Starting from now on, I will deliver all my latest (unstable) extensions versions through  my continuous build server. All request or bugs discovery that are requested in my forums and solved will lead to a new build that you will be able to download a lot faster than before.

Thanks to Maven for PHP, I can now commit, 60 seconds later, unit test run and  the result is a direct download for my extensions snapshots.

Here is an example with the module mod_related_thumb_items

Head to http://teamcity.waltercedric.com/teamcity/guestLogin.html?guest=1

Locate the module or component you are interested in:

Click on the latest build, must be  Success

If this build is a direct answer to a support request in my forums, or solve an issue, You should be able to see in changes the commit description, and even which file have been changed after and before the commit.

http://teamcity.waltercedric.com/teamcity/viewLog.html?buildId=217&buildTypeId=bt3&tab=buildChangesDiv

But Hey! you want to download this latest build now, go to artifact

Staying  on the edge by using RSS

You can monitor any build by using the RSS icon in your browser toolbar, or example with this module, it would be

http://teamcity.waltercedric.com/guestAuth/feed.html?buildTypeId=bt20&itemsType=builds&userKey=guest

This way of downloading the latest extensions do not replace the page http://www.waltercedric.com/joomla-releases-mainmenu-269.html where there is there only stable versions.

The next step is to make the maven phase “site” work (I have issue with phpdocumentor not found), this will create automatically a internet site in one of my sub-domains ad hide this complexity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZS8HqOGTbA

In this small post, you will learn how to install Atlassian Confluence in no more than 15 minutes. It do not replace the online installations manual (The Confluence Installation Guide is for people who are installing Confluence for the first time. Check the requirements and supported platforms, then download and install Confluence), but mainly complement it, with some of the best Linux practices (ADDED points).

How to install Atlassian Confluence in 15 minutes

Create user and user group

ADDED: Better run these web applications with their own user group and user for more security…This is not required, but follow Linux best practices, thus highly recommended.

The groupadd command creates a new group account using the values specified on the command line and the default values from the system.

# groupadd confluence

The useradd command allow a super user or root to create a new user or updates default new user information.

# useradd -g confluence -c 'confluence user for confluence' -m confluence

Be that user, for all next operations

# su – confluence

You are now in the new home of user confluence.

/home/confluence /#

Install Confuence

Get the latest standalone version

# wget http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/downloads/binary/confluence-3.1.1-std.tar.gz

Unpack it

# tar –xvf confluence-3.1.1-std.tar.gz

ADDED: To avoid having version number and make software updates easier, create a symbolic link (symlink). This will avoid to have in all your scripts a reference to the version number, thus keeping them more or less generic.

# ln –s /home/confluence/confluence-3.1.1-std /home/confluence/confluence

Customization of profile

ADDED: I do not like to type too much, that why all server where I went are full of aliases. This help also other developers to locate quickly interesting functions on the system.

# cd

Open the Bashrc and put at the end

# vi .bashrc

At least these 4 alias, you are free to define more. Think also that they may be seen as documentation.

alias rel='cd /home/confluence/confluence/'
alias logs='tail -F /home/confluence/confluence/logs/*'
alias cstart='/home/confluence/confluence/bin/startup.sh'
alias cstop='/home/confluence/confluence/bin/shutdown.sh'

To make you life easier, you’ll be able now to start and stop Confluence by issuing a cstart or cstop, watch logs by typing logs

Prepare database configuration

Go to confluence home

# cd

If you are using MySQL (most of the time you are), you’ll have to get the driver from internet due to licensing issues

# wget http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/mysql/Downloads/Connector-J/mysql-connector-java-5.1.10.zip

Install unzip if not available on your system

# apt-get install unzip

Unpack drivers in current directory

# unzip mysql-connector-java-5.1.10.zip

Search the driver file. I do this to avoid searching or typing for it

# find /home/confluence/ -name mysql*.jar

This should return something like mysql-connector-java-5.1.10/mysql-connector-java-5.1.10-bin.jar.

Copy this drivers into tomcat shared lib, aka into /home/confluence/confluence/lib

# cp mysql-connector-java-5.1.10/mysql-connector-java-5.1.10-bin.jar /home/confluence/confluence/lib

Create new database schema and user

# mysql –u root –p
mysql> create database confluence character set utf8;
mysql> CREATE USER 'confluence'@'localhost'
        IDENTIFIED BY 'xxxxxxxxxx';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON confluence
        TO 'confluence'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
mysql>  FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Configure Confluence to connect to this new database

Open /home/confluence/confluence/conf/server.xml and add in yellow the configuration for your database.

username="confluence"
password="xxxxxxxxxx"
driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/confluence?autoReconnect=true&useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF8"
maxActive="20"
maxIdle="7"
validationQuery="select 1" />

Start Confluence

Issue a

# cstart; logs

and check logs to see if there is no fatal error occurring before visiting your browser http://yourserverIP:8081/confluence to continue installation.

Scripts (optional)

Create a new init.d script for Confluence

ADDED: Are for starting and stopping easily Confluence, in a standard way. This is something missing currently in the manuals. Here I present you maybe the most basic script ever made, but its purpose is just to be called later on by a rc.d as you will see later.

# vi /etc/init.d/confluence

And place inside the following

 
#!/bin/bash 

RETVAL=0 
NORMAL_PORT=8009 

start() { 
su -l confluence -c '/home/confluence/confluence/bin/startup.sh' 
} 

stop() { 
su -l confluence -c '/home/confluence/confluence/bin/shutdown.sh' 
} 

status() { 
echo "not implemented" 
} 

findShutdownPort() { 
SHUTDOWN_PORT=`netstat -vatn|grep LISTEN|grep $NORMAL_PORT|wc –l` 
} 

case "$1" in 
start) 
start 
;; 
stop) 
stop 
;; 
restart) 
stop 
start 
;; 
redebug) 
stop 
debug 
;; 
status) 
status 
;; 
*) 
echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|redebug|status}" 
exit 1 
esac 
exit $RETVAL

# chown u+x /etc/init.d/confluence

Rc.d scripts

ADDED: This will start automatically Confluence in runlevel 5 if machine if ever restarted

# cd /etc/rc5.d

Create a symbolic link to the Init.d script for starting

# ln -s ../init.d/confluence S20confluence

And stopping

# ln -s ../init.d/confluence k20confluence

Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine and application framework. This lightning fast browser has some interesting hidden page only available by typing some special URL in the navigation bar.                                     

1. about:version
2. about:memory
3. about:cache
4. about:network
5. about:dns
6. about:stats
7. about:histograms
8. about:plugins
9. about:internets
10. about:dns
11. about:crash

about:version

Show information about version of Google Chrome and its internal components.

about:memory

about:cache

about:dns

about:histograms

about:plugins

about:crash

This is how Google Chrome look like when it crash

about:internets

In previous versions of Google Chrome, this should have start the screensavers pipe on windows platform only.

Following pages are no more working in Google Chrome 3.x and 4.x

about:network

about:stats

In this small post, I’ll show you how to reset the MySQL password in case you lost it.

You’ll need at least the root access of the machine where MySQL run.

Reset the MySQL root password

Resetting the root password of a MySQL database in case you lost it, is really easy.

Now start the database in the background, via the mysqld_safe command. Start MySQL with a flag to tell it to ignore any username/password restrictions which might be in place.

# /usr/bin/mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables &
[1] 8705
Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /var/lib/mysql mysqld_safe
[8345]: started

Now that the server is running, you can connect without any password

Stop the server,

# fg

hit CTRL_C to kill the process and start normally MySQL

# /etc/init.d/mysql start
Starting MySQL database server: mysqld.
Checking for corrupt, not cleanly closed and upgrade needing tables..

You should now be able to connect to your server using the password

Reset the MySQL root password

If you've got access to the root account already, because you know the password, you can change it easily:

# mysql --user=root --pass mysqlpassword Enter password:
mysql> update user set Password=PASSWORD('newpassword') WHERE User='root';
Query OK, 2 rows affected (0.04 sec)
Rows matched: 2 Changed: 2 Warnings: 0
mysql> flush privileges; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)
mysql> exit Bye

James Kennard experience with Joomla! 1.5 development enables him to share his insights effectively, in a clear and friendly way, giving practical hands-on solutions to problems, questions, and common tasks encountered in the design and implementation of Joomla! 1.5 extensions.

Kennard's cookbook is an excellent resource for novices and experts alike. I did start reading it and really appreciate the way the information are presented. While I develop for Joomla! since many years, I was surprised by the number of things that I was not using in all my projects. It is not for beginners, but those who have worked a little with Joomla! will learn a lot on its internals. Beginer

This book has helped me be a better developer, let me explain how:

• Examples are easy to understand, and really found in 80% of components, plugins and modules.
• I did discover a lot of existing API code, that did reduce my overall coding effort and code size by 30%
• I did add quickly new functionalities like RSS frontend, better paging presentation of data in no time. In fact, a lot faster than without having been not helped by this book.
• Starting at chapter 3, the book contains some tips about how to deals with the Requests and Users and how to keep Joomla secure through those practices.

My only regret, is how fast I went to this interesting book, even if it weight 360 pages, It was such a pleasure that I wish the book was even bigger! You can expect some direct results soon in my next components releases.

Book Content

360 pages that cover the following topics:

• Make your extensions extensible, add extensions points to allow third parties to customize your extension
• Create international extensions by enabling multilingual capabilities, solving some UTF8 pitfalls.
• Improve the user experience by adding Ajax
• Work with the file system, interrogate existing files and folders and store data in the file system
• Create Atom and RSS feeds to keep users up-to-date
• Build more than just HTML pages - create PDF documents, Atom Feeds, and more!
• Utilize the power of Subversion to maintain your source code
• Dynamically extend your database tables using JParameter to make your extensions more flexible
• Execute database queries and handle returned data in order to access and modify your data
• Handling errors
• Take control of your workflows by using JoomlaCode.org to manage your Joomla! projects

Nota

This book is published and sold by Packt Publishing. A donation is made to the Joomla! project with every copy sold as per the Packt Publishing Open Source Project Royalties scheme.

Where to buy

Go visit the Packt Shop now

Finally Got my Futaba 14MZ today, it’s a 14-Channel 2.4GHz Computer System from Futaba. I win it 5 days ago on www.ricardo.ch. A big Thanks to Juan Luis Suazo from Basel for the delivery and the nice talk we had about our common experiences using  RC helicopter. The next step will be to try to correctly configure this monster and do some practice in Reflex XTR

reflex XTR

It is the most advanced radio transmitter on the market. dot

Features

• DUAL internal processors for flawless reliability.
• PCM G3 2048 resolution for unprecedented speed and precision.
• Full color, touch screen display with Dial-N-Key button. Navigate through menus and make selections by touching the screen or using the Dial-N-Key button.
• 2200mAh Lithium-Ion transmitter battery
• Switch Customizing. Reconfigure the eight 14MZ shoulder switches to your own preference. Just pull out a switch to remove it, and plug in the style you prefer — tall or short, button or toggle, spring-loaded or positionable.
• Stick Customizing-A tension adjustment lets you tailor stick "feel" to your own touch. Dual ball bearings on each axis and a long-life potentiometer ensure smooth, precise control.
• Audio and Picture files-Using a Compact Flash memory card, modelers can upload JPEG picture images of their models that will appear on the LCD screen. Use the built-in mic to record and store up to 24 voice prompts -- like "Landing gear down!" and "Full throttle!" Assign them to specific switches and functions. Then, through the built-in speaker or included earphones, you'll hear audio confirmations of proper stick movement.
• Compact Flash Card Data Storage & Transfer Increase memory to 100 models. Upload digital images of your aircraft for use as model names on the graphic display menu. Create and store audio files.
• Silky smooth sticks- Each axis is supported by dual ball bearings. Stick tension and detent is adjustable, so airplane and heli modelers can personalize to their preference.
• Preset Model Types Numerous aircraft configurations are already programmed into the 14MZ -- seven wing types and three tail types. That's a good example of the many built-in "shortcuts" that make this radio so easy to use. Just select the set-up you need!
• Servo Grouping With the 14MZ, you can group multiple servos that control a single function onto one transmitter operation -- but plug the servos themselves into different individually adjustable receiver channels (even non-consecutively) without needing a separate servo synchronizer for mixing.

Package content

• 14MZ transmitter including (TM-14) RF module
• 32 MB Compact Flash data pack memory card
• 7.4V Lithium Ion transmitter battery
• Lithium Ion transmitter battery charger
• Wall charger for receiver battery
• 1500mAh NiCd 4.8V receiver battery
• Aluminum case with fully padded interior
• Switch harness
• Aileron extension cord
• Y-harness
• DSC (Direct Servo Control) cord
• Woven adjustable neck strap
• Rubber tipped stylus pen for touch panel, dress nut wrench, 2.5mm and 1.5mm hex wrench
• Instruction manual

Links

• Official Futaba 2.4GHz site
• Runryder’s Futaba Fasst forum
• HeliFreak’s 14MZ forum

Futaba 14MZ manuals

• Futaba 14MZ Manuals 
• Futaba 14MZ  Quick Start Guide for Airplanes
• Futaba 14MZ Quick Start Guide for Helis
• TM-14

I did deploy the latest version of the following extensions:

• Mindmap Content plugin Freemind (WIKI): This Joomla! content plugin provide an easy way to inline any mindmap or freemind mind map into your article content.
• SmugMug badge module (WIKI): A small module, highly customizable to display a badge of your Smugmug galleries (up to 4 galleries are randomly supported).
• RelatedArticles for Joomla (WIKI): This Joomla plugin will dynamically list down the links to related articles for the displayed article. The links to related articles will be displayed at the bottom of the article and hyperlink will be provided for each related article, in the list.

Visit  the Demo server now

You have full access to administrator backend, site is read only and get renewed every 30 minutes