June 30, 2003

Java showing it's age?

Is Java showing it's age or is it quietly being neglected? I just went over to Sun's Tutorials & Short Courses pages and had the feeling things look really old over there. Where is the Turorial for JDBC 3.0, that I was looking for, for example?

Posted by stuartcw at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)

Autocomplete Everywhere

Intellij Idea is so smart that it can even AutoComplete variable names after an @param JavaDoc tag. That is so smart!

Posted by stuartcw at 01:05 PM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2003

Debug problem with Intellij IDEA

I had a debugging problem with Intellij IDEA that I couldn't figure out and eventually I found a note about it in their Knowledge base: Debug problem using target JDK 1.3.1_07 or 1.3.1_08.

I spent ages trying to figure this out. I could use the software fine in production mode but when I went to debug it wouldn't work at all. I checked and rechecked all my settings, blamed Windows XP, exhausted every avenue. When I found it was a JDK bug I nearly fell of my seat. The solution: drop back to an older version but the older versions are (easily) available for download. sigh...

What's more when I installed JDK 1.4 I swear it just went ahead and installed it in the root of c: without asking for my preference.

What a waste of time... nasty JDK 1.3.1_07/08.. we hates it.

Posted by stuartcw at 07:36 PM | Comments (0)

June 24, 2003

http://jugs.dev.java.net/

Must tell Sam about this

All Java User Groups (JUGs) can have their own project space for a web page, tools, etc. This JUG community will enable Java User Groups from around the world to interact with one another.

Posted by stuartcw at 03:08 PM | Comments (0)

Compile C# Hello World

How to compile C# Hello World on the command line.

Posted by stuartcw at 12:52 PM | Comments (0)

June 23, 2003

International Moblogging Conference

International Moblogging Conference

"At 15.15, we're pleased to invite pioneer mobloggers Mie Kennedy, Carsten Schwesig and Stuart Woodward to discuss their experiences as EARLIEST ADOPTERS, in a roundtable moderated by journalist and primordial blogger Justin Hall."

Posted by stuartcw at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

June 17, 2003

Postgres and dumping data

This article describes how Postgres can dump an live database consistantly. It's one of those problems that can seem fiendishly difficult if you approach it from the wrong direction.

Posted by stuartcw at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)

Remembering The Kanji

I just made a mailing list dedicated to the book Remembering The Kanji by James W. Heisig.. Please join if you used, are using or are considering using this book to learn Kanji.

Posted by stuartcw at 04:10 PM | Comments (1)

June 16, 2003

Display wishlist

Display wishlist and allow comments...

Posted by stuartcw at 05:25 PM | Comments (0)

Postgres

I need to see what SQL is being processed by Postgres. Starting Postgres from the command line like this will log it.

/usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster -i -d 2 -D/home/pgsql/data -N620 -B2048 -o -S65536 >> /home/pgsql/postgres.log 2> /home/pgsql/postgres.log

Next, to figure out what all the options mean.

Posted by stuartcw at 01:07 PM | Comments (0)

June 15, 2003

Is nowhere safe?

Well here I am sitting on the loo at home with my newly installed wireless lan. I've been tinkering with settings. Thank goodness that the AirStation's UI is billingual Japanese and English. I'm not really sure what all the settings mean yet but that's great. It's like a new toy a Christmas that holds your attention until you figure out all the things it can do.

Anyway, here I am about to finish up and suddenly the attack warning box pops up and tells me that I am undergoing a TCP SYN FLOOD from 69.42.65.2 which when tracert'd looks like it is a wireless network in JFK New York. C'mon leave a man alone when he's on the loo.

I suspect that I'm going to turn that warning off soon...

Posted by stuartcw at 02:34 PM | Comments (0)

June 13, 2003

Pure poetry

rm -f `ls -1t | tail +8`

Removes the oldest backup..

Posted by stuartcw at 10:09 PM | Comments (0)

Cronjob change

I'm going to forget this...

export EDITOR=vi
crontab -e

Posted by stuartcw at 08:17 PM | Comments (2)

Database woes

I can see the connections by doing ps -ax | grep postgres but I am now looking for options for ps to let me see how long each connection to Postgres has been running.

Also looking to find out whether a Postgres connection can be automatically aborted due to timeout.

Posted by stuartcw at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)

Linux Performance

This page has descriptions of command line tools that you can use in Performance Monitoring

Posted by stuartcw at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)

June 11, 2003

nPop - POP client with Japanese support

nPOP is a small Windows POP3 client that supports Japanese mail encodings written by a Japanese developer. There is an English version. It's really useful for cleaning out your mail box of SPAM and reading mails as they come in.

Posted by stuartcw at 12:20 PM | Comments (1)

June 10, 2003

SSH

SSH is really nifty but can drive you mad. In the configuration file:

/etc/ssh/sshd_config

in the AllowUsers you can set which accounts are accessilbe from which IP addresses or range of IPs. This allows you to really lock down your security but if you mess it up you can lock yourself out of the machine and then you have to logon from the console. Not nice if the machine is in a data center far away.

Also you can end up making it a real pain to log on to the machine by forcing logons through another machine making a nasty twisty maze of logons to endure before being able to login to the machine you want to maintain.

After changing sshd_config, don't forget to restart the sshd service

/etc/rc.d/init.d/sshd restart

or you'll be puzzling as to why you still can't logon...

Also if you have any problems do

less /var/log/secure

followed by Shift-G to see the latest entries in the secure log.

I had trouble with one machine as it didn't have a reverse DNS entry and as a result gave the error "Could not reverse map address". I didn't realize that that machine had gotten it's IP addres via DCHP so actually it wasn't a good idea to put it in the list anyway. So I got the machine a shiny new permanent IP address and now I can access it using Putty with no problems.


Posted by stuartcw at 03:37 PM | Comments (2)

CVS setup

I always forget to put CVS.exe in my path and to set:

CVSIGNORE=*.bak *.~* *.java~* *.*~ *.*~* *.java.bak
HOME=C:\Documents and Settings\swoodward.STUART


Posted by stuartcw at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

June 09, 2003

Reusing Postgres Connections after SQLExceptions

While researching the reason for the "No results were returned by the query" error I found this interesting and kind of scary article:

"From a number of experiments, it appears that the only way I can re-use a connection after it has asserted an SQLException is to issue a rollback() call on the connection."


Posted by stuartcw at 01:34 PM | Comments (0)

June 06, 2003

WinMerge

Winmerge my favourite Win32 diffing and merging tool has just realease a new version. This is a great piece of software for your toolbox though I am a bit uncertain as to what the new features are in this realease. I think have added support for Visual Sourcesafe and some other versioning systems but don't quote me on that.

Posted by stuartcw at 01:20 PM | Comments (0)

June 05, 2003

Tokyo PC Users Group

Now posting live from the TPC meeting...

Posted by stuartcw at 09:37 PM | Comments (1)

June 02, 2003

Basic Authentication Scheme

I didn't know that the Basic Authentication Scheme was so weak. The name and password is just base64 encoded...

I could have sworn there was a base64 decoder somewhere in the JDK..

Posted by stuartcw at 05:54 PM | Comments (1)