NET: Registered protocol family 2

Well installing Trixbox on my Oracle VirtualBox to play around, my install ran into a problem and halted. I've heard this has happened for other installations on VBox and this solution worked for them.

Problem: 
NET: Registered protocol family 2

Solution:
Luckily a quick search said I needed to enable IO APIC in VirtualBox. Looking around, I found it and my installed proceeded as expected.

Picture:

Under settings, check Enable IO APIC

T-Mobile G2 with Android Debug Bridge (ADB) and Flash Builder 4.5 on Windows 7 64 bit

Problem: 

I recently developed an application for the Android market and was excited to test it out on an actual Android device. I plugged in my T-Mobile G2 phone, set the USB Debugging and the Unknown Sources options (found in Settings -> Applications [USB Debugging is in the section Development]). Windows 7 said it found a new device but was unable to install drivers specifically for the G2.

First Attempted Solution - FAILED:

After reading many blogs and forums on how to fix this issue, I decided on one method and started downloading software (HTC Sync) and following the poor instructions given by the blogger. Once all was said and done, it didn't end up working right. ddm found a device but it was always offline.

Final Solution - SUCCESS:

 So I back tracked everything uninstalling software and uninstalling drivers for the device. I decided to follow some direction given in forums I was reading through and did the following. I went to where Flash Builder was installed, for me that is C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Flash Builder 4.5\utilities\drivers\android. As the path shows continue to navigate to the android directory. In that directory you will see an android_winusb.inf. This file is a driver for many android devices (except the G2). Next, I added the two lines of code below into the android_winusb.inf file. One under under the sections [Google.NTx86] and [Google.NTamd64]. Then I used the Device Manager on my computer to find the Android Phone and then locate this file as the driver for that device.

Add the lines below to sections [Google.NTx86] and [Google.NTamd64] in the file:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Flash Builder 4.5\utilities\drivers\android\android_winusb.inf

;T-Mobile G2 - Start of code
%SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C91
%CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C91&MI_01
;End of Code


Good luck devs.

* The forum that assisted in helping me solve this problem is xda-developers.com.

ActionScript 3.0 Pad String Method

Problem: I use PHP a lot and am currently working on a project in ActionScript  (Flash Builder). I found myself needing a method similar to str_pad. I found a couple online, but nothing as powerful as the one provided in PHP.

Solution: Write my own... here it is. You will find it is very similar to PHP's str_pad method. Also note, there could be a couple improvements in padded string generation, but this will do for now.

/**
             * Add a number of padding in front or back of a string.
             * @param string:String - The string to pad
             * @param length:uint - The final length of the string
             * @param pad_string:String - The string to use as padding
             * @param pad_left:Boolean - padding front or back of string
             */   
            public function padString(input:String, pad_length:uint, pad_string:String, pad_left:Boolean = true):String
            {
                // return input if length greater than padded length
                if (input.length >= pad_length) return input;
               
                // generate padding
                var paddedString:String = "";
                for (var i:uint = 0; i < pad_length - input.length; i++)
                    paddedString += pad_string;
               
                // concatonate results
                var resultStr:String = pad_left ? (paddedString + input) : (input + paddedString);
               
                // account for overflow if any
                if (resultStr.length > pad_length){
                    // chop off extra from result based on pad_type
                    if (pad_left)
                        resultStr = resultStr.substr(resultStr.length - pad_length, resultStr.length);
                    else
                        resultStr = resultStr.substr(0, pad_length);
                }
                return resultStr;
            }

How to find the Perfect Web Hosting

Problem:
As a developer, sometimes it is hard to know which hosting companies to trust. We are compelled to read reviews (which might be biased or bought) to try and figure out what people are thinking. It may sometimes only seem helpful to only look at the bad reviews. Obviously this has it's downfalls, so how do you do it?

How do you know which hosting company to trust?

Solution:
No hosting company can give you 100% up-time guarantee and some hosting companies will have more problems than others. Remember, I'm not a hosting expert, but the following is what I've found over time.

Things to consider:

1. How much work am I willing / able to do for a web server?
• You can choose to manage your server yourself or have someone else manage it although if you don't feel comfortable doing so, there is an in between option. VPS is a virtual private server. This means that you physically share the same box (and some resources) as someone else, but that you have full control of your operating system and the programs installed.
2. Do I need a Dedicated, Collocated, Cloud, or VPS server?
•  These server types will cost more than shared hosting. In all three cases, you will have to consider security.
• Collocation [~$40 / month + server cost]: Your required to buy your own server and find a data center to host it. If something goes wrong that you can't fix remotely, you have to gain physical access to the box to service it.
• Dedicated [~$70 / month starting]: This allows you to put the strain of physical hardware maintenance in someone else's care; for a price. 
• VPS [~$20 / month starting]: This is similar to dedicated hosting except that you share some resources with other hosting clients. Now days you will be guaranteed a certain amount of RAM, CPU priority, and disk space, but generally you all share the same motherboard. This means if another user is writing/reading files a lot, you could see slow down with your service.
• Cloud [~$100 / month]: Often used as a buzz word to charge more, this is similar to a VPS. The difference with real cloud hosting is that you generally have redundancy, high availability, and rapid scaling when you need more or less resources. Because of the distribution of redundancy It's also generally able to respond quicker than a single location web site because of the redundancy in different states/counties/etc. Redundancy can be applied in any of the above options with fail overs using load balancers.
• If your starting out and you don't have big requirements, I strongly suggest you go with Shared Hosting. You can always change over later (and most likely will change no matter where you start). 
• If your ready to move away from Shared Hosting and you don't need the extra benefits of cloud hosting, I would suggest VPS or Dedicated hosting solutions. This allows you to save on costs now. Remember, if you don't choose to add redundancy and your server has problems, your web site will be down. Dedicated is nice if you want to guarantee 100% of the machine's resources.
3. Is shared hosting (or reseller hosting) too insecure?
• Shared hosting provides a good sandbox environment that allows you to have control over your website, email, and domains (if you host your domains here). They generally provide a control panel which is great for those who don't feel comfortable with managing their web server themselves.

Web Hosting I Recommend:

• Shared Hosting / Development: If your looking for inexpensive with the most options, and OK reliability, I would suggestion DreamHost, they do appear to have more down-time than other companies but they provide quick service, unlimited domains, databases, emails, and you can set up crons as well as have SSH access your web sites. I currently use DreamHost for several websites where 99.9% up time is not critical.
• Shared Hosting / Production: If your needing near-constant up-time, I suggest HostGator, they have great service, reliable servers and quick staff. I have used them for both Business Hosting (shared hosting) and VPS. They have always been helpful and have been prompt to address issues, they even will help with tasks like auditing security and so on for free depending on the service you purchase. They also offer both dedicated and collocated options at much higher prices.
• VPS: If your ready to make the move to VPS, I recently moved to Linode servers. They seem to be really reliable and I haven't had any problems yet. I did email support once with a simple question and they responded in about 20 minutes. I'm not sure how this response time would change had I had an emergency, but I assume only time will tell.
• Dedicated: One of my clients has a need for dedicated hosting with some real power to it. After reviewing many dedicated hosting providers, we have decided to go with Limestone Networks. I don't know enough about them at this point to promote them or give feedback, but I will update this as time goes on.
• Cloud: Finding a real cloud host is not easy, but one of the most popular is Amazon AWS. They provide rapid scaling, replication, fail over, etc. but you will be charges for every add-on. To give a price comparison, a similar setup to the Dedicated Server with Limestone Networks was a cost difference of about $350. AWS priced in at nearly $600 where Limestone Networks priced in at about $250. Note, because it is dedicated hosting, scaling is not an easy task nor does it have low latency through distributed data centers, but those aren't priorities for us.

Full Disclosure: While my primary concern of this post is to be completely honest about my experiences and educate, some of the links to hosts above have commission tracking codes attached. If you use the links posted above to sign-up with any of these companies, I may benefit from it (and Thank You if you do!)

NetBeans 7 - Deletes my files!

When I saw that NetBeans 7 was ready for download, I anxiously upgraded. At first it's new features appeared to be great until I suddenly realized that files on my server were being deleted...

Problem:
NetBeans would go to download my web site from the server to the local hard drive. After this process was complete, I found several files on my server had disappeared. I restored them via subversion (thank goodness, I am using versioning). I ran this test several more times to see if I could find correlations to what was deleted, however the problem seemed to select files at random.

Solution:

Returned to NetBeans 6.9.1 for now. I sure hope they fix these issues soon. I have really enjoyed the new features:

• Introduction of JDK 7 support including editor enhancements (syntax, hints)
• Revamped support for WebLogic Application Server and GlassFish 3.1
• Oracle Database improvements
• HTML5 editing support
• Maven 3 is supported and bundled with the IDE
• Improved support for CDI, REST services, Java Persistence, and Bean Validation
• PHP Rename Refactoring
• Line wrapping
• Improved detection of external changes (native file system listening)
• Updates to the C/C++ support (remote file system browsing, library projects running/debugging, enhanced templates/specializations)
• Support for Git 1.7.х
• Additional enhancements are listed at the NetBeans IDE 7.0 New and Noteworthy page

Featured from: netbeans.org

CodeIgniter 2.0+ is ajax check

Problem:
In some instances, you may want to know if your request in the controller was ajax.

Solution:
Turns out CodeIgniter has added an is_ajax_request method to the input class.

$this->input->is_ajax_request()

Issues while integrating PHP ActiveRecord with CodeIgniter 2.0.2

Intro
Being tired of having a trying to fully utilize CodeIgniter's built-in ActiveRecord (which is really  a loose interpretation of the ActiveRecord design pattern if you ask me), I decided to look for a standalone PHP ActiveRecord implementation. I followed Matt Machuga's tutorial for integrating PHP ActiveRecord with CodeIgniter (I had some issues with his newer revised tutorial).

First Issue: PHP ActiveRecord not loading values into class object.
PHP ActiveRecord appeared to be working except that it would not load the class values. The class structure were defined by the database table and were accessible. Creating and saving a model worked.

First Solution: Remove Constructors
PHP ActiveRecord wasn't loading object values from the database. After some searching, I found a forum on phpactiverecord.org specifing that your model classes can't use constructors (without respect to signature in PHP ActiveRecord). After removing the constructors, data would populate perfectly.

Second Issue: Storing in Session (or psudo-session)
So it appears that CodeIgniter uses cookies to store session data, not PHP's native session. Their implementation also did not support namespace classed (like our model that extends ActiveRecord/Model).

Second Solution: Go PHP Native Sessions
I decided to integrate the NativeSession library for CodeIgniter. This library claimed to allow you to use the session the same but it would integrate with PHP's native session. Be sure to follow the instructions and comments carefully for CI 2.0.*. So far it has been working without issues.

Third Issue: __PHP_Incomplete_Class Object
This happens when you are trying to access a class definition without it's presence. In other words, PHP wants to have access the actual class file for the class it is trying to instantiate.

Third Solution: Order of Loading Libraries
In CI libraries are loaded in the order they are specified. In our now reconfigured solution, we are autoloading session and activerecord (and anything else your using). In order for our new PHP Native Session to know which class definition an instance has, it needs access to our ActiveRecord library. This means changing the loading order to first load activerecord and then load session will fix out problem.

$autoload['libraries'] = array('ActiveRecord', 'session');

After all this, everything appears to be working properly. If any issues arise, I'll update my post with solutions I find.

Best of luck.