Monday, November 30, 2009

Open Journal Systems - error on document.login.password or document.login.username

I've made a bug fix for OJS (Open Journal Systems). Its a bug related to IE, and sometimes keeps users from being able to login.

Message: 'document.login.password' is null or not an object
or Message: 'document.login.username' is null or not an object
Line: 148
Char: 2
Code: 0
URI:
http://www.dsq-sds.org/login/signIn
/templates/user/login.tpl on line 30
change
<form method="post" action="{url .... }" >

to
<form method="post" id="signIn" action="{url ... }" >


Then at roughly line 65 change the line about document.login.username to
document.getElementById("signIn").{if $username}password{else}username{/if}.focus();

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Repayment is the hardest part of student loans.

So now you've gotten a job, and are paying back your student loans, but you notice, not all loans are equal.

Loan1: $3000 @ 1.5%
Loan2: $4000 @ 4.0%
Loan3: $5000 @ 6.0%
Loan4: $1000 @ 8.0%

example: several loans, at varying interest rates. This example averages to $13,000 @ 4.5%

When you make payments, which loan would you like to choose to pay off first. That is not really an option available to the paybacker. If you do nothing, but make your payments, say a $1000 payment, then 1000/4 = $250 gets applied to each loan. Or, the better way would be to apply all $1000, to your most expensive loan, to knock it away.

Applying to most expensive loan: 12,000 @ 4.20%
Applying to all loans: 12,000 @ 4.46%

And thats one easy way how being smart, makes you save money. But to do this with student loans, it quite difficult and time consuming. This is a natural way to design a repayment system when you're the lender, but after every payment you make (online), you have to then send an email saying, hey, I want this to be applied to my most expensive loan. To which they [The Direct Loan Servicing Center] reply, um, we can't really do that, but we'll do something, and its going to take 7-10 days regardless.

To those who believe that the free market will have the solution, because I could use some innovation, and competition, hopefully someone with a decent enough website so I can make targeted payments.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Installing Google Plugin for Eclipse Galileo

This was interesting, a fresh install of the Google Plugin for a freshly installed Eclipse Galileo on a (near) freshly installed Ubuntu Karmic, and it was miserable.

My first attempt:
Ubuntu -> Add Software -> Eclipse (Galileo) -> Install
Eclipse -> Install New Software -> Google -> Plugin, SDK
, ...
...Fail!
org.eclipse.wst.sse.ui is missing error.
Luckily, others have noticed, and this steps you forward
http://code.google.com/eclipse/docs/faq.html#wstinstallerror

Second attempt, same as the first, with the help from FAQ, then a new error:
An error occurred while installing the items
session context was:(profile=PlatformProfile, phase=org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.phases.Install, operand=null --> [R]org.eclipse.ant.ui 3.4.1.v20090901_r351, action=org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.actions.InstallBundleAction).
The artifact file for osgi.bundle,org.eclipse.ant.ui,3.4.1.v20090901_r351 was not found.


Whats this: equinox, p2, ant.ui ??
I don't understand this, but with new eclipse comes new update manager (p2). And this is not going well.

Satisfies me attempt:
Uninstall Eclipse, delete /home/user/workspace, cry for 15 minutes, get coffee.
Synaptic Package Manager, click to install/reinstall pretty much everything that says [eclipse] or [gwt].
I selected: libgwt-user-java, libgwt-dev-java, eclipse, eclipse-*..., eclipse-plugin-cvs, reinstalled libequinox-osgi-java.

And then when I go into Eclipse->Install New Software, I select Google Plugin, restart, install the rest of the Google stuff, and I'm in business.

If asked, I don't know what to answer, whats harder, learning a new language, or learning to install the new language.

UPDATE:
These are the repo's I used.
http://download.eclipse.org/releases/galileo
http://download.eclipse.org/webtools/updates/ -- I'm not sure this one was needed.
http://dl.google.com/eclipse/plugin/3.5