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Housekeeping

I’ve completed some general housekeeping here at Take the First Step. If I’ve done it correctly, then there will be fewer 404 – Not Found errors around here.

The first step for the budding webmaster is to register your site at Google Webmaster Tools. That will you a window into how Google sees your site. I like to check once a week to make sure that the Googlebot can find everything that it is looking for.

The next step is to learn how to interpret your web server log files. Your mileage may vary, but here’s how I look for 404 errors:

$ zgrep -w 404 access_log.20080512.gz | cut -d ' ' -f7,11 | uniq -c
   1 /blog/2004/09/27.html "-"
   2 /blog/topic/software/2003/08/18.html "-"
   1 /id/1319/jms-providers/ "-"
   1 /id/1318/leopard-part-4/ "-"
   1 /id/1317/brief-history/ "-"
   1 /id/1316/march-drabness/ "-"
   1 /id/1315/march-madness-08/ "-"

"zgrep -w 404" retrieves lines with the word 404 from my compressed access logs
"cut -d ' ' -f7,11" defines a space as field delimiter and retrieves the 7th and 11th fields from those lines
"uniq -c" shows the unique lines preceded by the instance count

Here we see some failing radio userland links and a mis-behaving client that is adding a trailing '/' to my page links. A little htaccess magic and the 404's are cured.

Open Source JMS Providers

I’d like to take a look at JMS and the leading contenders for an open source JMS provider seem to be:

• Apache ActiveMQ
• OpenJMS
• JBoss Messaging
• JORAM

Circumstances are pushing me to JORAM by a process of elimination:

• ActiveMQ seems to be happiest with Java 1.5
• The last release of OpenJMS seems to have been back in June 2006
• JBoss Messaging appears to only run inside of JBoss

I’ll let you know how things work out.

Leopard Configuration IV

10. Map the Caps Lock key to a second Control key via System Preferences.
11. To be Continued …

The full configuration list can be viewed at my MacBook Configuration Log.

Brief History of Blogging

• Gold Blogging is discovered
• Gold Blog rush begins
• Early prospectors bloggers stake claims
• Some get rich, most get blisters, merchants make a bundle selling
• Disillusioned miners bloggers abandon claims blogs
• Disputes begin over ownership role in history

I was going to comment on: Writers Blog Till They Drop, but Marc Andreessen got there first: New York Times covers blogging. And I somehow ended up with this. Go figure.

Leopard Configuration III

6. Configure Apple Mail to properly share folders with FastMail
   1. Start Mail
   2. Select the appropriate IMAP folder
   3. From the Mail menu, select Mailbox → Use This Mailbox For →
7. Clean some of the unused cruft from my Finder Sidebar. Select the Sidebar in the Finder Preferences and clear:
   1. Devices → iDisk
   2. Shared → Connected Servers
   3. Places → Documents
8. Set the display to a 2.2 gamma
9. Change my default shell to /bin/zsh:
   chsh -s /bin/zsh
10. To be continued …

The full configuration list may be viewed at my MacBook Configuration Log

26 Apr: Leopard Configuration part IV

Little Things

Jack of all trades. Master of none.

I’d venture to say that many consider that a compliment. But even if you take a more flattering definition of jack than any common fellow, it is pretty clear that “master of none” rules out superiority at any one skill.

So you really need to read between the lines when Fred Wilson advises that you need utility infielders. No one views a utility infielder on par with their starting shortstop or center fielder. But players who do the little things and get things done are as valuable as anyone else on your team.

ExpanDrive +1

After a boffo ExpanDrive review from John Gruber, I decided to take it out for a test drive. It only took 20 minutes for me to send Magnetk their money.

My upgrade to TextPattern 4.0.6 was greatly simplified by ExpanDrive. I simply mounted by webhost home directory, examined the updates in emacs, edited my htaccess, moved some files and I was in business.

Leopard Configuration II

3. Pick a new desktop background via System Preferences
4. Change the Login Window background image:
   sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture /Users/dwight/Documents/Wallpaper/Balto.jpg
   A picture of Balto in Central Park during the Gates.
5. Keep the dock from sliding around as icons are added:
   defaults write $HOME/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock pinning start
6. To be continued …

The full configuration list can be viewed at my MacBook Configuration Log.

16 Mar: Leopard Configuration part 3

Inline Style +1

First you learn the rules. Then you learn when to break the rules.

I believe in Cascading Style Sheets. I cringe when I see the typical use of inline styles. Despite that, I’ve trained myself to use them [sparingly] on Take the First Step.

Because I don’t get to set the style sheet of the browser based feed aggregators out there. And a <pre> section or a wide image can force the browser to use a horizontal scroll bar for an entire set of posts.

Please do users of browser based aggregators a favor. Add an inline style of style=“overflow:auto; width:100%” to any wide post elements. It will add a horizontal scroll bar to just that element. Your readers will thank you.

Leopard!

Well, enough dilly-dallying about. It was finally time to upgrade to Leopard. Rather than upgrade in place, I decided that this was my excuse to update my hardware a bit – I upgraded from the stock 1G Ram/80G disk to 4G RAM/120G disk (3G addressable/7200 rpm).

With my new hard disk in place, I started the clean install. After defining a new primary user and importing user settings, I was back in business. Now it was time to start the configuration process:

1. Name the computer: sudo hostname -s truckasaurus
   sudo scutil ––set ComputerName truckasaurus
   sudo scutil ––set LocalHostName truckasaurus
2. Remove the hard disk icon from my desktop via Finder Preferences
3. to be continued …

8 Mar: The hostname command only affects the LocalHostName – and that only temporarily. Use scutil instead.
8 Mar: Leopard Configuration part 2

Examining your Java App with a Debugging Proxy

Unless you're one of those annoying people who never makes a mistake, the time will come when your java web application is choking on it's web messages and you just don't know why. When that time comes, one of things that you will really want to see are the raw messages going back and forth. Which may be a bit problematic if your tools have been hiding the raw messages from you.

When I find myself there, I like to set up a debugging proxy (an explicit proxy will also work). This is as easy as specifying a couple of system properties (http.proxyHost and http.proxyPort) on the command line. Here I show my Java web services message client using Fiddler as a debugging proxy.

1 $ java -classpath $AXISCLASSPATH -Dhttp.proxyHost=localhost -Dhttp.proxyPort=8888 Simple < data/echo.xml
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
               xmlns:ns1="http://soapinterop.org/xsd">
  <soap:Body>
    <ns1:echoString>
      <ns1:echoStringRequest>Hello World</ns1:echoStringRequest>
    </ns1:echoString>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Invoking http://stephan-desktop/axis/services/echo

<soapenv:Body xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <ns2:echoStringResponse
      soapenv:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
      xmlns:ns2="http://soapinterop.org/xsd">
    <return
        xsi:type="xsd:string"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">Hello World</return>
  </ns2:echoStringResponse>
</soapenv:Body>

Producing the following view in Fiddler.

By selecting the "View in Notepad" button, we can see the complete response from the web service (formatted below for readability):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
                  xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
                  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <soapenv:Header>
  <ns1:echoMeStringResponse
      soapenv:actor="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/actor/next"
      soapenv:mustUnderstand="0"
      xsi:type="soapenc:string"
      xmlns:ns1="http://soapinterop.org/echoheader/"
      xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">header text</ns1:echoMeStringResponse>
  </soapenv:Header>
  <soapenv:Body>
    <ns2:echoStringResponse
        soapenv:encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
        xmlns:ns2="http://soapinterop.org/xsd">
      <return xsi:type="xsd:string">Hello World</return>
    </ns2:echoStringResponse>
  </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>