Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Logitech USB Headset H530 on Linux (Ubuntu / Mint)

Just wanted to quickly blog that the Logitech USB Headset H530 works on Mint 11 without any additional drivers to install.  Since it's a Debian style OS, I think would on Ubuntu as well. I'm blogging wheneve I find hardware that isn't noted for Linux but works anyways.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Adobe ColdFusion 9 on Mac Lion - Fix for cfdocument and Hanging Admin

First let me start off that I am not a Mac owner and therefore please keep this in mind.


One of the issues with ACF9 on Mac OSX Lion is the use of the java.awt package to get items like the list of available printers.  The AWT package is just a wrapper for a packages that are native on the target operating system.  In this case, there are bugs in the apple.awt.CToolkit class that is the problem on MAC.


We were having an issue with Mach-II 1.9 hanging on MAC Lion recently and we narrowed it done to our use of java.awt.Toolkit.  You can indicate to the JVM that you want to use the sun.awt.* package instead which appears to have fixed the issue for Mach-II 1.9 for Mac OSX Lion users.  The positive side effect is that it fixed the hung "Info" page in the CFIDE as well.


You probably already have headless=true in your jvm.config file, however you need another directive to use a different awt toolkit otherwise the JVM will default the buggy apple.awt toolkit.


Let me know if this fixes other ACF9 issues on Mac OSX Lion like cfdocument.




-Djava.awt.headless=true
-Dawt.toolkit=sun.awt.HToolkit




Update 1: This appears to have fixed generating PDFs using cfdocument as well.


Update 2: I'd like to thank Sumit Verma at Ten24Web for spending 4 hours nailing down that AWT was causing an issue in Mach-II 1.9. This is what led me down the right path to this JVM config argument change.


Update 3: Typically it is "CF9/runtime/bin/jvm.config" where CF9 is the location you installed CF.  Be sure to make a back up copy of the jvm.config in case you foo bar something.

Samsung SyncMaster TA350 - Fix Fuzzy or Blurry Text and Fonts

I recently got a Samsung SyncMaster TA350 for my office.  I was really excited about have a nice 23" monitor for laptop and have a nice dual-head display.

The Samsung have VGA and two HDMI ports.  My laptop has DVI and HDMI so I opted to use the HDMI connection.  I was extremely disappointed to the quality of the image.  Text was blurry / fuzzy and I got it slightly better by changing the subpixel settings in my OS and messing with the options in the OSD on the Samsung.  I confirmed that the output was 1920 x 1080 however things just didn't look the best.

There are two tricks to getting great output to your Samsung.

  • I did some research and opted to buy a DVI to HDMI cable.  DVI is just subset of the features of HDMI so cables are less thatn $10. Using this cable improved things a lot.

  • You need to tell the Samsung that you have a computer connected to it.  It is not intuitative at all but it's simple. (Just be sure that your cable is connected to HDMI port 1).



  1. Press the "Source" button on the remote.

  2. Scroll to HDMI/DVI 1

  3. Press the "Tools" button on the remote

  4. Select "Edit Name"

  5. Scroll and select "DVI PC" from the list of inputs in the menu and confirm


Voila! You should have crisp text / fonts on your Samsung.  I wish that Samsung had this in their manual.

Update January 26th, 2014:

  • If you no longer have the remote, I have not been able to find a solution that works without the remote. You might be able to program an universal remote control unit to work with this device however I have not tried.

  • This probably won't work for the HDMI 2 port. Only the HDMI 1 port is PC compatible (just look on the back of the unit, it even says so).

OpenCF Summit - Schedule


The amazing schedule for OpenCF Summit 2012 is now available! As with last year we had to make some difficult decisions and we still have a couple of surprises up our sleeves we can't announce just yet, but it's a fantastic lineup including:



  • Training on Day 1 from OpenBD, Railo, and Mach-II

  • Fantastic sessions on CFML topics (of course!) in the main conference track from CFML experts and the creators of both the open source engines

  • An unconference track organized on site and starring YOU!

  • Deploying CFML apps to the cloud using Jelastic

  • The fabulous OpenCF Summit Hackfest where you can hack for a good cause

  • The famous (infamous?) "Future of CFML" BOF

  • And much, much more


All that amazing training and content for a mere $72. How is that possible? It's because of our fantastic partners (and we have more of those to announce soon), but instead of pondering life's great mysteries why not go register right now!




Now it the time to register!