where have i been?

man i wish I was blogging more...end of story. I have been quite busy at work lately and I am working to launch both a new blog site for me {at} chrishough{dot}me and a site for my business koifishllc{dot}com. I am working as rapidly as possible to get "me" up and running first, which I hope to have up by early February. stay tuned

a few handy applescript time savers

Applescript can be a powerful friend and I have found the following scripts to be extremely helpful day to day. While I can not claim ownership of these, I felt compelled to pass them on as they have been great time savers for me. First, for recent win converts, .txt files are extremely easy to create on a win box, however, in os x you can use this handy short cut. Basically open automator, insert this code into a single "run applescript" step, and save out the compiled workflow as a .app file on your desktop.

open a .txt file

on run {input, parameters} do shell script "touch ~/Desktop/file.txt" do shell script "open ~/Desktop/file.txt" return input end run

Next, lets tackle hidden files. The following script will prompt you with buttons to hide / display hidden files, shown in the following image. Use your script editor to create the script and save it out as a .app file.

hidden files

set dialogTitle to "Do you want to show hidden files?" display dialog "Set the visibility of hidden files..." with title dialogTitle buttons {"Cancel", "Visible", "Invisible"} default button 1 copy the result as list to {buttonpressed} if the buttonpressed is "Invisible" then try tell application "Finder" to quit do shell script "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles OFF" delay 1 tell application "Finder" to activate end try else if the buttonpressed is "Visible" then try tell application "Finder" to quit do shell script "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles ON" delay 1 tell application "Finder" to activate end try end if

This last handy script can be tailored to your needs, but it is an excellent example of a script that runs displaying a progress bar to restart my development processes. The script below is built to restart cfml, mysql, and apache and I have a separate version for stopping the processes completely. Basically they are near identical. These scripts require the BP Progress Bar which also comes with an excellent example created by Adam Bell. Use your script editor to create the script and save it out as a .app file.

restart cfml, mysql, apache

property pwd : false set ProgressBar to load script alias (((path to scripts folder) as text) & "BP Progress Bar Controller.scpt") tell ProgressBar initialize("Restarting Web Services: CFM, MYSQL, APACHE") barberPole(true) setStatusTop to "Waiting for password entry…" set dialogTitle to "Restart Web Services Utility: CFM, MYSQL, APACHE" if pwd is false then activate display dialog "Password:" with title dialogTitle default answer "" with hidden answer set pwd to text returned of result end if set success to false repeat until success is true try barberPole(false) setStatusTop to "processing restart…" setMax to 6 delay 0.5 #apache start and stop do shell script "sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl stop" password pwd with administrator privileges increase by 1 do shell script "sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl start" password pwd with administrator privileges increase by 1 #coldfusion start and stop do shell script "sudo /Applications/ColdFusion8/bin/coldfusion stop" password pwd with administrator privileges increase by 1 do shell script "sudo /Applications/ColdFusion8/bin/coldfusion start" password pwd with administrator privileges increase by 1 #mysql start and stop do shell script "sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mysql.mysqld.plist" password pwd with administrator privileges increase by 1 do shell script "sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mysql.mysqld.plist" password pwd with administrator privileges increase by 1 set success to true beep activate display dialog "Success!" with title dialogTitle buttons {"Ok"} default button 1 giving up after 3 on error set pwd to false set pwd to display dialog "Sorry, try again. Password:" with title dialogTitle default answer "" with hidden answer set pwd to text returned of result end try end repeat quit end tell

If you have any questions or need help getting these setup please feel free to post a comment. Enjoy!

BFusion and BFlex Review

Compared to the other conferences I attended this year I found out about the BFusion and BFlex conference through twitter. Surprise?? When I heard about it, I immediately started following the conference website for updates and when the registration was opening. I needed more info! What I found out, shocked me. Not only was this conference close to Chicago, it was free. Yes, check that again, FREE. Now I was a little skeptical, this was my first time heading to this conference and I wondered how a show could be pulled off without ticket revenue. Stop right there! I am happy to report the conference was amazing.

My journey started out by making a poor decision to stay up for nearly 30+ hours driving straight to Bloomington, Indiana from Chicago at 3am CST on Saturday morning. Not only was I completely drained when I arrived, I do not remember most of the drive. I guess after 24oz of coffee, multiple red bulls, mountain dew, and the dense fog through Indiana, if it was not for daylight coming out, I may have never made it. Another item that slipped my mind, was the time difference, being that part of Indiana is an hour ahead compared to Chicago. I barely made the start of the show, but as soon as I arrived energy kicked in!

Since I was able to attend both cfUnited and cfObjective this year, I decided to take the intermediate track to learn more about the Mach ii framework, presented by Matt Woodward. I have to say, this single day course was amazing, top notch!! I learned a ton of new info about this framework and plan on trying to use it on a project asap. The only negative I had was that it could have been longer, as there was a bunch of information to review in a short time frame. It also could have been as a result to my brain being fried with little sleep. Unfortunately I was unable to attend the BFlex part of the conference as I had to head back to Chicago to get some work done before Monday AM. I do plan on trying to hit this side of the conference next year as I have heard from many people it was amazing.

Over all the conference was well structured, very enjoyable, and the hosts went really far out of their way to pay attention to little details. I found the facilities to be well laid out, easy access to the internet with no latency issues or downtime, well informed and helpful staff, tons of staff actually, comfortable class rooms, excellent food, and outstanding conference giveaways. I have to say they gave away about the same if not more things than cfUnited. There was a ton of books, free hosting, and the latest cf tag posters for everyone. All of this and the conference was free! One of the most important features I require in a conference is networking. Even on an empty tank, I managed to head over to Upland Brewery with a fellow group of cfml geeks for beers and grub. It turned into an excellent night, and I highly recommend Upland Brewery if you head into Bloomington, Indiana.

To the BFusion/BFlex crew, a huge THANK YOU for all of your hard work! I look forward to attending this event next year.

my cfml cfeclipse dev environment on osx

While there has been an on-going debate for quite a while now, I still run into people that have not made the leap to eclipse for developing cfml applications. First let me say, that moving from homesite can be difficult, and if you are using notepad, textpad, or even old cfstudio....MAN!!! I would definitely recommend taking a look into eclipse!!! I migrated to eclipse successfully a ways back and have grown to love the application. Yes, it isn't the best for design, as I still regularly use the Adobe Creative Suite, including Dreamweaver, however, its leaps and bounds above those older tools. Not only does it make integrating into subversion a snap, the assortment of plugins, including cfeclipse built by Mark Drew, are both excellent for cfml development and curing migraine headaches!!

I thought I would take a few moments to highlight my current setup on osx with a few of the plugins I have grown to love. Yes, I am still on 3.3, and plan on migrating to 3.4 once all of the kinks in my plug-ins are worked out. Since eclipse has been around for awhile now, this tiny walk through based on 3.3, only highlights what I utilize today. Once I finish the transition and testing period for 3.4 I will post an update with the results. Also, make sure to restart eclipse after every plugin installation.

1. Eclipse (3.3) - eclipse-SDK-3.3.2-macosx-carbon.tar.gz - you are looking for the 3.3.2 release for your specific OS and you can try to roll with 3.4, however, not all of these plugins will work.
2. Mylyn, Graphical Editors and Frameworks, and Buckminster (found in other tools) - these updates are required later on so I have found it best to install these right away in case there are any issues.
3. cfeclipse - site: http://www.cfeclipse.org/update - I am using 1.3.1.6 - if you are coding cfml applications and not using this, you could be saving yourself so many keystrokes as well as gain many of the benefits of other integrated eclipse plugins.
4. CF8.01 Extensions and CF8.01 help files. These have to be manually downloaded and installed from Adobe
5. Aptana(ruby on rails, air, php, iphone, all updates) - site: http://update.aptana.com/update/3.2/
6. XMLBuddy: xmlbuddy_2.0.72.zip
7. regex - site: http://brosinski.com/regex/update - excellent plugin for configuring and testing regular expressions.
8. sql explorer - I currently use this plugin for mysql and sql server 2005. Finding the driver files you need can be a bit of a pain, so you can download them here, however, there may be newer ones available. Also, here is a few shots on how you configure each connection:
   
9. Subversive - site: http://download.eclipse.org/technology/subversive/0.7/update-site/
10. Subversive Plug-ins site:
    http://www.polarion.org/projects/subversive/download/eclipse/2.0/update-site/
    http://www.polarion.com/products/svn/subversive.php?src=eclipseproject

I have been using this setup successfully for awhile now developing cfml applications and so far it has been very stable, robust, and makes my life so much easier working in subversion. The fact that I can create a branch, migrate to that branch, switch back to trunk, etc. saves so much time with a few mouse clicks. If you are heading into cfml development for the first time, take a peak at this config, and let me know if you run into any questions or issues.

large vmware fusion source files

Let me start by saying VMWARE Fusion for the Mac is an excellent product. I have utilized this piece of software to virtualize Windows XP Professional, Ubuntu, and Windows Server 2003. In fact I have successfully operated Windows XP, Windows Server, all with running processes in OSX concurrently without any issues. Trust me using the vm method instead of using boot camp is a much simplier and stable approach, and if your going to buy a Mac, with Leopard, definitely roll with VMWARE Fusion. I have tried Parallels, however, from my experience and how I utilize my vm, I found Fusion to be more stable, faster, and use less system resources. While there are always issues, one I ran into recently was the size of the vm source files, and as you can see from this image, mine was over 10GB.

Since they were so large, backing them up to Jungle Disc was a little problematic. Well, after a little searching around the web I came across the VMWARE Forums which outlined how to correct this issue, as well as a blog post by Matt Thomes and a comment left by Peter Kazanjy. The following steps will walk you through how to accomplish this:

1. Make a backup of your .vmwarevm file to a seperate temp directory. Better to be safe than sorry.
2. Check for Snapshots. If you have a snap shot of your image you will need to discard this snap shot prior to starting this process.
   
   From the VMWARE Forums:
   
   "If the Virtual Machine's Virtual Hard Drive has a Snapshot in place then you have to first use the VMware Fusion menu bar > Virtual Machine > Discard Snapshot command before trying to resize the Virtual Hard Drive.
   
   NOTE: Do not use the Discard Snapshot command unless you fully understand that in doing so any an all changes that you've made since taking the Snapshot will be written into the original Virtual Hard Drive. If you do not want the changes that have been made then use the Revert to Snapshot command first and the the Discard Snapshot command.
   
   NOTE: Using the Revert to Snapshot command DELETES any an all changes including Data that you may not have backed up off system since the Snapshot was take and if you're not backed up there is no easy way to recover once you've clicked the Revert to Snapshot command! You have been warned!"


3. Go to the VMWARE Forums and search for "vdiskmanager GUI", if that does not work try this link. You are looking for a specific zip to download titled "vdiskmanager GUI 0.2007.06.18.zip" which makes this process a whole lot easier. If you can not locate this file please let me know and I can email it to you.
4. Extract the zip and click on the unzipped app called "vdiskmanager GUI.app".
5. Double click on the app and select the "convert" tab.
6. In the "input" text box select your original large image source file (.vmwarevm). You will notice the .vmwarevm file will expand displaying a .vmdk file. This is the file you are going to select. Please note, the .vmwarevm file is a package that wraps all of the image files into a single group and will be used later once the image is broken into smaller pieces.
7. In the "output" text box locate your new folder and name the new image file the same name as the old larger file.
   It should look similiar to this screen shot:
   
8. After the conversion is completed, right click on the large file and select "Show Package Contents."
9. Higlight each of the split files then drag and drop them into the .vmwarevm package file. You will get the following error, and click yes to overwrite the files. Don't worry, you have a backup.
   
10. Re-Open VMWARE Fusion and start-up your vm. If you receive an error asking you if the "Virtual Machine has been moved or copied", just click "I moved it."
    
11. Verify the image starts up correctly.
12. Take a snapshot of the new image.
13. You can delete your old image or hold on to it to make sure everything went ok.
14. Pop-open a Guinness and celebrate!!