Lost in Compilation

A tech blog containing tips and tricks about Operating Systems, humor about information technology, and software development issues usually encountered by the author. Not all content is the author's ownership (links to original post will be provided).

[phgeeks-blog-blog]

Generating Random Data

In my experience as a software developer, I found it very important to have a large amount of data available in order to use it for testing the application you are developing. Yes, it is possible to manually create your own. However, this takes time and doesn't really give you a large amount of data (unless you spend all your time generating the test data). Another option is to utilize the data that will really be used with the application (this is the most ideal option but it takes time to request or is simply unavailable).

That's where the idea of automated generation of test data comes in. Basically, such a tool should allow you to define columns, the data type of those columns, and some formatting. After generating the data, it should allow you to view the data or download it for uploading to a database.

I don't know if there are better ones out there but what I tried to play around with was http://www.generatedata.com. Feel free to check it out. It is free, downloadable, and for a minimal fee you can have a user account where you can save your forms.

[phgeeks-blog-blog]

Utilizing WEB-INF

The best practice when it comes to developing an application that requires configurable properties (file names, database information, etc.) is to have an external file where these properties can be easily edited removing the need to recompile the code whenever there are changes in the properties.

With this in mind, the question now is where to store the configuration file that in can be easily accessible by the application. For the Wicket web application I am developing right now, the best location is the WEB-INF folder.

The question now is on how to access the file located there. 

MainApplication.get().getServletContext().getRealPath("/WEB-INF/database.properties")

The code snippet above gets the path of the file located in WEB-INF. With this path, you may now read the file.

[phgeeks-blog-blog]

Include Power Off button in Menu (Fedora+Gnome)

By default, the Power Off button is not included in the Menu. Here's the command to make the Power Button appear on the menu:

yum install gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-status-menu

[phgeeks-blog-blog]

Prevent Laptop From Sleeping When Closing the Lid in Fedora

Coming from a background of Windows, it's quite easy to tell your laptop not to sleep when the lid is closed. Linux is another matter though. Although it's not that hard, it's not a piece of cake however. Here's how:

Open Terminal. Make sure you are not logged in as root. Don't use sudo either.

Type gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power lid-close-ac-action "blank" . This command simply tells the laptop not to sleep when the lid is closed and the laptop is plugged in.

[phgeeks-blog-blog]

Minimize,Maximize, and Close in Fedora 15 and Gnome 3

The first weird thing I noticed in my Fedora installation is the missing buttons for Minimize and Maximize. If you want to see those familiar buttons again, follow the steps below.

Go to Activities>Applications and click on Add/Remove software.

Search for gconf-editor and then install it.

Once the application has been installed, open it. In the interface click on desktop>gnome>shell>windows.

Modify the field button_layout to contain the value :minimize,maximize,close.

Logout to apply the changes or press Alt+F2, type r, press ENTER.

[phgeeks-blog-blog]

When Firefox Doesn't Play Fair

Since I installed Fedora 15 on my laptop, using Firefox while surfing became very problematic. First, https sites (e.g Facebook, Gmail) fail to load. A friend (Mapy Sebastian) was able to introduce a temporary fix enabling me to surf once again. The following night however, Firefox was rendering pages slowly. I blamed the Internet connection but then I realized my housemates who were running Windows had no problems. I only realized it a while ago that Firefox with IPv6 enabled causes slowness and even failure to render pages.To cut the story short, here's the fix:

Type about:config on Firefox address bar. A page containing a warning is shown but just continue.

Type network.dns.disableIPv6 on the filter bar. Click on the entry to toggle the value to true.

Restart browser.

After this, Firefox should run faster and bugless (hopefully).

Reference: http://thedaneshproject.com/posts/disable-ipv6-in-firefox-3/