Oracle Application Express 3.1.1

I've recently been working with the Oracle Applications Express 3.1.1 development tool provided free with Oracle's 10g and up database product. It is pretty cool. Not being a DBA or a web developer, but also not being wholly ignorant of either, has not prevented me from creating some pretty useful tools at work. The best part is that you can create 'apps' from spreadsheets, which is very useful.

Once you start messing around with it you start to see how it works, and you can really expand on what you have done. For example, you can create your own javascript functions and implement them directly with buttons etc. And you can reference application variables, constants easily.

Go here ---> http://apex.oracle.com

Donkeys!

Donkeys!

firefox test

Firefox (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.15) Gecko/20080623 Firefox/2.0.0.15) works. It isn't pretty though.

I guess next up is trying to geocode addresses on the fly. I won't be putting addresses in though; most likely it will be Lat Lon coordinates, which Google's API does not seem to support. Innaresting....

twittering some more

I think most of the really serious bugs have been eradicated from my little twitter experiment. I will eventually post code here. Please be warned: I am not a coder, I am at best a copy/paster with a bit of insight. Use at your own risk. And if you don't like my coding, too bad I don't want to hear about it. Make it better yourself.

new twittering URL

I decided that 'redneck-haiku' isn't much of a name for web development, so I have rehosted at another free service. The new URL is http://twittering.net63.net.

Masters of Our Domain

For your viewing pleasure, a slideshow of the Masters of Our Domain has been added to this blog.

SMS - Twitter - Google Maps Geocoding Craziness

It works! I must admit it's a little surprising because my programming talents could fit into a thimble. But it works! Check it out at http://redneck-haiku.f-sw.com/.

There is alot of streamlining and rewriting to do. A number of features came to mind after the core code was in place, so it will mean a busy few days. Of course, having it rain every day while you are on vacation makes it easier to code and not do other things, outside.

Hacking Twitter

I've recently create a Twitter account, which in and of itself, is fairly pointless. However, it does allow you to post to the web via SMS. So if you are like me and work for a cheap-ass company that doesn't pay for email phones, it works well because you can post via text-messaging.

This gave me an interesting idea. If you could scrape that info using a web-app of some description you might be able to do something interesting with it. Having recently acquired a Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006 with GPS for a stupidly low price, I have been playing around with Latidudinal and Longitudinal coordinates, the Google Maps API, and Javascript/AJAX. I occured to me that if I posted coordinates to my Twitter account, maybe I could scrape those coords off the page and generate a Google Map from them.

It turns out the HttpRequests in AJAX do not like to play outside their own domain (ie. you can't pull data from twitter.com from a page on google pages). So to get around this javascript issue, I used PHP. It's really simple, actually, and here is a rough outline of how it works:

1. PHP creates a SimpleXML object that pulls my last twitter entry (in xml format) into a variable.
2. The PHP script writes a cookie with the coordinates pulled from twitter.
3. PHP forward to another page that uses Javascript (the Google API language of choice).
4. The javascript page reads the cookie and parses out the coordinates.
5. The javascript uses the coordinates as the centre of a Google Map.

I will post more info later. Still in the debugging / thinking of features stage. I am sure there are a grillion or so real programmers who will shoot holes through my methods. I don't care. As a non-programmer this seems like a pretty slick set up to me.

google api

This might turn out to be interesting. Playing with .NET these days and there are a whole slew of things you can do with Google. One thing I surely need is a way to get my calendar to my desktop... I am so bad at remembering things that I forget I wrote them down so I wouldn't forget them. Occasionally I remember something, but that could be just because I forgot that I forgot it....

rock on white stripes!

Rock on White Stripes! Thankyou for playing whacked-out mini-shows for free for your fans up close and personal! That's rock and roll as it's best. The White Stripes are breathing life back into rock like the Sex Pistols and Nirvana had done, by making it accessible to everyone. I love Keith Richards, but I don't love the Stones Corporate Machine despite the fact I understand it's necessity.

One of the best shows I have ever seen myself was nearly 17 years ago at a small club downtown. Teenage Head, a band that had a couple of rockabilly/punk style semi-hits in the eighties, playing to a crowd of about 100 or so... absolutely intense, sound was rockin' loud but clear as a bell, totally professional. And the band was just there, as if this was it, the last show, no more after this one. I've seen much bigger names, even been right up to the stage, and nothing comes close to the Teenage Head show.


Although I bet the Arva Grain Mill White Stripes show would have summarily kicked my white ass!

some people's egos....

I have a co-worker who has dedicated a website to his forthcoming marriage. Apparently 'Love is Forever', although I am sure if you asked his first wife she might have something to say about that...

All that aside, he has this irritating little 'Only xxx days until the Wedding' counter. So I have countered, so to speak, with my own counter. My wife and I have purchased a lovely home in the nicest part of our town, called 'Old North'. We move in ... well you can see how many days, then, can't you?

Irritated yet? I hope so...

review: Virtual Lego

If you are going to start using MLCad, you require the book pictured to the left. I have had the book only 4 days and already I have learned so much it's astonishing.

It is an outstanding reference book and worth every cent.

I bought it specifically to learn how to create flexible parts such as hoses; within a half an hour I had not only run through the tutorial, but also implemented what I learned in my own model.

Click here to buy it from Amazon.ca.

update: am I 4 cents ahead, or not?

Back on December 15, 2005, I posted a blurb about how I owed the bank 11 cents interest on a line-of-credit account, but had a 15 cent credit on a cancelled credit card from the same bank. At that time I was speculating about whether I would ever see my 4 cents.

Well I finally have the result. Actually, that's not true; I have had the results for quite some time, but forgot I had created the original post. My follow up is 'tardy'.

The upshot of it all is: I am out exactly 1 Canadian dollar. I wasn't allowed to pay the bank just 11 cents, I had to transfer the minimum of $1.00. And of course the credit card company said they would transfer the 15 cents to my account, but never did.

What more can you say?

why lego is such a great company

Recently I purchased the Mindstorms NXT set (8527). Upon opening the box, I discovered that the software CD-ROM was missing. I decided to see if the software might be available for download, so I went to lego.com and started poking around. Very sensibly, Lego does not offer their base load software for download; you can however download many enhancements and addons free-of-charge.

Not knowing what to do next, I decided to try using the 'Missing Parts' customer service webform. After entering the set number and browsing the available replacement parts, I was a bit disenheartened to see that the CD-ROM was not listed. But this is Lego, the greatest 'toy' company that has ever been, so I figured I had to at least try. So I clicked the 'Don't see your part listed? Describe it here.' link and submitted the form requesting the CD-ROM. In all honesty I really didn't expect anything to come of it.

Well today I find a bubble-pack envelope in my mailbox, from Lego, containing not only the software, but a letter, actually addressed to me with my name in the salutation, expressing Lego's sincerest apologies for having provided an incomplete set.

Well didn't the sun shine just a bit brighter this afternoon!

Lego had come through yet again. What a wonderful company! What a wonderful product! I feel like spending all of my disposable income on Lego sets. Well alright I wanted to do that anyways, but this just strengthens that desire exponentially. Maybe I will try to get my friends to spend their disposable income on Lego...

I went back to the website a few minutes ago and filled out the same form as last time, but this time I expressed my gratitude to the Customer Service Team. I hope it gets printed out and circulated to the team.

I think pretty much every other company around could learn from Lego's example.

It seems I am getting better at putting the Lego models together in MLCad. It also seems that I am getting the hang of using the rendering tools that are packaged with the Ldraw.org install. I don't like all the shadows I am getting within the images, but I am sure I will figure out how to get rid of most of them. Still, the output is fantastic!

The Lunar Lander from set 565. It is not perfect, as I am still trying to learn how to use MLCad. Still, MLCad is alot of fun to use, and it gives you a chance to build sets you may not actually own. You can always seach lugnet for models and instructions.

565 Moon Landing

Another set from my childhood, 565 Moon Landing. This is just the Moon Rover vehicle. The lander module is next.

854 finally done

Well it's finally done. Although it is very cool that MLCad lets you build Lego models you have the plans for but perhaps not the actual Lego parts, it is a much more painstaking process. This model is far from perfect, although LDView helps smooth out some of the rougher edges.

It still needs the hoses attached. I am no where near to figuring out how to add those in MLCad.

ldraw

Of all the tools I have found for experimenting with Lego, the CAD program MLCad is the most fun to use. MLCad, based on the original LDraw program, allows you to build models in a virtual environment. The parts list includes almost every part imaginable, and new parts are being added all the time. The image you see to the right is a partially-drawn model of Lego Technic Set #854. I received this set as a child, and only recently pulled it out again to build it. I found that I was missing some parts, and trying to sort out which parts were gone was beginning to drive me a bit nuts. Then an idea occurred to me: If I built the model in MLCad, not only would I have some great pictures of the model in process, but would also have a complete list of parts I could compare to the actual parts I have. Yes I could go through the instructions and figure out what parts are needed, but that would not be anywhere near as much fun or geeky.

lego mindstorms nxt

Meet AlphaRex. He's one of the robots I will be building shortly with my new Lego Mindstorms NXT set. I have been looking forward to this for a long, long time.

One of the reasons I have remained a fan of Lego over my 40 years is that Lego never compromises their quality. I have Lego parts that were purchased in the 1960's, that were used continuously by myself and my siblings until probably the mid-1980's, and those parts are not worn out at all.Perhaps a bit scuffed up from being stirred around in a box while we searched for the elusive 1x2 flat plates, but otherwise perfect. They still hold together as if they were new. And not only are the parts durable, the instruction booklets are durable. With the robotics, the software is well-thought out and properly presented. Everything in the Lego world is presented with a professionalism and a respect for the consumer that is unmatched.

As a Robotics Invention Systems 1.5 user (the previous Lego robotics incarnation) I was continually amazed at the capabilities of the base system, and even more amazed at how far the user community was able to recreate the system. I became a huge fan of Dave Baum's NQC, using the BricxCC IDE to develop and test programs far more complex than the original Lego IDE would allow. And it didn't stop with software: The number of 'homebrew' passive and non-passive devices that were developed by the user community was staggering. Mike Gasperi is the undisputed homebrew sensor King. Ralph Hempel has written two programming languages for the Mindstorms Series: pbForth for the Robot Inventions System series, and now pbLau for NXT. And there are more, such as LegOS.

It looks like that enthusiasm has carried over into the NXT world as well. If you look at Phillipe Hurbain's website, you will see the kind of dedication Mindstorms has invoked. I cannot think of another 'toy' that pushes people so hard to think and create. It would be interesting to find out how many software and hardware engineers, who are at the top of their game, played (or more likely still play) with Lego. Alot, I bet. Probably well over 80%.

Lego has become the seminal cross-generational toy. People who loved it as kids love it as adults. For people like me, there has always been Lego, and there will always be Lego.