Mylyn is a Task-Focused Interface for Eclipse that reduces information overload and makes multi-tasking easy. It does this by making tasks a first class part of Eclipse, and integrating rich and offline editing for repositories such as Bugzilla, Trac, and JIRA.

See also

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-mylyn1/

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Easy Eclipse for LAMP which is fully multi-platform compatible including GNU/Linux & Apple Mac OS X now has add-ons, extensions, plug-ins for :

• DataBase
  
• Bugzilla, Trac, and JIRA
• SubVersion
• Trac & Subversion integration
  
• Log Watching
• HTML
• JavaScript
• XML & XSLT
• QA & Testing
  

and you can find even more Easy Eclipse plug-ins @

• http://www.easyeclipse.org/site/plugins/index.html
  

to make it one of the best free libre open source IDEs for LAMP web developers !

easy eclipse ide

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I've been using the iPhone SDK since its original release way back in March. Many frustrating moment in the beginning but the recent beta 7 and beta 8 release proved to be ready for prime time. Apple has added many helper classes or helper methods to classes to make it far easier to work with the UI components, which is by far the most frustrating things I encountered. I am still having problem wrapping my head around the idea of Interface Builder but since the apps that I am building do not involve very complex UI, I just hand coded all the UI instead.

To illustrate, the original iPhone app idea I had that I started developing using the original SDK is a mobile application for Mingle. The application would consist of a series of table views showing projects, cards, and card details, along with some network code to talk to the Mingle server through REST API. At that time, progress was slow because of many factors. First, learning Cocoa/Cocoa Touch API and Xcode at the same time was tough. Second, the Cocoa Touch API was a bit 'primitive' in the beginning. What I mean is that while the API provides all the necessary hooks for developers to create an iPhone app it does not provide many pre-build components, making it difficult and required lots more work from developers to re-create the look and feel of the built-in iPhone apps.

I was so put off by the initial experience that I skipped beta 4-6 and did not open up Xcode until last weekend. And what a refreshing change with beta 7! Now it is straightforward to make an app that looks and feels just like an Apple's one. I was so fired up that last Sunday evening I decided that I would try to create an app for an idea that one of my fellow ThoughtWorker suggested to me. Instead of days of tearing my hair out and got no where, I was able to create a almost features completed app within hours, using beta 8.

So what is this app? It checks the build status on the CruiseControl server. Just like CCTray (Windows) or CCMenu (OS X), it allows users to monitor their software build status and trigger a build remotely if desired. Following the convention, I am calling it CCPhone. The app isn't more complex than the Mingle app but the fact that I was able to almost match the productivity I normally get on my Windows development environment means that I was excited about working on the app rather than dreading it.

Now here are couple of screen shots:

To-do:

• Fix the build time being 1 hours off (probably day time saving bug)
• Better status icons
• Create application icon (currently it uses icon from CCMenu)
• Finish coding the 'Force Build' functionality
• Add startup screen bitmap (so it won't be just a black screen)
• Add auto detect of CruiseControl server (Java, .Net, or Ruby)

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I first wrote about an SQL Injection attack way back in April.  It died down for a while, but that attack is still going on.  It broadened in scope to even hit some php and ASP.Net sites, and this week I've noticed several new requests for assistance.  If you're wondering how your site would fare, you should check out this article.  Here are the steps to take if you find yourself in a position to help fix the issue:

1. Take down the site.  As it stands now, the site is actively serving malware to it's users.  This is not a situation you want to be in.  You can put up a temporary page to tell the users what is happening, but you should not allow the  site to continue operating until it's fixed.
2. Fix the vulnerabilities that allowed the breach in the first place.  The nature of the attack is that the site will be infected again inside of a week unless the vulnerabilities are closed.  It could be as simple as replacing a single apostrophe with two apostrophes on a few form fields or it could be much more complicated, but it must be done.  The article I linked to above has some tools that can help.
3. Fix the database.  Now we can finally begin to undo the damage.  You have a couple options here, including restoring from backup, though that may not be necessary.  Instead, I modified the code used for the attack to help with the cure.  If this seems cryptic it's because I only changed what was necessary to make it work.  Note that you should not run this code if the database contains valid instances of the text "<script" anywhere:

DECLARE @T varchar(255),@C varchar(255)
DECLARE Table_Cursor CURSOR FOR select a.name,b.name from sysobjects a,syscolumns b where a.id=b.id and a.xtype='u' and (b.xtype=99 or b.xtype=35 or b.xtype=231 or b.xtype=167)
OPEN Table_Cursor FETCH NEXT FROM Table_Cursor INTO @T,@C
WHILE(@@FETCH_STATUS=0) BEGIN
exec('update ['+@T+'] set ['+@C+']=LEFT(['+@C+'], CHARINDEX(''<script'', ['+@C+'])-1)
WHERE CHARINDEX(''<script'', ['+@C+']) >0')
FETCH NEXT FROM Table_Cursor INTO @T,@C
END
CLOSE Table_Cursor
DEALLOCATE Table_Cursor

Now, finally, you can put the site back up and things should be back to normal.

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One of my friend reached out to me last week for help. The photographer she hired for her wedding had gone bankrupted. Since she has not gotten the album now she can't even get her wedding photos in either prints or digital form. All she has access to is the photographer's web site where the people can order prints from. She was hoping that I can somehow retrieve all the photos (~1220) from the site so that at least she would have digital copies of her wedding photos.

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I ran across a request in a forum today to create an Excel column name from an index.  It sounds simple, but it's harder than it looks.

The obvious solution here is to think about a column name as a base 26 number, with A-Z for digits.  Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work like that.  The '0' digit is broken.  For example, counting the column names from A you wrap around to AA after reaching Z. If this were base 10 it would be like counting from 1 to 9 and then getting 11 instead of 10, or counting from 0 to 9 and then getting 00 instead of 10, depending on whether you treat A as 0 or 1. So it's tricky.

So I ended up writing a new version after all.  This one will scale, and it's not even that complicated. I just had to get a little recursive:

Function ColumnName(ByVal index As Integer) As String
        Static chars() As Char = {"A"c, "B"c, "C"c, "D"c, "E"c, "F"c, "G"c, "H"c, "I"c, "J"c, "K"c, "L"c, "M"c, "N"c, "O"c, "P"c, "Q"c, "R"c, "S"c, "T"c, "U"c, "V"c, "W"c, "X"c, "Y"c, "Z"c}

        index -= 1 'adjust so it matches 0-indexed array rather than 1-indexed column

        Dim quotient As Integer = index \ 26 'normal / operator rounds. \ does integer division, which truncates
        If quotient > 0 Then
               ColumnName = ColumnName(quotient) & chars(index Mod 26)
        Else
               ColumnName = chars(index Mod 26)
        End If
End Function

That still needs some basic bounds and error checking, but it works well for a quick sample.  It's only 11 lines of code as is appears in my IDE (curse the vox formatter!) so it's pretty easy to follow.  It should perform well too, since it would be very odd have more than one or two recursive calls.  Now hopefully Google can index this page better than all those bad implementations I saw out there, but I'm not holding my breath.

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Lee on his way to work

Unless you have been boycotting reality TV or trapped down a well, you will know by now that Sir Alan has decided that Lee McQueen has what it takes to be The Apprentice.  Accordingly, he will be appointing Lee to a position in his organisation, Tottenham Hotspur, pending a short investigation into whether Lee's name really is Lee, or whether he made that bit up.

This is ostensibly a blog about recruitment and work and such like, and I'd been hoping to make up provide occasional tips on how to get the job of your dreams.  It looks, though, like I'm going to have to rethink everything I've ever accepted as true.

So what does Lee's appointment teach us about how to get a top job?  Here are my initial tentative thoughts.

1. Have a catchphrase.

2. Have a 3-point plan, such as 1) get through the first round, 2) get through any middle rounds, 3) get the job.  Planning is all about specifics.

3. Realise the value of a solid education.

4. Give the interviewer exactly what s/he asks for.  Apologise later if necessary.

5. Wink wink.

Anything I missed?

Right, I'm off to do some work on my CV.

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If i had

We have a new hts consultant, Sarah.  It’s her first foray into regular 8.30-5.30 office work (like all of our staff, she was originally a circus performer) and so we’re trying to live up to stereotypes by welcoming her with some mock-bullying.  (We’ve known Sarah for ages so this is perfectly acceptable.)  Accordingly, she has spent the morning receiving HILARIOUS emails:

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My Google Groups !

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Thank you tulrich for blogging (and creating ?) the Google Earth FireFox Plug-in and the Google Earth Monster Milk Float Game !

You can write Google Earth Plug-in apps using Javascript, including game-like things. It's pretty fun. It also integrates smoothly with Google Maps API sites; basically you just enable 3D, and most things will magically work.

http://www.google.com/earth/plugin/examples/milktruck/

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