My kid Juan (13) did this video along with 3 friends as part of a schoolwork assignment. He wrote the script, did the greenscreen and also did the editing. Watch it, it’s lots of fun!
I don’t have to say how proud of my kids I am. They make life worth it.
Alex
I’m attending GSMA’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It’ll be a great opportunity to meet fellow developers and companies. If you’re attending and wish to arrange a meeting, just drop me a comment and I’ll answer in private.
Regards,
Alex
This is a new version from my previous patch to add support for a DB based store.
Fundamental differences with the previous version:
1. The DB table is now created automatically at startup (if it didn’t exist).
2. Cleaned up code aiming at supporting other DB engines apart from MySQL.
3. Added documentation.
Please download the patches here:
Again, this is far from stable. It needs further testing and confirmation before rolling up into production.
Regards,
Alex
I wanted to share a short story about one of the many benefits of buying good hardware from serious companies.
My almost-2-years-old MacBook Pro battery was having serious performance issues: After a full charge, it only lasted about 20 minutes (even with the display dimmed to be barely visible).
Resisting the idea of having to buy a new battery, I’ve googled a little and found an Apple page about problems with MacBook Pro batteries. Turned out that my battery was eligible for a free replacement.
With nothing to lose, and after unsuccessfully asking in-person on a couple of “official” resellers, I’ve been directed to the AppleCare phone number in Spain. After about 15 minutes of music on hold and about 30 of Q&A with a nice and knowledgeable operator, I’ve been told that they’ll mail me a new battery on the next 4-7 days. I’ve also been given specific instructions about returning my old battery to the same messenger for recycling. Good! 
This was yesterday. Today, an UPS messenger brought my new battery and took away the old one. Right now it’s happily being charged while I’m writing this.
Just one more reason to be a happy owner of a Mac. I’ve no doubts about what I’m going to buy next time.
Alex
One of the problems with Kannel’s store formats is that they’re binary packed and it’s not easy to manipulate them. Specially with the store-file format, getting rid of a single message requires editing the binary file and it’s not a trivial task. Converting between file and spool formats it’s not easy, and if you want to export the content to some other format you need to rely on the web interface.
That’s why I’ve created these simple store-manipulation program: store_tools.
What store_tools do is to read the store location and format from your kannel.conf file and allows you to perform a series of commands with it. The available commands are:
| list [limit/start] [limit] | Allows you to list the content of the store. Optional parameters allows you to list limit records, or start at a given record and also limit the amount returned. |
| delete <uid> | Allows you to delete a message. You can retrieve the uid by using the list command. |
| export <format> <location> | Allows you to export the store into another format. Possible formats are: text, xml, html, spool and file. <location> specifies the path where you want the exported data to be written. |
NOTE: Since the delete command modifies the store, you should do it with kannel stopped.
Please download the patch here: kannel_store_tools
Please try it and let me know if it works for you.
-Alex-
According to Maven’s web site: “Maven is a software project management and comprehension tool. Based on the concept of a project object model (POM), Maven can manage a project’s build, reporting and documentation from a central piece of information”.
I’m pretty impressed on what Maven can do for my projects, I’m sure it would do as well on yours! I’ve assembled this small tutorial on how to use Maven from inside NetBeans 6.5 IDE.
NOTE: The text is somewhat readable only in high-res mode. You may consider using full-screen mode as well.
I hope you enjoy it.
Alex
So, the day has finally come. I’m living on Barcelona again.
The trip was long and complicated (planes delayed, all my luggage went lost) but this morning my 5 pieces of luggage arrived at home and everything started to fit into place.
I love this city and its people: It boils with art, music, architecture and all sorts of culture expressions. I love people’s open-mindedness as well.
So, new times are coming. I know it will be good times.
Alex
I’ve just commited latest Sqlbox version, 0.7.1 (yes, we’re now using a numbering schema).
The main changes for this version:
* Added support for the LibSDB database abstraction library. DB support is now similar to Kannel’s.
* Extensive code reorganization to move the queries into the header files and allow reusing from the libsdb module.
* Added examples for database connections on sample conf file.
You can download it from here: sqlbox-0.7.1.tar.gz.
You can also checkout from CVS as usual.
Regards,
Alex
This Kannel patch fixes support for Sqlite2 (which was partially implemented but missed the configuration section) and also adds a new option “lock-timeout” for both [sqlite-connection] (newly added) and [sqlite3-connection] groups.
lock-timeout can be set to the number of milliseconds that sqlite waits before throwing a “BUSY” error. Because locking on sqlite is done AT THE DATABASE LEVEL, it can be a serious issue because any write operation would lock the entire database, so this option aims to ease the risk of getting locks.
If it’s not set, the default sqlite behaviour is maintained.
Here’s the patch:
As usual, please try it and let me know what you think.
I’m now the maintainer for Sqlbox, and I’ve decided to start by writing proper Sqlbox Documentation.
I’m doing a refactoring on the build scripts to integrate Documentation into the build workflow (as Kannel does), will release my first Sqlbox source tree soon, but I wanted to release some Docs beforehand so other people can start using it.
Here’s a first approach at Sqlbox Documentation:
Sqlbox User Guide (PDF Format)
Sqlbox User Guide (HTML Format)
I know it still needs some polishing, but I hope it helps to ease the learning curve and installation questions that shows on Kannel’s mailing list from time to time.