Bermuda Day I

Well we finally made it to Bermuda. What happens after being here less than 6 hours? Check this out...

It is really amazingly astonishingly humid here. Like I have never experienced before - but it's not like the mugginess we get in Southwestern Ontario. It's a fresh, clean sort of humidity, like being a dryer with bounce sheets. It's still uncomfortable though we we are pretty well accustomed to A/C 24/7 back home. On the other hand, it is so quiet, there are practically no vehicles, the locals are friendly, and the availability of goods is excellent. I have my Coke 0, my wife has her 10% cream for her coffee (which she brought from home - we never take chances with her coffee).

Tomorrow we might get a scooter or a bus pass, or maybe both. I am not sure about a scooter yet, even though I think it's a great idea. I haven't ridden a motorcycle in years, and they drive on the left-hand side here, as in Britain, and a great deal of the rest of the world, come to think of it. Not sure if my brain can handle all that at once.

IE 8.0

I think it's strange.

apex LDAP, Part II

As promised, part II is here. This is the Package Body.

apex LDAP part I

It's finally done and working, and even in a package format for ease of use! Here is the package specification. Part II will have the package body, and Part III will tie it all together in an APEX application.

LDAP Spec:

apex and active directory and pl/sql and...

I think I may go mad.

I am on a steep learning curve these days, trying to learn Oracle PL/SQL while trying to develop applications in Apex. Part of the problem is that I have bitten off a rather complicated piece to chew on, and I have not had much luck finding others who have blazed a trail before me into this territory. I apologise for the mixed metaphors.

I still intend on publishing my final working code / solution to using AD groups to manage access to an Applications Express application. It just might be posthumous...

POV-Ray goodness

I've been playing with POV-Ray a bit more, using the POV-Ray Light source object available within MLCad. For a first-run, I'm pretty impressed.

I created two light objects in front of the minifig to act as in-cabin lighting sources. I also put one light object into the storage bay area. I added lights to the red 1x1 translucent tiles on each wing tip, the red 1x1 translucent cylinders, and the green 1x1 translucent tiles attached to the directional jets. There are no other light sources used in this rendering.

Galaxy Explorer Update

The main craft is now complete. Check out the image.

lego coolness

I have long been a fan of Lego. I am also a nerd. So when I found LDraw I was ecstatic. I was practically hysterical when I found MLCad. Then, I found all sorts of instructions for Lego models that had been uploaded to the web here. At that point I burst into flames.

Since being stamped out, I have gone on to periodically build models in MLCad that a) I have and couldn't be bothered to dig out the boxes for, or b) Always wanted but never had. Right now I am building set 497-1, Galaxy Explorer, which was released in 1979. My sister got this set one Christmas, and I recently acquired it from our Dad's apartment while cleaning it out after he died.

Here is a POV-Ray jpg of my progress so far. I started this yesterday morning (I think). Once you get the hang of MLCad you can really fly building stuff. Especially models that have mirror image parts - copy & paste is your friend.

layin' low

Been layin' low for the last little while. I've had my head stuck into work, Performance Appraisals for my staff, and home renovations. It's actually been very helpful to get my head out of the computer world more often that I've been able to in the recent past.

The coolest thing to come along is this, the Emerald Night Collection train from Lego. I have always wanted a Lego train, and this one is the lastest one on the block. (no pun intended). I ordered it right away and received it a little over a week ago. Well, it's just about the most wonderful Lego set ever. I ordered it with extra track, and the Power Functions package as well. It was expensive, but worth every penny.

I've written in this blog about Lego in the past. Lego supply the highest quality product with unquestionably the best customer service department in the world. It's a pleasure to actually have a problem with your Lego, to be honest, because dealing with their customer service is a breath of fresh air. They actually care. Really, they do. There was nothing wrong with the Emerald Night Collection, so I didn't have to engage the customer service department, but if I had it would have been a wonderful experience.

I've also been focussing more on something called 'being present'. Some of you probably associate this with Eckhart Tolle. I've never read any of his stuff. Some work friends have been involved with Landscape Education, which teachs the whole concept of 'being present', and 'contexts'. Well, I think it's great stuff to think about, but I'm not sure there aren't some tried and true cliches that don't cover it all. 'Don't cry over spilled milk', 'Walk a mile in another's shoes', 'What's done is done', 'Live today for tomorrow may never come'. All those sayings we have pushed in to the junk drawer as being old-fashioned, or over-simplifications. Well, that may be so, but the Eckhart Tolle's and the Landscape folks seem to me to be selling dressed-up versions of those old axioms.

I am speculating here; going on hearsay, even. But I am not convinced there is anything new to be discovered in the world of 'self-discovery', or 'self-awareness', or 'being present'. I think people need packaging to be convinced of something's worth, and although there is nothing wrong with that, perhaps a little self-reflection would reveal to them that they already have the tools they need.

On the other hand, I suppose most people not only need to be led to water but also shown how to drink. That is not meant as a criticism; these are deep emotional waters that we are taught from a very early age to stay away from. This is tough going, and it is only the rare few that navigate safely on their own. So buy the books and take the courses. It will help you. But remember to bring your own wisdom to these things as well, or they will have no value.

new word

Every now and then my coworkers and I make up new words. Usually this is a process where by two words are somehow made into one to form a new word with bizarre implications.

I made one up this morning that I am rather proud of: vometiquette

As far as I can make out, vometiquette would be the etiquette of vomiting. For example, if in a public place, what is the proper method for vomiting. Vometiquette would provide the rules!

eLearning that works

A colleague and I recently completed the 'Developing Applications with Oracle Applications Express' training offered by DBCON. I am a newbie to software development eLearning; my colleague, however, is a highly-experienced developer who has experienced various teaching methods over the years. We were both duly impressed with DBCON efforts.

I think the part I enjoyed the most was the homework. I have been on a few training courses over the last 20 years, and usually you leave the class or session with nothing to do until the next class. Not so with the DBCON training - they very wisely have developed their training course to cover the concepts with examples during the class, then follow up with the same concepts and examples within the tutorial package, which then expands the concepts you have learned with more examples.

On the whole I believe I learned more through this course than pretty well any other training course I have been on. I was so impressed I bought the second part of the training, 'Advanced Oracle Application Express Training' myself. Turns out my company is going to pay anyways, but I would have taken the course even if they were not paying.

If you are looking for some training that won't eat up your whole day, and let's you take the class where ever you have high-speed Internet, then DBCON is the provider you want to investigate.

not APEX but worth posting

I am an animal lover, but for reasons not worth getting into here, I am not particularly fond of primates. After reading this story, though, it might be necessary to adjust my opinions.

Read it here

the best book (for Apex)

Go out right now and get 'Pro Oracle Application Express', by John Edward Scott and Scott Spendolini. It is published by Apress. I picked it up for $39.99 (CAN) from chapters.ca a while ago and it is worth every cent. More than that actually, so I feel I got a great deal.

Or, you can sign up for DBCON's excellent training courses; they will send you the book in PDF format. Personally, I like reading books made of paper still, but having it in PDF format means I can share with coworkers and keep my 'real' copy in pristine shape.

more apex stuff

I am currently designing an authentication and authorization scheme for use with our Active Directory LDAP environment at work. It is a daunting task, considering that the apex.ldap functions don't work very well (or at all in some cases) with MS AD. The DBMS_LDAP routines however do work well; you just need to put in more elbow-grease to make things work.

I plan on posting my code here once I have finished, but I'd thought I'd list the requirements here, partly because it helps to make lists to sort through complex problems, and partly because I have nothing else to post here.

Security is an extremely hot topic at work, as I am sure it is at your place of business. We get audited all the time, and being defence contractors doesn't make it any easier. We have lots of rules around account activities, passwords, and group memberships. On top of that, when developing in the realm of the web app, we have further rules on cookies and sessions, among other things, that make life just that much harder for your average developer.

I am not going to go into minute detail, but the security model I am working with needs to fit into these parameters:

1. Access must be controlled by user id and group membership in AD
2. Application access must be multi-layered so that not all users have the same access (in such cases that it is required).
3. Once an application is deployed, security maintenance must be kept to a minimum to reduce total cost of ownership.

These seem simple enough, but when you flesh them out into code, things can get pretty hairy pretty quickly.

The model that I keep returning to in my mind is something like this:

1. Groups must be created in AD for each application and each access type, ie APP_Developers, or APP_Editors, or APP_Users.
2. Each APEX app must use the same authentication scheme..
3. At login, each app must validate the user against LDAP. Each app must maintain a table of the LDAP groups and the users in them for use in the authorization or sentry scheme.
4. This all has to happen automatically. (ugh).

Sadly, every time I start working on this problem, I think of another way to do it. It's hard being an obsessive/compulsive attention-deficit person. It means you obsess all the time over all sorts of different things, sometimes in parallel.

I do have the code for checking group membership (one group only) before logging into the app. So I know it can be done. Now I need to make it flexible, and incorporate more group checks.

I will post code shortly of what I've got, it's nothing you couldn't find elsewhere most likely, although I must admit I gave up looking a week or so ago.

Stay tuned...

extremely useful APEX titbit

This is one of the most useful things I have found while using the SQL Workshop. I am not an oracle expert by any means, and sometimes I find their error messages, for the most part, useless. I discovered something so brainlessly simple it saddens me I didn't think of it myself.

Open the workshop, select 'SQL Commands' and type in the following query:

select * from user_errors;

Save this query with whatever name you want.

Next time you get something really cryptic, like

PL/SQL: Compilation unit analysis terminated

Open the query and run it. It will give you much more useful information.

You have GOT to be kidding...

I was going to post this yesterday, but was too angry to write it without using expletive after expletive. There is nothing harder to read than a page full of holes.

Ireceived a letter from my bank yesterday, regarding my Line of Credit. The letter explained to me how the bank, such loving caring souls that they are, were going to change my Line of Credit interest rate from Prime + 1% to Prime +5%. They kindly doing this for my benefit, you see, because it's so hard to get credit these days due to the current world economic downturn.

Umm. How exactly does raising my interest rate 4 points translate into something beneficial to me? The argument they use is based on my need to acquire credit. They seem to have forgotten I already HAVE credit, so GETTING credit is not the issue. They are just gouging because they can.

Ooo I feel the urge to use expletives again. I had better stop for now.

My Dad - 1927 -2009

I haven't posted in a while; it seems like forever, to me. When dealing with sickness and loss you experience what ufologists might call 'lost time'.

My Dad was in his 82nd year. Mom passed away 2 years ago on January 29 2007. Dad passed away January 28 2009. Two years less one day. I suppose one more anniversary of Mom's death just wasn't something he wanted to deal with.

Dad had been in the hospital for almost three weeks, with pneumonia. Hospitals are not good places to be in, especially if you are sick. I am pretty sure he caught the pneumonia that killed him while in hospital, because after the first week he was actually much better and was being considered for discharge. That did not happen, at least not in the way we anticipated.

We tried as hard as we could to keep him around. That included fighting the hospital every step of the way with their 'end of life' spiels. They want you to sign the 'Do Not Resuscitate' forms about a minute after you show up, whether you've got a hang-nail or are missing large parts of your skull. It is horrifying. What is frightening is that if you start to ask questions about quality-of-life, seriousness of illness, you will find that even the staff reluctantly admit that maybe Do Not Resuscitate is a bit, how shall we say, excessive. Dad, had he survived, would not have been impaired physically or mentally. He would have needed to move into an assisted-care facility, but that is not a drastic change. It's not like he wouldn't be able to feed himself, or walk, or be able to understand us. It's very complicated and it makes me tired thinking about it, but it seems the hospital wanted us to throw in the towel just because he was 81. Really. And we wouldn't.

Dad threw in the towel himself. And that makes all the difference.

those theiving goats!

I love this story!

The burning question, of course, is why cars?

almost a whole week

Well we've had 5 whole days of Obama and the U.S. hasn't started any new wars. I take this as a significant sign of progress.

On another note, apparently Dub'ya left a letter for Obama in the Oval Office. I would love to know what it contained. Well, thesmokinggun.com, get to work.

today is the day!

Finally, the day has arrived! Mr. Bush no longer has his finger on the button, so to speak. What a frightening administration he maintained. Rumsfeld? Competent? Those two words don't belong anywhere near each other in a sentence, let alone a paragraph. I would be suspect of any document, magazine, newpaper, memo, book that used those two words together in a context where they do not contradict one another.

For the first time in years I feel hopeful about the American people. You elected the right man, the right party. The Republicans never seem to understand that if you shoot at someone, they are bound to shoot back, eventually. Hopefully, the new administration will do a better job of understanding human nature.