Category Archives: karova

Archive of an SVN changeset

All too often I need to release changes to a staging or live server and I always felt the releases were taking too long.

At Karova we use SVN and I always try and commit any releases in one changeset. I wrote a python script to archive all the files listed in a changeset. It’s been very very useful so far. Simply run the python script in the root of your repos and you will be prompted for the changeset number. The script then archives all the files in that changeset in a zip file named by changeset. You’ll need the svn client in your path for it to work though.

svnarchivebychangeset.zip

Enjoy.

Web Application installations with Wix…. Awesome

This week I set off with the goal of making one of our web applications alot easier to deploy. The tools I chose were –

  1. Web Application Installer (WAI)
  2. Wix (Windows Installer XML)
  3. WixEdit

I’d played with all three before but never really got past prototype stage. I’ve spent the last day learning wix and all the elements relevant to me. The Web Application Installer is collection of scripts and a template for different types of web applications. Firstly you use WAI to generate a list of files to install and the use WixEdit to edit that list and many other properties of the wix installation. Once happy with the configuration of the installation WixEdit will generate an msi for installation on your target machine. They truly are an excellent collection of tools. I now have an msi installer that sets up a web site in IIS, sets the ASP.NET version to 2, sets all the required permissions, creates a DB in SQL Server Express (specifying where to save the mdf and ldf files too) and changes the connection string in web.config accordingly. Todays quota of job satisfaction has now been achieved – saving about an hour per install (I’ve to install this app 28 times for different clients so the work was definitely worth while).

One huge pit fall which made me silly amounts of angry was that the SQL script you use to generate the tables and initial data for your database MUST be saved in Unicode (UTF-8). If it’s not then wix won’t be able to read it. I lost 3 hours yesterday with this!!!! as SQL server management studio express by default saves to UCS-2 Big Endian. Very little documentation on this fact so hopefully this post will help a little.

Step away from the code

Since coming back to Karova, I’ve been doing ALOT more management of projects than I did before. Usually what happens is I get the projects once they’ve been spec’d (and prototype’d if appropriate) and then I manage the completion of the project from dev->staging->live and then pass it back to billing.

We always have a good number of projects on the go and my stack is always packed full of project details. The problem I’m having though is being able to step away from the code. I love coding and I know of no other feeling (achievable in an office environment) better than being in the "zone". With so many projects on-going it’s imperative that I delegate rather than try and get stuck in too much even if I know I am most familiar with a piece of software or technology.

It’s a great opportunity for me to step back from code and focus more on managaing and looking at things from a technologist point of view rather than a coder. Under that role I have already been able to play with Linq, ASP.NET 3.5 and SubSonic. Has anybody been in the same situation and have some advice?. For now I just know I need to stay disciplined and step away from the urge to start ‘xslt’ing and coding my ass off.

Monster Commute

Late February of this year I started back working for Karova. As I lived in Dublin at the time it meant a monster of a commute every week, staying at a friends during the week and coming back to Dublin at the weekends. I still do the same commute but I now have my own place in Colwyn Bay which is only 2 minutes walk from the train station and about a minute walk to work. When I add up the commute time (which ranges between 11 and 14 hours a week) it is not far off what I spent on the trains when commuting to Dublin city centre and I get to work or watch DVDs on the ferry/train. All in all it’s an enjoyable trip every week. A little tiring but it means I can stay committed to GAA and my triathalon/marathon training. One thing I have learned on my commutes is that Family Guy is absolutely hilarious.

Moving Email to Gmail with Google Apps

A third party currently hosts our mail @ karova and I wanted to either host it ourselves or move to gmail with Google Apps. As a proof of concept I’ve moved the mail for the philroche.net domain to gmail. I have to say I am very impressed. I signed up for the 30 day free Google Apps premier edition so I was able to migrate all 29,000 of my imap mail over to gmail. The change in my MX records has not filtered through yet so I have a few emails that are still on my old server I’ll need to transfer somehow (without doing a complete migration again). Now I’ve got superb webmail, mobile access, Imap and POP3 with 99.9% uptime guarantee and 25GB space for only $50 a year. Bargain.

Irish Web Technology Conference 2008

It’s now official. I am returning to Karova at the start of March. I’ll have more news later on my future role but I am excited to be going back and focussing on Karova’s projects and products.

I have a few days off in between jobs so I’ve decided to go to the Irish Web Technology Conference 2008. There are some very interesting tracks especially the e-commerce track which will be very applicable to my work @ Karova.

If anyone else is going – give me a shout.

Back under my mums wing

I was away for close to four years, three of which were in the UK and one in Australia. I now find myself back in my mums house. It’s only temporary until myself and two buddies move into a friends house for at least a year (the house owner [Dan :)] is on a whopping two year honeymoon).

Last weekend was one of the most hectic and emotional of my entire life. On thursday I left the office in Karova to work remotely here in Dublin. I also handed bobby (my dog) over to his new owners. I collected my brother in Liverpool airport as he came over to help me pack.

On friday we collected the hire van and began packing until about 8pm. We then decided to go for a chinese and a couple of pints. We arrived home at 3.30 am.

Saturday we were mightily hungover – jaegerbombs will do that to you. We packed until about 5pm and had a dirty kebab. We got the 10pm night ferry from Liverpool to Dublin.

On sunday morning we arrived in Dublin at 7am and began unloading the van which took a couple of hours. I crashed/unpacked for the rest of the day until 7.30 when I went back to dublin port to  get the 10pm night ferry back to Liverpool to retutn the van and pick up my car.

On monday morning I arrived at 5am and after retutning the van I began packing the rest of my half of the house into volvo. At 1.30 pm I said my final goodbyes to my house (which is still for sale) and to Gillian and drove to Holyhead for the 5pm Swift to Dublin. The swift is not so swift and is always late (in all it’s pretty shit) so I arrived in Dublin at 9pm. I am now an official Irish resident once again. It’s not a woohoo moment and it’s definitely not a boohoo moment. I’m looking forward to taking some RnR time with my mates.

Graduate c# devleopers x2 wanted

As part of Karova‘s expansion, we are looking at taking on 2 more graduate developers. If you want to apply, you’ll need at least a 2:1 in a technical degree, knowledge of object oriented programming techniques, XML and XSLT, web standards and CSS. C# would be benifical, as would a good grasp of IIS. If you want good pay and a chance to be part of a growing and exciting company – please see http://www.karova.com/jobs for more detail. We are after a sales manager too for you sales guys.