Category Archives: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Debian: Yarn fails to run.

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Statue of Samuel Eliot Morison on The Mall on Commonwealth Ave in Boston.

Try setting the following environmental variable:

export NODE_PATH=/usr/lib/nodejs:/usr/share/nodejs

Yarn fails to run and shows a stacktrace like the following? Set the NODE_PATH.


Error: Cannot find module '@babel/runtime/helpers/interopRequireWildcard'
Require stack:
- /usr/share/nodejs/yarn/lib/cli/index.js
- /usr/share/nodejs/yarn/bin/yarn.js
    at Function.Module._resolveFilename (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:933:15)
    at Function.Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:778:27)
    at Module.require (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1005:19)
    at require (node:internal/modules/cjs/helpers:102:18)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/usr/share/nodejs/yarn/lib/cli/index.js:3:31)
    at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1101:14)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1153:10)
    at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:981:32)
    at Function.Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:822:12)
    at Module.require (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1005:19) {
  code: 'MODULE_NOT_FOUND',
  requireStack: [
    '/usr/share/nodejs/yarn/lib/cli/index.js',
    '/usr/share/nodejs/yarn/bin/yarn.js'
  ]
}

The following posting on the Debian bug tracker will help:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=933229

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Kaboom is cool!

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Great tool for converting KDE3 settings to KDE4 on Debian. Also, it’s works well to merge KDE4 settings from .kde4 with KDE3 settings in .kde. This is useful as KDE4 1st used .kde4 to save personal KDE configuration data. KDE4 is now using .kde for config data, which mean early KDE4 users will have problems with new KDE4 apps. Fear not, Kaboom will help!

http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/kaboom.html

I’d advise saving back-up copies of both .kde and .kde4 .

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Spam!

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Can you believe this:

21,027 spams caught, 65 legitimate comments, and an overall accuracy rate of 100.000%.

So this rinky-dink blog has gotten over 21,000 spam comments since July 2007, and 1,723 in January 2009. This is done by automated Spam bots; automated programs that scour the web for blogs to post comments  on, and these comments consist of adverts for products and goods for sale. Usually the same old crap spam that you see in your e-mail spam box (or if your unlucky in you’re e-mail inbox).

This must lead to a lot of unnecessary bandwidth usage, and for popular blogs and web-sites a possibly prohibitive usage of their bandwidth (wherever one’s website is hosted one has to pay for all the bandwidth used, including all those Spam comments). Which means, it can really drive up the costs of running a web-site.

JavaScript, programming, RoR, Uncategorized

Netbeans 6.5, with Ruby on Rails & JMaki

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While writing some RoR code at home (or at least trying to grok the RoR way) I’ve alternating between using Emacs & Netbeans 6.5. Emacs is one true editor to rule them all, but what it’s lacking is code completion such as in Netbeans.

I was working on test RoR project last night with Emacs, and after a couple of hours imported the project into Netbeans 6.1 (a painless process). When I opened the “.erb” file I had been editing in Emacs, I noticed a panel on the right side of Netbeans titled “Palette”, that allows easy creation of html items such as tables & lists. It also, includes JMaki support for Dojo, Yahoo’s YUI, Scriptaculous, Spry, & JQuery, which allows quick and easy insertion of Ajax features using JMaki. After about 5 minutes of mucking around with various Ajax tables, I was easily able to replace a basic HTML table with a prettier, sortable, Yahoo YUI, Dojo, or JQuery tables.

Here’s a rough example, showing the difference between an list, and a sortable Yahoo YUI table created with Netbeans & JMaki:

Sample Tables

This is fairly powerful, and for those inexperienced with Ajax provides a quick and simple way to add Ajax features to a web-page or application as it provides Ruby constructs to create the necessary JavaScript and encapsulates the programmer away from the JavaScript. On the other hand, if your an “ace Ajax guru” this doesn’t allow you to directly write and access JavaScript, and the abstraction might seem like an hindrance.

Here’s a quickie overview showing how to use the JMaki features using a 6.1 beta and Ruby on Rails:

http://blogs.sun.com/arungupta/entry/jmaki_on_rails_reloaded_for

And a more recent generic overview using 6.1 & standard HTML/JSP:

http://www.netbeans.org/kb/docs/web/ajax-jmaki-quickstart.html

What’s also useful, is that JMaki in Netbeans creates the same looking code on your HTML rendering page, which means that if you can create JMaki widgets using Java you can easily do the same with RoR, and presumably with PHP.

If your haven’t looked at Netbeans 6.1 or haven’t tried Netbeans in a while, I do think there are some really useful features that sometime give it the edge over it main competitor Eclipse. I use both IDE’s regularly, and prefer Eclipse for Java & Perl development, but for RoR (especially on Linux) and Ajax features I think Netbeans is the winner (for now). However, there is a JMaki plugin for Eclipse which I haven’t tried that might be comparable (for Java applications).

Using both IDE’s could be a useful addition to a programmer’s toolbox. What I must do next is test Netbeans with a J2EE project created under Eclipse and see if I can use both IDE’s on the same project without problems. It be interesting to see if I can edit the Java code with Eclipse and then modify the view and add JavaScript/Ajax feature with Netbeans.

More information about JMaki can be found at:

https://ajax.dev.java.net/

Updated: Fixed version number, it’s Netbeans 6.5 and not 6.1. Fixed typos from writing tooo fast.

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Dollar down!

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The Canadian dollar is at it’s highest rate against the US dollar and is now worth .98c:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070918/dollar_parity_070918/20070918?hub=TopStories

The Canadian dollar set a 30-year-high Tuesday, closing at US98.64 cents after investors got word of a drastic interest rate cut south of the border.

And, it may be worth more than the US dollar soon!

Economists say it could only be a matter of days before the loonie reaches parity with the American dollar:

“You got the two ingredients, commodity prices and interest rate differentials, both going in the dollar’s favour,” said Don Drummond, chief economist for TD Bank speaking to CTV Newsnet Tuesday evening.

Speculation surrounding the rate cut and record oil prices helped push the dollar past yesterday’s close of US97.28 cents. But the real surge came after the U.S. Federal Reserve cut its key funds rate half a point to 4.75 per cent to curtail a possible recession.

I wonder how much of this is due to rampant US government spending, for instance the billions on the TSA and the Dept of Homeland Security, and the many more billions spent prosecuting the incomplete Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

Look at http://www.dhs.gov  and the title is “Protecting our Freedoms”, the correct grammar is “Protecting our Freedom”. And I am the only one for whom the term “Homeland Security” sounds like something from Nazi Germany?