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Just a quick note here primarily for my own reference, but also hopefully to save anyone else the faff of getting this set up.

In the arms race between Eclipse and Netbeans, it is Netbeans which seems to have jumped ahead in terms of usability and stability. Unfortunately it does not have Trac integration, forcing you to use the web interface (and as I’ve previously remarked, pretty much all bug trackers are only worth using if you use an API interface).

Cubeon provides Trac support, however it has a real problem with self signed certificates when using SSL. Using their faq over here provides only part of the solution if you happen to be using multiple virtual hosts over SSL.

The gotcha is that only one SSL certificate can be served per IP address/Port combination, and the default one generated by Debian’s setup scripts is for localhost only. In my case I had multiple subdomains of my main site and I could not bind a certificate to a specific vhost to the exclusion of all others.

My solution:

  • Generate a self signed certificate for the server and install it on your vhosts, but when you’re asked for you Common Name enter a wildcard – so instead of www.example.com enter *.example.com.
  • Download and install this certificate in your local keystore, as explained in the faq. Replace <your-server-alias-here> with the address of the Trac server under the wildcard domain e.g. trac.example.com
  • Set up a Trac repo in cubeon, be sure to disable ssl verification (which would otherwise complain about the self signed cert)

Simples, YMMV.

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Many moons ago I wrote an extension to Elgg which allows you to run multiple Elgg sites off of a single install of the codebase.

Following some feedback from the wider world, as well as Elgg’s decision some time ago to move over to github I’ve tidied up the archive and moved it over to github as well.

I have taken the opportunity to perform a provisional migration to support Elgg 1.8, although there are bound to be some outstanding issues. Hopefully this github archive will make collaboration a little bit easier!

Have a play!

» Github Project Page

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Every time I go shopping I end up with a pocket full of till receipts.

Aside from the few things I buy offline which are business related (as an IT consultant most physical things I buy are bought off the internet) these receipts invariably end up in the bin.

What a waste of paper.

Given that now, in the UK at least, we are largely a cashless society – how hard would it be for these receipts to simply be emailed?

When you sign up for a credit card you could optionally give an email address to which to send the receipts. For individuals this could be your home email address (but of course doesn’t have to be), and for business accounts this could be the address of your accountant – bam, no more hunting down lost till stubs on tax day!

For simple PDQ machines the receipt could be emailed by your card company so there won’t be anything extra to do. All that would be required is to suppress the printing of the customer copy and a little bit of education.

Itemised receipts like the ones you get at Tescos would require a little more work as it’d be the store’s back end process that would do the actual mailing. The email address itself however can easily be stored on the card’s chip and saved along with the receipt in the shop’s back end system for later mailing.

Apple, typically ahead of the curve (not unsurprising given their industry) do this already, but this requires an in store registration process – impractical for anything other than purchasing the occasional big ticket item.

Its now 2012 – why do I still have pockets full of useless bits of paper?

Just a thought.

Image “Receipts galore” by Smaku