We have 3 different environments need to deal with: Mac OS X (myself), Ubuntu (another developer), and CentOS (production environment).  Dealing with the Linux environments (Ubuntu & CentOS) are easy, OS X is a different story.

In order to install cx_Oracle on OS X, I have to install the Oracle database “thick” client first, which is called the “Instant-Client“.

1. For the Mac OS X Lion, please install the Intel x86 Mac version.
2. You can see there are 32-bit and 64-bit version for downloading.  For Mac OS X Lion, have to install the 32-bit version instead of 64-bit version because the 64-bit version will be crashed (“Segmentation fault: 11″) on Mac OS X Lion.  It has been widely discussed on the web.
3. You can install all the 32-bit downloads or just install the following: instantclient-basic-10.2.0.4.0-macosx-x86.zip and instantclient-sdk-10.2.0.4.0-macosx-x86.zip
4. Unzip both files into the same directory.  For example, /usr/local/lib/instantclient
5. Make sure modifying ~/.bash_profile by adding the following exports:
6. export ORACLE_HOME=/usr/local/lib/instantclient
7. export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME
8. export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME
9. export VERSIONER_PYTHON_PREFER_32_BIT=yes
10. If you want to use Python 2.6 instead of Python 2.7, you can also export VERSIONER_PYTHON_VERSION=2.6
11. You can make the exports to be effective by restarting the Terminal, or
12. source ~/.bash_profile
13. Before install cx_Oracle, need to tell OS X the current version of the Instant Client dynamic library
14. cd $ORACLE_HOME
15. ln -s libclntsh.dylib.10.2 libclntsh.dylib
16. After installed the Oracle Instant Client (thick client), we can install cx_Oracle now
17. sudo pip install cx_Oracle

The above steps only work if you are not using the Python Virtual Environments.  I have found Jason Buckner instructions on how to solve the problem on Virtual Environments.

Disclaimer: My family and I follow the schedule to service all the cars that I mention below.  Although some of the cars do not being service at the Honda/Acura dealership, we do use qualified technicians.

My whole family is royal Honda/Acura customer.  My first new car was a 1997 Acura 2.2CL 5-Speed.  For over 150,000 miles in 5 years, it has zero issue.  My mother has the 2001 Acura TL and it is still on the road.  My father sold his 1999 Honda Civic when it was 210,000 miles.  He is currently driving a 2005 Honda Accord LX (nearly 120,000 miles on it).  My wife used to have an very old (forget about the year) Honda Accord and we sold it when it was 150,000 miles.

However, the quality of Honda production is getting downhill recent years.  I bought a 2006 Honda Accord V6 Automatic (my first 4-door automatic car!!!) for my commute.  It has transmission problem and air conditioning problem when it was just 80,000 miles.  At that time, I thought it may be related to the very bad stop-and-go Los Angeles traffic and it was made in North America.  In order to save gas and the load on the drivetrain, I switched to a 4-cylinder Acura TSX Automatic (I believe it is being called Honda Accord Euro Edition outside North America).  I believe the TSX is JDM so it should have no quality control problem anymore.  For the past 3 years, it has small issues but everything is doing fine.  I am happy with the maintenance cost and the gas mileage with the TSX.  However, the nightmare starts a week ago…

Sunday:

It is the night of 2012 Chinese New Year Eve.  After having dinner with family and friends at my parents’ place, my wife and I drove home separately.  Our dog, Charco, was with me in my TSX.  Since it was Sunday night @ 9pm, there was not much cars on the road.  I was cruising with legal speed on the freeway while I had the iPod music on (love TSX’s iPod integration!!!).  Without any noticible noise, I felt the TSX was losing power.  It has no power when I stepped on the gas pedal but the engine light was on.  However, the engine light turned off when I released from the gas pedal.  I pulled the TSX to the right hand shoulder slowly (again, glad that there was not much cars on the freeway during that time) and stepped on the brake to try to stop the TSX.  However, there is no more power assistant with the brake and I finally realized the engine was stalled.

I turned the TSX off once I managed to stop the car.  Turned the car key clockwise, the engine tried to start but couldn’t hold it.  At first, I thought may be the TSX ran out of gas.  However, the gas tank indicator showed the tank was full.  Hmmm… fuel injection problem? battery problem? I had no clue at all.  I called my wife to drive back to the freeway to pick up Charco and I called AAA to arrange a tow trunk to tow the TSX back home.

Monday:

I contacted my mechanic (it is a local shop that is in business for at least 17 years) regarding the TSX’s problem.  Since it is still being covered by drivetrain warranty (below 70,000 miles), he highly recommended me to tow the TSX back to the dealership.

Tuesday:

I towed the TSX back to the dealership near my home in the morning.  The service person was very nice and he got me a loaner car (a 2012 TSX!!!) to drive while they tried to figure out what’s wrong with the TSX.  In the afternoon, the serviceman called me and told me there was metal in cylinder#2 (a.k.a. engine is “dead”).  The cause of it could be lacking of maintenance.  The dealership needs me to provide them all the service records to proof the car was being serviced properly.  Awesome, I don’t have the habit to keep car service records!!!

I called my mechanic again and he was able to pull me records until sometime last year immediately (thank GOD!).  I drove back to the shop to pick up the records and delivered them back to the dealership immediately.  I thought that’s enough proofs to show them I did take good care of my TSX and Acura would take my claim and gives me a new/used engine.

I am wrong again…

Friday:

The director of service department contacted me today and told me that Acura believes I didn’t change oil before 45,000 miles (that’s the earliest records I delivered to them on Monday).  I told him it is not the case because it is difficult to get records earlier than that.  The director of service department suggested I should get all the records for my best interest because Acura will make decisions based on the records (Lesson Learn: We should always keep car service records if we are doing car service outside of the dealership).  Luckily, my mechanic is able to get all the records for me since year 2008.  Thanks Mr. Mechanic!!!!

That’s how the story is developed so far.  Will update with a separated post once I learn more from the dealership.  I have been studying the Acura TSX warranty terms and agreement the whole night.  The following are some of the highlight:

“Maintenance Minder function should never be exceeded; they are essential to trouble-free operation. Parts that fail because they did not get proper, timely maintenance are not covered by warranty. However, a warranty claim will not be denied if a part fails due to a defect in material or workmanship for reasons unrelated to the improper maintenance or operation.”

In order to proof the Acura is being serviced properly, we need one or more of the followings:

“The Acura Maintenance Journal showing the odometer mileage and date for each service. Each entry in this journal should be embossed and signed by a person who is qualified to service automobiles.”

“Copies of repair orders or other receipts that include the odometer mileage and date that the vehicle was serviced. Each receipt should be signed by a qualified automotive service technician.”

“A statement that you completed the maintenance yourself, showing the odometer mileage and date you did the work. Receipts for the replacement parts (fluids, filters, etc.) should accompany this statement.”

(Updates)

Saturday:

Picked up the service records from the mechanic shop in the morning and delivered them back to the Acura dealership.  After the director of service department examined the records, he told me Acura has authorized the fixes under warranty and they are just waiting for the service records.  He also walked through the engine damage with me.  However, they still have no clue what causes the damage because the engine oil looks like never been replaced and they found no water in the engine oil at all.  Since I have provided them the proof of service, they can’t deny the drivetrain warranty and they will start the work next week.  The cost of the fixes is more than $10k and all being covered under the warranty!!!

The bad news is the warranty will not be extended so it will be expired after the other 100 miles.  The good news is I can always contact the dealership and they will try to make exemption with Acura about the engine if there is more problem in the future.

The pistol in cylinder#2 is damaged badly.

The spring of the valve in cylinder#2 is also broken

Metals are inside the cylinder#2

The engine head unit is also damanged

I don’t have a solution yet but my current workaround is disabling security with my NAS. It is not a big problem for me at home since no one else is using the NAS but only me. However, I can see it could be an issue for small business, that is using the Buffalo Link Station for sharing files within the office.

P.S.: I also found out Aaron Thorne has a fixed for the issue. I haven’t tried it yet. Please let me know if you try it and work.

As for my solution, please following the steps below:

Login to your Buffalo NAS via the web browser. For my Buffalo, I put in http://192.168.1.50 on my Chrome web browser.

Select Shared Folders & Shared Folders Setup on the left navigation bar. You should be able to see a list of folders on the NAS.

Now, select the folder that you want to change the sharing settings. I try not use SMB/Samba at home so I have Windows disabled on Shared Folder Support. In order to disable security (everyone can read/write), in the Access Restrictions section, I put Access Restrictions from Enable to Disable. Make sure you click on the Apply button at the button!!! Repeat this step for all the folders you saw from the previous step.

As what I said earlier, Fujifilm X100 comes with a fixed 35mm f2.0 lens.  It does not have neither optical or digital zoom.  I am planning to bring this camera with me for my European vacation next month and I hope I don’t make a big mistake.  I was thinking to bring my Canon DSLR with a 17-40mm f/4 lens for my vacation because I believe there will be a lot of architectural and scenery opportunities.  However, due to the size of the DSLR, I may also want to bring my Ricoh GX200 as the compact solution.  It is about 7lbs of equipments I am talking about here!  Honestly, this is my vacation and I think I should relax and enjoy.  As a result, I make a decision on getting the X100 as my only camera during the trip.

When Sigma announced the DP1, I told myself it will be my primary “snapshot” camera other than my DSLR and lenses. Unfortunately, the high price and bad reviews prevent me to take the risk to get it. There it comes with DP2 and same story. A couple years ago, Panasonic and other manufacturers come out micro four third format camera body and it is very attractive. I was also looking into Panasonic GF1 because of the mechanical style switches (comparing to GF2′s control). However, both of the cameras still have issues with digital noise at high ISO and missing optical viewfinder.

Anyway, I will try to get outdoor and practice more with this new camera.  More update will follow in the next couple weeks!

Remember, RDBMS is still everywhere even in Facebook, Twitter, and eBay!!!

(Quote from Omer Trajman from Cloudera)

Welcome to Blogsy! I am Fomo and I will be explaining all of the cool features and functions that the Fomola team and I have put into Blogsy.

We really hope you enjoy Blogsy and it becomes your preferred way to blog. We will continue to work hard on making it better so look for regular improvements.
Okay, okay, I’ll shut up now and get to it.

A very important thing to know about Blogsy is that there are two sides – Rich Side and Write Side.

You are on the Rich Side now. To get to the Write side just swipe left or right.

In this table you can see some of the things you can do on each side.

Heres a quick overview pointing out where to go to do all the things you want to do.

Blogs

• Set up your blogs in the Settings menu
• Manage published posts, drafts, and pending-review drafts in the Post Info. menu under Published

Media sites

• Set up your first account in the Dock
• Set up multiple accounts in the Settings menu

Adding images to your post

Flickr, Picasa, Google Image Search:

1. Tap on the image site on the Dock
2. Place your finger on the image and drag it to your post (you can use a second finger to scroll to help you place it where you want)
3. Drop the image

Note: Tap on the image to get the Image Settings menu if you want to change anything (size, link, alignment, alt text, or delete the image)

Browser:

1. Find the site with the image you want
2. Long press on the image until you see Fomo
3. Drag the image to your post (you can use a second finger to scroll to help you place it where you want)
4. Drop the image

Note 1: Some sites may use special scrips which block Blogsy from dragging images.

Note 2: Tap on the image to get the Image Settings menu if you want to change anything (size, link, alignment, alt text, or delete the image)

Adding videos to your post

YouTube:

1. Tap the YouTube icon on the Dock
2. Place your finger on the image of the video and drag it to your post (you can use a second finger to scroll to help you place it where you want)
3. Drop the video

Note: Tap on the image to get the Video Settings menu if you want to change anything (size, iFrame/Old embed code, borders, color, related videos, or delete the video)

Embed:

1. Open the browser and find the embed code
2. Select the embed code and copy it
3. Go to the Write Side and tap where you would like your embedded content to be placed
4. Paste the embed code

Note: Some sites may use special scripts which block Blogsy/Safari from selecting and copying the embed code.

Links

There are two ways to create a link.

Method #1:

1. Select the text you want to use for your link on the Rich Side
2. Open the browser and find the site/image you wish to link to
3. Place your finger on the Blogsy Link Button (the button to the left of the address bar)
4. Drag it to the text you selected

Note: Tap on the link to get the Link Settings menu if you want to change any link settings (title, open in new window, or delete the link)

Method #2:

1. Select the text you want to use for your link on the Rich Side
2. Tap on the Link option that shows after making your selection
3. Type in the URL you want to use for your link

Note: Tap on the link to get the Link Settings menu if you want to change any link settings (title, open in new window, or delete the link)

Formatting

There are two ways to format text.

Method #1:

1. On the Rich Side select the text you want to format
2. Tap on the desired formatting button in the Formatting Toolbar

Note: To delete formatting on the Rich Side follow the same steps used for formatting.

Method #2:

1. On the Write Side select the text you want to format
2. Tap on the desired formatting button in the Formatting Toolbar (you can see the HTML added)

Note: To delete formatting on the Write Side you must delete the opening and closing HTML tags.

Post Info.

• You can set your post information in the Post Info. menu
• Categories/Tags/Labels: Tap on the item to select it (only use Add to add items which are not already in the list)

Local Drafts

• Local drafts can be found under Local in the Post Info. menu
• The current post you have open will not show in the Local drafts list

Publishing / Saving / Updating

There are two ways to publish/save/update.

• Method #1: Swipe three finger up quickly (We had 4 finger swipe until Apple used that in their latest iOS update.)
• Method #2: Tap on the Publish/Save/Update button on the top of the Post Info. menu

Since I have been switched to WordPress, I have tried many different software for blog composing and publishing. The best ones I have ever tried are RedSweater MarsEdit and Microsoft Windows Live Writer. I also run into a couple very good one that runs on Apple iOS platform such as BlogPress and BlogWriter. Unfortunately, I have been running into issue that all my published posts are missing “<” and “>” from the “<p>” and “</p>” tags. I have written a couple posts to discuss the problem and solutions, but I have no luck to fix the problem after upgraded to a new version of WordPress. You can see my previous posts here, here, and here.

Recently, I ran into an Apple iOS application, “Blogsy“. The user interview is amazingly beautiful and it takes full advantages of iPad’s big screen. I spent some money bought it right away and posted a couple testing post to my blog here. Once again, I ran into the same missing angle brackets problem. And once again, it is the same XML-RPC problem that is haunting me for years!!!

After doing some researches on web, it is the same old problem. There is a bug in libxml 2.6.16 library and it was being fixed in libxml 2.7.3 or above. The problem is well documented here. This is the reason why I mentioned I am using WestHost.com hosting for my personal blog. I am unable to upgrade the libxml2 library to 2.7.3 and recompile PHP to take advantage the new library. Being so desperate, I would like to find a temporary solution to fix the problem before I give up WestHost and switching to some other hosting solutions.

Finally, the answer is LibXML2 Fix plugin for WordPress. Once the plugin is installed, the missing angle bracket problem is gone and I can upgrade the WordPress software to the latest version without worrying overwritten the batch that I tried to apply on WP beforehand.

Pro Spring Integration is an authoritative book from the experts that guides you through the vast world of Enterprise Application Integration and application of the Spring Integration framework towards solving integration problems. The book is:

• An introduction to the concepts of Enterprise Application Integration
• A reference on building event-driven applications using Spring Integration
• A guide to solving common integration problems using Spring Integration

What makes this book unique is its coverage of contemporary technologies and real-world information, with a focus on common problems that users are likely to confront. This book zeros in on extending the Spring Integration framework to meet your custom integration demands.

As Spring Integration is an extension of the Spring programming model it builds on the Spring Framework’s existing support for enterprise integration. This book will take you through all aspects of this relationship and show you how to get the best out of your Spring applications, where integration is a consideration. It discusses simple messaging within Spring-based applications and integration with external systems via simple adapters. Those adapters provide a higher-level of abstraction over Spring’s support for remoting, messaging, and scheduling, all of which receives coverage in this book.

What you’ll learn

• Introduces the wide world of Spring Integration with an overview of application integration, the patterns involved and then quickly moving into applications
• How to identify integration problems that are best solved using Spring Integration and enterprise application integration (EAI)
• Discover and apply EAI patterns and related architectural concepts like staged event driven architectures (SEDA)
• Explore the concepts behind message-oriented middleware (MOM)
• How to interface with external systems using Spring Integration
• Extend the Spring Integration stack with custom adapters, endpoints, and more
• What are the next steps to production with expert insight into error handling, monitoring, management, and scaling the enterprise Java application

Who this book is for

This book is for any developer looking for a more natural way to build event-driven applications using familiar Spring idioms and techniques. The book is also geared towards architects seeking to better their applications and increase productivity in their developers.

You can order the book (ISBN13: 9781430233459) here now!!!

Evernote is the best cross platform note taking software in the planet. You could argue with me that SpringPad does the same thing but SpringPad is missing thick clients on Mac OS X and Windows platform. Evernote has the thick client for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Palm WebOS, Windows, and Mac OS X. Oh, Evernote also has a rich web browser version just like Dropbox and SpringPad.

Evernote for iPad is the best iOS client. With the large screen working area, it is very easy to compose and read notes with graphics on iPad. The users can browse the notes, notebooks, tags, places, and searches via thumbnails. However, there is a big problem: There is no easy way to change the notebook and search cover/thumbnails anywhere on Evernote. I hope Evernote can fix this problem in the future version. But now, I can only use the workaround to solve the issue.

1. Choose the notebook that needs to update the cover/thumbnail
2. Create a new note contains the picture or text to be the new cover/thumbnail
3. Rename the notebook to something else.  For example, rename from “Personal” to “Personal2″
4. Create a new notebook using the old name.  For this example, the notebook will be named “Personal”
5. Copy all the notes in notebook “Personal2″ and drop to the newly created notebook “Personal”
6. The new notebook will use the new note created on Step 2 as the cover
7. Delete the old notebook “Personal2″

Similar steps can be doned with Saved Searches as well.  Good luck!!