Scott Spendolini's Blog

I'm happy to announce that starting today, enkitec.com is running on Oracle Application Express and has replaced sumneva.com, which was running in parallel with enkitec.com since July. We spruced things up a little bit, created a new UI, and also created some new features & sections - some on the front end, others on the back end.  What many people will notice is that the APEX URL syntax is missing.  We decided to use mod_rewrite rules to give each page a more search engine friendly URL.  How we did all of this - and how it requires zero maintenance - is a great subject for future post. Have a look and let me know what you think!  I'll be the one in the corner feverishly working on my OOW presentations.

Oracle Wallet is a finicky little tool.  However, when you want to make outgoing HTTPS calls from the database, it's a necessary evil.  While the tool itself is straightforward enough, the steps to follow in order to configure it are not as clear. During my research, I came across what is perhaps the best step-by-step document for configuring Oracle Wallet that I have seen.  Jeff Hunter's blog walks through the process in great detail, accounting for even the most minor of details.  You can see his Oracle Wallet post here:  http://www.idevelopment.info/data/Oracle/DBA_tips/PL_SQL/PLSQL_19.shtml While this is definitely not something that I'll need daily, it's definitely getting bookmarked for the next time I'm faced with configuring Oracle Wallet.

It's an unavoidable fact of life as a web developer - you have to test on IE at some point.  The sooner, the better, in my experience.  As a Mac user, I run Windows and Linux in VMWare.  The benefits of this are huge, and most readers don't need them re-iterated here, so I'll spare everyone. What did get annoying is that my Windows 7 VM would mysteriously go to sleep, thus causing VMWare to suspend it after some period of idle time.  I looked all over VMWare for a sleep or suspend setting, and found nothing that seemed to point to solving my issue, as it kept happening. A simple Google search yielded the following post: http://skipmeamadeus.blogspot.com/2009/02/windows-7-keeps-suspending-in-vmware.html It seems that by default, Windows 7 will put the system to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity, as evidenced by this screen shot: Setting the 2nd setting to Never and saving my changes should prevent the VM from suspending in the future.

With the introduction of the iPhone 5, one new feature has more people abuzz than any other: the new adapter.  Instead of the traditional 30-pin dock connector that has become ubiquitous in everything from consumer electronics to luxury cars, Apple has opted to introduce a new, proprietary 8-bin connector dubbed "Lightning".  I think that I speak for most of us Apple product owners when I say that as soon as this was announced, you did a mental tally of all of the devices and cables that would eventually have to be replaced, and I wasn't too happy with the resulting number. Yes, it will be a pain to replace all of my cables and devices that use the older connector, but we'll all complain about, get angry, and eventually over time, forget about it.  Like the CD drive.  Or floppy drive.  Or the replaceable battery. My point here is not to get into a "who innovates more" argument, but rather highlight a type of innovation that is very much organic to Apple ...