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Lotus Notes server on unix: Waiting for a shell command

LotusScript allows you to execute a OS command by using the rc = Shell( “command” ) command. The problem with this is, that Notes starts the command asynchronously and returns 33 as the return code, meaning “it’s started”. There is no way to actually wait for the command to finish and - gasp - even get the return code from the command back. This was the sitatuation with a client. We needed to run unix commands and react to their outcome in LotusScript. ...

Jens-Christian Fischer
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EMacs on OS/X for Rails development

Being a step-by-step guide as an aide for the failing memory. Inspired by the screenshots of Dee Zsombor Get a Tiger compatible Emacs (unfortunately Aquamacs does strange (i.e non-emacs) things with it’s windows, so ECB falls on it’s face) Install RubyMode.el (from the Ruby distribution) Download ECB Download supporting libraries (eieio, speedbar, semantic) and install them (usually make, make install and an entry in .emacs) Download MMM (Multiple-Major-Modes) so you have support for both HTML and ERB in those .rhtml files ...

Jens-Christian Fischer
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Spores of life

R. sent me a link to a transcript of Will Wright’s presentation of Spore, an evolutionary game, a couple of months ago. I was stunned by the descriptions. Today I found a link to a video of the actual presentation and demo of Spore. While I sat and watched in amazement, my wife and our female co-worker watched too and commented on it. Interestingly enough, both of them weren’t that compelled. They commented on the strange creatures, the way they walked, etc. They didn’t see the beauty of the procedural way of doing things, the way the game evolves from single-cell creatures to “war of the worlds” ...

Jens-Christian Fischer
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A CSS microscope

If you are sometimes looking at a wonderful CSS design and wonder, how this was achieved, you could look at the HTML and the CSS code and start to figure out how to achieve things. This could take quite some time. Enter Xylo Scope. Xylo Scope loads all CSS files, and displays the relationship between the different tags and styles. It sports something similar to the DOM explorer that browsers like Firefox have but is geared more towards the CSS aspects. ...

Jens-Christian Fischer
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More trays?

Our office got a new HP LaserJet 2420dn printer yesterday to replace an old LJ6 (that was woefully inadequate for office use). Installation of the printer drives went fine (as long as you call a 67% success rate in the first round fine - now we are at 100%) Today the additional 500-page tray arrived and was installed. On Windows it was a snap to tell the printer driver, that there is another tray to be served from. On OS X (the Tiger variant) - no such luck. I can print no problem, but the drivers insists on only having 2 trays. And the place where I can select memory and duplex option has no little checkbox for selecting the additional tray. What is the wisdom out there for these kind of problems? Google is no help. Can it be, that Windows is better than Mac OS X? ...

Jens-Christian Fischer