JIRA Workflow Transition Displaying Wrong Text

I've been doing some JIRA administration and customization for a client, and I ran into a problem that was driving me crazy. I created a new workflow to deal with an Issue Type called Change Request by copying an exsiting workflow. I renamed one of the transitions from "Close Issue" to "Decline CR," and I associated a screen with the transition (the reason for creating a new workflow).

The name of the transition ("Decline CR") displayed correctly in the administration page, but in the regular display page of a Change Request issue, the name of the workflow action was still the old value ("Close Issue") from the original workflow. I tried a few things to fix it, but nothing seemed to help. I even tried changing the workflow scheme and changing it back. Still nothing.

This morning while fishing around in the administration pages, I found the problem. The transition included an internationalization property, jira.i18n.title, that specifies what appears to be the title of the workflow action, closeissue.title. I picked up that property when I cloned the workflow - the ultimate origin of the workflow was the JIRA's default workflow, which was internationalized. Removing the property got the workflow action name ("Decline CR") to display correctly. (I'm not working in a multi-language environment, so I don't need any localization.)

Converting a WordPress blog to a 'One-Click Install' on DreamHost

We set up a WordPress blog on DreamHost a while ago for a client. It was a custom install due to a bunch of craziness related to him getting booted from his old hosting setup. It all worked fine, and then DreamHost sent me a "nag email" (their term) asking me to upgrade because the old version had security issues. Fair enough.

I had another site to upgrade, but it had been installed as a one-click install. The upgrade for that was one click (plus some backing up). I could have manually upgraded this custom install, but if I did that, I knew I'd have to continue doing manual upgrades. Therefore, I wanted to convert this custom WP install to a one-click install.

DreamHost didn't seem to have any instructions, but how hard could it be? Basically, the procedure was pretty similar to what you'd go through to move a WP from one server to another.

1. Backup the database and the old site: I backed up the old DB using mysqldump, and I tarred up the old site.
   
2. Export the old site: from the WP admin page, select Export and dump all authors.
   
3. Create a new database in the DreamHost control panel. In theory, you could drop all the tables in the old DB and re-use it, but I was being paranoid, which paided off later.
   
4. Move old site out of the way: just move the old site directory to a new name - e.g., mv site.com save.site.com.
   
5. Create a new 'One-Click Install' WordPress site using Advanced Mode, since we had a custom theme and a bunch of other content (pictures). This was put in the new database. After DreamHost emailed me to tell me that was done, I logged in and changed the admin password.
   
6. Import the old content from the Admin Import function. Actually, DreamHost's email included the URL for that page. One issue I ran into was the "user name" for the old posts: WP thought the old posts by admin were from some other user because in the old blog, the admin user had a different display name.
   
7. Copy in the custom theme and other content from the old saved directory into the new blog site. Enable the theme. Set up Akismet - this is where having the old DB around was useful; I just looked in the wp_options table to find the API key instead of having to dig around for it.

enjoy,
Charles.

Seven Habits of Effective Text Editing - with Vim

I'm a big fan of vim. It's the Unix vi editor with a large number of improvements. The biggest thing I like about it is that it runs pretty much everywhere - Unix/Linux, Mac, and Windows. Having a powerful, familiar editor on Windows was a huge technological leap forward for me when I spent a lot of time on Windows, and it's still very useful on those occasions when I'm "stuck" on Windows.

I recently stumbled across an old article (Nov 2002) from the creator of vim, Bram Moolenaar, that describes how to use vim more effectively. The big thing I learned from it is how to use ctrl-N to complete things like identifiers in programming languages - e.g., type "read" and it expands to "readlines" and offers you a list of other options in your program. Granted, this is old hat for fancy-ass IDEs like Eclipse and Netbeans, but I had no idea that little old vim had it. I guess that's what they mean by vim means "vi-improved."

enjoy,
Charles.

Roomba Rants

I recently started using my (comparatively old) Roomba again, and I've been reminded of my chief complaint about Roomba: it gets dirty and needs to be cleaned.

Our house is a regular petting zoo, so stuff accumulates pretty quickly. This fills up the bin, which isn't so bad because emptying the bin is quick and easy. But the human hair and pet fur fowls the brush, and that takes some serious effort to clean. I suppose the Roomba for pets (which appears to be discontinued) addresses this with a brush that is comparatively easy to clean.

And then last night I discovered a new place to clean: the side sweeper brush. That thing was totally fowled (not surprising considering I just discovered that I needed to clean it - "read all the words"), and it took me 10 to 15 minutes with my pocket knife and tweezers.

I find it ironic that a cleaning tool requires a non-trivial amount of cleaning. Perhaps if I kept up with regular vacuuming, Roomba wouldn't get so overwhelmed by crap.

Finally, the reason I'm just getting back to using Roomba is that I just got a new battery after killing the old one some time ago. It turns out managing batteries with Roomba is a bit different than other devices I've used. Typically, I run devices down and recharge them. If I don't have an immediate use, I'd leave the device uncharged. Well, Roomba keeps discharging the battery even if it's not in use. And if you do that to a battery that's already low, it deeply discharges the battery - definitely not A Good Thing. I noticed the discharging thing: sometimes when I'd charge the battery and not use Roomba immediately, the battery would be low when I went to use it. So, Roomba prefers being left on the charger, even if you're not using it, which is something I tend to avoid with other devices. Anyway, the result was that I only got ~50 cycles out of the original battery - not good. The recording on Roomba's tech support tells you if you're not using the unit anytime soon, you should take the battery out. Fortunately, it's easy to install and remove the battery - e.g., no screws required.

Don't get me wrong: Roomba is still fun to use, and I did just put down more money for a new battery. So, I will continue to use it. It's just not as carefree and easy as I'd like to see it.

Later,
Charles.