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Getting Started with CouchDB on Windows

2010-12-28T23:30:00.039-05:00

In this post I will go over the details of installing and using CouchDB on a Windows machine. You can get more information about CouchDB by visiting http://couchdb.apache.org/.

Install CouchDB on Windows PC by downloading it from,
http://people.apache.org/~mhammond/dist/1.0.1/setup-couchdb-1.0.1.exe

You can get a list of all downloads from http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/Quirks_on_Windows.

Double click setup-couchdb-1.0.1.exe and install CouchDB. You will go through the following screen shots.

If you are installing CouchDB for occasional use you may choose not to install CouchDB as a service.

Now you can click on install and install the Database. After installation you have to start the CouchDB server. For doing that go to the program menu in Windows (Start -> All Programs -> Apache CoucheDB)

You will see the CouchDB DOS prompt followed by the Erlang Emulator Version 5.8.

Now please visit http://127.0.0.1:5984/ using your Firefox browser and you will see the following message,

{"couchdb":"Welcome","version":"1.0.1"}

You can see a list of databases in the newly installed CouchDB by visiting http://127.0.0.1:5984/_all_dbs.

Now to interact with CouchDB you will need one or more of the following apps,

cURL - download curl-7.21.3-ssl-sspi-zlib-static-bin-w32.zip from http://curl.haxx.se/download.html#Win32
Firefox Browser - using Futon at http://127.0.0.1:5984/_utils/index.html
REST Client - available in many languages including Java, Python, PHP, .NET, Ruby, JavaScript and more http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/Related_Projects#Libraries

All data format related to CouchDB is done using JSON (more: http://guide.couchdb.org/draft/json.html). cURL is the favorite command line tool to interact with CouchDB, but while working on cURL in Windows you have to take care of the "" properly otherwise you will get error. Please see this discussion http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3347974/curl-giving-invalid-utf-8-json-error-from-couchdb-although-json-is-fine-any-id.

You can download the cURL application (curl-7.21.3-ssl-sspi-zlib-static-bin-w32.zip) from the website mentioned above (more about cURL is here http://curl.haxx.se/). After downloading the application unzip the application and you can start using cURL by going to the unzipped folder in DOS mode. You can execute the same command in the DOS mode to interact with CouchDB as shown below,

Now head over to http://guide.couchdb.org/draft/tour.html and start using CouchDB in Windows.

Optional:
I would suggest you to go ahead and install LoveSeat, a very nice interface for CouchDB. An introduction for LoveSeat can be found here.

Next you could go ahead and install CouchApp (http://couchapp.org/). The details of installing CouchApp on Windows can be found here (http://couchapp.org/page/windows-python-installers), a copy of which is given below:

Download and install the following software to your Windows box in the given sequence,
1. Python 2.7.1 (http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.7.1/)
2. Python Win32 extensions for Python 2.7 (pywin32-214.win32-py2.7.exe)
3. Python Setup Tools (setuptools-0.6c11.win32-py2.7.exe)
4. Python Restkit 2.1.4 - http://pypi.python.org/pypi/restkit/2.1.4#downloads
5. CouchApp 0.7.0

Do not forget to add C:\Python27\Scripts to the environment variables.

There are latest releases of these software out there, so if you want to you can experiment with a newer mix of these packages.

A First Look at Chrome OS

2009-11-21T03:20:00.016-05:00

Here are a few screen shots from Google Chrome operating system. Please check out the Chromium project for more details. I downloaded the image from gdgt and installed it on VirtualBox.

The Login screen,

Applications,

About Chrome,

Chrome File System,

Networking,

Search,

Applications,

Google Wave,

Youtube,

Hulu,

Nokia S60 3rd Edition Phone Softwares

2009-10-22T15:06:00.012-05:00

You have got a new Nokia Phone (Symbian S60 3rd Edition) and you want to install some good applications in it. Here I list some FREE applications that you can install in your Nokia S60 3rd Edition phones.

Here is a list of applications, not in any particular order, that I have found useful in my Nokia S60 3rd edition phone.

Opera Mini - http://www.opera.com/mini/
SkyFire - http://www.skyfire.com/
Dr. Jukka's YBrowser - http://www.drjukka.com/YBrowser.html
Nimbuzz - http://www.nimbuzz.com/en/
JBak taskman - http://jbak.ru/jbaktaskman_en.php
Google Mobile (Search/Mail/YouTube/Maps...)
Qik - http://www.qik.com
M!Weather - http://www.ubahnstation.net/projects/mweather/mweather.html
Nokia Image Exchange - http://imageexchange.nokia.com/
ScrenShot - http://www.antonypranata.com/screenshot/screenshot-symbian-os
Nokia Energy Profiler - http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/324866e9-0460-4fa4-ac53-01f0c392d40f/Nokia_Energy_Profiler.html
Snaptu - http://www.snaptu.com
SmartCam - http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartcam/
DivX Player - http://www.divx.com/en/mobile
Nokia Mobile Web Server - http://mymobilesite.net/

Nokia Maps - http://maps.ovi.com
FreeCaller - http://sourceforge.net/projects/freecaller/
Stopwatch - http://www.getjar.com/mobile/6397/stopwatch/ author
Mobile Task Manager GTD - http://www.substanceofcode.com/software/mobile-task-manager/
TWIM - Mobile Twitter Client - http://www.substanceofcode.com/software/mobile-twitter-client-twim/
Frozen Bubble for S60 - http://fb-s60.sourceforge.net/

And if you have internal or external (e.g. Globsat BT 328) GPS receiver then feel free to try out the following applications,

Nokia Sports Tracker - http://sportstracker.nokia.com
Nokia Location Tagger - http://betalabs.nokia.com/betas/view/location-tagger
amAze GPS - http://www.amazegps.com/
Mobile Trail Explorer - http://www.substanceofcode.com/software/mobile-trail-explorer/
TrekBuddy - http://www.trekbuddy.net

Please Do not forget to register yourself at http://www.ovi.com/ and http://mymobilesite.net/. Please feel free to put a link to any other software that you find useful in the comments box. I will try to update this list regularly.

XAMPP + Python + Django

2008-11-09T12:13:00.027-05:00

In this post I go over the steps to install XAMPP, Python, and then Django on a Windows XP system. I have also listed the sites that helped me create the setup in my Windows XP machine.

Here are the steps I followed to setup the Django web framework on my Windows XP machine. Lets start with prerequisites,
STEP 1: Prerequisites

Windows XP with Administrative Privilege

XAMPP Windows 1.6.8 [Basic package]

Python 2.5.2 (NOT 2.6, explanation later)

mod_python (mod_python-3.3.1.win32-py2.5-Apache2.2.exe)

Django 1.0 (Django-1.0.tar.gz)

At the end of this step you should have the following files in a folder,
Step 2: Install XAMPP first
Download XAMPP and double click on xampp-win32-1.6.8-installer.exe to start the installation. Just click on next and follow the default settings to have XAMPP installed on your machine. After the installation is complete you will have a directory structure like this,

c:\xampp\
\anonymous
\apache
\cgi-bin
\FileZillaFTP
\htdocs
\install
\licenses
\MercuryMail
\mysql
\perl
\php
\phpMyAdmin
\security
\sendmail
\tmp
\webalizer
\webdav
apache_start.bat
apache_stop.bat
filezilla_setup.bat
filezilla_start.bat
filezilla_stop.bat
mercury_start.bat
mercury_stop.bat
mysql_start.bat
mysql_stop.bat
php-switch.bat
readme_de.txt
readme_en.txt
service.exe
setup_xampp.bat
Uninstall.exe
xampp-changes.txt
xampp-control.exe
xampp-portcheck.exe
xampp_restart.exe
xampp_start.exe
xampp_stop.exe

Double click on xampp-control.exe to start the XAMPP control panel.

Here you can see the status of the Servers. You can start the apache server and check http://127.0.0.1/ to see whether the web server is running or not.

There are lot of videos available on YouTube that can also help you with installing XAMPP. Here is one such video.

Step 3: Install Python 2.5.2 next
Install Python 2.5.2 (NOT 2.6) as mod_python does not support the Python 2.6 yet. Check out this video for one such installation of Python. This installation also covers installation of mod_python.

Python should be installed in the following directory

C:\Python25

Step 4: Install mod_python
Install mod_python by downloading from here mod_python-3.3.1.win32-py2.5-Apache2.2.exe. During installation you have to specify the directory where Apache is installed choose,

C:\xampp\apache

Step 5: Install Django 1.0
Download Django-1.0.tar.gz and unzip it. You will see a directory structure as below,

Django-1.0\
\django
\docs
\examples
\extras
\scripts
\tests
AUTHORS
INSTALL
LICENSE
MANIFEST.in
README
setup.cfg
setup.py

The folder that is of importance is django. Copy the django folder to the following folder,

C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages

After you copy the django folder there the folder structure will look like this,

C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\
\django
\bin
\conf
\contrib
\core
\db
\dispatch
\forms
\http
\middleware
\shortcuts
\template
\templatetags
\test
\utils
\views
__init__.py
__init__.pyc
\mod_python
mod_python-3.3.1-py2.5.egg-info
mod_python_uninstall.log
README.txt

Now copy the django-admin.py file from

C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\django\bin\django-admin.py

to the following two folders,

C:\Python25\Scripts
C:\xampp\htdocs

Now you are all set to test Django on XAMPP.

Step 6: Test Django on XAMPP/Apache
Open the command window and go to the htdocs folder and execute the following command (ref 1),

C:\xampp\htdocs\django-admin.py startproject testproject

This will create the basic testproject that you can access from local website. But before you can access this you have to open httpd.conf file from the following location,

C:\xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf

and then type the following text to the end of the httpd.conf file.

After you type this text please restart the apache webserver. Now visit the following website to see Django in action,

http://127.0.0.1/testproject/

If everything goes alright you will see the following screen,
References:

Django on Windows, this article is very well explained, please go through it.

See also: Django Best Practices

A three-page PDF of Django’s architecture

Credit/Identity Monitoring

2008-04-04T11:48:00.005-05:00

Here I list a number of available identity or credit monitoring services.

The list is mostly aggregated from Fatwallet website for my reference.

Citi Identity Monitor

NationalCity Identity Protect

TrueCredit by TransUnion

Chase Identity Protection

Experien ConsumerInfo

Privacy Matters 1-2-3

American Express CreditSecure

MyFico Score Watch

CreditKeeper

ID TheftSmart

Credit.com Credit Reports/Scores

Discover Identity Theft Protection

High Performance Web Pages - 20 new best practices

2008-03-20T15:54:00.002-05:00

High Performance Web Pages by Stoyan Stefanov of Yahoo!

| View | Upload your own

Google Map Files KML Icon

2008-03-10T15:30:00.029-05:00

Google has a list of icons that can be used in your KML files. Here is a list of all the icons that I know of. Please leave me a comment if you come across new icons that have not been mentioned here. Thanks.

PAL 4

PAL 3

PAL 2

PAL 5

Paddle

Misc
. Thanks Pieter.

The future of the Semantic Web

2008-01-30T23:35:00.000-05:00

Nova Spivack's talk on the future of the Semantic Web, how it works, the real value, differentiating the approaches, and what Twine is doing.

| View | Upload your own

A great talk by Jay Pipes on MySQL Application Performance

2008-01-30T23:21:00.000-05:00

A great talk by Jay Pipes on MySQL Application Performance

| View | Upload your own

Sync files across computers

2007-05-21T22:44:00.002-05:00

In this post I have collected a list of softwares that help you keep your files synced across computers (e.g. home machine, office machine, and your laptop).

FolderShare.com is a free utility from Microsoft that is cross platform and does an excellent job of syncing your files across computers. All file changes are automatically synchronized between linked computers, so you are always accessing the latest documents, photos, and files.

Dirvish is a free, fast, disk based, rotating network backup system. With dirvish you can maintain a set of complete images of your filesystems with unattended creation and expiration. A dirvish backup vault is like a time machine for your data.

Unison is an open source file-synchronization tool for Unix and Windows. It allows two replicas of a collection of files and directories to be stored on different hosts (or different disks on the same host), modified separately, and then brought up to date by propagating the changes in each replica to the other.

Rsync is an open source utility that provides fast incremental file transfer.

SyncToy is another free application from Microsoft that helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers quickly and easily.

cwRsync is Rsync for Windows, that uses Rsync and Cygwin for fast remote file backup and synchronization.

DeltaCopy is an open source, fast incremental backup program. It is a "Windows Friendly" wrapper around the Rsync program.

NasBackup is an open source backup solution using the Rsync utility. It is a high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up MS Windows desktop PCs, laptops and servers to network disks.

PathSync is an interactive directory (path) synchronizer for windows. PathSync is GPL free software, each download package includes the source.

Allway Sync™ is free file and folder synchronization software for Windows (with limitations). Allway Sync uses innovative synchronization algorithms to synchronize your data between desktop PCs, laptops, USB drives and more.

SynKron is a is a Qt application that allows you to sync folders, for example a flash disk with a folder on your hard disk. Synkron is open source and is released under the terms of the GPL v2.

Copy Data between SQL Express Database(s)

2007-04-17T21:19:00.000-05:00

In this post I present a step by step method to copy tables, with data, from one database to another database inside a single SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.

More information about SQL Server 2005 Express Edition can be found here.

STEP 1: (right click on table name)

Create a script for the schema of the table to be copied. This is the table with all the data.

STEP 2:

After you click create, you will see a code window as shown below.

STEP 3:

Change the database name in the script to the new database name (the database where you are going to copy this table). This is done just once by changing the text in the code as shown below.

STEP 4:

Now click on execute to run the SQL command as shown below.

STEP 5:

You will see a command window as shown below at the end of the execution. If you see an error your table copy failed. If the copy fails please make sure you have followed the instructions above properly, and you are not missing any opening/closing square brackets.

After STEP 5 you can go ahead and refresh the database where the table was copied, and you will see an entry for the table. If you open the table you will see there is no data in it. To copy the data from the original table please follow the following steps.

STEP 6:

Create a SELECT command by clicking the "SELECT To" as shown below,

STEP 7: (right click on old table)

Copy the SELECT query on this window to clipboard. We will use in in STEP 11.

STEP 8: (right click on old table)

Create an Insert query as shown below,

STEP 9:

Delete the portion of the query starting with VALUES, as shown below.

STEP 10:

Change the database name in the INSERT query to the "new" database name as shown below,

STEP 11:

Paste the SELECT query command from STEP 7 to the Insert Query window as shown below.

STEP 12:

Execute the command as shown below.

Now you can go to your new database and refresh the table to see the data in there. If you know of a better method of achieving this result, please leave a comment below. Thanks.

ASP.NET Database Connectivity

2007-03-24T22:17:00.000-05:00

This post explains how to connect to a database using ASP.NET. The classes use include SqlConnection, SqlCommand, and SqlDataReader (using System.Data.SqlClient).

The following flow chart depicts the steps you take to connect to the database.

Eclipse Code Snippets

2007-03-22T21:48:00.000-05:00

In this post I am collecting some useful code snippets for programming eclipse. Currently they are not in any order.

Access Status Bar of Eclipse Workbench

final IActionBars actionBars = getViewSite().getActionBars();
IStatusLineManager status = actionBars.getStatusLineManager();
status.setMessage("Status Message");

Console Manipulation

runInUIThread(
 new Runnable() {
   public void run() {
     try{
         IViewPart consoleView = PlatformUI.getWorkbench().
         getActiveWorkbenchWindow().getActivePage()
         .showView("org.eclipse.ui.console.ConsoleView");
     }catch(Exception e){
       System.out.println("Console Not Highlighted "+e);
     }
   }
});

GEF Undo/Redo Contextual Text

To provide contextual text in GEF Undo/Redo menu actions (e.g. instead of plain Undo you want Undo XYZ), please provide a label to every command. For that please override the setLabel(String label) of Command Class.

More can be found here.

This is Cricket

2007-03-17T12:47:00.000-05:00

A collection of videos form YouTube introducing cricket.

A 4 min overview of cricket (1. Batting & Scoring Runs, 2. Bowling, 3. Fielding, 4. Catching, and 5. Wicket Keeping)...

The following videos cover each topic in detail,

1. Batting & Scoring Run

Scoring Run

2. Bowling

3. Fielding

4. Catching

5. Wicket Keeping

Collection of Blogger Beta related websites

2007-02-14T00:10:00.000-05:00

In this post I am trying to collect a list of webistes that have interesting blogger related programming information.

I will add more sites as and when I come across them.

Create expandable post summaries in Blogger Beta

2007-02-13T21:02:00.001-05:00

In this post I explain the trick given in the blogger help to create expandable post summaries. I present screenshots to explain the steps required to create the "read more..." link as found in this post. This post specifically focuses on Blogger ~~Beta~~.

Ok lets start the process of creating expandable posts.

STEP 1
Login to your blogger account and go to "Template -> Edit HTML" page as shown below.

Click on the image to enlarge

STEP 2
Copy the following style information BEFORE </head> tag in your template as shown below,

Click on the image to enlarge

STEP 3
Save the template. This will ensure that the style information is saved before we perform the next step.

Click on the image to enlarge

STEP 4
Check the "Expand Widget Templates" box as shown below,

Click on the image to enlarge

STEP 5
Search in the page the tag <data:post.body/>

STEP 6
Copy the following code below the tag <data:post.body/>,

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'><br />
<a expr:href='data:post.url'>Read more!</a>
</b:if>

Click on the image to enlarge

Save the template. You are almost done ... :)

STEP 7
Goto "Posting -> Create -> Edit HTML" and create a new post. Use the following code to separate the summary from the full post

Summary goes here.

Click on the image to enlarge

Publish the post to see the summary, and when you click on "Read More !" you will see the full posting. That's it !!!. Do not forget to leave your comments below.

Ref:
[1] http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42215

Hawaii

2006-09-19T22:09:00.000-05:00

Some pictures of the Big Island...

Virginia Beach, VA

2006-09-02T22:00:00.000-05:00

Some pictures of Virginia Beach, VA.

Penn's Cave

2006-05-28T22:30:00.000-05:00

Here I present some great pictures of Penn's Cave, America's only all-water cavern. More information about the cave can be found here http://www.pennscave.com/.

Daytona Beach, Florida

2006-05-23T22:32:00.000-05:00

Enjoy some pictures of Daytona Beach, Florida.

Sebastian Inlet State Park, Florida

2006-05-23T22:20:00.000-05:00

Here are some pictures of Sebastian Inlet State Park, Florida.

NASA - Kennedy Space Center, Florida

2006-05-21T23:14:00.000-05:00

Here are some snaps from John F. Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The place is filled with technology.

Lake Okeechobee, Florida

2006-05-20T22:58:00.000-05:00

Here are some pictures of Lake Okeechobee, Florida.

Miami Beach, Florida

2005-05-26T02:40:00.000-05:00

Here I am posting some of the pictures I took on my trip to Miami Beach on May 26th, 2005.

Mahanadi River in Orissa, India

2005-05-03T09:09:00.000-05:00

In this post I am going to use thickbox's gallery feature to show some pictures.

Here are some pictures of Mahanadi. Mahanadi is a river in the state of Orissa. Click on the images to enlarge, and click again to close.

MIT and around Boston

2005-03-06T23:52:00.000-05:00

Here are some pictures from Boston. Pictures also include some pictures from around MIT.

Please update

2003-07-18T04:48:00.000-05:00

I have integrated my website with www.blogger.com. I will post my blog entries here.