Zach and I took an hour or so to swing by the aquarium yesterday after a a nice long bike ride around Dorchester.
The harbor seals were as charming as ever. This one even hung around for a photo with Zach!
Author: Dave Shevett
A wandering geek. Toys, shiny things, pursuits and distractions.
Updating Jarindex
Grump. I had no idea, but Jarindex was not working at all. Searches were coming up blank. Frustrating, when it’s supposed to be a handy search tool for finding classes in the vast swampland of Jar files out on the net.
Anyway, I fixed the indexer, and loaded up Hibernate 3.2 and Jboss 4.2.0 into it. Probably should update other packages as well. Currently I have:
apache-ant-1.6.5 eclipse-SDK-3.1.2 jakarta-oro-2.0.8 jboss-4.0.2 jdk1.5.0_04 jetty-5.1.10 junit3.8.1 OROMatcher-1.1.0a velocity-1.4
axis2 hibernate-3.2 jakarta-slide-webdavclient-bin-2.1 jboss-4.2.0.GA jdom-1.0 jpcap-0.01.16-win32 lps-3.1.1 rss_utils_1.1 velocity-tools-1.2
If any Java geeks want to see other packages loaded into it, let me know.
Cool power supply hack!
This is pretty durned neat. I use a standard bench power supply when doing geektinkering. It has a dial for 9v, 12v, etc, and has the normal banana-posts for connecting up power leads.
Some bright folks noted that PC power supplies, which are a dime a dozen, are +/- 5v and +/- 12v already. Why not just scavenge a power supply, put contacts on it, and use it as your bench PS?
Just like this.
I have to try this!
(Special thanks to Hack-a-day for the link.)
JBoss Release Grumpiness
This is a geek gripe. Particularly for Java programmers. If you’re not doing JEE development, this probably won’t make a lot of sense unless you like seeing open source companies being beaten up for version incompatibilities.
Hello, I’m Dave, and I’m a JBoss developer. (Hi Dave…)
Until recently, I was quite content with the series of tools available for JBoss4, and my chosen IDE, Eclipse. JBoss provided a lovely little plugin interface called JBoss IDE. I encourage people to click on that link, because you’ll walk through a series of redirects until you land on a page that, amazingly, has no information on where to get JBoss IDE! How wonderful!
It turns out that JBoss (now wholly owned by Redhat has pulled JBoss IDE in favor of another Eclipse plugin called Exadel. Fantastic, a new IDE plugin that has a lot more functionality than JBoss-IDE ever had. Lets take a look!
An hour later, and Exadel is installed and running and grand. But. Wait a moment, the latest version of the JBoss application server is 4.2-GA. That’s General Availability. Meaning the platform is released and is the recommended system for users.
Exadel has no configuration support for 4.2-GA. Only for 4.0.x releases.
And JBoss-IDE has been pulled completely (and even it’s ‘2.0.0-beta’ version, the most recent version they posted, did not support 4.2).
“Must be coming out shortly.” So I mailed off to Exadel tech support asking if there was 4.2 support in the works, or when it will come out.
I get a direct, and undeniable response from them:
Dave Belfer-Shevett wrote:
> > Exadel Support Team wrote:
>> > > Exadel Studio Pro is going to be re branded as Red Hat Developer Studio in
>> > > later summer. Red Hat Developer Studio will support JBoss 4.2 .
> >
> > So the answer is “no, it does not support 4.2 now, and won’t until late
> > summer” ?
That’s correct.
-The Exadel Team
Excuse me, but WHAT THE F??? We’ve pulled the old IDE toolset. We’ve released a new product. But you CAN’T USE IT WITH OUR IDE TOOLS! Hahahahha! And you won’t for a couple months. Sorry bout that, have a nice day.
There are workarounds. You can run the jboss server externally in a windows shell and deploy to it. This is a painful arrangement, but I guess I have no choice?
Thanks for leaving us all in the lurch, JBoss.
Rampant Eye Candy
It’s about time I did something with some of this horsepower on my desk. So this week I fired up a couple toys just to have some fun.
Enabling Relationships
I have to admit, there are times when having an enabling partner brings unexpected benefits.
In this case, my wife happens to work for Bose as a project manager, and as such as access to their employee discounts and specials. Because of her signing bonus, we have a lovely Bose Lifestyle 48 soundsystem to complement the Big TV. I would never have the money to be able to afford such an extravagant system, but it’s hard to argue with the discount.
Tonight I added some more pieces to the mix. We got some new speaker stands for the satellite speakers, and rewired the MythTV box a bit. The new stands look great!
Next step will be to use the new video switcher on the LS48 to route video and audio all via the Bose box. That’ll require ducking into the nest O wires behind the display. Something I’m really not looking forward to. :-/
One thing I am toying with though is calling up Comcast and upgrading our cable tuner to HDTV. The whole “we’ll stretch 4:3 to fit on an HD form factor” thing is getting wearing. Unfortunately, I’m guessing that Comcast is not providing boxes with enabled Firewire ports, so the usefulness of my MythTV tuner card is dropping daily. Damned corporations.
On the plus side, though, Ben has successfully aquired the HDTV cable for the Gamecube, so we’ll be enjoying true 480p signal shortly from that little puppy. Mmm, SSX3 in full glory.
MySQL Geekery du jour. Cannot open file error.
This one is going out to the world in general, because it took me 2 hours of googling to find it, and I want to lessen some poor other slobs pain…
MySQL , in this case on a Debian Etch (stable) install, has a limit set on the number of files that can be opened in the mysqld server. Apparently when you start getting close to this limit, like doing something that opens a LOT of tables at once, you start bumping into it. This article describes how to fix this.
Continue reading “MySQL Geekery du jour. Cannot open file error.”
got bent?
The eternal challenges of being non-standard.
I love my Haluzak Horizon USS SWB (that’s Underseat Steering, Short Wheelbase for you uprights) recumbent bike. It has, however, been somewhat of a problem finding a way to MOVE the damned thing from place to place without taking up the entire back of the van.
This past week I borrowed my brother in laws’ hitch-mount sorta-tray style bike rack and used it to haul around Zach’s bike, as well as another one we had on loan for blk’s use, but it was really looking like the ‘bent wouldn’t fit on the rack.
Today I needed to cart some kids around, and needed the inside space. Necessity calls! After some adjusting, fiddling, and bungie-cording, the bike is in place, and secure. It works!
In this picture it sure looks like the boom and the back wheel are sticking out a good foot on either side of the car, but in reality they stick out only about 3″, far inside the distance, say, a rear view mirror does. I think we have a solution. It’s even arranged in a way that SHOULD let me put another bike on the inside of the rack. Yay!
Thanks to BIL for the rack loan! I’ll be looking to buy one for real shortly!
Debian Package Search?
Seems like a simple request. I’d like to search the Debian packages to find out information about something I want to install. “Oh wait, I can just use the packages.debian.org site to look at the package and it’s history.” Hah, how naive I was.
Off to said site I go, I click on search and see… debian search disabled. I can use google, though!
“Wait, I remember this being disabled ages ago. They still haven’t fixed it?” – The text even still says ‘disabled for now, we’re working on it.’ But down at the bottom “Last modified: Mon, Dec 30 03:27:07 UTC 2002”
Boy I want that job. 5 years to make a search work. And it’s still not done yet!
Well, gee. Lets see if the google search they have there is working. Maybe they have it functional, and updating the comment has just slipped their mind. Type in the package I’m looking for (happens to be ‘ytnef’), and click *google search*
And get… a weekly news report in 18 different languages from 2005, which, luckily, includes a link to the package I wanted. If this package hadn’t been mentioned in the news article, I’d never have found it.
Come on Debian. No one in the entire volunteer organization can edit one HTML file?
Getting a release out the door
It feels good when you finally push a release of a product out the door.
The last 2 months I’ve been spending a chunk of time doing updates on Keystone. It’s always fascinating working on code that is pushing 10 years old, seeing things I remember writing during the dotcom boom, and finding other tidbits that make me go “What the HECK was I thinking?”
This release is interesting in that much of the work was pay-for contract updates from a customer who wanted to see some bugs fixed and a few enhancements added in. It’s nice working on something you enjoy, and getting paid for it as well.
The code is just about ready for it’s next major overhaul though. I’m trying to get up the gumption to rip out the entire database back end code and replace it with ADODB. I wrote my own database abstraction layer back in, oh, 1998-ish, but really, the world has moved on a bit since then. It’s time to move with the times.
Far more entertaining than it should be.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEWgs6YQR9A]
(thanks, blame, eye-rolling glances to blk for this one.)
Omgomgomogmg.
TOTAL geek squee.
Starcraft 2 is official. And it’s not a huge variation from the original game – updated after, what, 8 years, naturally, but same 3 races, new vehicles and ships, new engines, all that, but it’s the same game, redone.
Starcraft was one of the few games that totally sucked me in, and I still occasionally play it, years and years later.
The Wikipedia article on Starcraft II is under heavy editing right now, but the details are there.
I highly recommend watching the full cinematic trailer. It totally rocks.
KDE Gripe Du Jour
So this sure doesn’t make sense.
I like pushing my desktop around a bunch, seeing what it can do, what it can’t do. To me this is the way good software gets made. Use it, try to do what you want to do with it, find out where it fails. The trick in this approach is avoiding the “I want it to do what {XXX} application does, and do it JUST THAT WAY!” – that will ultimately result in failure. The question you should ask is “What am I trying to accomplish, and how would I do that with this tool?”
Today’s puzzlement was born of humble beginnings. I wanted to change the ‘new mail’ notification sound that Thunderbird uses. Simple enough, eh?
Just checking in!
Days of Sunshine, Days of Clouds
The Linux environment is such a love-hate world for me. In general, it’s mostly love. All the tools I want, speed, eye candy, toys, productivity, it’s all there.
Then there are the cloudy days. When things that should work, don’t, and I can’t figure out how to make them work.
After a couple sunny weeks, I’ve hit the equivalent of spring showers, and the clouds have rolled in.
First, I’m having all sorts of performance problems with Thunderbird. I suspect this is down to some twitchy DNS problem, but I’ve never seen it before, and others have not seen it as well. Right now I’m in ‘suck it up and deal’ mode, but it’s infuriating waiting 5-6 seconds of total GUI lockup whenever I hit Alt-Enter.
Second, I’m still working on setting up the new replacement machine for my roommate. This is a bellwether project for me – can I replace a windows machine completely with Linux. For the most part, we’re ready to go, except I cannot get the VPN to their Windows server (a PPTP connection) to work properly. I had great hopes for a new KDE tool called KVPNC, but either due to the programs’ newness or traditional complexity of setting up VPNs under Linux, I have had no success. At the moment, this is a showstopper on the project.
And last night, I wanted to edit some recordings I had done with my minidisc recorder at band practice. “No problem!” sez I, “I’ll just use Audacity,” an excellent free multitrack editor. BZZT! Audacity refuses to talk ALSA properly, and I cannot play the tracks I’m editing. I’ve used Audacity many times under Windows, and I thought I had also used it under Linux, but now on startup Audacity is yelling about not being able to access the ALSA device. Various forums have said that is because ALSA has sound device locking issues (which I mentally flag as bogus – wasn’t ALSA’s point to allow multiple applications to access the sound device at the same time? Avoiding the dreaded /dev/dsp lock? Frustrating)
So I have 2 projects held up, and one constant, ongoing annoyance. And, over on the side, my windows machine running quite smoothly, without any of these problems.
I want the sunshine back.