Connect NodeJS to Oracle--say what!?

posted by Ted on

I know what you're thinking--why would you want to use Oracle for your node backend when you have perfectly good options like mongo and the like? You know the old saying: "When in Rome, etc.". The business enterprise is quite likely Rome, and Rome likes its Oracle, baby.

My coding buddy Aaron Frost tamed this beast (to mix metaphors), so credit where it's due. I mostly watched and told him to use "sudo" in a couple of places. In this article we'll walk you through how he did it using one of two available drivers (as of ...

Writing a Boot2Gecko app

posted by Ted on

iPhone is so, like, yesterday. Is Boot2Gecko the future? Could be, if it's as easy to create apps for as the Boot2Gecko blog makes it out to be. Here is my experience with creating an HTML5 webapp, making it "installable" on Boot2Gecko, and installing it on my Nexus S phone running B2G. It really was pretty easy. Really.

Installing Boot2Gecko on Nexus S

posted by Ted on

Mozilla announced the Boot to Gecko project late last year. I picked up an unlocked Nexus S and took a weekend to build B2G and flash the the phone with it. I've distilled what I did down to a few easy-to-follow steps. Well, forget the 'few' part. And maybe the 'easy-to-follow'.

Creating a .gdeb package from a .rpm package

posted by Ted on

Occasionally, you'll need to install software that's only currently available as an .rpm package, meaning it is specifically packaged for a Red Hat Linux distro. These can be used to create a debian package, however, that can then be installed easily under Ubuntu. The program "alien" is used to do this

Using DavMail with Exchange for Linux

posted by Ted on

My one bone of contention in using Linux has been the paucity of Exchange-compatible clients. I have the inclination to blame M$, but hey--my Android phone client works just fine. Evolution, Thunderbird, KMail--sure, I can get IMAP mail, but none have worked to the point of syncing with my appointments. Enter DavMail. I'll show you how to install it and set it up to work with your company's Exchange server.

What's REALLY going on in that HashSet.contains() method

posted by Ted on

We all know that contains() is a handy way to check for the presence of an item in a HashSet. The java docs state: "Returns true if this collection contains the specified element. More formally, returns true if and only if this collection contains at least one element e such that (o==null ? e==null : o.equals(e))." So, you just need to override equals() the way you want, and everything's hunky-dory, right? Wrong!

Submitting a form from an a href link using jquery

posted by Ted on

Okay, Okay, I admit it. I'm javascript challanged. As a Java developer, I've looked down my nose at paltry javascript, treating it as a "me-too" technology trying to cash in on the hype surrounding java all these years.
As a result, I've missed out on a lot of js goodies. And, with javascript entering a renaissance of sorts, combined with the wildfire-like buzz surrounding libraries such as jquery, it's high time I learn some.