Using MySQL with JRuby is actually pretty easy (and no annoying arch issues on OS X! :-)

Install GEMs (DBI, JDBC driver, DBI adapter):

$ jgem install dbi jdbc-mysql dbd-jdbc

Then use it!

require 'dbi'
require 'jdbc/mysql'
dbh = DBI.connect('dbi:jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/test', 'root', '', 
                  { "driver" => "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" } )

I’ve never worked on an extension before but as it turns out, it’s really quite easy to pick up; some fairly simple XML (aka XUL) for composing the UI and JavaScript for the rest. One of the trickier bits has to do with scope. After doing some testing I figured out that the entry point into an extension is via the browser window; that is, your extension code will be executed each time you open a new window and that means that all your code is basically scoped to a single window.

In developing the new Ghostery feature I needed a way to run some code when the user quits Firefox. Luckily, the extension architecture is extremely flexible (if poorly documented at times) and I didn’t have to jump through any hoops to do it. Almost anything, it seems can be either chained or hooked in some way. In this case, the nsIObserverService gives us access to the necessary shutdown event to which we can attach an observer using a simple interface.

The problem, then, was that since our code is run every time a new window is created, I needed a way to register the hook only once to avoid firing multiple times on exit. My first thought was to try to register the hook outside of the window scope (e.g. using a different chrome overlay) but that appeared to be a dead end. Using a globally scoped variable as a lock was also a dead end. In the end I settled on something I already knew how to use: preferences. Essentially, I created a simple lock around a preference variable which, while I don’t need to store it between sessions, is in fact a global storage area that can be accessed from different windows.

Check out the code below for an example implementation. I left out the actual preferences code since it’s not crucial to understanding the solution.

This year was something of an anomaly for me: I only went to five shows. Two of those shows, however, were music festivals and easily made up for the otherwise quiet concert calendar — Lollapalooza with a staggering 35 shows in three days and the Newport Folk Festival with another 6.

I also went to 3 free shows at Madison Square Park: Jonatha Brooke, Raul Malo, and the John Scofield Trio. I’m a huge fan of Raul Malo and the Mavericks so we ended up braving some of the worst rain of the summer to see him. It rained through most of his shortened set, but it was still worth it.

With so few real shows this year they all made the list, but here they are in order:

1. Matt & Kim – at the Music Hall of Williamsburg
2. The Thermals – at Bowery Ballroom (my favorite venue)
3. Warren G – at the Music Hall of Williamsburg
4. Raul Malo – in the rain at MadSqPark
5. Jonatha Brooke – at MadSqPark
6. The John Scofield Trio – at MadSqPark

Lollapalooza

The name of the game at lolla was coverage: we tried to see as many shows as humanly possible with the size of the venue, the crowds and the weather (from soaking rain to blazing heat) all working against us. Some shows we stopped at were simply on the way to a must-see show, while others we went to because they were starting on a nearby stage. All in all, we saw a ton of great shows, but these were the best:

1. Dan Deacon – I’m actually not a very big fan of his [albums], but his live set was just amazing
2. Passion Pit
3. Depeche Mode
4. Lykke Li – another surprisingly great set

Full list of shows:

Lollapalooza

DAY 1:

Heartless Bastards
Thievery Corporation
Peter Bjorn & John
Depeche Mode

DAY 2:

Miike Snow
Ida Maria
Los Campesinos!
Joe Pug
Carebears on Fire
Gomez
Coheed and Cambria
No Age
Glasvegas
Lykke Li
Animal Collective
Tool
Yeah Yeah Yeahs

DAY 3:

Friendly Fires
Portugal. The Man
Car Stereo Wars
The Greencards
The Kaiser Chiefs
He Say, She Say
Neon Hitch
Gang Gang Dance
Dan Deacon
Vampire Weekend
Passion Pit
Cold War Kids
Deerhunter
MSTRKRFT
Band of Horses
Jane’s Addiction
Deadmau5
The Killers

Newport Folk Festival

Ramblin’ Jack Elliot
Ben Kweller
The Avett Brothers
Gillian Welch
Fleet Foxes
The Decemberists

They were all great shows at Newport, but the main stage was just too crowded by the time we arrived and the sound was sorely lacking at the further reaches of the field. We ended up sitting on the grass at just about the furthest possible point from the stage, save for the boats just off shore, on the only patch of grass that was not yet covered by blankets.

We had a terrific time, but the shows we caught on the smaller tented stages were far better, so I have to give the best in show prize here to Ben Kweller, whom I’m a big fan of. We also caught the last couple songs of Ramblin’ Jack’s set, which was just amazing. We even got to sing him happy birthday as he was celebrating his 78th birthday at the festival.

The weather was beautiful and it turned out to be a perfect day for outdoor music. What the shows lacked, the weather and the scenery more than made up for.

1. The Avett Brothers – I and Love and You
2. Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears – Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is!
3. Discovery – LP
4. Girls – Album
5. Monsters of Folk – Monsters of Folk
6. Passion Pit – Manners
7. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
8. The Thermals – Now We Can See
9. Wilco – Wilco (the album)
10. The xx – xx

A lot of the folk/rock influence comes from listening to NYC’s best music radio station, WFUV, and indeed, four of my top 10 albums are also on the listener’s best of 2009 poll. I’m actually a little surprised that Black Joe Lewis didn’t make it into their top 50, given how much they played it over the summer, but there’s still lots more great music on there.

Here’s some more of mine that didn’t make it the top 10 but were also in heavy rotation this year:

• Andrew Bird – Noble Beast
• Bell X1 – Blue Lights on the Runway
• Ben Kweller – Changing Horses
• The BPA – I Think We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat
• Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career
• The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love
• Fanfarlo – Reservoir
• Felice Brothers – Yonder is the Clock
• Gomez – A New Tide
• Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
• Heartless Bastards – the Mountain
• The Low Anthem – Oh My God, Charlie Darwin
• Miike Snow – Miike Snow
• Mos Def – The Ecstatic
• Röyksopp – Junior
• Them Crooked Vultures – Them Crooked Vultures
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!

Apple makes great hardware, there’s no doubt about it. However, occasionally they make decisions that not only boggle the mind but are completely infuriating. Like putting non-standard ports on a laptop and charging twenty bucks for the proper adapter cable!

A similar problem I ran into recently is the issue of the graphics card in the Mac Pro: only specially branded “Mac-compatible” GPUs will work in OS X. What’s the problem with that you ask? Availability and pricing.

Availability

The current generation Mac Pro as of this writing offers a whopping two GPU options at the Apple store: the NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512mb or the ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB. I also managed to find and EVGA GeForce GTX 285 PCIe 1GB at a third-party retailer, bringing our total to three. Compare that with a whopping 380 PCIe x16 cards available right now on Newegg.

Pricing

This one should be pretty obvious if you’ve ever bought an Apple computer product: there is a steep markup on these specially branded cards. Where the Radeon HD 4870 costs about $349 a similar PC card costs about $150 and you get 1GB of memory to boot!

Who cares?

Ok, so upgrading the GPU is looking like it’s going to cost an arm and a leg for an OS X compatible part. Is it worth it? Truth is, it’s not. Gaming on the Mac is in a sad state of affairs with a severe shortage of available titles and when they do appear, it’s often long, long after the PC version (e.g., CoD4: Modern Warfare which suffered a delay of nearly 11 months).

So why all the fuss, then? Well, if you’re a Mac gamer, then you’re running Windows via Bootcamp to get your fix, like I am.

Solution

After much research, and some helpful replies to queries posted on the Apple community boards, I finally found my answer. A second “PC” GPU added to the Mac Pro will be safely ignored by OS X and properly recognized by Windows (see screenshots below). Just be sure to disable the original GPU in Windows once you’ve got the second card all setup or else you won’t be able to use it for gaming.

I still ran into one minor issue: the Mac Pro has a unique PCIe x16 power connector requiring, you guessed it, a special Mac-only power cable! Fortunately there are plenty of them available on eBay for under 20 bucks so you should still be able to pull off a rather “cheap” upgrade.

DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/simple; d=classmates.com;
     s=prod20081009.key.pem; t=1248374724; bh=PH2W8/WWF0Eq5UeHS7xrebJL9l
     g=; h=Date:from:to:Subject:Mime-Version:Content-Type:Message-Id;
     b=IMICZJvpMfW9pEWFSGX9gnScTOsQb0sI3edRgw7jHekqAK8OuJoFkmGBYcLC8IhpD
     mnoepYufrgbzzCEUWiYwpqCNSJ7PkqiyDs5n9upo4qtyEa29vgv6rXb39vQ+FjymKV+
     E39Tuzsm2MuXTTO+e0C7LlOozzqnSfh30yovIOI=

Gotta love the sheer audacity of it..

Download patch (squirrelmail-1.4.19-reply_body.patch)

--- squirrelmail-1.4.19/src/compose.php	2009-05-14 06:26:29.000000000 +0000
+++ squirrelmail/src/compose.php	2009-07-23 16:09:59.000000000 +0000
@@ -856,7 +856,7 @@
                 $rewrap_body = explode("\n", $body);
                 $from = (is_array($orig_header->from) && !empty($orig_header->from)) ? $orig_header->from[0] : $orig_header->from;
                 sqUnWordWrap($body);
-                $body = '';
+                $body = "\n\n\nOn " . getLongDateString( $orig_header->date, $orig_header->date_unparsed ) . " {$send_to} wrote:\n"; // MOD BY chetan
                 $cnt = count($rewrap_body);
                 for ($i=0;$i<$cnt;$i++) {
                     sqWordWrap($rewrap_body[$i], $editor_size, $default_charset);

You can use your spring.xml config file for wiring up your beans as usual, but rather than deal with various property files you can easily override properties on the fly using system properties. See the following example:

In your spring.xml make sure you have this line:

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<bean id="propertyConfigurer" 
    class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
    <!-- Allow properties to be overriden via 
         system properties -->
    <property name="systemPropertiesMode" value="2" />
    <property name="locations">
        <list> [...snip...] </list>
    </property>
</bean>

Then you can override your aliases either using standard java properties (-Djdbc.url=”mysql://…”) or via your program’s own command line arguments, which is the route I ended up going.

CommandLineParser parser = new GnuParser();
Options options = new Options();
Option brokerOption = new Option("b", "broker", true, "broker uri");
brokerOption.setRequired(true);
options.addOption(brokerOption);
CommandLine line = parser.parse(options, args);
System.setProperty("jms.broker.url", line.getOptionValue("b"));

The fix in both cases? Simply copy the contents of the CD to the local harddisk (a network share works just as well) and then run setup.exe from there. Don’t be fooled by the suggested “solutions” from Microsoft or Installshield like I was.