Simes

Domino ReadViewEntries agent

Posted by Simes at 1:57 pm

Mar 092007

Sometimes when you’re working on a Domino web app, you need a NAB picker to help your users fill in name fields. At such times, you scour the web because you know that clever people like Scott Good and Matt White are out there and have probably done it already. And you find that they have, and you grab that code and use it. And it’s all fine for intranet sites.

And then, as happened to me this week, you find that you need to use your name picker with a NAB that normal users are not allowed to read, such as corporate sites which face the Internet. The picker I’m using, Scott’s, based on Matt’s, uses ReadViewEntries to get its data. Without user-level access to the NAB, it doesn’t work.

So, ideally, in this situation, what you need is an agent which can be run from the web and does essentially the same thing as a call to ReadViewEntries, because that way you can use the same name picker at the front end. And that, dear reader, is what I present to you today.

Again, the first thing you do in this kind of situation is hit Google to see if anyone’s done it already. And so this code is mostly from an agent at Vince Dimascio’s site which presents Full-Text Search results in a ReadViewEntries-like form. All I did was pull out the FTSearch stuff and put in support for start, count and startkey values. I’m quite pleased with the end result, though – it’s pretty nippy, certainly still fast enough for the typeahead lookup to work.

Source is here. Enjoy!

Poor Design

Posted by Simes at 12:01 pm

Mar 012007

Last night, while making hot chocolate, I discovered that the mug I was making it in was among the least microwave-safe mugs in the world.

The reason? After two minutes in the microwave, the contents were beginning to get warm, but the handle was hot enough to raise blisters.

How rubbish is that?

Project Shoehorn, Part II

Posted by Simes at 3:47 pm

Feb 262007

After a helpful response from Charles to my last post on the subject, I pulled the 0.9.3 JRuby build and ran my test against it. On the way I ran into a few other things and tidied up a few more as a result.

Firstly, the jars are now in the jre/lib/ext folder of my Notes client install, rather than putting them in another folder and adding them to JavaUserClasses.

Secondly, something about the new build causes a SecurityException to fire when running the test code again. I’m guessing it’s something to do with the new bytecode manipulation stuff in JRuby, but I don’t know for certain. Granting
permission java.lang.reflect.ReflectPermission "suppressAccessChecks", "true";
sorts that out.

And so, we run the test code again. A substantial improvement, knocking the run time down to about 6 seconds – still not really usable as such, but certainly better than before. It might be worth looking into a more real-world sort of test, one which actually opens real documents from real views and manipulates them. I shall also, as requested, be posting the details to the JRuby mailing list to see if anyone there can help.

Burning Sensation

Posted by Simes at 12:54 pm

Feb 262007

So I’m back on the WoW train. Pulled back in by the new expansion and enjoying it rather a lot more than I was expecting to – they’ve fixed a lot of the things that annoyed me about it the last time I played, and there seems to be more to do at most of the places in the world I’ve visited since rejoining.

And Outland is very, very pretty. Huge landscapes, swirling streamers of energy in the skies, and sheer drops into nothingness at the edges. All very epic.

So, seems like the MMO that got me back in to MMOs was the one that I got annoyed with and left in the first place. Just goes to show, er, something.

Project Shoehorn

Posted by Simes at 3:29 pm

Feb 222007

As many of you may know, I have something of a love/hate relationship with Lotus Domino. I love it for some of the things you can do with it, and I hate it for some of the hoops it makes you jump through when you try and do something slightly different. Also I hate LotusScript, but that’s only because I still hang on to a few shreds of my sanity. However, Domino is what I do for a living, so I’m kind of stuck with it.

Anyway. I’ve recently become interested in Ruby, and so set to wondering if it would be possible to in some way use Ruby’s elegant and succinct syntax in my neverending quest to be able to do the same amount of work only with less typing. Thus I came upon the notion of trying to run Ruby scripts from a Notes agent.

Massive Mog

Posted by Simes at 3:30 pm

Jan 112007

So, Vanguard, then. Will this be the game that rekindles my love of all things Massive and Multiplayer? So far, no. The crafting stuff seems more involved, which is a good thing, but I haven’t got far enough to be able to do any of it yet so I don’t know how that pans out. All the low level quests are of the form “kill x of these/kill these and collect y of those” which are, of course, very familiar.

And it’s not as pretty as WoW, but then so few things are. It does apparently have weather systems which move around the world like what real weather systems do, but I haven’t seen any yet.

iTunes playlist exporter

Posted by Simes at 5:07 am

Oct 292006

A new entry on the Code and Stuff page – exports iTunes playlists to .M3U equivalents. Handy for XBox 360 owners who use Media Connect but want to manage their custom playlists in iTunes on their PC.

Me, in other words.

Pay Attention

Posted by Simes at 11:45 am

Jul 042006

It’s a small and petty thing, I know, but I really do wish people would look at the message the ticket barrier displays to them rather than just yanking the ticket out and then standing and staring dumbly at the non-opening barrier for about 30 seconds. Everyone would benefit.

Just so we’re clear…

Posted by Simes at 4:40 pm

Jun 282006

When an ACU PgM has a project demand with a potential ITO request (and vice versa), relevant PM/PgM will contact ITO SPoC PgM, introduce the project/requirements and will ask for ITO engagement.

Everyone got that? Good.

Random Quotes from the Web

Posted by Simes at 1:11 pm