After upgrading to Fedora 34, my Jekyll environment was broken again. So it was time to find another solution that didn't require so much attention. Enter Eleventy, a static site generator that runs in the Node.js environment.

I started by following https://stedman.dev/2020/04/29/make-the-jump-from-jekyll-to-javascript/, but in the end I decided to forgo GitHub Actions and just generate the site myself and check it in under the docs/ directory. You can look at the history of the raydecampo.github.io repository, in particular the eleventy branch, for all the gritty details.

The steps went something like this (links to the appropriate commits follow the description):

1. Following the Install and Configure section of the stedman.dev document, get Eleventy installed and running. (64a6dac)

2. At this point, influenced by https://github.com/andeersg/andeers.com, I restructured so that the source of the blog contents were kept under the src/ directory. (51a2666, 66dbf6b)

3. Added permalink metadata to the blogs so that the files end up in the same place as they did when jekyll was creating the site (and blogger before that). (77e6af5)

4. Next, the jekyll built-in site.posts variable is no longer available under Eleventy. So I defined some collections and used them to fix the pages with lists of posts. (7a7e5b5)

5. Next up was fixing CSS. Eleventy has no built in support for SASS (kind of strange), so I added a node script entry to run SASS. I also downloaded a copy of the CSS for the jekyll theme I had been using. (db0d7ac, 1b1433f)

6. Next up was installing the Eleventy RSS plugin to restore RSS functionality. (4ef3cd9, a6a09f8)

7. Next we get tags working the way they did before. Stole a code snippet from philhawksworth (H/T). (3121301)

8. Add some metadata and fix up the parameterized data in the default.html template. (4233afc)

9. Install and configure the Eleventy syntax highlighting plugin. Don't forget to download a Prism CSS file. (14c89fe)

10. Finally it was time to get things working on GitHub Pages. GitHub Pages will let you use either the root directory or the docs/ directory of the repository as web root. So I changed the output directory for Eleventy to the docs/ directory. I also needed a passthrough for the CNAME file. Then I just needed to change the configuration in GitHub (Settings -> Pages) and I was all set. (1aa4e97, 5410778, 6f2d68b)

As an exercise in creating a Java library and submitting it to the Central Repository, I created an implementation of the xirr (irregular internal rate of return) function in Java.

Some XSLT re-usable templates for posterity:

New box, new OS, time for another edition of trying to connect to Microsoft's VPN software. This time it is Fedora's turn.

Just to get my feet wet, I published a Node.js module called xirr.

I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 14.04 on my main desktop machine and discovered that my VPN connection to Windows 2008 Server no longer worked. The bugaboo turned out to be the routing table which no longer requires a gateway entry. Here I have rewritten my post originally written for 12.10 to reflect the new configuration.

So if you have not been under a rock and have used Java 8, you are surely aware of the new String.join() method and the Collectors.joining() method to concatenate arrays or streams of Strings. Sometimes however, a simple concatenation with a delimiter is not quite up to the job.

Just collecting the implicit objects defined by the JSF 2.2 specification (section 5.6.2.1, table 5-11) which are available in the EL:

I've had this one as a draft post for a while and I just ran into the it again, so it's time to to publish it.

Liferay is a JSR-286 compliant portal server that runs on a variety of different application servers. Previously I have explained how to get Liferay working with JBoss 7.2.0.

Liferay is a JSR-286 (also known as Portal 2.0) compliant portal (and a whole lot more). Since I am in the market for a portal server for an upcoming project, I figured I needed to check Liferay out. The folks at Liferay have bundled version 6.2 with a number of different open-source application servers, including JBoss 7.1.1, but what fun would it be to simply download a bundle? Liferay is also available as a war download for deployment on existing (and closed-source) application servers. So let’s see if we can get Liferay running on the JBoss 7.2.0 server we built previously.

I have been messing around with the GateIn Portal Server in order to evaluate it for an upcoming project. One nice aspect of the portal is the way JavaScript is handled. JavaScript in GateIn is split into modules and managed via the RequireJS library. This allows the portlet developer to keep their JavaScript isolated and only include the dependencies they require. It also allows for re-use of modules defined in one portlet in other portlets. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to picture the disaster JavaScript could become on a portal which doesn’t provide isolation and re-use, especially if multiple organizations are providing portals.

GateIn is a JSR-286 (also known as Portal 2.0) compatible portal based on the JBoss application server (soon to be known as WildFly). The latest version of GateIn with a provided build is GateIn 3.6.0 and is bundled with JBoss 7.1.1. (There is also a beta build of Red Hat JBoss Portal 6.1.0 which bundles GateIn with JBoss EAP and thus carries a more restrictive license.) Note that GateIn is bundled with the application server and is not an add-on to an existing application server.

As you may or may not be aware, a great many changes have been happening to the JBoss application server since being purchased by Red Hat. Most importantly, the application server is being rebranded as WildFly for version 8. ("Why?" is the first entry on the WildFly FAQ if you are curious.) But since WildFly is not quite ready as of this writing (but looks real close), we are going to deal with the latest community release, JBoss AS 7.2.0.

Deploying RESTful web services on JBossAS 7 is relatively painless and straightforward. Thanks to the extensive support of annotations vs configuration in JEE 6, creating RESTful web services is almost XML-free.

As the number of CentOS (or Red Hat) machines in your environment grows, you begin to appreciate the need for a central login mechanism. Most workplaces already have a such a login for their Windows workstations in the form of an Active Directory domain. By joining your CentOS machines to the Active Directory domain, you allow users to login with the same credentials as on their Windows machines. Furthermore you do not need to add or remove users when new people join the team or others drop off the team.

In the past I have detailed how I set up a mail server for development application servers. Today I want to explain how to set up a mail server for a production application server, or one that should interact with real-life mail systems.

Back when I was fooling around with Ruby I wrote some code using the ruby-taglib library for manipulating mp3 tags. Later, I went through the process of installing Ubuntu 12.10 from scratch on my main system. Eventually I tried running the old on the new system and discovered that I needed to re-install ruby-taglib and ran into some difficulties.

A quick example script for creating a table in an Oracle database only when it does not already exist.

I recently went through the exercise of adding an additional JBoss application server to a production CentOS 6.4 server. The two applications were to be hosted on the same machine using virtual name servers to distinguish requests. I have covered virtual name servers before in my post on install Trac on CentOS 6. Multiple instances of JBoss can be made to play nice on the same servers by shifting the ports via the switch ‑Djboss.service.binding.set=ports‑01.

Just a quick post in case someone else ever encounters this issue. I got the following error when migrating an unchanged web application to CentOS 6.3 from an earlier version of CentOS:

If you have ever needed to develop a web application you have probably needed to send email from the application. Frequently in the applications I work on, we end up using the email address as the login, which means we need lots of email addresses for unit test and integration testing, etc. Using real email addresses for this is not very convenient, so we have used a separate development mail server. Ideally this mail server will accept mail from any development machine, but will not relay mail to any real addresses (so it won’t be an open relay).

Now for the exciting conclusion of our three-part series on installing Trac on a 64-bit server running CentOS 6.3. In part 1 I installed some prerequisite software and Trac itself. In part 2, I installed and configured Apache as a front end to Trac. In part 3, I will configure Trac to use an Active Directory domain for authentication.

Recently I had the need to set up a Trac instance on a 64-bit machine running CentOS 6.3. In part 1 I installed some prerequisite software and Trac itself. In part 2, I will be installing Apache as a front end to Trac. In part 3, I will configure Trac to use an Active Directory domain for authentication.

Recently I had the need to set up a Trac instance on a 64-bit machine running CentOS 6.3. For CentOS and Red Hat 5, someone has done the hard work already and set up RPM files (see the Trac documentation on RHEL 5 and Dag Wieers RPM repository for details) making installing Trac as easy as yum install trac. Unfortunately, our benefactors have not gotten to RHEL 6 yet so I needed to do it myself.

A few weeks ago I upgraded my HTPC to Ubuntu 12.10 and was treated to a nasty surprise: the overscan settings for the nvidia driver were no longer recognized. The HTPC is connected to my television (naturally) which is a 40" LG LCD HDTV. If you have ever tried to connect your PC to an HDTV before, you probably encountered the problem of that the visible portion of the screen is smaller than the drawable portion of the screen. The result is that the edges of the screen are not visible. In my case that meant the dash and the universal menu of Unity could not be seen. That makes for a less than usable experience.

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 12.10 on my main desktop machine from scratch, which means a number of things which had been installed and configured need to be re-done. One of those things is my VPN connection to work, which runs Windows 2008 Server for VPN.

A big hat tip to Asaf Shahar for this one.

Recently I took the plunge and put an SSD drive into my desktop. Since I needed to re-install the OS, I figured I would install the latest Ubuntu, version 12.10. I went over my trials and tribulations of getting the OS installed in part 1, and dealt with swap in part 2. Today we finish up the tweaks for the SSD.

Recently I took the plunge and put an SSD drive into my desktop. Since I needed to re-install the OS, I figured I would install the latest Ubuntu, version 12.10. I went over my trials and tribulations of getting the OS installed in part 1, today we are going to talk about some changes I made afterwards to support the SSD.

Recently I took the plunge and put an SSD drive into my desktop. Since I needed to re-install the OS, I figured I would install the latest Ubuntu, version 12.10.

In the process of converting an application from JSF 1.2 to JSF 2.1, I came across the following structure:

So when I get the chance I am working through Bruce Tate’s Seven Languages in Seven Weeks (it might end up being seven years in my case) and commenting on it when the mood strikes. I am currently working through the exercises for Io Day 2 and today I was contemplating the final exercise.

The ANT build tool for Java does a pretty decent job of abstracting away OS concerns from your build script. E.g., file paths can always be represented using the / separator and there are tasks for all the typical file system and build operations.

As you are probably aware, I am working my way through Seven Languages in Seven Days by Bruce Tate. (And if you have ever googled basic questions on the Io language, you will know that I am not the first person to have this idea.) In any case, I am on Day of Io, but before I get to anything specific there, I wanted to share a gotcha of Io that I encountered.

Well I am back to reading Seven Languages in Seven Days by Bruce Tate and am taking on the chapter on Io. If you are not familiar, Io is a prototype-based language like JavaScript. Since I typically work on the server-side and only dabble in JavaScript and HTML, I am looking forward to seeing how learning Io can reflect on my knowledge of JavaScript.

I recently hit an error I had never seen before:

Recently I have been upgrading a JEE application to the latest versions of the libraries used. In particular I was upgrading from Hibernate 3 to Hibernate 4.

I finally got back to my little Ruby project over the weekend. The idea was to write a tool to copy an m3u play list and associated files to my mp3 player since Rhythmbox and Banshee were not up to the task. I used the ruby-taglib library from http://robinst.github.com/taglib-ruby/ to access mp3 tags.

So I finally got back to my Ruby play list project. The next mini-goal would be to parse a play list file and print out the converted file names. I created a PlayListEntry class and a PlayList class and things were moving along very well:

I wanted to explore Ruby a little more so I needed to give myself a project. I figured I would try to create a script to copy a playlist to my MP3 player, since both Rhythmbox and Banshee had issues with this.

My notes on the final section on Ruby from Seven Languages in Seven Days by Bruce Tate.

My notes on Day 3 of Ruby from Seven Languages in Seven Weeks by Bruce Tate follow.

I ran into a situation today where I wanted to script deletion of folders older than a set number days on an old Windows 2000 machine. (The culprit is a commercial SMTP spam and virus filter that does not clean up after itself when it updates. Eventually the drive gets full and no mail comes through.) I found a solution using forfiles but this version of Windows does not have it. I found myself searching the web and gnashing my teeth over the limitations of Windows batch scripting.