I have learned why internationalization is abbreviated to ‘i18n’ thanks to Sun’s internationalization documentation. Now if only I knew why there’s so much more moo shu than pancakes…
Having a few days free this week, I finally got back in the shop for the first time this year. The same thing happened last year - I wasn’t in the shop for the first couple of months of the year. I’m not sure why this happens. It seems like the deep, dark months of January and February would be a great time to be in the shop. Maybe I’m distracted by other projects that I’ve come up with for the new year. Anyway, I’m back.
The major result of my past few days in the shop has been the fabrication of drawers for the sewing machine cabinet. Now I feel like this thing is making some real progress! The drawers are constructed of baltic birch plywood for the sides and back, and hardboard for the bottom. The fronts are made of solid cherry with a cutout at the top for a hand hold. The cutouts have a cove profile routed on the backside to provide some additional grip.
So I tried to install DB2 8.2 on Fedora 8 recently. The install seemed to go smoothly, but then I couldn’t really do anything. Running any DB2 command (like ‘db2′) would give strange errors like:
SQL10007N Message “-1390″ could not be retrieved. Reason code: “3″.
and
./db2cc: line 26: db2javit: command not found
and
DB2JAVIT : RC = 9501DB2INSTANCE : -2029059916
After searching the web and trying a number of things with no better results, I tried logging in as the db2inst1 user created during installation. Voila! Everything works beautifully. The thing that I was missing for using DB2 commands from other users was adding DB2 environment variables. The script that does this in a default installation is /home/db2inst1/sqllib/db2profile. Running the following command sets up the DB2 environment:
. /home/db2inst1/sqllib/db2profile
Okay, this is probably a total noob mistake, but if this post helps just one person, it was worth it.
Recently I was asked to look at building a web application that would run on Tomcat and use Active Directory for authentication. Since I didn’t exactly know how to do this, I thought it would be interesting to get an OSS LDAP server up and running on my Mac and try hooking into it with Tomcat. Since I couldn’t find this already on the net, I thought it would be handy to document the process I went through to get this set up. Read More
I’m still loving the 1.1.3 update for my iPhone. In the Maps application, I can now search for and find the destination that I want to go to, and then ask for directions from my current location. The app will approximate where I’m at and give me directions to where I want to go. I’ve found that the approximated location varies from pretty good to dead on. It’s no GPS replacement, but it’s pretty useful.
Perhaps I should expand on that a bit. When you?re in the Maps application, you can search for the location that you want to go to. Once you?ve found it, you click on the pushpin on the map to bring up details. Then, you click on ?Directions to here?, which puts the Maps app into directions mode instead of search mode. By default, the To field is filled with the place that you?re tying to get to, and the from field is filled with the special text ?Current location.? You click on the Route button and Google Maps computes a route to get you where you want to go. Once you?ve done it a couple of times, it?s a very fluid and natural experience.
Woohoo! I’m loving the 1.1.3 firmware update for the iPhone released yesterday. I’m not sure if my favorite feature is being able to rearrange the home page icons or being able to put a web clipping on the home page. The ability for Maps to show your approximate location is a pretty cool update as well.
I’ve recently been playing around with Fedora 8 as an environment for installing WAS while I work on certification. There were a couple of glitches that stumped me for a day or so, but since then it’s been working great.
 The first problem was related to updates. I could run the launchpad application, but when I tried to run the WAS installer, it would crash and core dump. Eventually I found an article on devloperWorks talking about a similar problem installing DB2. The poster said that an update fixed his problem. Although Fedora was offering 140 updates, I didn’t want to spend the time installing them. I decided to go ahead and do that, and afterwards my core dump problem was fixed.
However, now the installer just quit without doing anything (or even showing an UI) rather than core dumping. A post by Kenny Smith suggested that there were some other packages that needed to be installed as documented in the manuals. I decided to read the installation manuals on the InfoCenter, and followed the instructions for RHEL5. Sure enough, there were four or five packages that were documented as being required that were not installed by default, so I went ahead and installed them. Lo and behold, the installer ran and installed WAS!
I guess the moral of the story is two-fold: 1) Install the updates that the system is offering. 2) Read the manual.Â
I finally got back into the shop this weekend after a few weekends off, and the sewing cabinet gained a knee apron as a result. Cutting the curve on the apron was not quite as difficult as I imagined it might be. My el-cheapo bandsaw managed to do a decent job of making the rough cut, and then I made several passes with a drum sander to smooth it out. A final pass with sandpaper gave it a very smooth finish. The two pedestals are now attached to the back of the cabinet as well.
The next step is to make feet, and I’ve started machining the wood for those parts.
I’ve had my new Apple keyboard for just about a week now. It’s turned out to be as good as I had hoped it would be. Yay!
The keyboard seems a little low at first, but I haven’t had a real problem with that so far. The big win is that the keys provide much better feedback about when you have pressed the key than the previous design did. I have read some complaints about the keys being too easy to press, but I haven’t noticed that problem so far.
This weekend sees the completion of both pedestals of the sewing cabinet. The edge banding on the horizontal pieces (top, bottom, and shelf) were glued in and trimmed flush. The edge banding on the back panel was also trimmed flush. The next step is to attach the back to the pedestals and start working on the knee apron that spans between the pedestals.
