Comment from my friend Sri, after looking at my post regd using Google Charts API to track weekly runs.
” Hey V, You can show the value of the bars by using the variable CHM”..
Thx for making me lazy dude :).. Here’s the upated image
Technology
Tracking my runs using Google charts
I wrote a brief blurb, when Google came out with their Google Charts API. The API essentially allows you to represent your data visually by just generating a URL.. I have been wanting to use this in real life for quite some time now and think I finally found a need :). I am going to be tracking my weekly runs with using this APIÂ moving forward.
Here’s a graphical representation of my runs for Week 5 of my traning for the Chicago marathon
As you can see, I have been slacking off on my mid-week runs.
I used the following parameters to generate the graph
Type = cht (vertical bars)
Legend = chtt (Week 5 training)
Axis Values = chxl (Mon, Tue, Wed, Thur, Fri, Sat, Sun)
The URL I used to generate the image is http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chtt=Week+5+Training&chts=FF0000,20&chdl=Miles&cht=bvs&chxt=x,y&chxl=0:|Mon|Tue|Wed|Thu|Fri|Sat|Sun|&chs=300×150&chd=t:0,0,3,0,0,0,10&chco=4d89f9,c6d9fd&chbh=20
I still need to figure out, how to show the values in the image and play with the ratio of the axis.
You can get all the information you need about this API by visiting this link http://code.google.com/apis/chart/
HOW TO : Select column in Notepad++
Notepad++, is a great open source editor similar to EditPlus and UltraEdit. One of the features that I really appreciated in EditPlus, was the capability to select a column of data. I checked if NotePad++ has a similar feature and found the following hotkey that can be used to do this..
“Alt + Left Mouse Click” puts you in Column Mode Select
For a complete list of hotkeys that can be used with Notepad++, check out this link
HOW TO : Type "^" on a BlackJack II
This is a quick note for myself… if you ever want to type any special characters or symbols on a BlackJack II, hold the “sym/space” key for a few seconds and the symbox/special character menu will show up..
Rooting for the Mozilla team..
I downloaded multiple instances of Firefox 3.0 to support Mozilla’s attempt to set a world record for the most number of downloads in a day!!. Their servers had some problems dealing with the flood of download requests but seem to have stabilized now..Help set the record, but downloading a copy of Firefox 3.0. I have only used it for a hour now, but it is faster when I use Gmail. And it has a ton of new features that I haven’t even started playing with…
Become part of a Guinness World Record
Have you always wanted to play a part in setting a Guinness World Record? You have the chance now by helping Mozilla Firefox in their attempt to become the most downloaded software in a day. Head over to http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/ and help create the world record!!
HOW TO : Create dynamic pages in WordPress
I have decided to run the Chicago Marathon again this year. But this time, I am running it for a cause. I am raising money for the ASHA foundation, a non profit entity helping to educate the poor and needy in India. As part of the fundraising process, I wanted to share my training information with the folks that are donating for this cause and hence the need for this post.
I was looking into creating a dynamic page in wordpress (the software that powers this blog) that would list all the posts related to my training for the marathon. Google came to the rescue as usual and pointed me to the “InLine Posts” plugin by Aral Balkan.
You can do create a dynamic page by
1) Download the “InLine Posts” plugin from here : http://aralbalkan.com/wordpress
2) Unzip the file and upload the contents to the plugins folder in your wordpress install. It is located in the wp-content folder.
3) Activate the plugin by logging into the admin interface of your wordpress install.
4) Create a new page and add the number of the post you want displayed in the page by listing the post ID in the following format : [[POST_ID]]
Tools of the trade : IBM Page Detailer
I discovered IBM Page Detailer, a tool to analyze web traffic between a client and a server in a graphical format, while listening to the brilliant Steve Sounder’s lecture on “Even Faster Web Sites” from the Google I/O 2008 conference. And credit goes to Ray for posting the list of videos from the Google I/O conference.
Am still playing around with this tool, but it looks like there is a lot of potential here. Rather than acting as a proxy, like most of the HTTP analyzers do, this tool actually places a probe in the clients network stack. And not to mention that it is free to use :).
Tools of the trade : Java application management
We recently launched a new product at work and had to optimize a Java web application hosted in a JBoss application server for performance. The following tools came in rather handy to troubleshoot and analyze the application.
- Java core dump memory analyzer from SAP. This tool is better than the standard run of the mill heap analyzers since it can handle larger core dumps. The tool is available here.
- Messadmin : Session information tool by Cedrik Lime. This tool helps you to analyze the sessions on the application server in real time. We were able to install it on the application server without making any changes in our application, other than adding a couple of listners.. In essence, we copied the jar/war files to the application server and edited our application web.xml file to add the following listners
<context-param> <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name> <param-value>/WEB-INF/applicationContext*.xml,classpath:applicationContext*.xml</param-value> </context-param> <filter> <!-- MessAdmin Servlet Filter --> <filter-name>MessAdminFilter</filter-name> <filter-class>clime.messadmin.filter.MessAdminFilter</filter-class> </filter> <filter-mapping> <filter-name>MessAdminFilter</filter-name> <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern> </filter-mapping> <listener> <!-- MessAdmin listener --> <listener-class>clime.messadmin.core.MessAdminListener</listener-class> </listener>
HOW TO : Repair corrupted MYSQL Table
I recently came across a corrupted table in MySQL and was getting the following error, when I was trying to access a table.
“mysql ERROR 145 (HY000): Table ‘xxxxxxx’ is marked as crashed and should be repaired”
I repaired the table by
- Log into the mysql client using “mysql”
- Change to the required database by using “use DATABASE_NAME”
- Repair the table by using “repair table TABLE_NAME”
Love the simplicity of MySQL :).