jason thurber's blog

From the same directory as DataLoader.jar

1. java -cp DataLoader.jar com.salesforce.dataloader.security.EncryptionUtil -g SOMEGARBAGESTRINGFOLLOWS
2. copy that value to key.txt
3. java -cp DataLoader.jar com.salesforce.dataloader.security.EncryptionUtil -e “MYPASSWORD” “/full/path/to/key.txt”
4. copy that value to process-config.xml’s sfdc.password
5. Add <entry key=”process.encryptionKeyFile” value=”/full/path/to/key.txt”></entry> to process-config.xml

Alternately, add sfdc.password, sfdc.username and process.encryptionKeyFile to config.properties (in the same directory).

If you’re not listening to Pandora (assuming you’re in the US) then you should be. It is awesome! There is a free iPhone application and PandoraBoy for your Mac (so the remote works).

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 2 is now available from Greenhouse. If you’re a Penny-Arcade fan then you’ve probably already played Episode 1. If not, check them both out… I’ll be playing thru Episode 2 this week.

Alex and Scott have announced the alpha release of Feedlounge! Feedlounge is a “web-based RSS/Atom feed reader”… (at this point you may be thinking)… umm… cool!? Actually, it’s really cool:

• If you’re an RSS-addict, you’re also probably someone that moves between computers on a regular basis. A web-based reader means that your feeds are always in sync, with any new subscriptions, read and un-read items in the state you left them, no matter which of your n computers you’re sitting in front of.
• Feedlounge is the only app I’ve used that gives nothing away to a rich-client app. Your keyboard works exactly the way you expect. It actually leads to a bit of cognitive dissonance (in a good way 😉 )when you press the arrow key in a web-app and it actually does the right thing. This is trademark Alex, the guy builds good web-app!

It’s been difficult not to talk about this since, well, since it’s conception almost a year ago. I’ve really enjoyed working with Alex, Scott and the rest of the Feedlounge development crew and I’m continually amazed by the Feedlounge app… it’s awesome.

Head over to the site and check it out!

Following several separate occasions on which I spent hours at a time unable to make calls from my Treo 600, I decided to upgrade to a Treo 650.

This was an unusual consumer experience, as I kept going from store to store trying to get a deal. I’d go to Fry’s to look at Sprint phones (got ’til October on the contract ya’ know), then I’d go to the Sprint store, then I’d come home to do research online. Every time I’d get home my wife would ask, “Did you buy a phone yet?”, and I’d say, “No, they either suck or are too expensive.” She was actually getting a bit pissed that I wouldn’t pull the trigger and buy something (anyone who knows my regular buying habits realizes this is a bit out of character for me). Finally I got sick of trying to save $100 or $50 or $150, went to the Sprint store and just bought the phone.

First impressions:
– The screen is awesome!
– Buttons are just different enough to confuse my Treo 600 muscle-memory (on which I could touch-type)
– Quick Launch/Phone screen is a major improvement
– Why did they have to change the connector?! Now I have to buy another retractable USB charging cable.

After using the phone for awhile:
– The NVFS file system isn’t a big deal
– Bluetooth is really awesome in unexpected ways, and lame in the way I thought it would be cool
– Amazing: bluetooth sync, dun and salling clicker!
– Lame: headsets are static’y
– Battery life is really excellent
– The screen is truly amazing

“Must have” list for the Treo 650:
– Free 128mb SD Card from PalmOne to make up for the NVFS issues (NOTE: I waited long enough to post this that I’ve already received this card 😉 ).
– Salling Clicker – Perhaps the coolest thing you can do with tha’ ‘toof
– iSync Palm Conduit
– The Missing Sync – Allows hotsync via bluetooth and some other cool things
– How to get Bluetooth DUN working: http://vocaro.com/trevor/treo-dun/

My moment of Zen:
Riding in the car on the way to Sacramento, VPN’d into work on my Powerbook over bluetooth, Remote-Desktop’in to my work machine. It was totally usable! As I IM’d to Scott, ‘I’m living in the future!’.

Rory Blyth – Neopoleon.com

The best security in the universe is to not have an application to break into in the first place.

Well, I noticed that Quicksilver was consuming 400’ish MB of Virtual Memory (and 200’ish MB of Real Memory) and was starting to get sloooow. So, goodbye Quicksilver, hello again LaunchBar 4 Beta 9.

Thing I really liked about Quicksilver:

Things I didn’t like so much:

BTW – If you’re running OSX and not running one of these programs (or one of the other flavors of the same) you’re really missing out!

I’ve encouraged a friend of mine to move to Mac. He bought a Powerbook 15in, iBook 14in, two iPods, Airport, Airport Express…. the works really. He’d been running Outlook as his email client on Windows against a pop3 server, and had all of his email stored on his local machine.

After a bit of rudimentary research I learned the following process:

Well, that didn’t work (but did consume many hours with import/export fun). It “almost” worked, but the html email looked like crap, and attachments were mangled.

So, I googled some more and constructed a Byzantine process involving Windows Outlook and Outlook Express, dbxConv and Mail.app. All I can say is, “it worked for me”:

So, I’ve got a couple of email addresses under a single username/password combination, let’s call them a@a.com and b@a.com (in actuality it’s more like a@a.com, b@a.com, a@c.com and b@c.com but two should suffice). I was trying to figure out how to allow Mail.app (the email application that ships with OSX) to send as any of these email addresses (you might call these “aliases” or “outbound email addresses”). I tried to configure a new account that wasn’t configured with an inbound server, but that didn’t work, so I asked Google:

And Google spoke (in the voice of this page) saying: You simply comma-delimit multiple email addresses when configuring an account and they all become available in the “account” dropdown when composing email. A very clean solution (if not terribly intuitive or discoverable). It’s exactly the sort of thing a novice email user would never need to know and an advanced user would know to (eventually) google for!

A few months ago I tried to start working with PHP5 on OSX. Followed the directions I was able find on Google (which were none too assuring as most of them ended with “so that didn’t work, anyone have any advice”) and gave up after several hours of mucking around.

Approximately an hour ago I downloaded the php5 source code, built it and installed it. Well, I shouldn’t take any credit, basically I followed the directions here exactly (I helped that I’d recently done a complete upgrade of Fink, so I had libxml2).

I cleaned up my httpd.conf file so that it wasn’t trying to run both PHP4 and PHP5 (’cause it can’t… at least not without some horrible hackery), and ran phpinfo(). It worked, I was running PHP5. PHPMyAdmin still worked, but Tasks doesn’t yet support PHP5. It’s a measure of how much I’ve been using Tasks recently that I then spent 20 minutes figuring out (googling actually) how to run PHP4 and PHP5 simultaneously. Again, it’s a simple as following the directions at How to run PHP4 and PHP5 prallel (sic).

Now I’ve got two running instances of Apache, one listening to port 80 and one to 8080. I really like it when things just work!

Edited on 8:48pm – Corrected the two mistakes relating to Tasks, namely the link was wrong and I meant PHP5, not PHP4 (which didn’t make much sense in context). One of the rare times when I got distracted mid-post and failed to re-read.

Divs not scrollable in IE6, eh? You’re using overflow:auto? Try removing the DOCTYPE declaration from the top of your html…

It worked for me, but your mileage may vary (and this will certainly cause all sorts of other problems I don’t know/care about).