Jonathan Clarke @ Beilabs.com

Ubuntu & MongoDB, match made in heaven

install dependencies:

sudo aptitude install build-essential git-core libboost-dev libpcre3 libpcre3-dev scons xulrunner-1.9-dev  libboost-thread-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-program-options-dev libboost-date-time-dev fakeroot dpkg-dev libpcap-dev

$ git clone --depth=1 git://github.com/mongodb/mongo.git
$ cd mongo
$ chmod 755 debian/rules

edit debian/control and remove ", xulrunner-1.9-dev" from "Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}, xulrunner-1.9-dev"

$ dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b
$ sudo dpkg -i ../mongodb_1.3.1_i386.deb

Things to focus on this year

Thesis: E-commerce in the third world. This will be complete in August this year, follow me on @givefoo for updates.

Weight: For too long this past year I have let myself get lazy and fat. Goal for end of Feb is to be 2 kilos lighter than I was on 1st January, walking back from the office (couple of miles) when I’m there, and soon will be hitting the gym much more often.

The next step is to get qualified and to get permanent residency for Australia.  The process first involves getting qualified with the Australian Computer Society, they like taking money and reading examination transcripts. Fun.

Graduation in Ireland, this happens in November 2010, if I pass that is.

Railscamp 7 is happening in Canberra in April this year. I’m going to be focusing my efforts on getting sections of my rails application offline with the wonders of HTML5, bring on the Werewolf and Mexican.

Getting more involved in the community, I’ve been slacking in not being able to attend various ruby group meetings, silicon beach drink sessions and other open coffee mornings….this shall improve.

This blog needs an overhaul, just in content mind you.  I have not been posting regularly enough lately. This shall change.

My predictions for 2010

1. Rails 3 will cause a deluge of former PHP/ASP developers into #rubyonrails
2. Avatar 2 will be announced, Halloween 2010 will have a plethora of blue skinned women….
3. The number of Android users will drastically rise when teenagers realize there is nothing stopping them from getting pornography on their shiny Google phone.
4. Robert Jordan will release a 13th book, 3 years after his death.
5. There will be an Irish Railscamp….now with even more beer.
6. Techcrunch will lose the lawsuit for JooJoo while Paul Carr is fired for joking about it on his weekly column
7. YCombinator will turn into a Digg clone
8. The most wanted item for Christmas 2010 will be the Take-Twos release of Duken Nukem Forever 13 years after commencing development (I’m holding out that the code will be open sourced / court case pending)
9. I will finally launch my very own startup and it will not suck
10. 2010 will be the year of MongoDB

So what have we learned this year?

So the Lisbon treaty was passed finally by the people of Ireland this weekend.  I’m not entirely sure how I should react to this news.  I’ve been abroad for both the initial referendum as well as for Lisbon 2, yet I’ve been keeping track of the arguments for and against for some time.

As an impartial observer (I have no allegiance to any political party mainly due to the fact that I’ve been traveling for so long) I find it incredibly interesting that nothing has changed in the Lisbon Treaty since it was last rejected.  So what is different?

12.6% unemployment throughout the country was announced in September.  That is a huge number. It’s a number that has shocked people with many talking about being reminded of the 1980s, having to leave the country and seek better lives.  For the past number of months there has been a huge media campaign by various organizations pushing for a Yes vote. Will voting yes bring back jobs? I have no idea. Lets wait and see.

Ireland was once heralded as a low cost nation, manufacturers flocked to the country to set up shop to reap as much profit from a skilled workforce as possible.  People wanted what their neighbors had, (house extensions, cars, holidays), got easy loans from the banking sector without realizing their neighbors also had debt coming out of their eyeballs.  It was party time in Ireland, everyone had their hand out looking for grants, “free” European money for their own pet project and live was awesome.

So now the hangover has kicked in.  The manufacturers realized that the Irish were pulling the piss (low level job positions looking for crazy money), got fed up and moved out of the country.  People have been watching over their shoulder, wary that their job is on the line (of course only I can do this job) forgetting that EVERYONE IS EXPENDABLE.  Anyone can be trained in any position, in any industry.

The next step for Ireland?  Well, now we seem to think the country is the darling of Europe again, by saying yes to Lisbon we’re back in the club and everything will be magically better once more.  We need to take a long hard look in the mirror, focus on our strengths and aim on being a world-beater.

I’m proud to be Irish, I’m proud that we’re always considered the underdog but I’ll be prouder when we stop feeling sorry for ourselves, sorry for our past and concentrate on our future.  Lets hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes and please god learn from them.

Some questions that are being asked in Iran...

• When will the recount occur?
• Why were there more ballot papers issued than were counted?
• Why did areas loyal to the opposition not get enough ballot papers?
• Why were the polling stations closed early?
• Who will perform the recount?
• Does this recount null and void the previous result?
• Why is there not more about this in the mainstream news?
• Why has the current regieme imposed harsh restrictions on communications in and out of the country?

Jonathan Clarke's Shared Items

So the world and their mother should now know that I have a brand new Google Ion/HTC magic phone. It’s seriously kickass.  Anyhow, one of the applications I have fallen in love with is NewsRob, it allows me to sync all of my unread google items, read them offline, add stars and share them at will, once I come back into wifi it uploads all unread/shared items.  So I’m finding myself on a train without wifi for about 3 hours every day I head to work and I’ve been getting through my enormous set of RSS feeds.

The articles I’ve been thinking are the cream of the crop are now being shared at this link, if your one of my contacts in Google you should already be getting it.  If not, just check it out and subscribe here.

Git acts weird when trailing whitespaces are involved.

So here i was commiting webrat to git when I came across the following error

All is once again well in the world