I just realized I should put all that info into my Gmail Contacts, and then it will appear on my Google Calendar automatically. Oh wait… It doesn’t show up. Damn. Why doesn’t it work?

Turns out, this obviously valued feature is not turned on by default, but it is available.  To get your contacts’ birthdays and other events to show up, simply perform the following in Google Calendar:

Click Settings (the little gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen), then Calendars (link just under the "Calendar Settings" tab), then the Browse Interesting Calendars (lower right) link, then More (under the heading), and finally Subscribe next to the Contacts’ birthdays and events.

Fantastic!  Now you, and more importantly, I should have no reason to forget to remind our friends and family a Happy Birthday.

I did a little research this morning and came across the ReadSync Facebook application which syncs with your Amazon Kindle bookshelf. The application lets you view all the books you have sync’d to your Kindle. It lets you share a book on your wall with friends, and even see your friend’s bookshelf (if they are also using the application.) This looks to be exactly what I wanted.  The only drawback is those hardcover and paperback books I still happen to pick up from time to time (mostly technical books which I want to quickly be able to thumb through.) For these I will still rely on weRead, unless ReadSync makes an update to allow a reader to manually add books to their bookshelf.  I think a hybrid application containing both eBooks and tangible books would satisfy all readers.  Maybe I will contact the developer and try to get that ball rolling.

Happy Reading!

I think the ‘verified’ or ‘official’ account identifier that Twitter put in place should be Enhancement #1 on the Ping backlog.  I’m still liking the service, and will continue to use it, but I’ll stay away from following artists until this gets resolved.

So far, so good.  If you are need of a good screenshot/capture tool, and don’t feel like forking over $50 for a SnagIt license, check out Greenshot.

I found a robust and relatively simple calendar control to use for web UIs. It can use a pop-up window or a floating <div> tag. I prefer the latter as it makes the page look good and avoids a pop-up.

To use the control simply put the CalendarPopup.js file in your application’s “scripts” directory and be sure to include it in your JSP. (I used this in a Java app, but you can apply it to any language.)

Download the and put it in your images directory.

Add the following lines to your application’s JavaScript file (or include on the same page if you don’t have an external JS file):

// Set up Calendar control
var calObj = new CalendarPopup("calDiv");
calObj.showNavigationDropdowns();
calObj.setMonthNames('JAN','FEB','MAR','APR','MAY','JUN','JUL','AUG','SEP','OCT','NOV','DEC');

// Handle the Calendar control
function doCalendar(destObjId, srcObj) {
    calObj.select(document.getElementById(destObjId),srcObj.id,'dd-MMM-yyyy');
}

Then add the following lines to your JSP:

<script>document.write(getCalendarStyles());</script>

In your JSP, add the following HTML code where you want your date field and calendar control:

<input id="dateField" style="width: auto;" maxlength="11" name="actualDate" size="25" type="text" />
<img id="imgCal" onclick="doCalendar('dateField',this);return false;" src="cal.gif" border="0" alt="" />

That’s it!

In order to workaround IE 6′s inability to recognize the z-index attribute on the tag, I made some modifications to the original JavaScript code. You will need to pass the an ID value to be used for the hidden that will overlay the box.

var calObj = new CalendarPopup("calDiv", "calFrame");

You will also need to specify the following styles in a stylesheet. The ID values in the stylesheet must match the names of your DIV and IFRAME IDs on your page.

div#calDiv {
    position:absolute; visibility:hidden;
    background-color:white;
    layer-background-color:white;
}
.select-free {
    position:absolute; z-index:10;/*any value*/
    overflow:hidden;/*must have*/
    width:152px;/*do not change value for calendar control */;
}
.select-free iframe#calFrame {
    display:none;/*sorry for IE5*/
    display:block;/*sorry for IE5*/
    position:absolute;/*must have*/
    top:0;/*must have*/
    left:0;/*must have*/
    z-index:-1;/*must have*/
    filter:mask();/*must have*/
    width:3000px;/*must have for any big value*/
    height:3000px/*must have for any big value*/;
}

Your JSP now needs the following line:

<div id="calDiv" class="select-free"></div>

Brought a tear to my eye after @wilw got involved.

I was also interested to find out that the new Google Wave application only works with IE if you have the plug-in installed.

The plug-in works in Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8, and requires you to have Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7.

It’s been several months since the acquisition, but today I got fed up.  BEA used to have a website, dev2dev.bea.com, where they would post clever tips, tricks, etc. about the WebLogic platform.  I would have thought that Oracle would have kept all of this “useful” content alive after the website consolidation, but I was wrong.  It wasn’t bad enough they killed the forums at BEA, which has since caused all Google searches to come up with a plethora of dead links since the BEA URLs no longer exist.  Links from other forums to BEA listings are now worthless as well.

But hey, I can always go over to the forums at Oracle’s website and search there right?  One would think that was a logical solution, that is until they found out the honest truth:  Oracle’s search engine is powered by the Total Perspective Vortex.  At least that is what it feel’s like each time I attempt to find any God-damned thing on their site.

All I wanted was the article about the Thread Dump Analyser (TDan) tool that was written a while back.  It’s the best tool out there IMHO for performing thread dump analysis and being able to represent the output in a visual way.  It’s a good thing I keep a backup copy of the tool available.

Good Night.