Archive for September 2008

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Point of Sale systems, and their back-ends

Posted on 3/9/2008, 11:54 am, by Colin Charles, under MySQL.

Old Town White Coffee is a place we’ve been hanging out a lot at. Its got wifi, power sockets, couches, good food and drink, great eye candy (bonus!), and is open till late.

Today, we found out that all their PCs that hold the orders (order{1,2,3,4}) have Samba shares. Open to all, naturally.

They use Crystal Reports. Have a custom front-end, with appropriate touch screen drivers, but the back-end is pretty stock. They use MySQL, Connector/ODBC 3.51.12 and also use SQLyog 5.30. I know the system is designed and deployed by NIT, it looks like their F&B POS.

Their use of MySQL (schema wise), includes using VIEWs, stored procedures and triggers (on UPDATE and DELETE).

I wonder how many point of sales systems are powered by open source software. This one runs Windows, but at least within the stack, there’s open source MySQL!

P/S: if you’re from NIT or Old Town, secure your order systems.

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Student Reviews Contest

Posted on 3/9/2008, 2:37 am, by Colin Charles, under MySQL.

Calling all students!

Here’s an easy way to make USD$500 (grand prize), or USD$250 (five runners up). All you have to do is use the MySQL database (5.1) and the GlassFish application server (v2 Update Release 2) to develop a cool web application and write a review of your experience using these products.

The deadline for this is October 22, 2008. Remember to read the contest details, as it lists eligibility criteria, and how we’re judging the entries.

As a judge, here’s my advice:

  • Make me go “wow!”
  • Use some of the new features in MySQL 5.1 – think XML, event scheduler, table logging, etc.
  • Make it ridiculously easy for me to judge the application – good documentation is going to help, but if the application itself is intuitive, it’d rock harder
  • There’s no time limit you need to spend… 5 hours for ace coders, 20 hours for average coders… its up to you. Extra effort, usually means you’ll get a high rank

If you want to get started quickly, there’s a NetBeans IDE 6.1 with GlassFish and MySQL bundle. It only comes with MySQL 5.0, so you’ll still have to get MySQL 5.1, but that should be a piece of cake. NetBeans is after all, a seriously good IDE.

At a university? Got a notice board? Go ahead, and print the flyer. Spread the love.

Good luck!

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Happy 25th GNU

Posted on 3/9/2008, 1:00 am, by Colin Charles, under General.

I first heard of Stephen Fry when he narrated The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Then, I saw him in V for Vendetta. Today, I can only highly recommend you look at Freedom Fry – Happy Birthday to GNU.

GNU is 25 years old. Wow, it has come a long way. The Hurd is nowhere to be reckoned with, but Stephen does talk about Linux being a pillar. I have no idea why he seems to mention gNewSense, as I’m sure the non-free binary blobs usually entails something like working wireless, or working video, etc. Ubuntu with is non-free blobs, IMHO, is the best choice for new users…

Its interesting to see the MacBook Air perched on his coffee table (try running gNewSense on that baby). Its also useful to note that the video is played using the Fluendo Cortado Java app.

Must watch video. And Happy Birthday GNU… you definitely shaped my professional life for the better

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One

Posted on 1/9/2008, 9:32 am, by Colin Charles, under General.

I’d rather have one breath of her hair, one kiss of her mouth, one touch of her hand, than eternity without it. ONE.

Seth/Nicholas Cage, City of Angels

… because I saw it again today and realised how its one of the movies I really enjoy the most

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Buddy Pounce in AdiumX

Posted on 1/9/2008, 9:20 am, by Colin Charles, under General.

For a long time, I managed to use a feature in GAIM Pidgin that was known as the Buddy Pounce. Its described as:

When you set a pounce on someone, you can choose from a number of events, such as sign on or status change, and then you choose from a number of actions. These actions include everything from playing a sound (like an alert would do) to sending a message to the person, to executing a command. This action will occur the next time pidgin detects the event, i.e. the next time the person in your buddy list who you have pounced signs on.

I hardly use Pidgin any longer. I use its cousin, AdiumX, on the Mac (work IM? There’s skype and IRC). To do it in Adium, you have to right click on the contact, select Get Info, then set up a pounce in the Events tab.

Great, now you can hear when someone you care about signs in… With reference to ticket#921. Not very intuitive, but maybe I was seasoned to look for “Buddy Pounce”.

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