it? See the Google Tech Talk here:
  Props to Nathaniel for bringing this up

See you in the near future!

Now usually I don’t mind snow, but there are certain types you’ll surely recognize that are just plain annoying. The following is my top three.

3. Slush: these little heaps of snow end up mixing with mud and other flavors of crud. You might consider to go outside, but prepare to get wet.

2. Ice: you’ll be taking baby steps as you strategically get from point A to B. You might as well be traversing a minefield, but you’ll get to where you want to go eventually.

CodeIgniter is a powerful object-oriented PHP framework that Nathaniel introduced me too. It saves a lot of time and pain by structuring your PHP-based application in a logical way while providing you the tools you need to easily render forms, safely access databases, and much more with minimal code. It also utilizes the popular Model-View-Controller (MVC) design, commonly seen in Java Enterprise and ASP.

Trademark of CodeIgniter

Unfortunately, CodeIgniter may not run nicely with certain configurations of PHP and non-Apache web servers due to the handling of the PATH_INFO variable (common diagnosis is only being able to hit your index page, no matter what the URL is). The following sets up PHP and Abyss Web Server to handle this issue.

First of all I’d like to state that this blog hasn’t been abandoned – I’ve just been overwhelmed recently with assignments, school projects and finals. It’s also introduced me to developing rich client applications/plug-ins on the Eclipse framework (see these tutorials from Eclipsecon 2005, old, but still very relevant) and sparked some interest in AspectJ and aspect-oriented programming.

Trademark of the Eclipse Foundation

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Eclipse, it’s well known as a Java-based development environment for software development after starting as a project within IBM. WIth Eclipse’s RCP and plug-in development tools, you can develop and deploy your own application on top of the Eclipse application framework.

Left, the Eclipse Java Development Environment developing a rich client application; right, the rich client application running the Eclipse framework

As for current projects; the ResNet Quota Monitor has since been revived with a revamp to the UI and feature improvements. Also, I’m putting together a prototype for a Helpdesk agent assistant environment called the “IT Help Desker”. More on that and many other techy tidbits in the weeks to come!

It’s common to just take it out of the box, hook it into your network, and never touch it again. Remember that routers are miniature computers too! If you have the right hardware and a bit of spare time, you can make these little boxes do more than just share your Internet connection.

Unlocking your router's potential - not like this.

Some common uses include:

• increase signal strength above factory settings
• managing your network from the Internet
• synchronizing a dynaminc dns address
• additional layer of firewall protection and parental control
• turn on your computers remotely
• using it to access a wireless network/increase its range

Interested? There are countless other uses as well.  But how are these features possible, and why aren’t they all available when you buy your router?

Ever wondered how to connect to your home computer from the office, school, or anywhere with an Internet connection? It’s possible, and that’s through a service called dynamic DNS.

Why would you want to have your home computer available on the Internet?

• a web server to share a website or downloadable files
• an ftp server for users (by account or anonymously) to upload and download files
• remotely control your desktop via VNC from another computer, or iPhone/iPod touch
• SSH in to launch X Window-based applications remotely (see my previoius post about this)

Of course, you restrict what your visitor can access using a firewall or router, so that the rest of the files on your computer and computers on the network are safe (you should be doing this anyways!)

xkcd - Map of the Internet

So what’s wrong with finding out your IP address ( example, by http://whatismyipaddress.com/ ) and using this?

• not very friendly for public use (http://72.233.2.54/, compared to a URL, like http://javadocs.wordpress.com)
• subject to change, as controlled by your Internet Service Provider

In this day and age, we expect websites to be more than information vectors. Just like your favourite sports car, not only does it have to get its job done, but it has to get its job done in style. Meet Nathaniel Sabanski, and he’s the Web equivalent of that Aston Martin engineer who puts all the right curves in all the right places.

It’s Nat’s birthday today, so I’d like to wish him a happy birthday! Nat has been my long-time tech collaborator and beta tester; he helped me to solve the Tetris Cube puzzle earlier this year and run several compatibility tests without any hesitation over the years and for this I thank him.

Nathaniel does one of the best theme integration I’ve ever seen – providing a balance of functionality and beauty. Some of his work includes…

In the beginning, there was darkness in the world of course registration. A certain coldness loomed over the inevitable scheduling of university courses every summer to make a timetable that works. Then, in 2007, Billy said “let there be automation” and Timetable Builder was born.

The first deployable for the Resnet Quota Monitor (build 1.2008.10.09) is now available from the Google Code repository. Enjoy! Note: you will need Java 1.6 or later for this application to run.

Please let me know if you encounter any problems, as well as providing feedback and such here.

Well, I think I’ve found a location for project downloads – Google Code. I’ll be posting the latest stable releases of any deployable projects there, so make sure you check every so often to grab the latest versions.

Google Code Repository