I have wanted to install ESXi for a long time now, thankfully we have a spare Dell PowerEdge 1950 for me to use. I am going to install FreeNAS and pfSense to get the hang of using it. Later I will install some real machines. Here is a quick audio-less screencast showing how to connect with the vSphere client and create a new virtual machine.

We have an older medical office that we need to upgrade. It is using XP as a server and several Win2000 boxes as the clients. The practice management software is not compatible with Windows 7. We couldn't upgrade the software nor could we downgrade the new boxes to XP. I suggest VMWare (my answer for most everything lately) but this time Microsoft's Virtual PC and XP mode came to the rescue. We were able to test and configure the first machine, shut it down, save it to a network share and co

Problem : I have to use a punch clock webapp for work. It doesn't have jQuery already included and I would like it to work from the iPhone. Solution : Write a bookmarklet in javascript. Fill-in the text fields and click the submit button. (function(){ // Grab the username and password input fields user = document.getElementById('txtUserName'); pass = document.getElementById('txtPassword'); // Grab the submit button, oddly named 'punch' punch = document.getElementById('btnPunch

Here are some interview questions, when I'm back from vacation I'll have proper examples write out a dog class in JavaScript with a color property and a bark method var Dog = function(color) { this.color = color; this.bark = function() { console.log('woof'); } }; If I wanted to create a new dog var clarence = new Dog('black and white'); and if I wanted to add an eat method to the Dog class. This is will add it for all previously defined instances of the Dog class. Dog.prototype.eat = function(

In this quick video I show how to use iOS boilerplate to make a quick JSON driven blog.

Recently Google announced that Google App Engine is leaving preview. Along with a SLA they are also putting their pricing into effect. There has been a lot of speculation, but no one knows for sure how things will keep playing out. What does this mean for mcottondesign? It means that even if everything stays the same, now would be a good time to re-write this blog in Node.js and CouchDB on EC2. I have already shown how to make an all javascript blog in my screencast series with the same name

I have been pushing changes to my github repos and haven't come up with another screencast yet. The major decision is to stay with Google App Engine or to leave.

I am working on making a new screencasts series as I make a real-time multiplayer game. I need a head start before I start recording. Stay tuned.

I have several ideas for future screencasts but am not sure what direction to run in. Here is my list of future topics Use Socket.io to create a live view of database writes into couchdb Work on a prototype of my self-monitored security system Work on a iOS app used to explore the returned JSON from various APIs Improving my twilio-node module Please let me know if there is another topic you want to hear about [ http://twitter.com/mcotton ]

This week I look at quickly solving problems using JSFiddle.net

Github repo is at https://github.com/mcotton/GAE-CRM

The code is open source and on github Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 - CouchDB Map/Reduce explanation

The code is open source and on github Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 - CouchDB Map/Reduce explanation

The code is open source and on github Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 - CouchDB Map/Reduce explanation

The code is open source and on github Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 - CouchDB Map/Reduce explanation

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a w

The code is open source and on github Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 - CouchDB Map/Reduce explanation

The code is open source and on github Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 - CouchDB Map/Reduce explanation

The code used in making this blog is now open-source and available on github . In addition to that, there are several screencasts about how it was created. It feels good to make it available, look for more contributions in the future.