What a mess. This is a real mess. I normally upgrade to the latest release as WP is normally very good. This time it’s a complete and utter mess. I get the impression 2.8 wasn’t tested. At all. Get 2.8.1 out the door please!

UPDATE 190608

seems something has changed to break plugins which then break wordpress. For me, it’s the podPress plugin. Disabling it brings back the tag functionality.

I’ve been looking into unit testing for C++ and tried out cppunit, which blows up spectaculary when it runs and the errors are so bad I just can’t be bothered with it. It took and age to figure out how to build it with VisualStudio 9 and it still doesn’t run properly. So I had a look at Boost.Test. The blurb on the site proclaims “one of the most highly regarded and expertly designed C++ library projects in the world” and it is easier to use than cppunit. So how to get started with a simple test? (more…)

Just read this great article on dealing with change in your projects:

The Clint Eastwood school of change

I’ve been asked quite a few times where people can find the source code for Guanxi::Beans, i.e. guanxi-beans-x.x.x.jar, so I thought I’d just jot down a few notes on this module.

Guanxi::Beans contains a load of Java classes that the other modules (IdP, Engine, Guard) use to work with SAML and their own XML configuration files. The confusing thing is, there’s no source code. The beans are generated using XMLBeans, which process the various XML schemata that Guanxi uses. The main ones are:

• Beans/xsd/saml – SAML1.1 and SAML2 metadata XML schemata
• Beans/xsd/shibboleth – the Shibboleth SAML Profile schema
• Beans/xsd/guanxi-*.xsd – the Guanxi configuration files (more…)

Another ship is now sailing the Shibboleth seas. This time it’s the open source content management system Alfresco which Prof Aggie at Leeds University has shibbed as part of the JISC funded AMSeT project. She’s flying the Guanxi flag too! You can read about Aggie and his team’s work on their AMSeT site.

I got a report that the Guanxi IdP doesn’t work on Tomcat 6, so I went digging and it came down to this line in the AttributeAuthority:

EntityDescriptorType sp = (EntityDescriptorType)servletContext.getAttribute(
  request.getParameter(samlRequest.getAttributeQuery().getResource()));

It’s a bit of code that checks to see if the AttributeStatement needs to be signed. It works on Java 5 and Java 6 as well as Tomcat 5.x but it blows up with this exception on Tomcat 6:

java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap.get(ConcurrentHashMap.java:768)
...
at org.guanxi.idp.service.shibboleth.AttributeAuthority.
preHandle(AttributeAuthority.java:299) (more...)

I was reading about Connectivism a while ago as I’m interested in how people learn and I know fine well how I learn and I thought it would be fun to apply the theory to my own learning experiences. I also thought it would be interesting to look at both sides of the argument for connectivism, as I’m an associate lecturer and software engineer. I both design and build connected systems and also use them for educating my students.

I’m no eLearning expert, in fact I’m barely a Novice on the Dreyfus Model although I’d prolly put myself in the Expert category in a lot of software development categories, so it’ll be interesting to plod along and try to see it from “the other side of the fence”, although I’m in the position of being on both sides at once! (more…)

The Guanxi Shibboleth Service Provider Engine v2.0.2 is now available for download. This is a minor bugfix release to address issues of local metadata trust.

• v2.0.2
• WEB-INF/config/spring/application/entity.xml, updated spEntityFarm, local-metadata is now handled by spLocalSAML2EntityManager
• Updated org.guanxi.sp.engine.job.SAML2MetadataParser to improve refreshing metadata, eliminating periods of no metadata while parsing new entities
• Updated WEB-INF/guanxi_sp_engine/jsp/process.jsp to use fmt tags instead of loading ResourceBundle using Accept-Language header
• Updated WEB-INF/guanxi_sp_engine/config, removed guard_template.zip as it’s no longer used.

What on earth is keeping me from blogging? The Carnival of Projects! What on earth is that? It’s what I’ve been working on recently at $WORK:

Oddbod : A migration application for getting out of Elgg 0.9 and into 1.5. Ruby and PHP

bb-create-user-service : A Blackboard building block that exposes a user creation service. Java

milly-create : A client that can auto create accounts in Millennium library system : Java + SOAP

Guanxi : Updating the IdP : Java

GADfly : ActiveDirectory user and folder management system : C++

Elgg : Various addons to do with notifications and Google Maps : PHP and JavaScript

CPD : Anything to do with getting better : Haskell!

The 2.0.3 release of the Guanxi Shibboleth Identity Provider (IdP) is now available on Sourceforge. (more…)