Well, I’ve been writing so much lately about technology I thought I’d take a break and mention I’ve got two new pieces of art in my collection. They are both limited edition Shepard Fairey (Obey Giant) prints that were sent out as holiday gifts. Peace Fingers Red was given to friends, family, and vendors in 2006 an edition of 200. Peace Tree Yellow was again given as a gift in 2007 and is an edition of 350.  Both prints are 18×24, signed, numbered, and extremely rare.  Peace Fingers and Peace Tree both exist as standard prints, but the gift editions have variations which make them unique.

A quick how-to guide on installing MySQL Server on Apple OS X 10.5.5:

1. Download the correct disk image for your flavor of OS X.
2. Open the image and notice two packages, click the one “mysql-5.0.xx-osx-10.5-x86.pkg
3. Follow the installation wizard (choose the installation location, click next, etc).
4. In the disk image you’ll see a file MySQL.prefPane — double click this file, it will install to your system preferences.
5. Now in system preferences you’ll see an icon/name pair “MySQL” — click this once to open the configuration settings. Click ‘Start Server’, this will boot up the server*.

** Lastly, if you wish the server to start each time you reboot click the checkbox “Automatically start MySQL at Startup.” Lastly, if you wish the server to start each time you reboot click the checkbox “Automatically start MySQL at Startup.”

Thats it, you are ready to roll. Use your favorite MySQL management GUI to connect to the local database or simple use the ‘mysql’ command from a terminal window. Don’t forget to initially set your root password.

Sitelinks are additional links Google sometimes generates from site contents in order to help users navigate your site which appear as a pseudo sub-navigation in the search results. Sites have no control if/when Google will generate these sitelinks directing users to content, or what links it will choose (surely I would have selected others).  Well I just noticed that Google has created some sitelinks for my blog www.brianjeremy.com.  What’s interesting is that not only have I confused others, but I have confused google too regarding my name.  If you google ‘Brian Jeremy’ (my first and middle name) you will see the sitelinks displayed below, however if you google my actual  name ‘Brian Kupetz’ you won’t see any such sitelinks.  Maybe in the near future Google will determine we are one in the same.

Let me preface this article by stating that I initially began using reinvigorate as an analytics tool in 2003.  This was much before Urchin became popular and was later purchased by Google and turned into Google Analytics which these days is the de-facto standard for most applications.  Reinvigorate is an application thats been under sole development from Sean McNamara for six years and has gone through many different phases and iterations.

Currently a new and revolutionary version of reinvigorate is under beta testing again and will released in the near future alongside a tandem product called Snoop.  Snoop is a desktop application with both Windows and OS X versions.  Snoop runs in the system tray or status bar (depending on your operating system) and instantly notifies you of a new visitor or interaction with your site.  As seen in the screenshots below Snoop allows you to identify the visitor’s session, IP Address, the current page they are viewing, as well as the referrer and custom fields.

Snoop is not a replacement for reinvigorate’s web-based analytics suite which is one of the most robust and feature-rich on the market.  So don’t be fooled this project hasn’t moved away from the origins of web page analysis, instead it is now integrated into your operating system and coupled with an additional desktop application.

Key Features

• Custom Events – Using basic Javascript you can create an unlimited amount of custom events.  For example, if you are interested determining when a visitor signs up on your mailing list, or purchases a specific product you can easily integrate the tracking of these events and view them as they occur.  All events have the option to trigger audible sounds, however if you are analyzing a high trafficked site you likely won’t need the audible notification enabled as it will sound like your best friend ringing your door bell non-stop at 4 am to kidnap you and fly you to Las Vegas for a bachelor party.
• Name Tags – If your site requires users to login and authenticate you can seamlessly capture this data using  simple Javascript code similar to the Custom Events so this information can be included in the data collection process.  Basically not only can you analyze how visitors use your site, you can actually identify those visitors for more specific trend analysis. 
• Real-time Notification – As it has been since day one reinvigorate has been a product that collects and reports data in real-time.  It doesn’t sweep your web logs each night to see how many visitors stopped by yesterday and let you know what pages they viewed and for how long.  Everything is revealed to you in real-time as it happens.  Think of Snoop as as the stock market of web analytics.

If you aren’t already excited about how powerful this product is, you should be.  Knowing Sean there will be even more features included prior to the public release.  Follow me on Twitter (@brianjeremy) or register to be included in the Beta to learn more about the product or to be notified when the final public release is available.

Below you will find a few screen shots of the new OS X and Web Interfaces.

As a footnote, I should probably give a mention of (MT) Media Temple who has been an infrastructure supporter of reinvigorate since its inception.

The Release

Formerly known as the Casa Framework, Casa Lib recently launched its updated ActionScript 3.0 compatibility version. Over the years the project was renamed from the Casa Framework to the Casa Lib since it became apparent that it provides features more closely related to a code library than a framework.  The open-source library is intended for ActionScript 3.0/Flex developers to gain efficiencies of scale: code faster, with greater standardization, reliability, and flexibility.

The library provides core classes, utilities, and interfaces for both AS2/AS3.  A few touts of the latest release include such features as a standardized external load API, improved rapid garbage collection, the ability to remove listeners with IRemovableEventDispatcher, and an abundance of utility classes for common manipulations.  Though this is the initial AS3 “stable” public release it has been reliably tested on numerous high-profile production AS3 driven websites.  For a partial list of sites that have been built using the Casa Framework/CasaLib you will find a great list here.

I had a quick back-and-forth with Aaron this morning and the future of Casa Lib looks bright! As Adobe releases flash player version 10 (code named “Astro”) the Casa team is planning to begin integrating features and utilities for FP10 in coming releases.

You can obtain version 1.0.0 of the library via download at http://as3.casalib.org/releases/1.0.0/1.0.0.zip or via SVN Repository at http://svn.as3.casalib.org/releases/1.0.0/ Additionally the documentation can be found here: http://as3.casalib.org/releases/1.0.0/docs/

The History

Casa was originally created by Flash guru Aaron Clinger in 2005, making its first public appearance in early 2007.  From 2006 – 2008 Aaron held the role of Lead Developer at Odopod, the world renown San Francisco design studio.  It wasn’t soon later that Mike Creighton joined as co-lead of the project.  Currently Aaron and Mike are both consulting and available for freelance work.

If you haven’t had a chance yet to take a test run of the Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash I suggest you browse through the documentation here.  Currently the code functions with AS3, but I imagine in the near future the the library will modified for AS4 compatibility. 

Ever have an issue locating your triggers w/ MS SQL Server Management Studio or forget what triggers are running?  Well this snippet should lend you a hand:

USE [dbname]
SELECT *
FROM sys.triggers
WHERE is_disabled = 0 -- Enabled
ORDER BY [Name];
GO

I once had a girlfriend who insisted I was “secretive” and “mysterious.” Well, I guess those days are over with the birth of my blog last year www.brianjeremy.com, twitter, facebook, and the general lack of privacy all American’s face these days. So, I thought I’d release a partial list of applications and tools I use regularly to help me in my profession [we can define exactly what I do in another post - I suppose in simple terms I direct software development and oversee system administration]. Oh, most of these services, tools, subscriptions aren’t free but increase productivity drastically so get your AMEX in hand.

Server Diagnostics & Maintenance

• Pingdom – Monitors HTTP, UDP, TCP, PING : Sends a TXT alert if there is an issue.
• DNSstuff – Comprehensive DNS Diagnostics: Full Analysis Reports, Reverse Lookups, Traceroutes, Ping, SPF, Whois, and way to many services to list.
• Netcraft – Provides Host Netblocks, Application/Web Server make/model, sub-domains, provides a historical list of changes to Servers/IPs overime.
• Charles – AN / HTTP Proxy, HTTP Monitor/Reverse Proxy that allows you to view and record all of the HTTP traffic between a client machine and the Internet. This includes requests, responses and the HTTP headers (which contain the cookies and caching information).

Web Development Diagnostic Tools

• Firefox Firebug Extension – With Firebug you can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.  Its insane, just download it.
• Firefox YSlow Extension - YSlow analyzes web pages and tells you why they’re slow based on the the book High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers which you can purchase from Amazon. YSlow is integrated with the Firebug.
• Firefox Web Developer Extension – Since FF became popular amongst developers this became the de-facto tool for front-end  engineers and designers to figure out “how to make web pages appear correct” in various browsers.  The extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with features that allow you to accomplish the above goals of getting your designs to look A+.
• Firefox Server Spy Extension – Its another great tool that indicates what brand of HTTP server you are accessing (e.g. Apache, IIS, Sun-ONE-Web-Server, Tomcat, IBM HTTP etc.)
• Browsershots - Makes screenshots of a web page in a variety of different browsers running on a plethora of operating systems.  In total, it has the ability to produce screen shots [for design/layout debugging] on roughly 80 variants of browsers/operating systems.

Security Analysis Tools

• HTTPPrint - httprint is a web server fingerprinting tool that relies on web server characteristics to accurately identify web servers, despite the fact that they may have been obfuscated.  httprint can successfully identify the underlying web server when their headers are mangled by either patching or other methods.
• ISAPI_Rewrite – Is a powerful regular-expressions-based URL rewriter for IIS. It is compatible with Apache mod_rewrite  (in fact it will interpret Apache mod_rewrite .htaccess files, so you can change web servers w/o any hassle).
• ServerMask – This is an add-on for IIS which masks the brand of your server by modifying its HTTP header data as well as modifies your web server’s “fingerprint” by removing unnecessary HTTP response data, modifying cookie values, removing the need to serve file extensions, and adjusting other response information.  If curious, you’ll have to try httpprint against a production copy of ServerMask to determine its accuracy.

Software Development & Lifecycle

• FogBugz – Is a simple to use bug tracking system.  In addition to tracking, prioritizing, and coordinating bugs and issues.  It can also be used as project management software to better coordinate team communication.
• Atlassian JIRA – In a nutshell JIRA is the most robust bug and issue tracking as well as project management software on the market.  
• Atlassian Bamboo – Is a Continuous Integration and Build Server.  It automates the process of compiling and testing source code, saving time and instantly alerting you of build issues.
• Subversion – Is a widely-used open source version control system.  It maintains current and historical versions of files [typically source code and documentation].
• Versions – Is a new [just out of beta] Subversion client of OS X.  Its amazing, just download it now!

Database Design / Management / Monitoring

• Sybase PowerDesigner – By far the most robust data modeling tool.   Designing schema’s, physical data models, reverse engineering databases, the list is endless.  But save now, its $$$.
• Red Gate SQL Prompt – SQL Server code completion of database object names, syntax, and snippets as you write, intelligently offering only appropriate code choices.  If you write a lot of DB code or work with various databases intelligent name retrieval saves hours.
• Red Gate SQL Compare – compare and synchronize SQL database schemas, automatically traverses all objects and gives a full report prior to providing options for synchronization or simply providing a synchronization script to run at your leisure.
• Red Gate Data Compare – similar to SQL Compare with the caveat that it compares the contents of two databases and automatically synchronizes your data.
• Red Gate SQL Data Generator - One-Click realistic data generation based on the column types you specify. 
• Navicat for MySQL – Best GUI for MySQL database administration.  Distributed for Windows, OS X, and Linux.
• Navicat for Oracle – Just released two weeks ago.  Compatible with oracle 8i to current and supports all objects including directory, tablespace, synonym, materialized view, trigger, sequence, type and more. **Really looking forward to spending more time reviewing this product.

Of course this list isn’t complete, but hopefully you are able to integrate some new tools into your life. Also, please comment if you have any suggestions of items I’ve missed.