Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Operation not allowed for reason code "7" on table "YourTableHere" in DB2

Note to self: When you make a change to a DB2 table and you see the following database error in the logs:
Operation not allowed for reason code "7" on table "YourTableHere"

It is time to issue a reorg on the table via this:
CALL sysproc.admin_cmd('REORG TABLE YourTableHere');

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Review of JavaScript Web Applications by Alex MacCaw

Title: JavaScript Web Applications
Author: Alex MacCaw
ISBN:144930351X
ISBN-13978-1449303518
Javascriptwebapplicationscover

Pros: Extensive, Well-written, Several examples
Audience: Advanced and/or Intermediate Developers
Introduction
I started this book thinking that it would provide a basic overview of the use of JavaScript within web application development. Boy was I wrong! This text is really a manual on creating a full featured JavaScript web based app. Given that the author is the creator of Spine.js, he is qualified to create an extensive JavaScript Manual.
As a Java and .Net developer, this text is more that I require concerning the use of JavaScript. However, I am sure that as time goes on and JavaScript is more embedded in various frameworks via the likes of JQuery, etc. this book will become more practical for me. 
Review
Instead of giving a chapter by chapter review, here is the summary of the overall content of the book (as if such is easy to do for this comprehensive work). This book is not for those just starting JavaScript development. However, if you have experience in another language, this resource will serve you well as you move into further JavaScript programming. 
The initial part of the book deals with the concept of the MVC framework, models, events and event handling, controllers, application state, views, and templating. The examples are mostly in JQuery which is also my framework of choice for JavaScript development. MacCaw also covers Node.js, Socket.IO, and WebSockets. Moreover, he also provides an examples on testing, debugging your apps, as well as a look at the Backbone and Spine.js (which he created) libraries. Finally, the text provides further information on JQuery, CSS extensions, and CSS3 in the appendixes.
Conclusion
When you are ready to take take the deep dive into developing a JavaScript based we application, this is your manual.

Friday, March 02, 2012

Personal Informatics: The Weather

This past year I have been tracking various personal data key indicators. One has been the number of miles ran per calendar month. Having used Runkeeper to do this an interesting observation has emerged. 

It has been no secret how mild the winter has been here in the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area. However, this February 2012 is about the same as February 2011 concerning being able to run outdoors. The temperatures seem to be higher in February 2012 but the conditions that allow one to run outside, no ice or snow, were no different this year than in 2011  Look at the monthly numbers from Runkeeper for this 2011-2012 winter season:

2012running

Compare this to the 2010-2011 winter season:

2011running

Running outside November 2010 through January 2011 was not safe due to ice and snow. While there is a vast difference between the months of November through January for both winters, the month of February was not different for either winter season. Interesting....

Thursday, March 01, 2012

Autotest on Ubuntu 11.10 running Rails 3.2

I’m reading and working through Ruby on Rails Tutorial from Michael Hartl. The book rightly promotes a "test first" approach. In this Hartl mentions autotest. As the text mentions, "configuring it can be a bit tricky."
Here are the steps I used to get autotest working on my Ubuntu 11.10 OS running Rails 3.2.0.rc2:
$ gem install autotest
$ gem install autotest-rails-pure
$ sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin
$ gem install autotest-notification
Next, I added the ~/.autotest file:
Then, I simply ran autotest from my rails app directory:
$ rails-apps/myapp autotest
This is nice in that I do not have to manually run the rspec tests as autotest runs each time I change a test file or the tested implementation code.