Martian Intuition

If you're trying to use a Sierra AirCard 597E on OS X 10.5 Leopard via the bundled Sierra Wireless Watcher Lite software, then you're probably frustrated like me.

Since my original review, Sierra did release a new version 1.1.3 of the beleaguered PowerPC binary (no it's not Universal/Intel-native). While the new version starts less slowly than 1.1.1, it still mysteriously crashes, sometimes taking the connection with it.

The fix? Simply use Apple's built-in modem dialer, leaving Watcher Lite dormant unless its device provisioning or activation functions are required.

Step 1: In the Network Preferences Panel, check "Show modem status in menu bar"

Step 2: Enjoy the nicely integrated, crash-free EV-DO connectivity

On December 9th, after over twelve-years living in Austin, ten of them working as a pro web developer, I accepted a web dev position in San Francisco with Scout Labs. January 7th I start the job: front-end Ruby on Rails web development.

The company's product, the Scout, already received a revealing write-up by TechCrunch. The possibilities of the Scout are just beginning, and I'm ecstatic to become part of the team building this phenomenally useful tool.

Googling revealed words originally by Bette Davis, Richard Nixon, & Aldous Huxley.

How does Sprint's Mobile Broadband service perform in Austin? Is it worth a twenty-four month commitment totaling over $1500?

In an effort to answer this question, here's a summary of my experiences & observations during this first month of going mobile.

Cycle through open documents using Command + ` in Illustrator & InDesign; that's the OS X system-standard short-cut.

But that window switcher function is Ctrl + Tab in Photoshop.

Why Adobe, why?

After years of working out of an office & local cafes with WiFi, I've been jonesing for the ability to do my web work anywhere; especially under a shady tree in the park. I love loving my work. So, after comparing the only cellular broadband options available here in Austin TX (just two: Verizon & Sprint), I just picked up a cellular broadband internet card & plan with Sprint.

Here's my initial speed report using SpeakEasy's Speed Test...

What do you get when you combine a Last.fm profile and Amazon's MP3 Downloads?

You get personally tuned, streaming radio (my favorite is "My Neighborhood" in Discovery Mode) with inexpensive, non-DRM, high-quality (256Kbps VBR) MP3 downloads just a few clicks away.

Wow. I just suddenly realized how much the iTunes Music Store missed the Web 2.0 boat. Good luck Apple; I'll still buy your computers & OS.

Here's a quick demo of how the Last.fm-Amazon combo works...

After years of talking about it, therapy clothing, the sustainable, green fashion boutique in Austin, now sells a selection of products on-line. My favorite, Loomstate organic denim & cotton are some the comfiest clothes I own.

Response code "406" makes it look like a web server error, but if you're troubled in Windows Internet Explorer 6, it may very well be a client-side error.

Client-side Causes

• loading a behavior in CSS, like img.transparent { behavior: url(iepngfix.htc); }, where the URL actually returns an error (self-diagnosed in Windows Internet Explorer 6)
• broken meta tags (source)

Server-side Causes

• Accept-headers that do not declare any types that the server can provide (source)
• over-zealous mod_security (source)

Here's a WSDL file for Zimbra's Admin SOAP API.

Updates

• 22 August 2007
  • added CreateDomainRequest operation
  • implemented complexTypes ldapRecord, accountRequest, domainRequest to support different definitions of the same element name in different contexts (this actually DRY'd the schema)
• 20 August 2007
  • changed urn:zimbra schema in the WSDL so that account & domain elements always ref a common element (fixed/simplified to avoid redefinition of an element name)
• 16 August 2007
  • revised this post to explain & support my findings about Zimbra's SOAP API
• 15 August 2007
  • expanded coverage of WSDL with many more Zimbra Admin operations
  • refactored types/schema to reuse element definitions via ref attribute
  • implemented simpleContent string for sessionId & a
  • moved header context into the 'zimbra' namespace
• 04 August 2007
  • now with support for the several app-level methods
  • also fixed some namespace problems

This WSDL for Zimbra does not fulfill WSDL's true purpose: to make Zimbra's SOAP services immediately consumable. Ideally, WSDL enables mapping remote services to native objects without writing adapter code.

The fact is that Zimbra's SOAP API does not fit elegantly into WSDL's ideal.

Zimbra's SOAP interface wraps the content of every message

Every message body is wrapped in an operationNameRequest or operationNameResponse element. Yet the WSDL specs say,

Multiple part elements are used if the message has multiple logical units

Zimbra goes the route of monolithic messages. Though not functionally critical, this extra level in the SOAP message causes mapping to unique complexType *Request & *Response objects in the client, instead of directly to part-level simpleType & complexType elements. Direct mapping to usable message parts enables very slim adapter code (if any) in the client.

Also, the Zimbra's method names follow the pattern operationNameRequest instead of the normalized, simple operationName, adding further complexity to the WSDL.

Zimbra's web API is not RESTful

A sessionId must be propagated through each request & updated if changed in a response. Also, an initial AuthRequest gets an AuthToken, and subsequent requests' headers must contain that token.

Nonetheless

WSDL rocks as a way to generate stubs for your own implementation of a web service.

Just switched this site/blog from Typo to Mephisto, a process that's taken months to accomplish in spare moments of personal web productivity.

The conversion process didn't work so well at first. It took digging in to the Mephisto Converter code to make it work going from Typo 4.1.1 to Mephisto trunk.

Here's the code that made it WFM.

Well this is quickly becoming Mars' notes from building software on OS X blog!

Anyway, after following the official RMagick install, gem install rmagick fails with an error like:

/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rmagick-1.15.7/./lib/rvg/misc.rb:321:
in `get_type_metrics': unable to read font `/Library/Fonts/Verdana' (Magick::ImageMagickError)

It seems that the examples fail because of a spurious font choice in the documented examples.

All that is needed to build the RMagick gem successfully at this point is:

sudo gem install rmagick -- --disable-htmldoc

And voila, the examples aren't built, thereby avoiding the problem.

RMagick!

Say for instance you just applied a software update to your Mac OS X Server and rebooted.

Suddenly a Rails app that was running fine spits out an error when ActionPack does a redirect_to. In the Rails production.log:

SystemStackError (stack level too deep)

Well my friend, before you set off to debugging the Ruby install on your OS X machine, try clearing the Rails sessions. At the command line:

rake tmp:sessions:clear RAILS_ENV=production

Everyone must login again, but alas the problem is solved! [for me]

Is it because we're using Apple's built-in Apache 1.3 web server with source-compiled FastCGI support? Hmmm.

Want to try implementing a design with PNG graphics?

The glaring problem of PNG images is synchronizing color appearance with GIF/JPEG images & CSS colors. This is a well documented problem.

PNG vs JPEG/GIF color problems can be avoided by using PNG for all of the graphics in a site that must perfectly match.

Otherwise, the best path to PNG bliss is a shell command tool that strips out all that advanced color/gamma data (since it confuses different browsers in different ways) and tries each of the 130+ compression modes to find the most efficient one.

pngcrush -rem gAMA -rem cHRM -rem iCCP -rem sRGB -brute infile.png outfile.png

Get it at the pngcrush development site or as I did (for Mac OS X) via Darwin Ports.