Mac@Work : The Ultimate Business Machine

The
Ultimate
Business Machine

Technology, business
and innovation.

And, not least, about
the Mac.

Weblog • Archive • Cutedge

by: Bernard Teo

Wed 21 Jul 2004

Contributors to Postfix Enabler

Category : Commentary/PFEContribs.txt

I've not updated the list of people who've paid for Postfix Enabler for some time.

Here's to :

Jason Bode, Warren Jacques, Saikee Wong, Dirk Kring, Rajiv Wickremesinghe, John Farrell, James Schaaf, Jerry Bannon, Masatoshi Tsunoda, Kevin Moloney, Erik Klein, Paul Earle, Andrew McLaughlin, and Glenn Sugden.

I get a kick out of seeing the PayPal notifications coming in, with all these names. It's like the United Nations. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it.

Posted at 7:19AM UTC | permalink

Tue 20 Jul 2004

Mac@Work Live

Category : Technology/MacAtWorkLive.txt

Leon Chen of Apple's World Wide Developer Relations sent over these iMacs and a few other G4s. These iMacs are very nice because they're all G4s, have enough memory and hard disk space, and already have airport cards - they're all ready to do training on.

We're preparing our place to host developer training for Mac OS X, Java, Xserve, and all the other OS X technologies. We've found that the biggest drag about doing training is spending a whole day beforehand preparing all the training workstations, and then packing them back in the boxes at the end of the sessions. So we thought why not do it at our office where we have enough space, is conveniently located downtown, is easily accessible, and where we're also able to host seminars.

And, because of the projects and systems we're working on, we're able to set these systems up with good demos, ready to run, showing Oracle, MySQL, mail servers, web servers, Java servers, e-commerce applications, etc, all the things that could convince people that the Mac's a really powerful tool to use in the enterprise.

Sort of like Mac@Work Live, because we're really focused on getting the most out of the Mac, at work in the enterprise.

So that's another nice project to work on, together with the traveler's hostel project where we're going to use all the technologies that I've written about in these pages. If I could have chosen just two projects to work on at the beginning of the year, these would be it.

Posted at 1:46PM UTC | permalink

Mon 19 Jul 2004

Freeing Luca

Category : Technology/FreeingLuca.txt

We're thinking of releasing Luca (our accounting application) as a donation-ware, un-crippled download. We're constantly improving Luca. It hasn't got stuff like nice icons for the buttons, but I feel these can wait. I believe that the user interface has to work well first. And I'm constantly pruning away at the interface so that the things that are there are the things that are absolutely necessary to have. Like the Zen way, I'd like Luca to have a very sparse look. But that doesn't mean it isn't deep. You'll know it goes pretty deep when you start using it.

Why are we thinking of doing this? I'm thinking that the more people who are using it, the better it will get. And it'll get there faster, too. When I look at Postfix Enabler, and consider the amount of features that it grew to have, I think about how so many people were willing to contribute good constructive suggestions.

So, Luca has got the stage where it already works well, but it could do with some polishing by having many people use it.

Also, the Mac is still not what most people think about when they think about a machine to run their business on. Perhaps Luca could be an agent to help jump-start the movement back towards using it. I've always believed the Mac to be The Ultimate Business Machine. But you can't run a business without having an accounting system to run it on.

Hai Hwee's working on overlaying a point-of-sale/inventory system on top of it. We're finding that there are so many things we could do, just by having an accounting system, and having the ability to integrate all other business processes into it.

So we could release Luca just like we did the Enablers, as donation-ware, for as long as we can remain viable as a business concern through our consulting projects, though we won't be able to provide much tech support.

Are there anybody using Luca now who feel that they will definitely use it seriously if it doesn't have a time limit? If we dropped that time-limit, would you pay us for what you think it's worth?

And I'm also wondering why there are not more people building Cocoa applications using Java? In my opinion, that's the best position to be in. We have some Cocoa using Java course notes that I'd like to find time to build on. There's so much work and so little time.

Posted at 2:58AM UTC | permalink

Switching Servers

Category : Technology/switchingServers.txt

We've switched back to the server at the office. It takes less than 5 seonds to deactivate DNSUpdate at the iMac and reactivating it at the office server. This switches our IP address record at dyndns.org to point to the office's server machine. Add another minute or so to make sure any new changes to the server during the weekend get updated to the office server and we're back to normal operations.

And I'm thinking, again, this is a most powerful way of arranging things. Why don't more IT people get it and stop thinking of the Mac as a non-business machine?

I remembered there were some talk at MacSurfer a few days ago about Mac users being smarter than PC users, and I went to look it up - "Overall, the results are pretty clear: Mac users might not actually be smarter than PC users, but they certainly use better English and a larger vocabulary to express more complex thinking." Reach your own conclusion.

Posted at 2:40AM UTC | permalink

Sun 18 Jul 2004

Disaster Recovery

Category : Technology/disasterRecovery.txt

This web site's domain names (cutedgesystems.com and roadstead.com) are hosted at dyndns.org. There are a couple of advantages to outsourcing your domain name hosting to a third-party provider, rather than running a DNS server yourself.

One is, of course, if you're running everything out of an Internet connection with a dynamically assigned IP address - which makes running your own DNS Server impossible in the first place. With a piece of software like DNSUpdate, you can get your server to update dyndns.org regularly whenever its IP address changes, so that people can continue to find you via the domain names no matter what happens with your IP address. A connection with a dynamic IP address is cheaper than one with a fixed IP address. So, there's a cost saving that comes from being able to do that. Plus, most home broadband connections are of the dynamic IP address type - so this makes it easy to set up a home office. Wherever you hang your hat, that's where your server is.

The second advantage is not so obvious. You may only realise how useful it is to have this dynamically updateable DNS service if, by any chance, you're not able to run your server at its current location for any length of time - e.g., if power is unavailable, as in the case of our office where the building's management has decided to shut down the power again, over the weekend, to complete the installation of the new air-conditioning system.

So, once we're told we have to bear with another long weekend shut-down, it took less than 10 minutes to get ready the iMac at home (where we have a broadband connection) to take over the server's job. With SSH (Remote Login in System Preferences->Sharing), we can copy over most of what we need and set up the MySQL database remotely. With Postfix Enabler, we could get whoever is sitting at the iMac to set up the mail server, just by entering a couple of domain names and hitting the Start button. And with DNSUpdate, we can switch the servers over the same way (enter domain names and hit OK). The process is simple enough to walk someone through by phone.

Come Monday, all we need to do, when we get back to office, is to get someone to deactivate DNSUpdate at the iMac, and then we'll be able restart the server at the office, and we'll have everything back as we have left it. Of course, some details remain, like bringing over the new stuff that were saved to the iMac over the weekend, but these are easy enough to do.

In most IT organisations, mention Disaster Recovery, and it will evoke images of a tactical manoeuvre involving a cast of thousands, backed up tomes of Standard Operating Procedures that have been vetted by layers of "information architects" to meet ISO-9000 standards. I've always felt weighted down by these initiatives. It's got to be much simpler than that. After all, by definition, a disaster means there's no time to think. Why are large organisations so stupid?

We often wonder what we're doing, slogging away, running our own little company, when we could have remained the good salarymen. So, now and then, having the liberty to work a bit smarter brings its own little pleasures, and short of becoming as rich as Bill Gates, this will have to do.

Posted at 9:58AM UTC | permalink

Sun 11 Jul 2004

Java on OS X

Category : Technology/javaOSX.txt

Just a word about WWDC. It seems like we're all on our own in the way we're using Java on OS X. We're building Cocoa applications using Java.

Attend a Cocoa talk, and it's all about Objective-C. Attend a Java talk, it's all about J2EE (which we are using) and things like Swing (or call Cocoa using, horrors, JNI).

If you're doing Java, there's no CoreData API for you (yet). Neither WebKit. Nor Cocoa Bindings.

So one can't help feeling that Java programmers are second-class citizens in the Cocoa world.

Then why do I feel, even more, that we're on the right track?

Well, if you're on Objective-C, even with Cocoa Bindings and CoreData, you're still only going to be allowed to call a SQL database locally, on the same machine as the application. Whereas, using JDBC, we can already call our accounting database from half-way around the world.

And you've got to wait for Tiger to come out. Because, then, OS X would have SQLite bundled in. But we've already waited four years for MySQL to get almost all the critical functionality of Oracle. I'd hate to have to wait another four years for SQLite to catch up. Apple may have valid reasons for their choice but SQLite doesn't interest me at all.

And I've heard people asking for better XML and WebServices support in Objective-C. Well, we've already got that, right now, in Java. And try writing a web server application in Objective-C. Or modelling the business workflows and business rules.

I wish Java is as elegant as Objective-C. But we've got to get something done now.

Wouldn't it great to concentrate all your efforts in one direction? And not trying to re-invent the wheel. Not Invented Here? It's funny that WebObjects programmers are headed in the other direction (from Objective-C to Java). And DashBoard widgets are written in JavaScript. And so on.

We're going to continue walking to the beat of our own drum. Probably the best way of maintaining our sanity. Luca proves that you can write a complete, full featured Cocoa application using Java. And you can do a bit more and make a web-server based application out of it. Or a cross-platform Swing application. And that's probably all we need now.

Posted at 1:35PM UTC | permalink

Crash

Category : Commentary/crash.txt

The server was down for about ten hours yesterday. The building we're on switched over to a new air-conditioning system yesterday and we had to switch off everything for the recommended ten-hour stretch - if we didn't want anything to be damaged in the event of a power surge.

It would have been easy to switch the server over to the spare iMac I had running at home (I've done that before and switched servers, on the fly, within 30 minutes, in the ultimate test of disaster recovery) but somehow, this time, I just let things crash.

It's been difficult to get going the last few days - so many things to do, along so many axes. So it's good to crash and start all over again.

Sorry, if you were trying to get hold of something here. Normal services are resuming and the process of recovery starts now.

Posted at 12:36PM UTC | permalink

Wind

Category : Commentary/wind.txt

I have the answer to my own question. It takes longer to fly back to Singapore than to fly to San Francisco because there is a constant headwind that reduces the speed of the aircraft by about 15-20%. (When flying to San Francisco, the plane was aided by a slight tailwind.) That's why it takes about 20% longer to fly back, increasing the journey by more than 2 hours.

So the next question is: why is there a headwind? And I believe it's like that the whole year round because it always takes longer to fly back. Why does the wind always blow from west to east, at least at high altitudes? What makes this puzzling is because I know, from sailing dinghies off Changi, that the wind usually blow in-shore from the east?

That's why the Peranakans of Singapore - the Straits-born Chinese - made their home along the east coast. Having got to this region longer than the later Chinese immigrants, they know where to get the nice sea breeze, over there at Katong and Changi. But I digress.

A quick search through Google turns up these two articles : What makes the wind? and Weather Systems from West to East.

So the earth's rotation is indeed the cause. But it's counter-intuitive. We should expect to reach Singapore faster when coming back from San Francisco because the earth's rotation swings Singapore back towards us.

But the earth's rotation also causes the hot air that rises from the equator, on its way towards the poles, to move east. This is because, due to something called the Coriolis effect, they maintain the speed of rotation at the equator.

"So, as these winds travel away from the equator, they move eastward relative to the ground beneath them - since the winds have a greater rotational speed than the ground. This explains why high altitude winds blow from west to east. And it is these high altitude winds that, to a large extent, control the weather."

So, mystery solved. But the point I'm getting at is that we can learn almost anything we want from the world-wide web, without going through formal school. Here's to Tim Berners-Lee.

Posted at 12:23PM UTC | permalink

Mon 05 Jul 2004

Last Day in San Francisco

Category : Commentary/GoodbyeSanFrancisco.txt

It's amazing how many places you can get onto the Internet from (for free) via the Airport connection in San Francisco. I've sent mail from a bench in Union Square, a bus stop near Nordstrom and, now, from a Chinese fast food place (Asia Express, I think it's called) near the Villa Florence Hotel. (And, of course, the Apple Store).

It's been a good WWDC. I didn't think sitting inside a convention hall listening to geek-talk could compete with the sights of San Francisco, but I've sat through all the sessions I wanted to attend and found them all interesting.

I hadn't written anything because there's just so much to absorb and there's already so much written elsewhere on the web. Also, I couldn't quite shake off the jet lag. Mostly, at around 4.00 pm San Francisco time (when it's 7.00 am in Singapore), all my systems just want to shut down. It's all I could do to plough through the last two sessions, and then it's time to crash out.

Maybe a summary when I get back. But, first, there's a long 18-hour flight to endure tomorrow. Time to say goodbye to San Francisco.

(PS : Why does it take longer to fly back than to get here? One would have thought that we would be aided by the earth's rotation; you know, Singapore should be rushing towards us just as we're rushing towards it.)

Posted at 1:02AM UTC | permalink

Mon 28 Jun 2004

The Summer of Love

Category : Commentary/haightashbury.txt

On my first visit to San Francisco, I tried to see if I can find Haight-Ashbury without a map. I knew in which general direction it lay, and on my second day, after having meandered through JapanTown, Alamo Square, Fillmore, and Castro, I finally found it. (I had much stronger legs then. These days, the SF 7-day Unlimited City Pass is my best friend. Passing through familiar streets on the buses, I'm amazed at how much ground I had covered on foot, then.)

I'm a child of the sixties, though too far away to be touched by its excesses. Listening to Janis Joplin and, later, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Carol King, I knew quite a bit about Flower Power and the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius. (It's funny but I've just finished reading Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, and those who have read it will know the connections. But I digress.)

The Pacific Ocean is but one huge basin into which both east and west pour its ideas, some of which gets washed up on the other shore, to be re-used in new ways.

Jared Diamond, in "Guns, Germs, and Steel", writes about how it's no accident that civilisation, as we know it, originated and then spread out from around the Mediterranean Sea. Geography played an important role in the diffusion of knowledge. Technology, too, because nowadays, it takes me less time to reach the opposite shore in California than it took the Greeks to sail to Egypt. The Pacific becomes the new Mediterranean Sea.

So, the Californians absorbed Eastern Mysticism and fused into a most attractive form of music and philosophy which, in turn, was consumed by us, the children of the east. I've gone through long hair and bell bottoms.

And made my pilgrimage to Haight-Ashbury.

If you're intrigued, like me, by the ideas Dan Brown stirred up in Da Vinci Code, this is another book to read: "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess - The Conflict Between Word and Image" by Leonard Shlain. Certainly, it has helped me enjoy the proceedings at this morning's SF Gay Pride Day Parade with a certain historical perspective.

Posted at 1:41AM UTC | permalink

Sun 27 Jun 2004

Moscone West

Category : Commentary/moscone.txt

Registration starts for WWDC at Moscone West.

And I've got a nice WWDC bag.

Posted at 2:34AM UTC | permalink

Celebrate your gay life

Category : Commentary/sanfrancisco.txt

It's Gay Pride Day at San Francisco, held on the last Sunday in June. I missed this the last time I was here, so I made sure to look out for it. Keep a look out for their logo. If you didn't know, you would have thought Apple (or at least the old Apple) is the main sponsor for the event. (More pictures from the previous year's event.)

This is a great time to visit San Francisco. And jazz singer Jacqui Naylor has found a new fan.

(Look at that guy on stage on the right. He's translating the vocals for the people with hearing disabilities. Wonderful isn't it?)

Posted at 2:34AM UTC | permalink