Cowell Computer Consulting

I recently tried a piece of software called 'Contactizer'. It didn't do what I wanted it to, so I uninstalled it. During its stay on my computer it created about 10 additional iCal calendars, and put a few events in one or two of them. So, I needed a way to determine if a calendar was empty before I deleted it.

Here's a little applescript that will tell you the number of events in each calendar.

tell application "iCal"
    repeat with mycal in every calendar
        get name of mycal
        get count of every event in mycal
    end repeat
end tell

Posted by Luke Cowell on September 27, 2008 at 07:58 AM

Someone I know recently had their web site redone. Apparently, their site was vulnerable to a security vulnerability and they were told by the original 'developer' (I'll call them design-corp) that it would need a complete rebuild. Hmm, I'd suggest that it's a better idea to patch the vulnerability, rebuilding the entire site sounds a little bit like a cash grab or that they don't know how to fix it. My confidence in design-corp was waning.

This situation got my curiosity and so I thought I'd check out design-corp's site. They actually had an impressive client list. Lots of local, but very high profile clients. They had a extensive portfolio divided into < $10000 sites, > $10000 sites and Ecommerce and Database sites (which I can only guess are the most expense). Design-corp isn't cheap, I'll say that much, so it made me think that it's not necessarily about what you're selling, but how you sell it. That is to invest a lot of time in helping the client understand the value of what they're getting.

So, here's the punch-line, in form of a list of features that Design-corp's web sites can include.

• Web strategy
• Training
• Project management
• Web design/creative
• Programming
• Database development

OK, some of these aren't funny, but a couple are.

Programming - my question is: what web site's don't require some programming ? How far can you go in the business without it ?

Project Management - read: the project was big enough that we had to charge for an additional service. We all do this, don't we ? It's called getting the job done, so you get paid.

Come on, they're suppose to be web experts! Should they list that they know basic computer operations such turning a computer off and on, or that they are experienced with Microsoft Word ? To me that stuff is all par for the course in the web world.

I should be thankful, at least they aren't driving the prices of web development down.

Posted by Luke Cowell on September 24, 2008 at 07:37 AM

Most of the people I know, who have anything more than a basic phone, have bought iPhones. Some people have chosen to stick with the 'venerable' Blackberry. Configuring email on blackberry's can be a pain in the ass sometimes. I know there's built in email activation on the blackberry, but that requires you to have access to the unit. Some of the people I support live thousands of kilometers away and in different time zones, so that doesn't always work.

In theory, if there were a web page I could change the settings at, I could avoid lengthy support calls and configure their email myself. For some reason blackberry doesn't want you to know this, but each company that offers blackberries has their own portal on the blackberry site. In fact, the service providers (Rogers, ATT, Verizon) don't seem to really want you to know this either because it's proven to be almost impossible to find this sort of info on their sites.

OK, so here's the trick - use google. Let's say I want to find the Rogers portal, craft a search like this:

rogers site:blackberry.com inurl:brand

Obviously you substitute the company you're looking for with rogers.

site: just tells google to limit the search to blackberry.com.

inurl: tell google to ensure that the word brand is in the url.

Here's a few providers:

http://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=rogers
http://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=telus
http://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=mycingular
http://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=vzw   <—Verizon

I just don't understand why this has to be some complicated....

Posted by Luke Cowell on September 22, 2008 at 04:19 PM

A lot of machine specific information doesn't need to go into the repository for your rails app. The following is taken from http://tuples.us/rails-guide/ which is largely taken from the ugly rails wiki.

svn remove log/*
svn commit -m 'removing all log files from subversion'
svn propset svn:ignore "*.log" log/
svn update log/
svn commit -m 'Ignoring all files in /log/ ending in .log'
svn remove tmp/*
svn commit -m 'removing all tmp files from subversion'
svn propset svn:ignore "*" tmp/
svn update tmp/
svn commit -m 'Ignoring all files in /tmp'
svn move config/database.yml config/database.yml.example
svn commit -m 'make database.yml template'
svn propset svn:ignore "database.yml" config/
svn update config/
svn commit -m 'ignoring database.yml'

It may also be a good idea to add:

svn remove db/*.sqlite3
svn propset svn:ignore "*.sqlite3" db/
svn update db
svn commit -m ' removing sqlite dbs from svn'

Posted by Luke Cowell on September 22, 2008 at 04:08 PM