Site-specific browsers (SSB) have made a bit of a stir recently due to programs like Fluid and Prism. These tools customize a very thin layer over a browser to provide something that looks a like a standard desktop application, complete with a nice icon and entry in the dock or start menu.
SSBs can be used for a variety of sites, but I find they are particularly useful for social networking (Yammer, Twitter etc) and project management sites (Unfuddle, Basecamp etc). This is because these sites tend to present themeselves as applications, with virtually no dependancy on the standard browser ...
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You've been able to clone github repositories using http for a while now which allows you to get around proxies at work. But using this method won't allow you to push any changes back, which is a major pain point to using Github behind at my workplace.
Today, a co-worker brought this article from Justin Bailey to my attention, which describes how to use an ssh tunnel over port 443 to get push access to github.
The steps in the above are pretty clear and consice, however I added a few minor changes. Here are the steps I ...
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It happened. Everybody thinks it won't happen, at least not to them. My hard drive failed. Completely. As in not even able to see it in any recovery tools.
I was happily doing my thing, when everything froze on screen and I got a SBoD. A quick restart later and I got a terrible clicky sound from the hard drive followed by this:

We lost it all. All our photos, the most impossible to replace, our home movies from our travels, our documents like resumes etc., my side projects, the lot. The funny thing is, I have an external ...
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I came across this article by Phillip Calçado wherin he introduces The Rule of the Second Card.
The first card played on a given area of the code base is expected to take a long time. The second card should take at most half of the first card’s time.
This obviously only applies to the first and second card in a new area of work. Because the first card will need some time an planning, possibly some spiking to evaluate potentional solutions, it is expected that the first card in a new feature is going to take longer ...
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UPDATE: Turns out it was an update to 1.2.4 that had
Enhancement to SearchableModel allowing multiple properties to be indexed.
Yesterday my blog was throwing an error and only returning the 'Oops' page for every request.
Turns out somehow the SearchableModel modifications I was using suddenly stopped working.
The dev_appserver still works as expected, but I was getting this error:
File "/base/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/ext/db/__init__.py", line 1455, in fetch
raw = self._get_query().Get(limit, offset)
File "/base/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/api/datastore.py", line 981, in Get
prefetch_count=limit)._Get ...
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It's only been almost 4 years since my wife and I returned from our working holiday in the UK. We have literally over 5000 photos taken during our travels, which virtually no one has seen.
Having recently moved into a slightly bigger apartment we decided it was time to sift through the monster collection and find some worthy of printing on canvas and hanging.
So this is a sample of my attempts at enhancing some of the photos that might make it onto a wall.
Feedback most welcomed.
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I've struggled with SVN behind a proxy server for a while now. I tried setting the http_proxy environment variable but unfortunately SVN does not seem to honour this - at least on Windows.
The answer is quite plainly on the Tigris FAQ and the solution is to edit %APPDATA%\Subversion\servers and modify the following lines (around line 144):
# http-proxy-host = defaultproxy.whatever.com
# http-proxy-port = 7000
# http-proxy-username = defaultusername
# http-proxy-password = defaultpassword
Simply remove the hash at the start of the line and change the settings to appropriate values and presto - SVN is through the proxy and downloading from external sites.
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Review Board is an open source tool that allows you to conduct code reviews in an easy informal yet structured manner.
It does away with 'over-the-shoulder' reviews and makes email review hell a thing of the past. Each review has its own set of comments and patches in one place, which all developers on the project can see.
I have just finished installing Review Board on Ubuntu Jaunty and thought it might be useful to set out.
This is a step-by-step nothing missing tutorial from a clean Ubuntu install to your first review request.
1. Setting up a Server
I ...
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There are a number of ways to set the proxy settings in Ubuntu and each way affects some applications and not others.
General applications
System wide proxy settings, except for terminal applications, can be set in System -> Preferences -> Network Proxy Preferences.

Simply enter the proxy server name and port. If your proxy requires authentication you will need to click on the Details button.

Then hit the Apply System Wide button and then close. Most applications such as Firefox will now be able to use and authenticate with the proxy.
Known Exceptions
Synaptic Package Manger
To set these the proxy on ...
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You may have seen this error when creating a custom list definition in Sharepoint.
Exception from HRESULT: 0x81070201
This error means that the custom list schema.xml cannot be found for one of a number of reasons.
- You didn't create a
schema.xml
- It was not included as an
ElementFile node in the ElementManifests node of the feature.xml
- The
Name attribute in the ListTemplate node must match the folder name that the schema.xml is physically stored in.
The last point is the one that I got caught out on, and at first glance it seems to be ...
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