IBM DB2 Express-C em versão mac

DB2 for Mac

É oficial. A versão GRÁTIS do DB2 está disponivel para download para mac.

Acabaram-se as desculpas do não quero outra maquina virtual para correr isso, nem sequer experimento.

Eu sei que sou suspeito para falar já que faço parte da equipa DB2. A análise que vou aqui fazer é muito influenciada pelo meu dia a dia no trabalho mas o que escrevo aqui é a minha opinião pessoal .

A IBM não trabalha no DB2 para pessoas como nós que têm uns sites jeitosos com alguns milhares de hits diários (com sorte). Eles fazem isto para aguentar soluções de escala gigante, algumas com standards pesados em  XML de agências governamentais, financeiras, health-care, etc, que transaccionam quantidades enormes de informação diáriamente. Essas empresas não só tem que minar os dados como fazer queries sobre eles de uma forma bastante intensiva. Estou a falar das maiores empresas americanas, e não o digo decor. Ouvi-o da boca de DBAs da Merrill Lynch, Barclays, ONU, Morgan Stanley, etc.. Que tem eles em comum? Todos eles usam DB2 e estão interessados em usar as funcionalidades XML do produto.

Já agora ninguém confia que seja possivel ter performance em XML certo? Bem a IBM tem pessoas inteligentes (como eu, lol) a trabalhar em tornar isso possivel. Deixo este link para vos aguçar o apetite. Claro que a performance não será a mesma que SQL mas comparado com os parsers xml que andam a usar… eheh. Exprimentem. :P

Como já descrevi o cliente normal do DB2 é facil constactar que não é feito para vender a José, ao Joaquim. Nem sequer a pequena empresa da Josefina. A versão Express-C é gratís para todos por isso mesmo. As limitações são um máximo de 16Gb de ram e 4 processadores na maquina.

Se isto parece razoavel:

DB2 for Mac Download

Depois contem como correu e se precisarem de umas dicas podem sempre entrar em contacto.

Footnote: Para os interessados se estão a desenvolver algo com um standard xml estranho  a probabilidade desse standard ser suportado pela ibm é grande e pode ser consultado aqui.

Sobre o Windows 7

Como é obvio vou falar mal. Alias diariamente uso windows e é provavelmente a coisa mais infeliz do meu dia a dia.

Anyway acabei de ver um vídeo a mostrar os corners (no windows 7 são top down left e right em vez de actual corners como nos macs) e multi-touch. O senhor que estava a apresentar é descarado o suficiente para dizer que isto é algo que o iPhone tem mas os macs não.

AMIGO: Os corners já existem nem sei a quantos milhões de anos. Quanto ao multitouch já vão alguns meses.. Pelo menos. Mentir para que? Vão sempre copiar a mac. Vão sempre usar o raio do DOS que toda a gente sabe que é foleiro. Se querem inovar. Inovem. Se vão copiar admitam. SIMPLES NÃO?! Já agora, para além de admitir paguem… Eu nem gosto muito de IP mas se a apple fez e vocês copiaram então paguem. Ponto!

Conselho de amigo. Querem fazer algo de jeito deitem lá fora isso que chamam Windows e começem do zero. Com esse código nunca na vida vão lá.

Posts Relacionados Sugeridos de Uma Forma Descarada na Secção dos Comentários :P

• 
  http://freelancesamurai.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/fingerworks/
  

Lego Mac Pro

Não gosto muito de usar o meu blog para fazer simples foward de um artigo de outro estáminé. Para isso uso o botão share no google reader. (caso me queiram adicionar a lista de amigos, o meu email está aqui)

Mas desta vez não consigo resistir. É que este post no blog da MAKE deixou-me com um sorriso parvo na cara de achar a ideia de fazer um caixa com lego tão fixe. E claro, tinha que ser um mac! Faz-me lembrar dos projectos insanos do Anders como montar um PC numa banheira e por-lo a correr mergulhado em óleo. Até partilhava o link mas não me lembro bem o nome que ele deu ao vídeo no youtube. (Anders where’s the video of the PC you assembled on a bathtub? Because of you this is now the worse post in the history of internet.)

Para que este artigo não seja completamente inútil partilho também que vi que existem empresas que contratam especialistas com legos, especialmente pessoal que trabalha com os technics. É um skill porreiro para fazer protótipos. Na Bang & Olufsen usam lego para a simular a mecânica do prototipo e flash/director para a demonstração interactiva do dispositivo.

Fica a imagem e o link para o artigo original.

Lego Mac Pro 2

Java 6 for Mac OS X Leopard is here!!

In the most impressive development of the week I have just discovered that Java 6 was finally released for Mac OS X. I’m in complete disbelief.

Now I almost believe that IBM DB2 Express-C for mac will be released in less that a month. :P

More on this here.

Skitch Invites (Mac OS X only)

I have been receiving some emails asking me how do I create these images. Well I use Skitch, which is one of my favorite Mac OS X apps (along with Books, Textmate and iSync). Unfortunately it’s still invite only.

Anyway if your interested in giving Skitch a try just leave a comment in this post, and I’ll send it to the email you provided as soon as possible.

Howto: Change folder icon in Leopard

Copy the icon you want to use (PNG), browse to the folder you want to change the icon.

Now select it and press command + I. Now select the folder and press command + V to paste the icon.

There’s something in the air

A razão pela qual nem comentei o MacBook Air prende-se com o facto de ter enjoado o dito portátil em poucas horas. Não porque o seu design não seja incrivelmente apelativo, nem porque despreze a obra de engenharia que foi conseguida. Enjoei porque toda-a-gente falou do MBA e não conseguia ler sobre outros assuntos, por muito que tentasse. Foi o aparecer de um novo caso, da dimensão do da Madeleine/Casa Pia/Insira-o-que-quiser, no mundo cibernético. E o meu leitor de feeds parecia a TVI.

De qualquer forma houve algo que me chamou a atenção. Isto para além do óbvio: Um preço exorbitante e o teclado preto.

Cabos não incluidos? Nesse caso acho que vai haver muita gente a comprar este cabo. Realmente não imagino um gravador/leitor de CDs/DVDS por wireless mas isto é um cabo Steve.

Se quiseres que dê um jeito e crie este dispositivo mas sem fios, envia um MBA para minha casa e eu vejo o que se pode fazer.

Imagem do dia

Atenção: Esta ilustração mostra como limpar as preferências do TextMate. É apenas um devaneio geek, que mostra como se pode complicar até a mais simples das coisas. A próxima versão será em base-64, para piorar ainda mais o cenário. Contudo quero deixar claro que o uso ilícito de software proprietário é crime. Se através deste exemplo descobrirem como se faz e o fizerem estão a vossa própria responsabilidade.

Screencast app for Mac OS X Leopard

I’m looking for the best screencast software (sound recording is a must have) to run on my MacBook.

So far I found the following software:

• Adobe Captivate 3 [Windows Only]
• SnapzProX
  
• BTV
• Camtasia Studio [Windows Only]
• iShowU
• vcn2swf
• Jing Project [integrates with webapp, by the creators of Camtasia]
• Screenography
• Screen Mimic
• Screen Record
• Blip.tv [integrates with webapp]
• Screencast [thanks Rui Moura]
• ViewletBuilder

From what I have read so far it seems iShowU gathers most of the preferences. But when a app is prefixed by an i mac users seem to love it immediately.

Anyone tried any of these products? What are your thoughts on them? Which one would you advice me to use?

[EDIT: Currently I have tested most of these products and I'm using iShowU and KeyCastr]

MacBook OS X Leopard Tips: Controlling the fan speed with Fan Control

I use my computer for something like 6 hours a day so it’s bound to get hot. I didn’t like the apple scheme for the fans that consists basically in making no noise until it’s hot and then make a lot of it.

So I looked for a open-source application to help me control the fan rpm and found Fan Control. I wouldn’t even post this if not for one simple fact: The source is included in the dmg file. Good job guys!

Mac OS X Leopard Tips: iSync plugin for Nokia 5300

First of all my phone sucks. I’m aware.

And when i opened iSync for the first time and saw that it wasn’t supported I was really piss*d off. I wasn’t worried about contacts – even thought it’s nice to know that if I loose my cellphone I’ll still have them – but I really needed the integration with iCal/dashboard.

I googled it and found a lot of hand-crafted solutions that I don’t think are suited the general public. Luckily someone thought of this and made a easy to install plugin to make iSync capable of synchronizing with Nokia 5300. Interested? Let’s go:

Close iSync. Download this and the unzip it to ~/Library/PhonePlugins/.

That’s it. The next time you open it you’ll be able to sync with your (not) favorite phone. Credits go to Erka, the author of this plugin.

Mac OS X Leopard Tips: Change your home directory to a different partition

Here’s something that I thought would give me some headaches. Well guess what I was wrong once again. I’m quite used to this by now so it’s actually fun. I’m sorry to be bothering you with all this Mac OS trash but I like to keep my stuff documented and this is a excellent way of doing so while helping other people.

If you are reading this I assume you want to change your Leopard home directory to somewhere else. So you can start by clicking on the apple on the top left screen and then select System Preferences. Browse to Account and ctrl + click your account to select Advanced Options. There you can change your home directory to wherever you please. Restart and you are ready to go.

Changing your home directory – or any of that other advanced options values – can have some nasty effects on your Leopard. I’m assuming you are an advanced user and familiarized with all the stuff the advanced options window.

If this is not the case and you are considering doing this anyway I’ll leave you with a piece of advice my grandma could have given to me – she actually never did so I have ruined my fair share of computers. And phones. And Playstations. I’ll better stop this list here for my own sake.

Anyway that advice is (should have been): if you don’t know what it is, don’t change it. If you want to change it: learn what it is, how it works, and then you can do what you please. And ruin the computer anyway. But only because you wanted to.

From Ubuntu/Windows to Mac OS-X Leopard

I just got my first brand new MacBook and, as one would expect, some problems emerged by leaving my usual OS combo (Ubuntu/Windows) for Mac OS X Leopard. I’m still undecided whether to install Ubuntu or use VMWare Fusion to use Linux. As for Microsoft Windows as long as I don’t need to use .NET I don’t think I’ll install it. Not even with the free licenses Microsoft provides University of Minho students.

First I had to decide what to install:

• Firefox
• del.icio.us UNSAFE add-on for Firefox
• Portuguese Dictionary add-on for Firefox
• Pidgin Adium
• Nero Toast Titanium
• Office
• Photoshop
• TextMate
• Ruby on Rails
• Java SDK
• Netbeans
• Glassfish
• GHC
• Erlang
• MacTex
• oXygen
• BookPedia
• DB2 (will IBM make it available for mac anytime soon?)

The question you are probably asking is why Firefox instead of Safari!? Because the damn unsafe add-on for del.icio.us is just that: del.icio.us! I just can’t live without it. Maybe if the guys over there worked the basics of security we could say that it’s both excellent and safe! And don’t say there’s a add-on for Safari as well. I’ll only accept it if the add-on is as good as the one provided by Yahoo.

Now we go for the fun part. The problems and solving them. Your attention please, this is only fun for me when I do it on my computer so it won’t be pleasure if you ask me to fix your computer! Joana this one is for you, I know how your mind thinks.. Almost as badly as mine. Oh well, we are related aren’t we? :\ Please release those crazy Christmas photos to the world! :X

I’ll start with a small OS free tip and then go for the Q/A part. If you are Portuguese like myself you just hate all the results that google gives you from .br domains. Most of the results are overrated and most of the times you just wish that they weren’t there. If this is the case just do your normal search in google but write -br in the end. Just test this, go to google and type governo brasileiro -br. It works ;)

1. How do I get my mouse to behave like a normal one by removing this dreadful acceleration?
   

   Easy. Check Rúben’s blog @
   http://blog.0×82.com/2007/12/mac-os-and-usb-mouse.html
   

2. What’s wrong with the encoding on TextEdit? The automatic descovery does not work and even when I specifically tell him to use this encoding it won’t work. The Where is ISO 8859-15 dilemma.

   Still don’t know. Anyone? If you want to test the bug just do this (from here):

   $ echo é > ~/a.txt
   $ cat ~/a.txt
   é
   Open a.txt with TextEdit and get:
   È

   Cracked it! At least I have a partial fix for Migrating documents from Ubuntu to Mac OS X Leopard:

   cmd + space terminal enter

   {go to the directory where the file is}

   bash$ iconv -f ISO-8859-15 -t UTF-8 {filename} > UTF8-{filename}

   For me it was:

   bash$ iconv -f ISO-8859-15 -t UTF-8 Pam.tex > UTF8-Pam.tex

   And yes PAM is as in Pluggable Authentication Modules. So I have a latex work on that :P

3. Where is type-a-name application? It’s not on the dock.

   Just press cmd + space and type what you are looking for. This is called spotlight. Either this or open Finder and go to applications.

4. Why doesn’t it show my dashboard when I go to the left/whatever corner?

   Have you even configured your mac? Common.. Click the apple on the top left corner and go to System Preferences. Exposé and Spaces. And now that you are there take a look around and configure all the other things that you neglected.

5. This computer is always underlining the words in red. (when the spelling is right :P If not you are a dumbass for asking this!)

   Just press cmd + mouse and change the language. Thanks Nuno Veloso from Apple Tech Team for this tip.

6. How can I see the right mouse button menu?

   crtl + mouseclick

7. PageUp/PageDown!?
   

   fn+ up
   fn + down

If after this you still feel like reading about Mac OS for rookies – like myself – you can check this section in Arun Gupta’s Blog or check this extensive list of Keyboard Shortcuts. Have fun!

Now let’s get back to work, something almost impossible when your doing a report on LaTeX and the encodings are never right.

One final touch: ctrl + alt + cmd + 8. Merry Christmas! :)

DB2 Express-C 9.5 Released

A new version of DB2 Express-C was made available by IBM today. As you might already know DB2 Express-C is a free dataserver without limits on database size or number of users.

We got this news from Antonio Cangiano, a IBM Engineer that likes DB2 and Ruby on Rails. Seems like a nice guy! :P

You won’t find this new version on IBM DB2 Express-C Website, but you can download the Linux Version here and the Windows Version here.Mac version is still not available. This is probably the down side as many of us are waiting for IBM to ship a Express-C DB2 version for Macintosh. Hopefully next time?

I still didn’t tested the new DB2 but according to Antonio

Version 9.5 brings to the table a great deal of new enhancements and features. Among these there is also the reduced amount of memory requirements and the improved efficiency of operations on Linux. Oh and it will also make you rich and more beautiful. I mean, pureXML support has been greatly improved and it is a release that is sure to please many people on both Windows and Linux.

I know the t-shirt looks great. Hopefully Vítor will send me one! :P

Is Windows Vista the new ME?

Microsoft has given all the IT students at my university free licenses to almost all the software common developers use. So I have been using Windows Vista right from it’s release with satisfactory results.

Well it seems not everyone is getting the same results. I am tired of reading about companies that migrate back to XP for lack of some functionality, that companies deny to make drivers for Vista when they already have for XP, etc. Will SP1 fix all this and make Vista a better choice? For Microsoft sake it better be.

Let us see. Apple (and Mac-OS) are on the peak of their popularity yet and Linux platforms like Ubuntu give a easy to use operative system where you can do everything you normally do in Windows (and a bit more if your a coder) with a slight difference, it’s free. Many of you are unaware of this fact but when you buy a new laptop 120€ go straight to Microsoft. That about 10% of the value of your laptop. Why pay for it when you can have it for free?

Right now the Portuguese Parliament is discussing the adoption of open-source software in the public companies. The mentality is changed and personally I don’t believe Microsoft would survive a new Windows ME, there’s simply no contingency plan like they had back then. I know that Microsoft has some advantages, people are used to it, they don’t know they are paying for it, laptop manufacturers enforce Windows as mandatory, PC games are for Windows only, etc. But things have changed and I don’t know how much more time can Microsoft live of the past. If they don’t give users a a new way to interact with a computer, if they don’t trill the crowd with a new Windows, a genuine breakthrough, then it’s a one way street to nowhere.

I know a new service pack won’t change Vista as much as it is necessary to satisfy consumers. But if it succeeds it will provide Microsoft the time to rethink their strategy. If they continue to bet on the same they did 10 years ago, they will fail. And then, they will fall.

How to delete the recycle bin icon

I use RocketDock (the single greatest piece of software ever, after all the others) to keep my apps organized. I cannot afford to have a mac so this is my way of doing this. In the dock I have access to the recycle bin and, therefor, I have no use for the standard icon on the desktop. Worse, it annoys the hell out of me. So I did a search if the good guys from Microsoft had a solution for this problem.

Well just wanted to let you know I found it..

Kidding, the solution to this is to create one file named Hide Recycle Bin.reg. Now insert this text in the file you created.

Now double click it and your good to go. In case you feel like having the old icon back, create another file and name it Show Recycle Bin.reg. Write this there and the run it.

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech

It’s been a while since the last time I watched this video. Watching it helped me see how obstacles can be useful to achieve what you expect from life. I can relate to Jobs little tail in many aspects and just feel thrilled that he pulled it off.

In our daily life, all factors seem to force us to settle. Everyday we hear people saying, judging, that we shouldn’t look for so much. Settle for a decent paid job, settle for a decent wife. But you will never excel if you are not doing what you enjoy. That isn’t simply what you are.

The higher you get, the higher the fall right?

Wrong! There’s no thrill in the ride if we can’t get to all the high places. Falling is just another part of life, deal with it. Learn with it! Do not, under any circumstances, live by it.

Can you bypass rapidshare waiting time?

Before presenting the solution I would like to state that I feel very strongly against piracy. Sites like rapidshare, megaupload are the perfect scheme to make profit from illegal downloads without having to take the fall. (You can learn more about how this website works reading it’s wikipage)

If they could (they probably can) they would (ok, they probably will) sue me for saying this, but everyone knows this is the truth. I know that have the right to only offer a free service to a user whenever they wish to. It’s the way they do it that intrigued me. Can I fool “one of the biggest and fastest web hosters world wide”. Well it appears I can.

They check information from your computer (specifically your network interface MAC Address) to know what is the computer trying to access a file. I didn’t gave myself the work of checking if they let any tracking cookies in the system, I just assumed they do (and worked around it).

Before just giving the solution I found, let me just express my opinion on privacy. In my opinion no one has the right to know what computer is mine, what data is in my hard drive or what things I like to do. You should protect yourself to prevent companies from knowing stuff like who you are, what websites you visit, what is your computer, what data you have stored in your computer, what is your email (so they can flood it the way they want), etc. It’s not like I’m a hacker or that I have the most important things of the planet of my laptop, that’s certainly not the case. But all these information are about myself and for myself only. No company should be making money selling this information so a third party can benefit from it, by flooding my email or having data (like my address or phone number) where they can annoy me. They shouldn’t even know about it in the first place. So protect your information from unwanted use, check out why you should encrypt your hard drive, try to be spyware free and most of all be aware that not all is good about the internet.

For starters, how do I avoid a website from knowing it’s me. Simple:

1. Clear your private data (how to)
2. Close Firefox
3. Download MAC Address Changer (here)
4. Install the program and run it
5. In the program select the network connection you use to access the internet from the list
6. Hit the Change MAC button
7. Hit Random MAC Address
8. Hit Change now
9. Disconnect your modem from power for 10/15 seconds (unplug the cord).
10. Plug the cord back in.
11. Open Firefox and go to the web page you wish to access.

Don’t forget, when your done go to MAC address changer and put your original MAC address on.

And I remind you I take no responsibility on what you do with the contents of this post, I did it so as a learning experience and I guess anyone can draw the same conclusions I did. I’m not responsible for your actions, do what you please but at your own expenses.

[EDIT: For Mac OS X Leopard users]