Nialls Blog

Firstly, thanks to Jeremy Horn A.K.A. The Product Guy for the jQuery NobleCount plugin.

I've had to use it recently and found it to be quite good, so I've decided to contribute back also.  Nothing much but a possible addition for preventing users from pasting charaters into the relevant textarea and bypassing the keyboard events. See below:

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If you haven't noticed already...

In the run-up to Christmas, I thought it would be nice to add some festive cheer to the "Homepage" of my blog!

For some reason my preference was to add Christmas lights over any other potential effect.  So here it is.

These lights don't just flash either, you can also smash them with your mouse pointer and alter their size.

To alter their size, simply append any of the following options to the URL:

• ?size=pico
• ?size=tiny
• ?size=small
• ?size=medium
• ?size=large

NOTE: There are sound clips used when smashing the lights so please ensure your speaker volume isn't too high (especially if you're in the office!!).

Credit: schillmania.com

Seeing as everyone else out there except me (and a few others) uses a Mac, I thought I'd write this short post regarding installing CouchDB on Windows and how to access the Futon Administration console.

Apache CouchDB is a document-oriented database that can be queried and indexed in a MapReduce fashion using JavaScript. CouchDB also offers incremental replication with bi-directional conflict detection and resolution.

As promised, the quick and dirty way to install CouchDB on windows is as follows:

1. Click here to visit the Wiki and download the installer.  At the time of writing the latest installer was v1.0.1
2. When downloaded, run the installer as an "Administrator" and follow the on-screen instructions.
3. To install couchDB as a Windows Service, leave the default selections as it's automatically configured to do so.
4. Once the installation is complete, for the default installation options, the service "Apache couchDB" should be running under the local system account.
   1. If, after installation you are experiencing permissions issues, see here.
5. Open a modern web browser, in otherwords Firefox (this is also the recommended browser to use).
6. Navigate to: http://127.0.0.1:5984
   1. You should see the following text: {"couchdb":"Welcome","version":"1.0.1"}
7. To access Futon (Administration console) Navigate to: http://127.0.0.1:5984/_utils
8. That's It !!

Told you it was a quick guide ;-)

I will be exploring couchDB further in the near future and will post my experiences here for anyone else who is interested.

In particular, I'll be looking at:

• http://couchdb.riaforge.org/wiki/index.cfm/Main
• http://github.com/cybersonic/couchdbcfc

Thought I'd clear the cobwebs off the blog and start getting some of these posts I wanted to post online!!

OK, This has been around for a while and if you're not already using Firebug then the following links might come in useful.

In order of _my_ preference check out these utilities for inspecting JS Variables \ Objects.

• http://www.netgrow.com.au/files/javascript_dump.cfm
• http://flesler.blogspot.com/2008/05/jsdump-pretty-dump-of-any-javascript.html
• Alternatively ColdFusion can also provide debug-level messages in the log window, details here:
  • http://livedocs.adobe.com/coldfusion/8/htmldocs/help.html?content=JavaScriptFcns_21.html

If there are any others you know of, feel free to add the to this list.