Apache Ant is regrettably (?) using XML

I’ve done some Apache Ant build file hacking today and that made me recall that the original author of Ant, James Duncan Davidson, actually regretted using XML as the file format. Mysteriously missing from today’s world wide web, but fortunately captured by the Wayback Machine, the blog entry Ant and XML is worth reading. The… Continue reading Apache Ant is regrettably (?) using XML

Most ThinkPad T60p original battery for the money

The old battery for my IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T60p went from bad to useless this autumn but it wasn’t until yesterday that I ordered a new 9-cell battery (7.8 Ah) directly from IBM Sweden where the 9-cell battery actually was cheaper than a 6-cell battery (5.2Ah) . I first looked at well-stocked reseller Dustin but after… Continue reading Most ThinkPad T60p original battery for the money

MySQL support for UTF-8 in Ruby on Rails

As a follow-up to my post about MySQL support for UTF-8 in PHP, here is the very same information for Ruby on Rails. In Rails it is a simple configuration entry in config/database.yml. I use the development configuration as an example: development: adapter: mysql database: dev username: dev password: secret socket: /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock encoding: UTF8 UTF-8… Continue reading MySQL support for UTF-8 in Ruby on Rails

MySQL support for UTF-8 in PHP

Originally published in Swedish in my Folkmun.se Blog, a handy tip to make sure that you are reading and writing UTF-8 when connecting to a MySQL database: mysql_query(“SET NAMES utf8”); mysql_query(“SET CHARACTER SET utf8”)

Let’s Divide and Conquer!

This is my new English-language blog about various software development topics that catch my interest. I’m quite sure that for example Android, Ruby on Rails and agile software development will be mentioned.