Findings:

• Love how it has improved my posture. Feels great for my back and my shoulders.
• I don’t slouch like I did in a chair. No more resting my elbow on the chair or my desk.
• Can’t get as sleepy as I could sitting in a chair.
• Feels like I have better blood flow and generally feel more active.
• Legs and feet get sore after a while.
• Would be really great to have a tall stool to rest my legs and feet throughout the day.
• I’ve heard that a padded mat will help some with the feet hurting.
• I find myself wanting to continue to stand at my desk even when my feet and legs are tired.
• Many people within WCG and outside WCG on my social networks have either asked questions or shared their love for standing at their desk.

Insights:

• Based on reactions and questions, I think there is a lot of interest both internally to WCG and outside of WCG for working at a desk while standing.
• I believe that standing at my desk has made me somewhat more productive in my work day because I don’t get as sleepy and I feel more active throughout the day.
• I also believe that I continue to want to stand at my desk because of how good my posture feels standing at my desk versus sitting.
• Working at a desk may not be feasible for everyone since it does put a fair amount of stress on the feet and legs. Some may be able to stand for longer periods at a time than others. I think the key for some will be to have a tall stool so they can gradually work up to standing and working for long periods of time.

The next step for me is to get a tall stool to be able to rest my feet and legs throughout the day as they get tired. I may also want to look into a standing pad to reduce the stress on my feet. Standing has been worth the effort and I recommend it to anyone looking to improve their posture and their general health while at work.

Found a great motivational post, “Fail Upwards“, that I wanted to put on my motivation board on Pinterest. Clicked my “Pin it” bookmarklet to pin the post but was greeted with this sad message:

If you want your content to be sharable on the booming social sharing site, Pinterest, then include a related and cool looking image to go with it! … or just include a cool photo ; )

The next video is on the New York Times Opinions Page. I don’t agree with A.C. Graylings statement that there is not God but I like the rest of what he says. You can read about it and watch it at http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/10/31/opinion/100000001141283/ac-grayling.html

<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>

Not sure if this is a bug, error, or what but it was causing me grief. I haven’t been able to find others on the web complaining of this but my own solution was to remove the colons and traverse accordingly. I wrote a function that takes the feed as a string and returns the string with all colons inside tag names removed.

function removeColonsFromRSS($feed) {
    // pull out colons from start tags
    // (<\w+):(\w+>)
    $pattern = '/(<\w+):(\w+>)/i';
    $replacement = '$1$2';
    $feed = preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $feed);
    // pull out colons from end tags
    // (<\/\w+):(\w+>)
    $pattern = '/(<\/\w+):(\w+>)/i';
    $replacement = '$1$2';
    $feed = preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $feed);
    return $feed;
}

Clicking on the image brings up a really nice 360 degree view of the inside of the store.

What excites me about this is it appears that they plan on getting the entire layout of larger stores.

When I took my bike in I was able to talk with the owner and he said that about 2 weeks ago a few “Google guys” (his words) came in and asked him if he wanted to do the “Google groupon” thing and if they could take pictures of inside the shop for his Google listing. He hadn’t seen the 360 view on Google maps yet but I was able to tell him it was cool and it looked good. He said he hasn’t decide yet on whether he is going to be doing the “Google groupon” thing yet because the deal is 1/2 of his regular price and Google gets half of that. He said it would be nice for advertising and getting attention but thought that it might be a bit heaver load and more work than it’s worth. Great guy.

Check out the listing for yourself if you want to see it. http://g.co/maps/uwtkv

What do you think of this? Will this help you decide what stores you want to go to? If you own a store, will you be allowing Google to do this?

Had a great time this weekend attending the HTML5.tx developer conference. Lots of great developers and designers in the Austin area. Was fun to meet people, learn, and review technologies and techniques for building better experiences online. Some of the things discussed at the conference were

• HTML5 & DOM APIs
• Advanced CSS selectors
• HTML5 Video
• LESS (css)
• Modernizer, Yepnope, and Polyfills
• CSS3 and animations
• Building for experience not browser

Recently, while helping out with the OpenPhoto project, I created a bash script that would print out the Ubuntu server’s IP address if it was not installed on Amazon’s EC2. If it is installed on EC2 it would get the publicly accessible IP address of the machine and print that out instead.

#!/bin/bash
# finding IP address and compensating for possible EC2 installation
EC2=`curl --silent --connect-timeout 1 http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-hostname`
if [[ $EC2 != "" ]]; 
then
    IP=`echo $EC2 | sed -rn 's/ec2-(.*?)\.compute.*/\1/p' | sed 's/-/./g'`
else
    IP=`ifconfig eth0 | grep 'inet addr:' | cut -d: -f2 | awk '{ print $1}'`
fi

Here is how you can disable the Google Chrome cache:

• open developer console
• click settings gear in bottom right
• check “Disable cache” under Network heading

This is as of version 14

• ErrorStack helps us collect, report, and notify us of errors across all of our applications no matter where they are.
• Graphite stores and graphes analytical data provided by our products.
• StatsD run by NodeJS collects our analytical data via UDP so there is minimal impact on the performance of our applications as we collect the data.
• Cron helps us run various tasks on our servers and helps us ensure that things are running smoothly

Just a minute or two later I got an email alert from ErrorStack notifying me that Node had died. After checking the graphite graph again I saw that the total metrics received had gone back up because the Cron script was able to restart the process. I love it when a plan comes together like that.

#!/bin/bash
PID=`pidof node`
if [ $PID > 0 ]; then
  echo "node still running"
else
  echo "node died"
  curl -d "Msg=node died&_s=yourErrorStackKeyGoesHere&_r=json" http://www.errorstack.com/submit
  # command to start node server again goes here
fi

Here is some of the code that I use to report errors to ErrorStack https://github.com/MikeGrace/ErrorStack-Reporting-Tools

You can get rid of any of the data or folders by deleting them from the server. The data is stored in files found starting at

/opt/graphite/storage/whisper/

Happy deleting!

Ever had the urge to test your site or your client’s site on all versions of IE? Me either! Introducing IE Collection. You can download the .exe that will install all the versions of IE that are compatible with your version of windows all the way back to IE 1! So whether your are feeling nostalgic or just need to get some testing done, download it from FileForum or Softpedia

To celebrate this blog post on this year’s Programmer’s Day, here is a this blog post as seen through IE 2′s eyes. How meta ; )

In many of my projects I use a remote error collecting service called ErrorStack. Love it! My apps throw errors over the internet to it and it generates report and has a myriad of ways to alert me. I do my best to write code that doesn’t have errors and handles errors and exception gracefully but it still happens. This is where the Java 1.5 setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler comes in to play.

I wrote some quick code to test out the feature

package org.michaelgrace.sandbox;
 
public class GlobalErrorHandling {
 
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Handler handler = new Handler();
    Thread.setDefaultUncaughtExceptionHandler(handler);
 
    throw new RuntimeException("party on error!");
  }
}
 
class Handler implements Thread.UncaughtExceptionHandler {
  public void uncaughtException(Thread t, Throwable e) {
    System.out.println("Where did that error come from?!");
    System.out.println("This is where I would report the error to ErrorStack");
    System.out.println(e.getMessage());
    System.out.println(t.toString());
  }
}

I exported the class to a jar using Eclipse and ran it from the command line

mgrace$ java -jar global-error-test.jar 
Where did that error come from?!
This is where I would report the error to ErrorStack
party on error!
Thread[main,5,main]

It worked!

I plan on building a class for making it easy to report errors to ErrorStack and will release it to the world when I do.

Resources: http://www.nomachetejuggling.com/2006/06/13/java-5-global-exception-handling/

From the Rhino downloads page I downloaded rhino1_7R2.zip since R3 doesn’t work with Envjs at the time of this post.

I also downloaded the latest Envjs and placed it in the same location as the unzipped rhino folder.

Navigate in a terminal to the location of the unziped rhino folder and start up rhino.

java -jar js.jar

Then you will want to load the Envjs JavaScript that will emulate the browser environment. (location is relative to where the jar file is running from)

load("../env.rhino.js")

Then I tell Envjs to load external scripts found in the page. This is required because scripts running in Rhino with Envjs will have file system access.

Envjs.scriptTypes['text/javascript'] = true;

Then we navigate our emulated browser to the test page that I built.

window.location = "http://mikegrace.s3.amazonaws.com/geek-blog/rhino-envjs.html"

The test page that I built looks like this when you load it in a browser with JavaScript disabled

This is because the page content is built using jQuery

Rhino and Envjs Test<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.2/jquery.min.js"></script><script charset="utf-8" type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[
    $(document).ready(function() {
      $(document.body)
        .append("
 
<h1>Header of the highest order</h1>
 
")
        .append("
 
Question: What is the answer?
 
")
        .append("<code>42</code>");
    });
 
// ]]></script>

Because Envjs will emulate a browser, we will be able to work with the page in Rhino like we would in a browser.

Getting the paragraph text is as easy as running some jQuery in the Rhino console

jQuery("p").text();

Awesome!

rhino1_7R2 mgrace$ java -jar js.jar
Rhino 1.7 release 2 2009 03 22
js> load("../env.rhino.js")
[  Envjs/1.6 (Rhino; U; Mac OS X x86_64 10.6.8; en-US; rv:1.7.0.rc2) Resig/20070309 PilotFish/1.2.13  ]
js> Envjs.scriptTypes['text/javascript'] = true;
true
js> window.location = "http://mikegrace.s3.amazonaws.com/geek-blog/rhino-envjs.html"
http://mikegrace.s3.amazonaws.com/geek-blog/rhino-envjs.html
js> jQuery("p").text();
Question: What is the answer?
js> jQuery("code").text();
42

If you are looking to debug your scripts in Rhino a bit better, you can launch the rhino console in the Rhino JavaScript Debugger using a command similar to this

java -cp js.jar org.mozilla.javascript.tools.debugger.Main

Installing StatsD on an Ubuntu server (10.04) was surprisingly easy. Here are the steps that I took. These will work from a fresh install of Ubuntu server 10.04 or after having installed and started graphite.

# INSTALL NODE.JS
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install python-software-properties git-core
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs
 
# CLONE THE STATSD PROJECT
git clone https://github.com/etsy/statsd.git
 
# CREATE A CONFIG FILE
cd statsd
cp exampleConfig.js dConfig.js
# edit config file your settings
sudo vim dConfig.js
node stats.js dConfig.js
 
# START STATSD
node stats.js dConfig.js

When you start StatsD, it will probably give you a warning like

(node) process.compile should not be used. Use require(‘vm’).runInThisContext instead.

but it is still working as expected so you can ignore it.

You can then test to make sure StatsD is working. Edit and run this simple PHP script to throw some stats at your StatsD.

<?php
 
StatsD::increment("testing.increment");
StatsD::timing("testing.timing", 2345);
 
class StatsD {
    public static function timing($stat, $time, $sampleRate=1) {
        StatsD::send(array($stat => "$time|ms"), $sampleRate);
    }
    public static function increment($stats, $sampleRate=1) {
        StatsD::updateStats($stats, 1, $sampleRate);
    }
    public static function decrement($stats, $sampleRate=1) {
        StatsD::updateStats($stats, -1, $sampleRate);
    }
    public static function updateStats($stats, $delta=1, $sampleRate=1) {
        if (!is_array($stats)) { $stats = array($stats); }
        $data = array();
        foreach($stats as $stat) {
            $data[$stat] = "$delta|c";
        }
        StatsD::send($data, $sampleRate);
    }
    public static function send($data, $sampleRate=1) {
        $sampledData = array();
        if ($sampleRate < 1) {
            foreach ($data as $stat => $value) {
                if ((mt_rand() / mt_getrandmax()) <= $sampleRate) {
                    $sampledData[$stat] = "$value|@$sampleRate";
                }
            }
        } else {
            $sampledData = $data;
        }
        if (empty($sampledData)) { return; }
        try {
            $host = [your graphite host here];
            $port = [your graphite port here 8125?];
            $fp = fsockopen("udp://$host", $port, $errno, $errstr);
            if (! $fp) { return; }
            foreach ($sampledData as $stat => $value) {
                fwrite($fp, "$stat:$value");
            }
            fclose($fp);
        } catch (Exception $e) {
        }
    }
}
 
?>

Be sure to edit the $host and $port settings towards the bottom with the appropriate graphite settings.

When you run this script, you can run a tcpdump on the receiving machine to see if the UDP packets are getting to the machine.

sudo tcpdump -tn port 8125

If your StatsD is installed on a different machine/IP than Graphite, you can also watch StatsD send of the data by running

sudo tcpdump -tn port 8125 or port 2003

This is especially helpful if you have not properly set up your Amazon EC2 security group settings. Be sure to open a UDP port for the traffic coming through.

ssh-add ~/.ssh/ec2.pem > /dev/null 2>&1

to my .profile file located at ~/.profile

The last part of the command is to route the output of the command to dev null so I don’t see it when I open up terminal.

 > /dev/null 2>&1

UPDATED TO WORK WITH GRAPHITE 0.9.9!!! (10/13/2011)

The new release of Graphite 0.9.9 includes an experimental Flot JavaScript graph. Awesome!

Steps to installing Graphite on Ubuntu -> gist.github.com
Ubuntu Graphite install screencast -> youtube.com

 If you are looking for a how-to on graphite one (CAD) or statsd this is not the place.

A few months ago I blogged abou how much I love stats. One of the things that I shared in that post was a blog post done by the etsy developer team about statsd and graphite to track everything.

This week I was able to get graphite setup on a dedicated Ubuntu 10.04 on my Mac using VMware Fusion. I thought I would share the steps I took so others might be able to save some time in their setup. In setting up apache I just copied over the default virtual host settings since graphite will be the only thing running on the server. If you are planning on having multiple virtual hosts on the machine then you will want to configure the virtual hosts differently.

####################################
# BASIC REQUIREMENTS
# http://graphite.wikidot.com/installation
# http://geek.michaelgrace.org/2011/09/how-to-install-graphite-on-ubuntu/
# Last tested & updated 10/13/2011
####################################
 
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
 
wget http://launchpad.net/graphite/0.9/0.9.9/+download/graphite-web-0.9.9.tar.gz
wget http://launchpad.net/graphite/0.9/0.9.9/+download/carbon-0.9.9.tar.gz
wget http://launchpad.net/graphite/0.9/0.9.9/+download/whisper-0.9.9.tar.gz
tar -zxvf graphite-web-0.9.9.tar.gz
tar -zxvf carbon-0.9.9.tar.gz
tar -zxvf whisper-0.9.9.tar.gz
mv graphite-web-0.9.9 graphite
mv carbon-0.9.9 carbon
mv whisper-0.9.9 whisper
rm carbon-0.9.9.tar.gz
rm graphite-web-0.9.9.tar.gz
rm whisper-0.9.9.tar.gz
sudo apt-get install --assume-yes apache2 apache2-mpm-worker apache2-utils apache2.2-bin apache2.2-common libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 python3.1 libpython3.1 python3.1-minimal libapache2-mod-wsgi libaprutil1-ldap memcached python-cairo-dev python-django python-ldap python-memcache python-pysqlite2 sqlite3 erlang-os-mon erlang-snmp rabbitmq-server bzr expect ssh libapache2-mod-python python-setuptools
sudo easy_install django-tagging
 
####################################
# INSTALL WHISPER
####################################
 
cd ~/whisper
sudo python setup.py install
 
####################################
# INSTALL CARBON
####################################
 
cd ~/carbon
sudo python setup.py install
# CONFIGURE CARBON
####################
cd /opt/graphite/conf
sudo cp carbon.conf.example carbon.conf
sudo cp storage-schemas.conf.example storage-schemas.conf
sudo vim storage-schemas.conf
### edited storage-schemas.conf to be the following
[stats]
priority = 110
pattern = .*
retentions = 10:2160,60:10080,600:262974
###
 
####################################
# CONFIGURE GRAPHITE (webapp)
####################################
 
cd ~/graphite
sudo python check-dependencies.py
sudo python setup.py install
 
# CONFIGURE APACHE
###################
cd ~/graphite/examples
sudo cp example-graphite-vhost.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
sudo cp /opt/graphite/conf/graphite.wsgi.example /opt/graphite/conf/graphite.wsgi
sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
# moved 'WSGIImportScript /opt/gr..' to right before virtual host since it gave me an error saying
# WSGIImportScript cannot occur within <VirtualHost> section
# if this path does not exist make it!!!!!!
# /etc/httpd/wsgi
sudo mkdir /etc/httpd
sudo mkdir /etc/httpd/wsgi
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
 
####################################
# INITIAL DATABASE CREATION
####################################
cd /opt/graphite/webapp/graphite/
sudo python manage.py syncdb
# follow prompts to setup django admin user
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/graphite/storage/
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
cd /opt/graphite/webapp/graphite
sudo cp local_settings.py.example local_settings.py
 
####################################
# START CARBON
####################################
cd /opt/graphite/
sudo ./bin/carbon-cache.py start
 
####################################
# SEND DATA TO GRAPHITE
####################################
cd ~/graphite/examples
sudo chmod +x example-client.py
# [optional] edit example-client.py to report data faster
# sudo vim example-client.py
sudo ./example-client.py

Original installation instructions -> http://graphite.wikidot.com/installation

Looking to run an Ubuntu instance on EC2? Check out http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/10.04/release/

Now you are ready to install StatsD!

Bob Pearson posted on his blog today 10 things he has learned from Michael Dell on innovation and collaboration. I have taken my favorite parts and shared them here.

• We get smarter when we listen well.
• Most innovation occurs step by step. It is rarely about the big idea.
• Collaboration leads to the best ideas
• The most powerful driver of human behavior online is to help your peers.
• When companies see themselves as peers, they serve their customers well
• People get a sense of empowerment when you allow them to participate and recognize their contribution.
• The real action occurs after the idea is received.
• Let go, allow your team to try new ideas, fail occasionally and end up with a great batting average.

“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should”

Sometimes trying to be efficient results in less than efficient results. You have all probably seen manifestations of this even if you didn’t recognize it. I challenge you to take the next few days and try to recognize these things around you and in things that you might be trying to design, build, or do. I would like to present to you one example that I have encountered since moving to Austin.

Exhibit A:

Now I’m guessing that one day a person was put in charge of deciding on a layout for the men’s bathroom. They probably calculated the remaining distance left for the urinal area and exclaimed, “Hey! There’s enough space for 2 urinals!”

SEE! There’s enough space… or is there?

Let’s put it in context of its use.

Woah!! That’s close! And we know it! This is why both urinals almost never get used at the same time. What a waste! If only one urinal had been put in place it would be a much more luxurious experience and other guys wouldn’t be forced to decide to use a stall or break the universal protocol.

Please! As you are designing, building, and going about your every day life, don’t just do something because you can. Make sure that you take the time to consider the use cases and the context in which the disign, tool, app, etc. will be used.

: )

I have always found asking questions an interesting part of life. Asking people clear, concise, and well formed questions can lead you to better information and interaction faster and with less friction. Asking questions to one’s self can bring better understanding and lead to new discovery. There is soooooooo much to learn about asking questions and the impact it has on our lives.

My life is full of asking questions:

- Google search
- How could I build this better?
- What technology would fit this application best?
- What did my wife mean when she said…
- What does it mean?!

Jeff Atwood recently posted some interesting thoughts on asking questions titled “Gorilla vs. Shark”. A fun and interesting read that I recommend.

The first time I fired up MAMP Pro and LocalTunnel, I couldn’t get MAMP to serve up the correct directory. The key is making sure that the localhost host is pointing to the directory you want served up through LocalTunnel. Cheers!

configure: error: BDB/HDB: BerkeleyDB not available

Make sure you have BerkleyDB installed by running something like

sudo yum install db4

You may also have to run

sudo yum install db4-devel

configure: error: xml2-config not found. Please check your libxml2 installation.

try installing libxml2-devel by running something like

sudo yum install libxml2-devel

Your time and my time is precious. I am grateful for tools that help me get work done quicker and better. I was reminded today how grateful I am for these tools as one was letting me know that it was updating to fix some issues that were found recently.

Tools can be immensely useful but only if used properly or at all. Here are some of my thoughts on finding and using tools better.

1. Decide today that you are going to try new tools
2. Don’t try every new tool that you find
3. Watch and learn from others around you
4. Really learn how to use the tool
5. Question the tools you are currently using
6. Wish
7. Build new tools

If you decide today that you are going to take the time and effort to use a new tool when you find one, it will be much easier than deciding right when you find it and don’t feel like you have the time right then or the motivation. If you tried every new tool that you found, you might not have time to actually do anything else. This depends on how many different tools you are finding and trying but it’s good to use some common sense in this area. Others may have found great tools that you didn’t know about and paying attention to what your friends and coworkers are using can help you find tools that you might not have otherwise. This also goes for how others use the same tool that you do. It always kills me to watch others use a tool and see that they are greatly under utilizing the potential of the tool.

Have you ever wondered why a tool works the way it does? Have you ever used a tool or an app and thought, “That was stupid.” Questioning current methods and tools helps us find and move on to better ways. Many years ago I was in a typing class in Jr High learning how to type. The teacher told us how the qwerty keyboard keys were arranged with the goal to slow down a typist to prevent typewriter arms from jamming up. I remember wondering why we were being taught a keyboard configuration made to slow us down. Unfortunately, no alternatives were presented at that time but several years later I came across dvorak! Dvorak was designed with the goal of being more natural and reflecting the common english language. I made the switch to typing using dvorak just over 3 years ago and I have never looked back.

Have you ever heard yourself or anyone else say, “I wish that…”? This is usually how the sentence begins when someone recognizes that there could be a better way. Don’t just let those realizations just float by you without thought or action. Do a Google search for a better way or tool to see if you can find one. Ask your friends if they know a better way. Ask an expert in the related area if they have advice on a better way or tool. If none of these return results, then it’s your turn to come up with a better way or tool. All the tools that I know of and use on a regular basis came to be because someone recognized that there could be a better way and made it so. One person can make a difference. You can make a difference by educating yourself, recognizing areas of need, and taking action.

I really enjoy helping others, finding better ways to do things, and building tools which is a big part of why I enjoy my job as much as I do. Here are some of the tools that I use on my Mac that make tasks easier and more enjoyable.

How to run Xdebug on Mac OSX using MAMP

1 Start MAMP

2 Edit php.ini template file through MAMP to enable the extension. Edit the template file via File -> Edit Template -> PHP -> PHP [php version you are using] php.ini

3 Edit bottom of php.ini template file so that it ends up looking like if you want profile output

[xdebug]
zend_extension="/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/xdebug.so"
xdebug.profiler_enable = 1
xdebug.profiler_output_dir = "/tmp"
; DONT REMOVE: MAMP PRO php5.3.6.ini template compatibility version: 1

If you don’t want profile output and just want xdebug running then use

[xdebug]
zend_extension="/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/xdebug.so"
xdebug.profiler_enable = 0
xdebug.profiler_output_dir = "/tmp"
; DONT REMOVE: MAMP PRO php5.3.6.ini template compatibility version: 1

Now when you have errors, if they are sent to standard out, you will see something like this

My php.ini file:

4 Save edited template and close edit window

5 Restart MAMP

6 Open MAMP’s WebStart page and navigate to PHPInfo tab. Check to make sure that Xdebug is running. Doing a search in the browser window for “Xdebug” makes this easy.

7 If you used the same settings that I have above, when you run PHP code, Xdebug will put the cachegrind.out files in your ‘/tmp’ directory. Open your ‘/temp’ directory and run one of your PHP files to make sure it is working correctly. You can open the ‘/tmp’ directory in finder by opening the terminal and running

open /tmp

8 Now you can use any app that understands those cachegrind.out files to view the profile data. Apps like KCacheGrind (Linux/Windows, KDE), WinCacheGrind (Windows), xdebugtoolkit, and Webgrind.  I went the simple route and used webgrind. Webgrind is a simple web based application that you can run locally on MAMP and it will look for the cachegrind.out files automatically with just one click. Continue for steps on setting up with webgrind.

9 Download Webgrind

10 Setup Webgrind host on MAMP to run Webgrind

11 Visit webgrind url setup on your local MAMP installation. Mine was simply webgrind/

12 If you already have cachegrind output files you should be able to select the file in the “Auto (newest)” dropdown or leave it select at Auto and click update which will reveal the profile data

13 Throw a celebratory fist pump

I think it’s awesome that the MAMP guys have included Xdebug with their release of MAMP 2.01. I wrote this blog post because I wanted to be able to profile some of my projects to find areas where they could be improved. After finally figuring it out it was super simple. The problem was that it took me a long time to set up because of all of the incorrect and outdated information on the internet. I hope this makes it easier for others to get setup. If this post becomes outdated please leave a comment or contact me about what needs to be updated.

– UPDATE –

I am LOVING Xdebug! Just realized that when you do a var_dump of some variable, Xdebug formats it for you so it’s actually readable! AMAZING!!!!

Before:

After:

Things I searched for to find my answers:
php profile
xdebug osx
mamp xdebug
php xdebug osx
webgrind
maccallgrind
cachegrind osx
cachegrind
valgrind
xdebug mamp
php.ini add extension mamp

I now get to work for WCG and will be working out of their Austin Texas office on 6th street.

My wife and I are very excited to be in Austin, experience the culture, and bask in the warmth of the sun. We are especially excited for the warm winters that we are going to have here ;) I am excited to be part of a winning team, doing amazing things, and making a difference in the lives of others.

You can expect to continue to see me blog here and possibly on WCG’s blog as well. You can connect with me and stay up on the latest on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ where I like to share what I learn and get to know other awesome people.

A huge thank you to family, real life friends, and online friends who reached out and responded to my announcement of looking for work. It always amazes me how supportive and helpful everyone is. The response was amazing and I had lots of good options to choose from. Thank you!

Photos are from the Utah 2011 Tour de Donut ride I did recently. Last photo was taken with the famous “Fat Cyclist” (left) that is making a difference doing what he loves to raise money to fund cancer research and help others with cancer, and my good friend Sam Curren (right).

– SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT! –

If you haven’t checked out my latest Kynetx apps, you should because they are HOT!   The first one filters out foul language and hides animated gifs on G+. The second makes browsing craigslist much easier, faster, and more enjoyable.

Today I released an update to my Craigslist inliner Kynetx app that I released some time ago. This new update allows anyone to view a page of craigslist posts by their images. If you have ever thought to yourself that you just want to view all of the images then here is your answer.

Install the app by visiting http://apps.kynetx.com/installable_apps/4445-Craigslist_Inliner

The other viewing mode, for those who are curious, loads each listing “inline” in an i-frame so you can just scroll down through the page to view all of the listings.

You can turn the filtering on and off using the controls that will show up on the right side of the Google+ interface.

Preferences are remembered so the next time you come back it’s just the way you left it. I plan on adding a feature in the future to be able to collapse posts if they match a list of keywords that you list. I personally really look forward to this feature so I can filter out what ever I want. If you have ideas or suggestions for this app or a new app please let me know.

As seen on Tom Anderson’s G+ profile!

Featured on mormonlifehacker.com!

Those who have worked with me before know that I am passionate about what I do. Please check out my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, StackOverflow and Endomondo profiles. While you are here, if you are curious to learn more about me, please take a few minutes and go through some recent posts here on my geek blog or browse through some of the photography I have done on smugmug.

More details –

My wife and I are willing to live just about anywhere with the exception of Idaho (been there, done that). We would be especially excited to live in any of the following areas:

• Western Washington
• California
• Utah
• Austin Texas

I loved working for Kynetx and building apps that helped make the web and browsing experience better. I also really enjoyed building tutorials to help developers just getting into developing Kynetx applications. I’ve had some of my applications featured in The New York Times, Gawker, and more. I enjoy using GIT for projects. I have done work in PHP, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, used the Ruby on Rails, Django, and jQuery frameworks, and work well with HTML and CSS.

Vision –

My dream is to make the world a better place and work on teams that are striving to change the world. I dream of one day being able to work on projects that will make a difference in people’s lives without having to worry about how much money I am making. I dream of one day being able to ride my bike across America, meeting people, touring this great country, and raising money for a great cause.

I dream of one day being able to help others who want to change the world but don’t have the money or the tools to do it.

If you are looking for someone like me or know of a job opportunity that you think might be a good fit for me, please contact me through any of my listed social networks.

… and now I am going to go for a bike ride because that is how I deal with stress : )

It isn’t hard to do and I watched a simple short youtube video to figure it out.

Today I saw a very good example of a company listening to their customers and getting it right. The company and service, Dropbox recently updated their terms of service, privacy policy, and security overview documents to make them more readable.  Many people online, including one of my close friends, expressed the concern that the changes made it sound like Dropbox was claiming the rights to all files and intellectual property a user uploads to Dropbox.

Here is the good part. Dropbox was actually listening to what people were saying online and participating in the conversation! They were participating in conversations online where people hang out socially. It’s a simple concept but it’s still amazing that many companies haven’t figured it out yet. Dropbox then followed up that listening with an update to their blog post explaining the changes to their terms of service, etc in more detail. Their customers still had concerns about what was explained so a second update was added to the blog post explaining in even more detail what the changes would mean for each user. Go Dropbox!

UPDATE: 07/06/2011

Dropbox reworked the wording in their TOS and posted another blog post and posted also to Twitter -> http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=867

Recently while browsing a lot of Craigslist postings I got sick of clicking each link to open in a new tab just to view them. If you have spent much time on Craigslist I’m sure you have experience the same frustration. This Kynetx app is my answer to my frustration. It will present a button on listing pages that, when clicked, will load each listing inline. You can view the app and get it by visiting http://apps.kynetx.com/installable_apps/4445-Craigslist_Inliner

input[type=search] {
    -webkit-appearance:textfield;
    -webkit-box-sizing:content-box;
}
 
input::-webkit-search-decoration,
input::-webkit-search-cancel-button {
    display: none;
}

If you are using a webkit based browser you can checkout the live demo at -> http://mikegrace.s3.amazonaws.com/geek-blog/webkit-search-input-example.html

My wife and I moved to Utah almost a year ago and we have loved every minute of it. Since moving here I have been riding my bicycle a lot and not using my Honda Gold Wing so much. I decided recently that it would be a good idea to sell my motorcycle and use the money to buy my wife a computer since she has been without one since her MacBook Air died a few months ago. I’m really sad that I no loger have a motorcycle to ride but I think what I got in return is worth more. : )

For Skype versions prior to 5 there is this blog post on how to do it http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20081116113445565

For Skype version 5…

Open up the file found at ~/Library/Application Support/Skype/shared.xml

At the bottom of the file you should see something like

<VoiceEng>
  <MicBoost>
    <_260>-1</_260>
  </MicBoost>
  <MicVolume>
    <_260>73</_260>
    <AppleHDAEngineInput.3A8.2C0.2C1.2C0.3A1>81</AppleHDAEngineInput.3A8.2C0.2C1.2C0.3A1>
    <AppleHDAEngineInput.3A8.2C0.2C1.2C1.3A2>100</AppleHDAEngineInput.3A8.2C0.2C1.2C1.3A2>
  </MicVolume>
  <SpeakerVolume>68</SpeakerVolume>
</VoiceEng>

Change the value inside of the ‘MicBoost’ and _260 blocks to 0 and that should turn the auto adjusting off.

I also changed the volume to 100 so it is all the way up so I can control the input from my system preferences. In the end yours should end up looking something like this

<VoiceEng>
  <MicBoost>
    <_260>0</_260>
  </MicBoost>
  <MicVolume>
    <_260>100</_260>
    <AppleHDAEngineInput.3A8.2C0.2C1.2C0.3A1>63</AppleHDAEngineInput.3A8.2C0.2C1.2C0.3A1>
    <AppleHDAEngineInput.3A8.2C0.2C1.2C1.3A2>100</AppleHDAEngineInput.3A8.2C0.2C1.2C1.3A2>
  </MicVolume>
  <SpeakerVolume>68</SpeakerVolume>
</VoiceEng>

This weeks podcast I get to have Mike Farmer on the show and we talk about
- Kynetx Impact Conference
- Kynetx employee layoffs
- Geeks and their hobbies

————————————————————————-
2011-03-30 Mike Grace podcast – Click to listen
————————————————————————-

Because the extensions are sandboxed, all of the scripts from the extensions run a bit differently than they used to in the previous Kynetx extensions. Without getting into the technical details too much, the previous extensions just injected JavaScript into the page and the new extensions run JavaScript in a sandbox which has access to the DOM but can’t access anything else on the page. Because of this change my retweet app broke since I was using the jQuery loaded by Twitter.com to bring up the new tweet box (I do this because Twitter.com used that library to bind a click event and to trigger that event it has to be from the same library that bound it). Thankfully, with the help of a friend, I was able to get a work around for both Firefox and Chrome’s sandbox environment.

How I did it…

If the app is run not inside a sandbox I can just access the jQuery that Twitter.com loads to open a new tweet box

$("#new-tweet").trigger("click");

From within the Firefox sandbox I can access the page outside of the sandbox

window['$']("#new-tweet").trigger("click");

If I am in the Chrome sandbox I can create a script element that has the JavaScript that I want to execute. Crude, but it works. : )

var trigger_click_script = document.createElement("script");
var fallback = "window['$']('#new-tweet').trigger('click');";
trigger_click_script.innerHTML = fallback;
document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(trigger_click_script);

Here is the JavaScript code that I ended up with that gets executed when a user clicks on the retweet button.

// get stuff to retweet
var tweet = $K(this).parents(".tweet-content").find(".tweet-text").text();
var name = $K(this).parents(".tweet-content").find(".tweet-screen-name").text();
 
// build tweet
var retweet = "RT @"+name+" "+tweet;
 
// open new tweet box
$("#new-tweet").trigger("click");
 
// hack for FF sandbox
if ($("#tweet-dialog:visible").length === 0) {
  window['$']("#new-tweet").trigger("click");
}
 
// put tweet in new tweet box
$K(".draggable textarea.twitter-anywhere-tweet-box-editor").val(retweet).focus();
$K("#tweet_dialog a.tweet-button.button.disabled").removeClass("disabled");
 
// hack for chrome sandbox
if ($("#tweet-dialog:visible").length === 0) {
  var fallback = "window['$']('#new-tweet').trigger('click'); ";
  fallback += "window['$']('.draggable textarea.twitter-anywhere-tweet-box-editor').val('"+retweet+"').focus(); ";
  fallback += "window['$']('#tweet_dialog a.tweet-button.button.disabled').removeClass('disabled'); ";
  var trigger_click_script = document.createElement("script");
  trigger_click_script.innerHTML = fallback;
  document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(trigger_click_script);
}

2011-03-20 Mike Grace podcast – Click to listen

Look forward to any comments or feedback people might have : )

Unnamed terminal tabs:

Menu option to bring up inspector:

After using cmd + i to bring up Mac Terminal Inspector:

After renaming tabs in Terminal:

If when you bring the inspector window up with cmd + i and the focus isn’t in the “Title” input, you can use shift + cmd + i to put the focus there. You can then press enter to apply the title change or just press escape to apply the title change and close the inspector.

If you liked this or have other cool ideas, let me know in the comments or on Twitter @MikeGrace

I like this trend of getting rid of submit buttons. Done right I think it makes interfaces cleaner, simpler, and easier. With mobile devices I still think it is better to give a submit button on forms but for desktop versions I love this lack of submit buttons. I find it interesting that Google has kept their search button even when Google Instant is enabled.

That’s all. Just my thoughts on the matter. ; )

Working with limited space and needing both a basic and advanced search I came up with this design. The search happens automatically much like Google instant search as you type. What I like about the design:

• large input and “[Product Search Results]” in results area lets user know that it is a search and that it searches products
• The “basic” and “advanced” buttons are placed in a way that associates them with the search input letting the user know that clicking them will change the type of search being done
• Visual separation of search input and search output
• No unneeded search button or title to tell the user what it is since it’s parts and design say what it is.

What I am worried about:

• Some users might not like the lack of a search button (Google still has their search button even with google instant enabled)
• Making assumptions where I shouldn’t have

This is just a simple demonstration of what I have come up with and would love your feedback. What do you like about it? What do you hate? How would you do it differently? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @MikeGrace

Check out the demo now if you haven’t! -> http://mikegrace.s3.amazonaws.com/geek-blog/sandbox/search-example.html

I like the design they went with for the UI and it feels good to see a company like Lanyrd create an app that works similarly to what I built about 2 months ago. I decided to put my app interface in the side tray to allow for more controls. The app allows you to hide any tweet based on any word found in the tweet. It also allows you to highlight the tweet if you are interested in particular key words and it remembers your list each time you load the browser.

If you don’t have it, (you really should) you can get it and try it out at http://geek.michaelgrace.org/2011/01/tweet-filter-kynetx-app/

My party stance

The Kynetx app that I built to filter out foul language on Twitter.com has filtered through over 200,000 tweets removing over 4,300 foul words!

When I originally built the app I didn’t think it would get used by enough people to get through that many tweets so quickly! I’m glad I was able to build this app and that others have enjoyed using it. If you would like to try it out you can get it at http://geek.michaelgrace.org/2011/01/foul-fowl-control-kynetx-app-for-twitter-com/

I’m going to tell you all about what that app looks like and what it does but first some background. I use Twitter a lot.

I have really enjoyed the whole experience. I have found over the past 2 years that connecting with people is what makes Twitter great for me.

Tweeting lots every day is easy along with following lots of people. These two actions only require a little typing and clicking buttons. The hard part is following people and listening to them and engaging in meaningful conversation. I read most updates of the 900 something people that I follow and it takes lots of time and effort.

Here are my goals with Twitter:

• Find more interesting people to follow and build meaningful relationships with them
• Spend less time reading tweets that I’m not interested in that have no relevance or are basically spam
• Spend more time engaged in tweets that are relevant, will help me grow as a person, and build meaningful relationships
• Help my friends do the same things listed above

Here are some things that stand in the way of me accomplishing those goals

• Don’t have a way to quantify and report the relevance of a “follow”
• Don’t have a way to quantify the time spent time on Twitter and different Twitter activities
• Don’t have a way to quantify the amount of load a particular follow puts on my  Twitter stream

I want to find more people to connect with but it’s a double edged sword. If I follow more people I increase my chances of finding interesting people to connect with but this same action causes more content to come through my Twitter stream. This makes it harder to stay connected with the people that I have already established a meaningful connection with.

I think an app/service can be created to help me reach all my goals and take care of all the road blocks. This is where My6Sense, TweetStats, SocialToo, Twitter, and Kynetx come in. I envision creating a Kynetx app that

• records how much time is spent on Twitter reading tweets
• what percentage of the tweets I read  are from each follow
• the relevance of Tweets and follows as I read and give feedback

Because a Kynetx app can be deployed as a browser extension it is fairly easy to get this kind of data and report it to a system through a simple API. The server could then take this data and start doing interesting and helpful things with the data. Things like

• make suggestions to un-follow people based on a ratio of load vs quality content created much like SocialToo attempts to do through rules
• build cool looking, informative, and geeky charts like TweetStats
• help me sort Twitter stream based on context similar to what My6Sense does
• suggest people to follow based on the relevance data received from my friends

Just imagine being able to see personal trends of how much time you spend going through your tweet stream. You could also see trends of the percentage of relevant people you are following, who is generating the most load on your stream, who you find the most relevant, and more. Because all of this is based on your actions on Twitter.com and is quantified you could set goals to improve in different areas. Rewards for achieving those goals could be given and the app could give me help along the way. Built correctly and used well, it could be a powerful tool to transform any social network into an astoundingly strong group of friends and acquaintances that are relevant, meaningful, and create much more benefit than cost to build and maintain.

If you like this idea, have suggestions, or have something you want to say, let me know in the comments or tweet me!

There is lots more that I could write about but I think I’ll hold off for now and see what people have to say about this.

I went through each slide reading the notes at the bottom and thinking through each slide. I am genuinely impressed by the thought that has gone into this presentation. In a moment of awesomeness, I experienced an aha moment on slide #103. I found the key to understanding something that has left me perplexed since my childhood.

Back when I was younger, I was often charged with doing the dishes. I hated doing the dishes! Or, so I thought that I hated doing the dishes. Several times I had decided that I wanted to surprise my mom and do the dishes without her asking instead of the often, “Michael, will you PLEASE do the dishes?!”. Walking into the kitchen I was excited to do something nice for my mom until I heard, “Will you please do the dishes Michael?”. I was furious and my mom was confused. Even though my mom asked nicely, what changed when she asked that made me so mad? I finally understood today on slide #103. Enjoy! : )

(be sure to go through the slides in full screen)

We feel very blessed by the many responses we received from friends and family when they found out I was without employment. We ended up having to chose between a couple of jobs and we are excited with the opportunity that Needle presents us with. We are excited to be staying in the Utah area and plan on continuing to participate in the many great tech events that happen in Utah.

It has been a crazy adventure going from employment to unemployment and back again in just a few short days. I’m excited about the work that I will be doing and I hope to continue to blog lots as I learn and work. Thank you again to every person that offered help, gave referrals, called me, offered to give a good word, tweeted, blogged, and thought about me. Here’s to an exciting future. : )

I was able to take my usage from 3 GB down to 692 MB. : )

What is it?

It’s a keyboard activated search tool for a specific website built to act like the application launcher Alfred App and QuickSilver. I went through each page in the Kynetx documentation site and indexed each page by hand. I didn’t include all pages which I believe makes this a much more powerful search for Kynetx developers. I also assigned key words to each page based on what I thought it should be searchable by. If you have suggestions, let me know because I would love to hear them.

Check out the live demo at http://supersearcher.michaelgrace.org/

If you like it, you are free to use the code in any way that you like. Cheers!

“INPUT!!!!”

Reasons why I think I am addicted to stats:

1. I love tracking statistics within my applications to know what is going on
   
2. Built my own stats API to easily track what my Kynetx apps are doing in JavaScript
   
3. I have been checking http://tweetstats.com/graphs/mikegrace for over a year
   
4. I installed DD-WRT on my router mostly for the statistical functionality and for geek cred
   
5. Built my own round robin style load tracker for my server so I could better understand its load http://status.michaelgrace.info/
   
6. I built my own JSON interface to the command line top program to monitor who and what is creating the most load on my server
7. This blog post by the etsy engineering team about tracking everything made me drool http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2011/02/15/measure-anything-measure-everything/
8. Even though I didn’t really enjoy the homework, I absolutely loved my statistics class in college.
9. Sites like onetruefan.com that give me stats about what I do on the web make my geeky heart beat faster
   
10. Purchased a wall plug that would tell me stats on how much electricity my different appliances use

As you can see I am fairly addicted to numbers and stats and I haven’t even listed everything here.  I wish that more stuff was webhook enabled so I could gather meaningful statistics and build cool apps that tied more of my ‘stuff’ together in meaningful ways like Kynetx envisions. Here is to a future where life is made better and more interesting through the application and correlation of meaningful data.

http://mikegrace.s3.amazonaws.com/geek-blog/sandbox/delay-search.html

This is what the demo looks like even though the code is the fun part:

Tested on Mac 10.6.6 with Firefox 3.6, Chrome 9.0, Safari 5.0, and Opera 11.01

http://mikegrace.s3.amazonaws.com/geek-blog/double-tap/double-tap.html

This is what it looks like even though the code is the fun part:

The demo code will shift states as you press the ‘s’ key. If you press the ‘s’ key quickly enough back to back it will switch to the activated state and stay there until the ‘esc’ key is pressed causing it to reset. The code also won’t change state if the focus is in a textarea or input to prevent activation while a user is typing in an area they don’t want to be interrupted in. I will have to add an exception for the search tool input box when I implement this to allow the ‘esc’ key to reset and hide the search tool while inside of it. You can use the code if you like and I would love to hear any feedback that anyone has about it.

Tested on Mac 10.6.6 with Firefox 3.6, Chrome 9.0, Safari 5.0, and Opera 11.01

You can check out the most recent results at http://jsperf.com/function-call-vs-inline and test your own browser.

1) Yes, at the time of this blog post I am unemployed.

2) Kynetx is still kickin butt and taking names. Kynetx FTW!

Yesterday morning I found out that I no longer had a job at Kynetx as Kynetx was shifting to plan B. Any good startup worth their salt always has a plan B and Kynetx is executing that plan B. In Steve Fulling’s own words, “failed bridge financing. Re-aligned staffing to revenue. We’re open & okay”. I’m bummed out that I don’t get to be a part of that plan B execution but I have known since the day I joined the team that this was always a possibility and I have absolutely no regrets about joining the Kynetx team. One of my best friends, Michael Farmer, expresses my feelings better than I could over on his blog post at http://michaelfarmer.info/people-thought-i-was-crazy

While the last 48 hours have been a roller coaster of an emotional ride, my wife and I are very excited for the future and all of the possibilities that it holds. I am overflowing with gratitude and love for everyone on the Kynetx team family. I have grown tremendously as an individual and as a developer while working at Kynetx and have learned so very much from all the extremely smart and talented team. I gladly welcome any future opportunities to work with anyone on the team and highly recommend each one of them.

Here’s to an exciting future.

oh! And what blog post from me about Kynetx would be complete without some “Grace faces” that have become somewhat legendary within the Kynetx team.

Update:

Several of my co-workers have also blogged about the recent change at Kynetx and they are all a good read.

Mike Farmer -> http://michaelfarmer.info/people-thought-i-was-crazy

Q Wade Billings -> http://scramswitch.blogspot.com/2011/02/one-of-my-favorite-musical-artist-is.html

Sam Curren -> http://www.mostlybaked.com/changing-sails

Jessie Morris -> http://www.jessieamorris.com/content/so-long-and-thanks-all-fishing-lessons

Phil Windley -> http://www.windley.com/archives/2011/02/starting_a_high_tech_business_making_hard_decisions.shtml

Alex Olson -> http://www.alexkolson.com/2011/03/01/reduction-in-force/

Also, a friend/fan of Kynetx has also blogged about his thoughts on the recent events

Holden Page -> http://pagesaresocial.com/2011/02/28/extending-best-wishes-kynetx/

You will need to install Desktop Notifier app linked to at http://www.notify.io/ and my Kynetx app will walk you through getting setup what it needs to run. Once everything is setup and running, you can click the ‘test’ link created by the Kynetx app to make sure everything is working

Download Chrome Extension

Download Firefox Extension

1) Open Transmit preferences

2) View “Cloud” options

3) Add custom header for crx file extensions (content-type text/plain)

4) Add custom header for xpi file extensions (content-type application/x-xpinstall)

Once these are set, every time a file with one of those extensions gets uploaded the proper headers will be set and your user’s browsers will automatically start the install process.

I found Facebook’s “Find Friends” browse page and thought it would be fun to do an experiment with the data contained within. To participate in the experiment download and install either this Firefox or Chrome Kynetx browser extension.

Download Chrome Extension

Download Firefox Extension

The app will put a button on the Friend Finder page which will allow you to view a graph based on the currently loaded possible friends.

Clicking on the “Show awesome possible friend chart!” button will reveal the awesome possible friend chart.

I will be putting up the general findings soon at http://facebookfriendfinderstats.michaelgrace.org/. :)

Navigation Mockup

I enjoyed building the navigation and thought what I came up with was cool enough to share what I did.

The JavaScript added is just to simulate changing pages.

Example page -> http://mikegrace.s3.amazonaws.com/geek-blog/sandbox/css-nav-border-party.html

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Download Chrome Extension

Download Firefox Extension

For a list of other interesting Apps/browser extensions that I and others have built for twitter, check out this blog post by Kynetx

5 Insanely useful browser apps for Twitter.com

or my index of Kynetx apps on my blog

Action shots!

App loaded in meta tray (was going to have settings here but decided to keep it simple w/out settings)

Tweet annotated with keywordicon

See the app in action through moving pictures!

Download Chrome Extension

Download Firefox Extension

Demo video:

Download Chrome Extension

Download Firefox Extension

I’m not going to show before and after action shots but I can show you how the app behaves when I was testing it with a list of random words:

Download Chrome Extension

Download Firefox Extension

Download Internet Explorer Extension

If you are interested in seeing the code that makes this app work the way it does, you can check it out over at http://kynetxappaday.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/find-and-replace-words-in-twitter-tweet-stream/

At work we have standup meetings each morning to discuss roadblocks and the plan for the day. Often, most of the time is spent relating what is going to be done for the day which isn’t working very well. I want to build an app that each employee would install that would remind them each morning to submit their short list of what they are working on for the day and would show what everyone else is working on for the day. A user could dismiss the promptings for the day on all sites and could see the list anytime by going to a predefined url where the days tasks and road blocks would be listed. This app would probably use a Google spreadsheet to facilitate this functionality because it would be nice to have this information recorded even though it could be done through app variables.

Demo video:

Here are some action shots showing how the app works:

Installing the browser extension and loading a page for the first time. The time happens to be between 6 am and 10 am. You’ll notice that the app runs on whatever url you are currently on. It doesn’t look so great if it happens to be a site that has a lot of crazy stuff going on like Google reader or flash sites.

Once the user submits the day’s standup items the app confirms submission and removes itself from the page

On all pages that the user visits between the hours of 6 am and 10 am a little icon will be annotated in the bottom right corner of the browser window.

When a user hovers over the annotation, it will reveal two action buttons. The list button will show a list of everyone’s submitted standup items for the day. The x button will removed the annotation from the page if it is in the way.

When a user clicks on the list button, the standup items will be listed in a notify and the annotation will remove itself from the current page.

After the first time a user has used the app, it will remember the user’s name so the user doesn’t have to enter it again.

I won’t be sharing the extensions I built for the Kynetx team but I plan on sharing the code along with explinations on www.kynetxappaday.wordpress.com soon. Hope this app has gotten you thinking about ways you could use something similar or maybe completely different apps you could build using Kynetx.

Questions?

KRL Documentation
Ask KRL question on StackOverflow.com
Ask @MikeGrace on Twitter
Ask @Kynetx on Twitter
Read the latest on our dev blog

I took that as a challenge and built a Kynetx app that would fix that problem.

Action shots:

Status Update Before

Status Update After

Photo Before

Photo After

Download Chrome Extension

Download Firefox Extension

]]> http://geek.michaelgrace.org/2011/01/shun-the-facebook-likes-kynetx-app/feed/ 2 http://geek.michaelgrace.org/2011/01/krl-stack-overflow-question-watcher-for-kynetx-team/ http://geek.michaelgrace.org/2011/01/krl-stack-overflow-question-watcher-for-kynetx-team/#comments Wed, 12 Jan 2011 06:04:55 +0000 MikeGrace http://geek.michaelgrace.org/?p=1573 I built this app based on an idea I got this morning and it has turned out great! I love it!

The app is built for the Kynetx team so I wont be sharing the extension with the public but I have no qualms with sharing how awesome it is. The app allows each Kynetx team member to see who on the team has viewed the KRL tagged question on Stack Overflow. A Kynetx team member can then mark that they are currently working on an answer for the question or that they have “passed” on the question. A simple tool to help coordinate the teams efforts in answering the public’s questions about KRL on Stack Overflow.

Action shots:

Questions

• What do you think of this Kynetx app?
• Does this app give you any ideas?
• Could you or your company use a tool like this?

.

: )

I think the native retweet is great sometimes and other times it just doesn’t fit. I got really sick of doing the copy and paste dance so I built a Kynetx app that adds the “RT” functionality that I want. The RT doesn’t automatically get sent out because often times I need to shorten up  because it doesn’t fit within the 140 character limit.

Action shots

RT button:

After clicking RT button:

Get the Google Chrome or Firefox extensions below

Download Chrome Extension

Download Firefox Extension

Download Internet Explorer Extension

You can view the code that runs this app along with a short explanation on how it works over at http://kynetxappaday.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/day-32-old-school-twitter-retweet/

Wishing @Twitter would add support for showing XKCD comics inline on twitter.com

I agree that it would be nice to have each XKCD comic load inline. Until it is supported, I thought I would bang out a Kynetx app to do it. Only took me an hour while helping my wife get ready for work and out the door so I feel pretty good about it. There are a few things I could add to it but it works and it’s simple. You can use the app as a Google Chrome extension or a Firefox Extension.

Download Chrome Extension

Download Firefox Extension

Action shot!

I’ve noticed recently that I have been hiding the One True Fan bar a lot for various reasons. I really love the bar but I don’t always want to see it, but at the same time I always want it to be there. So… I built a Kynetx app that solves my problem and maybe others will find it useful also.

Minimal One True Fan is a Chrome and Firefox Extension that

1. looks for the One True Fan bar on the page
2. hides the bar
3. takes the checked in status button and places it in the bottom left corner of the page
4. clicking on the status button will bring the bar back

See the Minimal One True Fan Kynetx app and the One True Fan extensions in action!

Download Chrome Extension

Download Firefox Extension

Update 01/04/2011

Updated the app to also show the avatar of the current One True Fan of the current site because who doesn’t love to see if they are the One True Fan? : D

1. Start typing the URL so it will auto suggest it
2. Use keyboard shortcut ctrl + alt + backspace

Doing this immediately removed the suggestion from my Chrome history on my cr-48 for Chrome OS

I have decided to make a Kynetx app that helps me with this annoyance and you are free to use it and give feedback (things like, ‘I wish it worked on this site’ or ‘Dude! This is awesome!’).

Example Code

*It is currently only helping on a few sites but I will be adding sites as I run across them and people suggest them.

If you have the extension installed and working, you can see a list of domains that the app is helping you focus on at the end of this post inserted by the extension.

Download Chrome Extension

Download Firefox Extension

Action shot before:

Action shot after:

List of sites this extension is helping on

If you had the extension installed and running properly, you would see this replaced with a list of the sites that the extension is currently helping on

So, because I want to use both and didn’t want to wait for OneTrueFan to fix the problem, I created a simple Kynetx app that runs as a browser extension and fixes the problem if it detects both on the page. : )

DOWNLOAD CHROME EXTENSION

Action shots:

Kynetx app code:

Example

Creating new keyboard shortcut for changing tab in TextMate:
1. Found action in app menu to assign keyboard shortcut to

2. Open System Preferences

3. View keyboard shortcuts window

4. Click plus button to add new shortcut

5. Click add and celebrate!

non printable characters

I Recently was working on building some Selenium tests and needed to compare a string after being saved to a database and returned to the user interface. Because of the interface plugin that does some syntax highlighting, the string was being displayed with some non printable characters. Because the non printable characters were not breaking the app, I decided that it would be OK for me to remove them to compare the strings in my selenium test.

To remove the non printable characters or only return the printable characters I used the following ruby:

printableString = stringFromInterface.scan(/[[:print:]]/).join

There is a great list of other character classes that can be used in your regular expressions found at http://doc.infosnel.nl/ruby_regular_expressions.html

Character classes

setTimeout(function() {
    // JavaScript code executes here
}, 3000)

The first parameter of the setTimeout is the JavaScript function that will be executed once the delay is up. The second parameter is the amount of time to delay in milliseconds.

It is possible to pass the setTimeout function a string in the first parameter as the JavaScript to execute but this is a bad idea. Passing the JavaScript as a string means that it must go through eval() to be executed. eval() == evil. It’s also difficult to pass parameters to a function when using strings that must go through eval(). Passing an anonymous function instead of a string is also easier to read for developers.

Here’s how I take screenshots of my selenium tests running, written in Ruby:

• Find the variable referencing the selenium driver. Might look something like this:

  @selenium_driver = Selenium::Client::Driver.new(.....

• Wait for condition to take screenshot. Example:

  page.wait_for_element("//h1", {:timeout_in_seconds => 10})

• Take screenshot. Example:

  @selenium_driver.capture_entire_page_screenshot(File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__)) + 'screenshot1.png', '')

  or something simpler like:

  @selenium_driver.capture_entire_page_screenshot('~/Desktop/screenshot1.png', '')

Selenium documentation for using the capture screenshot function.

Quotes in strings that are then going to be put in other Ruby strings need to be tripple escaped. If the string is going directly to the eval in Selenium then only a single escape is needed.

first = "first quote: \\\"......"
second = "#{first} second quote: \\\".........."
jsfunction = "window.alert(\"#{second}\")"
puts jsfunction
 
it "should alert string" do
  page.js_eval(jsfunction)
end

Bad Example:

array = ["h1","p","div"];
$K(array).each(function() {
    console.warn( $K(this+"").children() );
});

Much Better Example:

array = ["h1","p","div"];
$K(array).each(function(index, value) {
    console.warn( $K(value).children() );
});

I had previously tried the following with out success

array = ["h1","p","div"];
$K(array).each(function() {
    console.warn( $K(this).children() );
});

The problem of what I was originally trying was that each item in the array wasn’t being treated as a string, I think.The problem of what I was originally trying was that ‘this’ is an object and not a string like I need for the jQuery selector.

A big thanks goes out to my friends,Alex Olson & Sam Curren, for helping me understand my mistake while being tired.

If I didn’t need to do something different for each time through the loop I could do something like this stack overflow answer:

array = ["h1","p","div"];
console.warn( $K( array.join(", ") ).children() );

IE content not scrolling bug

If you have some content in a container and the content isn’t scrolling, there is probably an easy fix. If any of the content inside the container that is position relative, the container must also be position relative.

Doesn’t work in IE

<div id="scroller" style="overflow-y:scroll">
  <p style="position:relative">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur</p>
  <p style="position:relative">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur</p>
  <p style="position:relative">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur</p>
  <p style="position:relative">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur</p>
  <p style="position:relative">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur</p>
  <p style="position:relative">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur</p>
</div>

Works in IE

<div id="scroller" style="overflow-y:scroll;position:relative">
  <p style="position:relative">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur</p>
  <p style="position:relative">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur</p>
  <p style="position:relative">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur</p>
  <p style="position:relative">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur</p>
  <p style="position:relative">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur</p>
  <p style="position:relative">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur</p>
</div>

Photo by Anderson Mancini

ie error expected identifier string or number

IE 7 was throwing an error while working on some JavaScript

ie error expected identifier string or number

The problem was that I had an extra comma in a hash

this.css({
      "position":"fixed",
      "top": ( $K(window).height() - this.height() ) / 2 + "px",
      "left": ( $K(window).width() - this.width() ) / 2 + "px",
    });

It should have been

this.css({
      "position":"fixed",
      "top": ( $K(window).height() - this.height() ) / 2 + "px",
      "left": ( $K(window).width() - this.width() ) / 2 + "px"
    });

Photo: By stealingsand

Placehold.it

After finding the sweet http://placehold.it/ web service, I knew I wanted to use it but wanted to be lazy.

I created a TextMate snippet to make using placehold.it even easier.

Now I just type ‘placehold’, press tab, and BAM!

Download the placehold.it TextMate snippet

Enjoy!

Sweet scissor photo by transp