First, PostRank has been acquired by Google which is pretty awesome. This has the added note that, we’ll be moving to California in the coming months. Lots to do, house to sell, stuff to move. Both Stacy and I are pretty excited by this set of events, plus, you know, no snow. That’s definitely a bonus.

The other piece of news is that, my first PeepCode screencast has been published. You can go checkout Meet EventMachine: Part I if you’d like to learn more about EventMachine. The second part should be published soon. This has been a long time coming, my fault given I was dragging my heals shooting the initial video. Geoffrey from PeepCode has been absolutely awesome through this whole process and the finalized video is much cooler then I originally envisioned.

That’s the nutshell. Hopefully things will calm down soon.

I ended up beating on Review Board for about six hours before getting it installed. Now that it’s running it looks pretty nice. I think we’ll end up doing more post-commits then pre-commits but hopefully it’ll fit into our workflow.

Anyway, I though I’d put up a quick post on what I needed to do it get it running. The docs do a good job of getting the base install done. So give that a gander but come back here before you start running rb-site install.

We need to setup our MySQL database before running the rb-site. I did this by initializing a reviewboard MySQL database with a reviewboard user. I then granted all priviledges by executing:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON reviewboard.* TO 'reviewboard'@'localhost'
            IDENTIFIED BY 'some_pass' WITH GRANT OPTION;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON reviewboard.* TO 'reviewboard'@'% '
            IDENTIFIED BY 'some_pass' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Once rb-site install is run you’ll need to configure your webserver. In my case I ended up using Apache with FastCGI. When I tried to use the mod_python option the webserver would get a Segmentation Violation and terminate. Not so good.

The provided Apache FastCGI configuration script didn’t work for me and I ended up using the following.

AddHandler fastcgi-script fcgi

FastCGIExternalServer "/var/www/reviews/htdocs/reviewboard.fcgi" -host 127.0.0.1:3033 -idle-timeout 60

<VirtualHost *:8888>
    ServerName reviews.local
    DocumentRoot /var/www/reviews/htdocs

    # Alias static media requests to filesystem
    Alias /media /var/www/reviews/htdocs/media
    Alias /errordocs /var/www/reviews/htdocs/errordocs

    # Error handlers
    ErrorDocument 500 /errordocs/500.html

    # Direct all other requests to the fastcgi server
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /reviewboard.fcgi/$1 [QSA,L]
</VirtualHost>

The first parameter to FastCGIExternalServer needs to be the full path to reviewboard.fcgi as if it existed in your DocumentRoot. Nothing else seemed to work for me.

Note, if you’re using VirtualHosts you’ll also need to make sure the NamedVirtualHost option is enabled in your httpd.conf file (or whatever your main Apache config file is named).

Now, this will run, but it won’t work. The reason it won’t work is that it needs an external server to send the FastCGI requests too. You can run this server by executing: rb-site manage /var/www/reviews/ runfcgi method=threaded port=3033 host=127.0.0.1 protocol=fcgi. You’ll notice the host and port match up to those specified in the Apache config file.

I ended up creating a simple shell script to handle starting and stopping the rb-site server.

#! /bin/sh

# chkconfig: 2345 90 90

PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DESC="reviewboard daemon"
NAME=reviewboard

case "$1" in
  start)
    echo -n "Starting $DESC: $NAME"
    /usr/bin/rb-site manage /var/www/reviews/ runfcgi method=threaded port=3033 host=127.0.0.1 protocol=fcgi
    echo "."
    ;;
  stop)
    echo -n "Stopping $DESC: $NAME"
    pkill rb-site
    echo "."
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: NAME {start|stop}" >&2
    exit 3
    ;;
esac

exit 0

With that I was able to login and start playing with Review Board. I ended up doing a bit of extra work to disable registration (which is kind of nasty as I had to edit the base HTML templates and urls.py) but everything seems to be working well now.

Eventually, I found out that all the rspec tests were being run twice. The first set of tests all passed the second set all failed. After a while I also realized the second set of tests were being run in the background. Odd, very odd.

Fast forward another hour, a lot of digging in the rspec code and I realized it’s because we fork inside the spec files. We fork and execute the server we want to test. rSpec sets up an at_exit handler to run the specs at exit if they haven’t been run. That at_exit handler would run number of forks + 1 times for each spec file.

I finally found Don’t get forked by rSpec, setup the at_exit { exit! } code in my spec files and everything is happy again.

Wheeee…

Along with the job, we’ve moved into our new house in Waterloo. Stacy and I have been busy unpacking and organizing stuff for the last couple of weeks. Most stuff is sorted out now I think, Canada Post finally found our mail from the two week hold they had on stuff and both of us are settling in pretty well. Just waiting on the last few pieces of furniture to arrive.

Since we’ve finally got a house, and a bit of a yard, we picked up a puppy on Saturday. We got ourselves a little Welsh Corgi which we’ve named Odin. He’s been a lot of fun so far. Lots of energy and lots of sleep seem to be the orders of the day.

There have been lots of other fun side trips, losing of Foosball tournaments, wine tasting and other goings on that I’m leaving out at the moment.

Hopefully I’ll get back into some more regularly schedule writing now that things are starting to settle down. Although, I appear to be getting volunteered to do a presentation at DevWaterloo tomorrow so we’ll see what happens.

This also means that we’ll be moving to Waterloo in the near future. We just need to sell the condo and find a house to live in over there. It’ll be nice to get out of the city and back to Waterloo again.

Working for Security Compass was a great experience and all the guys there are fantastic, along with knowing a lot about computer security. The work was a lot of fun, who can complain with getting paid to break things? But, with everything good comes the bad. In this case, the travel. As you probably know, I’ve spent a lot of time on the road the last few months. The amount of flying and hotel starts to wear you down and it’s doubly so when you’re married. So, I decided it was time to change.

On the amusing side, my last flight back from Seattle I qualified for Air Canada Elite status. Of course I won’t be flying very much but I’m Elite for 2008 and 2009, heh.

Now you know why we went out and purchased a car.

XSS-Me does Cross Site Scripting (XSS) injection against the forms on a page. This will send a predefined set of attack strings against the website to see if the site reflects the content back to the user.

SQL Inject-Me is a tool to do some SQL injection tests against an application. It will send a series of SQL commands and attempt to make the database return an error message to the user.

Anyway, check out the Exploit-Me site and give the tools a try. If you find any issues you can report them to bugs at securitycompass.com.

Oh, and as an added bonus, the tools are being released under the GPL v3. We’re working on getting bug tracking, mailing lists and all that other infrastructure setup for the project.

There have been some books, some movies, some video games. Other events, trials and tribulations. But, that’s the condensed version.

Hopefully things are slowing down a bit and I’ll be blogging regular like again but we’ll see.

Cuba was a lot of fun. We didn’t do too much, sat by the pool, read some books. We didn’t leave the resort at all. Exactly what we wanted.

I’d like to go back at some point. Probably to another resort. The one we were at was pretty good. Food was excellent and it had a layout that felt big but everything was close together. My only complaint from the trip was that the service was bit slow. Other then that everything was good.

I’ve, of course, been swamped with work since I got back. A couple deadlines are looming so I’m not sure if I’ll have time to get any photos up or not. We’ll see.

Along with work I’ve been doing some Enlightenment stuff. I’ve been trying to split the Ewl_Text widget apart as it was pretty big. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass as there is a lot of code in there but it’s coming along. I’ve also been doing some work on the new website. I setup a planet for Enlightenment and got ViewVC installed and running.

Lets see, where to begin. Stacy and I bought a condo the other weekend. We’ll finalize everything on the 23rd of November. (That’s when we get possession.) This should give us about a week to do any painting before we move on the 30th. We’re still in the process of getting movers, neither one of us wants to have to move all our crap ourselves. It’s going to be a hectic few weeks getting everything packed and arranged.

Hm, I guess next up is work. I’d been offered a job at another company, which I subsequently turned down. Was a bit of a shit storm at work. Everything is good now. I’ve moved more to focus on migration tools which is what I want to do. A lot of my other projects, as much as possible, have been transitioned off to other people. It’s nice to drop the baggage every now and then. So that’s good. Work’s actually at the point where I sit down, start working and, what feels like 30 seconds later, it’s time to go home.

I’ve finally taken my Amsterdam pictures off my camera. (You’re seeing one of theme in the post icon.) They turned out pretty well. A bunch are blurry. I really, really, need a camera with auto-stabilization, or something. All in all, I like em. As usual, if I ever get a gallery setup…

Movies, movies, I think I’ve seen two since I last posted. Borat and Flags of our Fathers. Both were really good movies. I wasn’t expecting much from Borat, I haven’t seen the show it’s based on but, I laughed, then I quoted a bit. The guys I went with all grew Borat style mustaches. I think the best part of the evening is when the bar tender (we went for drinks afterwards) asked one of the guys ‘Are you in a mustache club?’.

Lets see, thats the condo, the job, movies. Ah, right. Been poking at EWL again, as usual. Did a bunch of work on the Ewl_Text widget to hopefully make it faster. Ended up simplifying the code in a few places which is nice. Should also make it easier for RbdPngn to integrate his skiplist work once it’s complete.

I picked up Ratchet: Deadlocked about a year ago. Didn’t really play it then (according to the save file, 1.5hrs). Popped it in the other day and have been pleasantly surprised. It’s quite fun to run around and blow shit up with ridiculously sized weapons. 11 days to the Wii.

That’s it for now, I’ve got to get some sleep. I’ll try to post more regular like in the future. I swear.

As usual, working in the office can be quite distracting. Between people coming up to ask questions, phone calls, emails and other things I wasn’t getting much writting done So, I took Wendsday and Thursday and didn’t bother to go to the office.

Instead, I spent the two days hopping between coffee shops at Young and Eglinton. Wendsday I managed to start at the Indigo Starbucks, moved to the Duke of Kent for lunch, went down to Tim Hortons, up to the other Starbucks then back across to road to the Indigo Starbucks again. Four cups of tea, four bottles of water and a dead battery on my iPod later I managed to get a lot of writting and formatting complete.

Today wasn’t quite so hoppy. I started at home as I had a conference call that was suppost to be at 11, which got postponed. So, I went to the Indigo Starbucks (I love the leather chairs they have there), then came home for the 2pm re-schedule. After that, back out to Tim Hortons and then the Indio Starbucks again. I’ve now been sitting at home for the past few hours with iTunes visualizations running on the TV.

I’ve actually been quite supprised at just how productive it can be to get out of the house and get out of the office and sit somewhere and work on something. I’ll have to remember that if I get another project like this one.

Only three chapters and one skipped section remaining before I can call it a night.

Spend the week in Ohio on work. Everything there went smoothly. I think the customer was happy. I’ll find out in a week or so I guess. I think work is regretting letting me have 2.5 weeks off for my wedding as they may be in need of people to do some work during that time. But, damnit, this summer has been busy enough I want my time off to relax. So, unless told not too, I’m taking it, heh.

Was a little concerned about getting back over the border on my plane on Friday. I’d been hearing all kinds of things about no liquids, no electronics, only what you’re wearing and your passport. All kinds of stuff on what you couldn’t take on the plane.

With that in mind, I thought I’d be smart and got to the airport about 3hrs early, just in case there were lines or something. I, of course, got through security and everything about 5 minutes later and ended up sitting in the airport for those 3hrs. This wasn’t so bad. Ohio has free wi-fi in their airport which is nice. Got bored of the laptop and decided to read. Between that and the first half of the plane ride back I managed to finsh Outlander which was a good book. A lot of sex, but a good book. As I said, I liked it but I probably won’t read any of the others. Not exactly sure why. I guess it just didn’t take a tight enough grip on my balls to make me want to jump into another 800 page book.

I’d planned ahead in case I mananged to finish my book and brought Someone comes to town, Someone leaves town by Corey Doctorow with me. This one is shaping up to be an awsome book. I’m loving it so far, it’s just the right amount of wacky with technology type stuff, and set in Toronto, which is great.

Once back from Ohio I hopped in a car with Stacy and drove over to Fergus for the opening on the highland games. The tattoo was good, some really good bands playing. Fireworks were cool. Stacy picked me up a kilt as a wedding gift. It’s black and made of hemp. I should get it sometime in November.

Once the tattoo ended, it was up to Owen Sound. Stacy had a hair run through for the wedding at 8am on Saturday (which I in no way go up to drive her too) and then she had a bridal shower that morning. Sunday was another bridal shower, for both of us this time. We got some cool stuff. Lot of glassware which will come in handy.

Over that chunk of time I managed to get a bit of EWL work in there. I gave tree2 a bit of loving and it can now show rows. RbdPngn and I poked at it a bit more and the header can now resize the rows correctly and stuff is looking pretty good. There is a problem with setting the preferred size at the moment so it’s really small by default but we’ll get that worked out.

I also fixed ewl_tree to allow the columns to follow the header since the way we did it in tree2 could be easily ported over. A bit of other poking around here and there. I started playing with the icon situation in EWL. We don’t want to import all the icons from Tango or something in EWL as we don’t think that makes sense, but we do wany themers to be able to specify stock icons for things. To that end I started playing with ecore_desktop today to see if I could use that to get the icons. I don’t think it’s quite up to snuff yet as I don’t seem to get any of the icons I requested back. I’ll have to let ecore_desktop mature a bit more then I’ll come back and see if it’ll work for EWL.

That’s long enough for this. Well, one more thing. I’ve started to get a little bit of spam on here. I’m going to have to start thinking of ways to deal with it, so the comments system might need a bit of a change in the future. We’ll see what happens.

I’m going to have to fight them tooth and nail to keep from getting really drunk as I have to catch a plan on Sunday at 1730hrs to fly to Ohio for work.

I’ll be spending the week in Ohio doing various Solaris 10ie things which should be fun. Playing with processor sets, zones maybe some DTrace, we’ll have to see.

I then fly back at 1035hr on Friday, jump in a rental car (probably not till around 1500 or 1600hrs) and drive to Fergus to hopefully catch the Tattoo at the highland games, and maybe look at some of the kilts and other cool shit their usually selling. Then back in the car and on up to Owen Sound as Stacy has a hair apointment at 0800hrs on Saturday to try out the person that’s doing her hair for the wedding.

Afterwhich one of my moms sisters is throwing her a bridal shower. Then on Sunday is a Sinclair family picnic / happy engagement celebration somewhere.

At which point I can drive back to Toronto and passout from exhaustion.

Anyway, if you don’t see me around me it’s because I’m out and about, passed out from the demon alcohol or passed out from exhaustion.

Later.