ByteCounts.com

This blog is now totally mobile, folks.

This post was written on the WordPress iPhone app.

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The conversion from Movable Type to WordPress went great!

I love it when a plan comes together.

If you know me, you know I love Eclipse. But sometimes Eclipse needs a little nudge. If you ever needed to view the CJK (Chinese, Japanese or Korean) languages in the console, you know what I mean.
My current project supports those three and ten other languages. Needless to say my UTF-8-fu has become very strong.

Here are the steps to get Eclipse’s console to display text in UTF-8.

1. Go to Eclipse > Preferences > General > Appearance > Colors & Fonts > Debug > Console font
   • choose a Unicode font, like Lucinda Grande
2. View the Tomcat server overview page (double-click on the name in the Servers tab).
   • Click the “Open launch configuration” link
   • Choose the Arguments tab, add  -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 to the VM arguments text field.
   • Choose the Common tab, select the “Other” Console Encoding radio button, and choose “UTF-8″.
3. Select the Eclipse application, in the Finder. Right-click and choose “Show Package Contents”.
   • in Contents/MacOS/eclipse.ini, add -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 to the bottom of the file.

Here’s what the final product looks like. Without the steps above, all of the Japanese characters in the image will appear as question marks (?????).

Literally hours after I trash blog about, how busy the Orkut folks must be, to make me wait so long for access to the Orkut developer sandbox, I’m granted access.

Dang. <– Napoleon Dynamite impressions here

Those guys are good!

For the last month or so, I’ve been spending a lot of time reading and writing OpenSocial code. I know, show me the codey. Patience, grasshopper…
But ever since the Google I/O gathering, my brain’s been working overtime on ideas.

But I’ve had a stumbling block or two, mainly in the sandbox arena. Apparently, the team over at Orkut is too busy to grant me full developer access there. Even though I was a member long before the Brazilian mafia took over. But it’s all good now, because I’m working in my own sandbox now.

Introducing, Shindig - an Apache incubator project for OpenSocial and gadgets.

The build and run docs are easy to read, I had the puppy up and running in no time at all.

To be truthfully honest, I did run into one situation that needs a little improvement. With the demo OS app below (http://www.bytecounts.com/projects/opensocial/random-quotes.xml), the Shindig “Gadget testing container” totally breaks.


No appropriate view could be found for gadget:
http://www.bytecounts.com/projects/opensocial/random-quotes.xml


Took me a while to realize the solution. Shindig can’t handle the OS profile view.
This code:

  <ModulePrefs title="Multiple Content Sections (version 5)">
    <Require feature="opensocial-0.7" />
  </ModulePrefs>
  <Content type="html" view="profile">
  <![CDATA[

needs to be changed to this code:

  <ModulePrefs title="Multiple Content Sections (version 5)">
    <Require feature="opensocial-0.7" />
  </ModulePrefs>
  <Content type="html">
  <![CDATA[


But I’m totally digging Shindig! Oh come on, you knew it was going to happen

Today I pledged to help Mozilla set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours. This is a great marketing idea. It’s free, easy, and viral. Truth be told, because it’s so easy to do, I’m kind of surprised at how low the current pledge count is. It’s just over 615,000. But since there’s no set date as to when this download day is, there’s time to sign up! So come on! Those Mozilla folks need nicer cars.

Oh, why would this be another world record? Because I helped set the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest group yodel. Yep, 1773 of us crammed into URL’s Cafe, yodeling our butts off. Good times…

Run, don’t walk to your nearest Open Social sandbox, and drop this code in quick. You’ll have access to all the kick ass (yet, random) quotes that I display on the blog homepage.

http://www.bytecounts.com/projects/opensocial/random-quotes.xml

Can’t stop listening to Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip

This tune takes multiple listens to absorb it all. Everything Scroobius Pip says is true.
Well…except for the part about The Smiths being “just a band.”

I just logged over 200 miles via Nike +. Hold your applause. Much to my disappointment, there was no “atta boy” or congratulatory message on this huge accomplishment (for me, that is).

Instead, I saw this lame, “keep on, keepin’ on” message. The worst part of this, is that I have to run 300 more miles to get another web badge! Now I’m not saying this should be easy. But a nice congratulations after 250 miles would be great.

It’s taken me somewhere around 14 months to log this many miles. So I look forward to getting the 500 mile badge sometime in 2010. Lame.

I have a black 80 GB iPod. I named it Black Irish.
Here’s why: it’s loaded with Celtic tunes.