That’s a terrible blog post title, I know. Nevertheless, I just burned 90 minutes trying to figure out why a simple Spring MultiActionController setup left me with an error: “No request handling method with name ‘list’ in class.” Google was little help, so I resorted to Bing.

Eventually, I found a buried forum response with my exact problem, I had referenced the wrong package’s type! If you’re running in to this, make sure you do this:

import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;

and not this:

import org.springframework.web.portlet.ModelAndView;

This will teach me to be more mindful of what Eclipse decides to add for me automatically.

Pardon the relatively technical post, but I want to document this problem somewhere in hopes that it saves someone the frustration it caused me.

I’ve been experimenting with iPhone development lately. For the most part, it’s been a fun learning process despite the quirks that Xcode, IB, and Obj-C throw at an MS developer. Objective-C is, at worst, a 20-year-old hack that follows few conventions established by most other OO languagues.

My most recent lesson has been adapting my project to use Core Data for persistence. Early on, I kept receiving the error “message sectionOffset sent to freed object” when trying to load a connected table.

I found the solution nowhere online, and the exception is not at all helpful. For me, the problem was that I was trying to access the FetchedResultsController before performFetch had been called. Adding performFetch to my viewDidLoad fixed the issue, and I was on my way. My iPhone app is on its way.

I’m generally no fan of Apple. Their marketing is so frequently filled with lies. The Mac v. PC ads are impossibly smarmy. And the Apple Stores: the retail employees are either so uninformed or so blinded by corporate idolatry it makes me ill. (Don’t get me started on the so-called “genius” bar.)

Mac OS has its moments, but for every cool feature (Exposé, Spaces), there is as much awfulness (menu bar, Finder, window management, keyboard shortcuts). If you really think it’s any better than Vista, it’s probably time to put the Kool-Aid down. And the dev environment, Xcode? What a usability nightmare.

But I’ve certainly been a fan of their hardware ever since my 3rd-gen iPod. Their computers, phones, and media players are certainly the best looking around, and they always seem very solid. With that in mind, curious about iPhone development, and needing a laptop for grad school, I made the plunge and bought my first Mac – a refurbished MacBook Pro (MBP). This was in September.

Three weeks later, conveniently past the return period, Apple announced a new line of MBPs that were much cooler than mine. On top of that, mine started making a really high-pitched noise at medium brightness in Vista. Two separate repairs by the “geniuses” did nothing to fix the problem, and the laptop was beginning to show signs of having been taken apart and reassembled by non-experts.

Here I was seemingly stuck with an “obsolete” machine that made my ears ring and didn’t nearly shine like it had only six weeks ago.

So I was elated yesterday when I called Apple to pursue a third repair or possible exchange. After only a few minutes on the phone with customer service and a few more minutes on hold, they gave me an exception to the return policy – I’ll be getting a full refund for the “old” one. I was really impressed by this; kudos to Apple on a great “make good.” My new MBP is already on the way.

Before I begin, let me clarify that I really enjoy Vista and Windows Media Center (WMC). Don’t let my recent purchases fool you, I haven’t become a Mac, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to. WMC combined with an Xbox 360 or other Media Center Extender (MCE) provides an awesome television viewing experience, especially in HD. With the issues ironed out, it’s been working fantastically for a couple of months now.

However, my experience with it hasn’t been without its problems. The problems themselves wouldn’t have been so bad if they had been well documented online, but they weren’t. This post exists so that hopefully someone else with the same problems can save themselves some of the swearing I’ve been reduced to.

My Setup

• Windows Vista Ultimate
• ASUS P5K Motherboard
• Core 2 Quad – 2.4 Ghz
• 4GB RAM (I only realize 3.25 under 32-bit Vista)
• Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm, 1TB Hard Drive
• SiliconDust’s awesome HDHomeRun network TV tuner

Problem 1: Total Computer Freeze

I had used WMC on my old PC (and extended via the 360) without issue, so when I build the new box, I was pretty excited about seeing it all in HD. You can imagine my disappointment when I fired up the MCE on the 360 to try it out, seeing the great picture only to get an error message telling that WMC couldn’t connect. When I went to the PC to investigate, it was totally locked up. Not like a program had crashed… not like a blue screen… not rebooted… just totally frozen. Nothing to do but turn it off and back on.

This seemed to happen every time I used the extender. Sometimes it would happen immediately after the MCE started, usually it would happen 30 seconds or so in to watching something (live or recorded). Occasionally it would happen after 30 minutes or more of fine performance – this was the most frustrating, as it would seem that some tweaking I had tried had fixed the problem.

Solution: It turns out that this freezing has something to do with the onboard network card of my P5K motherboard, either the hardware itself or the drivers. Strangely, simply adding another network card did not fix the problem. I had to to remove the drivers completely and disable the card in the BIOS settings. After doing that and installing a new network card, this problem has gone away.

Problem 2: “application has launched UI unexpectedly”

I felt great when the total lockup was solved, but that didn’t last long. Soon enough I began to get the “application has launched UI unexpectedly” error from the 360 when trying to launch the MCE. I would reboot, and occasionally that would fix the problem. I also followed the steps in this Microsoft knowledge base article; that seemed to fix the problem too, until a week later when it happened again. Reapplied the steps, problem solved… until a week later when I was trying to demo my sweet setup to a friend… boom. This time reapplying the steps several times did nothing, and I was ready to beat my head against the wall when I saw the annoying “low battery warning” from my mouse driver pop up.

Solution: Duh – that was the unexpected UI! I checked the Startup folder for all users and sure enough, the mouse driver shortcut was there. When someone starts a MCE session, it runs as a separate user on the computer, logged on in the background. So that user was effectively getting the low battery warning with no way to handle them. I moved all the shortcuts from the “all users” startup folder and put them in my own startup folder, and I haven’t seen this happen since.

I hope this helps someone. If so, let me know!

And I’m already done moving my blog. That was easy.

I’m moving TCOB to Dreamhost after experimenting with GoDaddy for several months. GoDaddy was fine, but it didn’t allow for as much technical experimentation. Furthermore, several of their processes seemed convoluted. I’m looking forward to trying out Subversion on Dreamhost as well. I’ll post again to this blog when everything seems moved.

Along with the move to WordPress, I’ve broken TCOB’s RSS and Atom feeds. I tried a couple of mod_rewrite additions to fix that to no avail. So if you’re using the excellent Google Reader or any other RSS aggregator to read TCOB, you’ll want to update your subscription.

The irony of this post is that the intended audience will not see this article, as it alerts them in a way they probably won’t read. Fortunately, I’m sure “they” refers to one person.

While I’m mixing things up, I’ve decided to experiment with the WordPress “personal publishing platform”. MovableType had served me well, but WordPress seems tighter and more versatile. It’s certainly a lot shinier.

I also like that it’s Open Source. I try to use Open Source software as much as possible, but I only do so when it reaches the same level of polish found in comparable commercial versions. This is rare, but WordPress seems to exceed that standard.

Anyway, you’ll see various pre-built themes here until I can figure out how to implement the one I designed myself, at which point you’ll barely see the difference.

Update: back to my theme. Woot! Still a bit of updating left on some pages and posts, but I’ll get to that eventually.

tcob.com now resides at GoDaddy after a sadly frustrating experience at its former host. Dominet had been fine for a couple of years, and I even recommended it to friends. The uptime was never great, and in comparison, they offered fewer services, space and features for the price than my other providers. The last straw was when they decided to upgrade my server’s OS in the middle of the day without warning. That wasn’t resolved by the time I went to bed. Once it was up, it took another day and a half to get my CGI working.

GoDaddy seems pretty sweet so far. Before starting, I had a couple of questions in email that were answered very quickly, and the one phone call I made found a human at the other end of the line with no waiting. Setup was very smooth, and I had easy access to all the CNAME, MX, and SRV records I wanted to change before the transition (I use a lot of the Google Apps for your Domain services). Adding a MySQL database, installing MovableType, and importing all of my blog entries was a piece of cake.

While I’ll miss the shell access I had with Dominet as well as their online file editor, I don’t think I’ll miss them for long. So far so good with GoDaddy.

If anyone is trying to reach me by phone, wait until tonight or tomorrow. I just switched carriers to T-Mobile. My number remains the same, but it has been switched to my new phone, which is still on a truck somewhere between Minneapolis and Plymouth. I’m very excited about my new Blackberry Pearl.

This is a test post for Windows Live Writer. What do you think? Not sure what to think of Writer, but it certainly looks nice so far. One thing I have noticed is that it already has applied my styles to the post, so as I type, I know exactly what it’s going to look like. Neat. I will keep using this and let you know how it goes.

Now, I’m updating the post. I can edit properties below, but I’m getting an extra break between paragraphs. That should be easily fixed. Done.

One thing I don’t like is that the recent posts list only seems to include posts created with Writer. It would be nice to see all posts. Wait, correction: I can open all posts. I just opened The Return of the Tray, checked the spelling, made a few corrections, and updated it online. Wow, this is great! Thanks to Patrick for pointing this out to me. Let’s see if my trackback to him works.

Google continues to impress me with their latest free application, SketchUp. It’s a 3D-modeling tool that’s so fun and easy to use, I’d call it a toy if it weren’t so obviously powerful. Just walking through the tutorial this morning had me saying “wow” outloud several times. You can model your fantasy house, and add it to Google Earth at your own address.

I’ve been all over Google’s stuff lately. Gmail for Domains lets me use the incredible gmail interface for my tcob.com mail. Google Desktop takes the small-applet/widget movement, organizes it, and makes it useful. Google Calendar is already the coolest app for managing my personal schedule.

I’d like to be able to add Picasa to this list. It’s also great at what it does, editing and organizing your photo library. But it’s based on the idea of saving your changes to the database. This is a neat idea, but I need the option of easily applying those changes to the original file. Until then, it’s all about IrfanView.

It’d be great if I learned the lesson taught by Patrick’s situation and actually got myself a backup system. What are the chances?

Not even finished with my photo upgrade, I somehow got it in my head that I had to try Movable Type.

One thing at a time, right? Maybe not. Anyway, Movable Type seems very cool so far. Compared to my old blogging package, Blosxom, it’s certainly more professional and thorough. I’m not 100% convinced yet, but it looks like I’ll be switching. The installation was a bit more involved than Blosxom’s, but within an hour (and thanks to this import script), I had my test blog up and running with all of my old entries in place. The next step is to see if I can bring the old beautiful look to the new system.

Update: I’m sold. As you can see, I’m on the new system. Now to adjust the look!

I’m attempting to update my Gallery installation to version 2. My photos page may or may not be working in the meantime.

Update: The conversion is complete, but I’m not sure how I feel about it. Gallery is a great package, and I do really like having my pictures on my own site. On the other hand, maintaining Gallery can be a lot of work. The amount of options and details can be daunting.

I’m in the process of trying a Flickr pro account, and moving my pictures there. I have mixed feelings about Flickr. More about that later.

Like my good friend Patrick, I’ve lately been the victim of comment spam. What a pain. I’ve adopted Patrick’s simple approach to the problem by including a visible password on the comment page for each entry. So if you have something to say, you still easily can, but simple spam engines should be fooled.

Lacking a laptop, I’m wondering what my best bet for backing up my digital photos will be while I’m in France. I have an iPod, and I had considered the various attachments that let one load an iPod with photos from a digital camera or from cards. Unfortunately, these solutions don’t seem cheap, and their reviews are mixed at best. Does anyone know of a good travel photo backup plan? I don’t have enough cards to store all the pictures I want to take (although maybe the safest solution is to simply buy more cards).

My iPod is back in business, thanks to the excellent, expeditious service I received from ipodmechanic.com. They replaced the cracked LCD and had it back on its way to me in a day or two. And the very reasonable $130 they charged will teach me to be a bit more careful with it at the locker room. 5-foot falls on to locker room floors are shockingly not covered by Best Buy’s service plan. What do they cover?

I recently started using Blosxom to manage and update my site (as recommended by Patrick). It’s a really slick way to manage a blog or an entire web site.

Now my site features (or will feature soon) categorized posting, RSS, and archives. This is all meaningless now, but it might mean something when I actually start posting with regularity.

8/16/2007 Update: In retrospect, Blosxom sucks. MovableType was way better, and WordPress better still.