nginx is all around

English: Nginx Logo Español: Logo de Nginx (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As for my new job I need to emulate our production site environment I’ve deployed nginx-1.3.9 onto my Win7-laptop.

I’ve tried to run nginx -t in order to test the inintal config but got

nginx: the configuration file C:/nginx/conf/nginx.conf syntax is ok

nginx: [emerg] bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (10013: An attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions

nginx: configuration file C:/nginx/conf/nginx.conf text failed

After googling a bit I’ve found the several solutions of which:

• firewall (McAfee security center) check has shown no 80 port blocking;
• running nginx as a Windows service was postponed for some time – as the page under URL isn’t accessible any more;

• so I’ve simply followd that post and changed the port in nginx.conf.

After that it has worked fine.
In order to finalize nginx administration experience I’ve followed this post’s instructions and created two bat files for start and stop.

Now what I still have to

• get to know how to run a Grails app on nginx and connect it to the PostgreSQL DBS.

In support of Zero Email initiative

Some thoughts infulenced by an interview with Thierry Breton (ATOS CEO) on his Zero Email initiative and idea to ban internal email communications within February 2014.

…the fact that most of the young people that we were hiring were not using email anymore after graduating from universities.

They were instead mainly using instant messaging tools and social networks like Facebook – and for most of them, when they joined Atos it was first time they had ever worked with internal email tools like [Microsoft] Outlook.

Awesome! Someone finally has decided to listen to a newly hired Gen Y. That’s partly my case, so I’m really involved into that case.

So this intrigued me – and in addition I had already been thinking for many years that most of my colleagues and my employees were spending increasing amounts of time on internal emails.

Please read the full intewiew, it is really helpful.

As for me as a Gen Y guy, most valuable of it is idea to listen Gen Y folks – we’re the future and it really helps to get an insight. It’s 10 years since I’ve finished school and last week I’ve been there at annual alumni meeting, where my teacher told me how nowadays’ scholars are doing: they use VoIP and public social networks to collaborate and define homework tasks, it’s within their DNA. Even now best of graduates come here and what do they see? A corporate ban on any modern browser, which is #1 web tool for every younger.
So as for me that Zero Email is 1st of all a nice example of listening to younger folks.

How I’ve bought the Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet

Finally! Yesterday I’ve received my shining new B&N Nook Tablet, still with aroma of fresh plastic and artificial leather (from the cover). Mmm, yammy 🙂

It cost me 10 000 RUR (which was ~280 USD + some taxes) and was brought here (to Moscow) by my fellow friend directly from NY Manhattan store.

I’ll post some photos of the tablet inside the cover soon and plan to root the device and get a normal Android installed there, so follow the posts here.

What if Android Market updates doesn’t work for apps installed on SD card

Image via Wikipedia

The problem: under Android OS applications installed to SD card using Android Market cannot be updated, showing error message.

The solution (found here, thanks to cdore…@gmail.com):

1. Connect your device to PC.
2. On your device select Mount or External drive option.
3. Open your device as a drive in My Computer.
4. Find folder “.android.secure” or “/mnt/secure/asec/”
5. Delete file “smdl2tmp1.asec” (L before the 2nd letter and letter 1 after “tmp”).
6. Try to re-download updates via Android Market.

Hope that helps!

Outlook tips’n’tricks

A few tips for Outlook users:

• Quick email sending:
• send emails quicker by pressing Ctrl+Enter instead of clicking Send button;
• if you’ve disabled this option, you can enable it via menu: Tools – Options – Email options – Advanced email options – Press Ctrl+Enter to send and email (in the bottom).
• Enabling Add to Dictionary context menu button:
• menu Tools – Options – Spelling – Spelling and AutoCorrection – Custom Dictionaries: you need to set a language to the one you’re trying to add or, even better, to All languages.
  

Getting to orbit

A few months ago I’ve changed my job from HR consulting (www.warhowell.com) to FMCG (Mars; food production) company.

Some changes I’ve mentioned before:

• I make ~200 km per day; by car or by a corporate bus (which gives an unique opportunity to sleep while travelling with payoff in 2 additional hours of sleeping in the morning).
• If using bus, getting to workplace at 8.30 means waking up at 6.00. It’s very early for Moscow) I didn’t ever thought I’ll be waking up so early.
• The job is nice. The Mars is nice. The people are nice.  The only bad thing is this everyday bus trip though it’s much better when the car is okay: driving, listening to music, watching airplanes taking off in Domodedovo airport, and enjoying the sun.

Web service review: ArrivedOK

While adding another TripIt plan I’ve found an application which was developed by Russian startup – it’s called ArrivedOK.

The whole thing is about your relatives’ and friends’ nerves – nowadays plane delays and (OMG!) crashes happen so often that people are nervous about is you landed OK or not (hope that case will never happen).

After registration you simply enter your mobile number; before flying away you enter mobile numbers of people you’d like to inform upon arrival. And… no, that’s not all – you need to pay some fee in advance to buy some ‘packs’ of SMS. But there’s a free version – informing people by tweets or blog posts.

Bottom line: if you love your friends or relatives and want to save their nerves – try the ArrivedOK, maybe it’s worth your attention?

P.S.: you can put a badge on your website, it’ll look like that:

Problems in setting up sync to Google services in Windows Mobile

Google support has a page on synchronizing it’s services with Windows Mobile device.

The page is quite informative, the only problem is that it still has not been translated into Russian, which leaves out of border lots of potential users. Thus, a dig to Russian Google support team for lack of description 😦

Few nuances leading to digs to MS sync developers exist:

1. Only one server is permitted: the MSDN Blogs thread discussion states that there’s the only solution yet – use POP\IMAP for another server. The user “zhamid” answers it quite well:
   

   “Yes, it is technical.  The way we initially implemented the application, it is restricted to using only one exchange account.  This may change in the future, but right now this is what we are stuck with.”

   Awesome, huh?!

2. Only one email synchronization via ActiveSync is possible: in order to enable Gmail sync you have to disable email sync with laptop\desktop (assuming you have Outlook synс it sounds awful).
3. The connection will be named “MS Exchange” (even though it’s Google nor Microsoft) and there’s no change option.

The user “stewartbryson” sees no future fixes, hoping for Google solution:

I can’t wait until Google has fully implemented calendar, mail and contact list in the Google Domain apps product. That way, I can move away from Exchange for my company email and use this very precious SINGLE exchange connection on my mobile phone for my largest customer at a single point in time.

The bottom line: the problem exists throughout several product generations, is well-known but no action was made. Even more: OMA (Outlook Mobile Access) was discontinued in MS Exchange 2007.

Windows Mobile: restoring PIM & SMS data

Recently I’ve updated firmware on my Asus P527 and (insurprisingly) SMS & PIM data (contacts, calendar items, tasks, etc.) were wiped.

Well, sure before updating I’ve:

• backed up the entire system state,
• manually copied two main files:
  • cemail.vol
    little database containing SMS and email,
  • pim.vol
    the same size DB with contacts, tasks and calendar items.

So I’ve started restore process but… Asus backup utility said the backup file is corrupted, so it won’t restore anything( I had to restore both files manually, again. The thing is that you can manually delete and copy back pim.vol, but not cemail.vol file – it’s always being already used by some process. No ideas which one – killing doesn’t help.

So here comes the solution (files were saved as pim_old.vol and cemail_old.vol):

1. download and install MortScript software to PDA,
2. create a script (using any ANSI-compatible text editor) with the following text:
   Delete “\cemail.vol”
   Copy (“\cemail_old.vol”, “\cemail.vol”)

   Delete “\pim.vol”

   Copy (“\pim_old.vol”, “\pim.vol”),

3. save the file as “sms-restore.mscr” (beware of extension – it’s used by MortScript interpretating engine!),
4. copy:
   • both “old” files to the root directory,
   • the script file to “/Windows/Startup” (or your localised startup folder),
5. move files from the startup folder (to prevent them locking *.vol files):
   • MsgWait.lnk
     messaging subsystem,
   • poutlook.lnk
     Pocket Outlook,
6. clear Today Screen (i.e. uncheck all the items in “Settings/Today“),
7. reboot the device.

Check your messages and contacts… Voila! they’re restored.

Keep in mind that if you’re restoring messages from WM5 on WM6.1 (as I did) they’ll be transformed into chat view, it may take a couple of minutes (depending on amount of SMS).

NB! After you’re sure that eveything is okay don’t forget to move MsgWait.lnk and poutlook.lnk back to startup folder and reboot again.

MOSS 2007: Undeleteable (aka “sealed”) fields

Just understood that I can’t delete an “Article Date” column I’ve added to a document library.

After a brief googling I’ve found an article by John F. Holiday (SharePoint Server MVP), where he sais, that following columns can’t be deleted after you’ve added them to an object:

• Article Date,
• Contact, Contact E-Mail Address, Contact Name, Contact Picture,
• Scheduling Start Date, Scheduling End Date,
• Target Audiences,
• Byline, Image Caption,
• Page Content, Page Icon, Page Image,
• Rollup Image,
• Summary Links, Summary Links 2.

That's it, you can't delete it :(

Anyway, he gives a sample code which could help with deletion. Didn't tried yet, just've hidden the column.