Rogue Wolves

I've had a string of bad luck with my aging iBook lately. First the screen went dead with the infamous Logic Board problem. Fortunately Apple replaced the logic board free of charge with what I would describe as one of the best support experiences I have ever had. However, shortly after getting my iBook back from support the hard drive started making creaking noises and the machine would grind to a halt - a sure sign of a dying hard drive. My iBook is no longer on warranty so it would cost me $250 to have Apple replace the hard drive and they would only replace the factory default drive which was 30 gig. Considering I can find deals on the Internet for an 80 gig drive for close to $100 - no thanks. Not to mention the drive that came with my iBook was a 4200 RPM drive (slow). So after a bit of research, some advice from friends, I decided to attempt to install a new Toshiba 80 gig 5400 RPM drive.

If you have ever searched around to see how to replace a hard drive in an Apple iBook you will understand when I say it's a "tad bit tricky". These things are built like Fort Knox. When I first saw what was required I ran away with my tail between my legs..but after a bit more encouragement and research I decided it wasn't so bad as long as you are diligent. The worst part is all the little screws you need to keep track of. If you have a screw chart it's a piece of cakeâ„¢.

I found this excellent Mac laptop repair guide that gave detailed instructions on how to replace a 12" iBook G3 hard drive. The guides list equipment needed to perform the repair, provides a screw chart, pictures of each step, etc. I highly recommend it. The instructions were pretty accurate and fairly easy to follow.

I noticed that the last article I posted was showing up twice in the "Latest Articles" block on the left. After a bit of investigation I found it was showing up more than once because I applied two categories to the article, "Open Source" and "Firefox". The SQL statement that builds this block was returning multiple rows for that post, one for each category assigned. If this was a closed source system I would have to live with this bug until the developers of the software posted a patch to fix this. However, Drupal is an open source system and the Article Module is open source as well so I had several possibilities here:

1. Wait until the developer of the module posts a fix
2. Since it's open source a third party might have fixed the bug themselves and posted the fix online somewhere
3. Look through the code and fix this myself.

I ended up taking advantage of option number 2. I remembered my friend Evan Wise had discovered this bug also and he chose option 3 and fixed the problem himself. He posted a fix for the bug on his website and also posted the fix on the Drupal site for the module maintainer and for any others that might want the fix ASAP. It turns out it's a simple code fix that adds a DISTINCT to the SQL.

This is one of the major benefits of open source software. It's a distributed and collaborative effort to improve the integrity and quality of software. You can benefit from the hard work of others and contribute back to that community. This environment not only benefits end users but it can benefit companies that leverage the software or build on top of it.

The latest version of Firefox is available for download. This version brings browsing performance enhancements, automatic updates, re-ordering of browsing tabs, security enhancements, increased support of web standards such as SVG, CSS 2, CSS 3 and Javascript 1.6 and much more.

The release notes for version 1.5 are located here. Also a comprehensive list of updates can be found here.

What are you waiting for? Go download it!

Hello World and all that Jazz!

Today I finally took the wraps off my consulting web site. This is an attempt to separate my professional space from my personal space. For those of you looking for my personal website it has moved to this location.

What is this site all about? Well consider it a place to advertise my consulting services and also a place to geek out and talk about software development, technology, industry and anything else that I might find interesting on the Internets. This site is a work in progress so please bear with me while I tweak the site design and layout. Think of this launch as version 0.5 of the website (launching beta websites seems to be all the rage these days). My expertise is not in web design so if you don't like the look please let me know of any suggestions you might have and also if you notice any browser issues. I have tried to make sure the site looks fairly consistent in IE, Firefox and Safari but due to browser inconsistencies this can be tricky at the best of times.

Just like my personal site I am using Drupal as the content management system to power the site.   Drupal is amazing and I hope to help out with the project as I can.

So feel free to poke around and post comments.

Welcome to Rogue Wolves.