Archive for the ‘Geek’ Category

Bugzilla API: an example using PHP and Zend Framework

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Bugzilla has a rudimentary API for driving it from code.  To do this from PHP is reasonably trivial, but using Zend Framework (for the cookie jar primarily) makes the task very simple.  Here is some example code: $oClient = new Zend_XmlRpc_Client('http://my.zilla.url/xmlrpc.cgi'); $oHttpClient = new Zend_Http_Client(); $oHttpClient->setCookieJar(); $oClient->setHttpClient($oHttpClient); $aResponse = $oClient->call('User.login', array(array( 'login' ...

Windows 7 for an Ubuntu devotee

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

There are three reasons I know of for spending money on an operating system at a time when free Ubuntu is now such a viable option. Those reasons are not Internet Explorer, the Microsoft Office paperclip and the excitement gained by placing your valuable data within an environment of questionable ...

Bug Tracking in the Open

Friday, January 15th, 2010

In the inspiring Google blog post The Meaning of Open, Jonathan Rosenberg sites the Google Web Toolkit as using “a public bug tracker”. And it is this small mention (in the midst of a post discussing much bigger themes) that I want to pursue. I work for MediaTel Group and ...

Picasa on Ubuntu

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

I've recently taken a shine to Picasa as an alternative to F-Spot on Linux.  Installing Picasa 3 Beta for Linux is straightforward on Ubuntu: download the .deb from Google's site and then install it (sudo dpkg -i picasa_3.0-current_i386.deb).  Having done that, the only other bit of configuration I have found ...

Ubuntu Karmic – now better than Mac OS X

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Ok. The subject of the post is deliberately provocative and the chances of me changing the allegiance of die-hard fans of Apple's "beauty-in-a-box" are remote to say the least. But I think it right to encourage everyone (whether Windows, Mac or Linux desktop users) to look again at ...

Stored Procedures: Good or Bad?

Monday, December 15th, 2008

A project team rewriting one of our web products has made the decision to jump ship from SQL Server to the open-source MySQL database and, at the same time, to place a greater emphasis on the use of stored procedures. Since that decision, there have been various other projects where ...

Hailing Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex (and the Eee PC 701)

Monday, October 20th, 2008

(Updated: new steps needed for wireless on Eee PC) Each release of Ubuntu just gets more and more, well, grown-up.  When I started using Ubuntu on the desktop, it was a brave man who would upgrade when a new release became available rather than install from scratch (and keep your fingers ...

Integrating Subversion (SVN) with Bugzilla

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

It's well documented why using a source code control system is a worthwhile investment. Change tracking, team working, a safety-net, release management, control and reporting. And Subversion, a.k.a. svn, is the leading light in the open source world, taking over the mantle from CVS. Subversion is different. It ...

Sync Google Calendar with iPod on Ubuntu Linux

Saturday, October 6th, 2007

Create a script to fetch the Google Calendar and copy it to your iPod: # download the Google calendar ical file through the private URL wget -c -N http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/yourname%40gmail.com/public/basic.ics # copy it to the iPod cp basic.ics /media/your-ipod-name/Calendars/google.ics rm basic.ics Now configure Ubuntu so that this script is run whenever you plug your iPod in. ...