Been to Hawaii, didn't surf

I'm no audiofile

2009-02-28T14:42:00.000-08:00

After having used my pair of Polk Audio RTi8 paired with Onkyo 606 reciever for close to 3 months, I decided to re-calibrate Audissey thingie. When I did it before, I did not bother to put the calibration microphone on a tripod, although I immediately recognized the purpose of a hole at the bottom of the mic assembly. Instead I (imagine that!!!) held it in my hand. The result of the calibration

"man inetd.conf " made me cry

2009-02-22T20:20:00.001-08:00

...almostThere's something wrong with me. I keep on asking questions Google knows no answers to. I realize that a desire to have rsync daemon enabled in Solaris may be quite uncommon. Well, you demigods of organized computerland, I happen to have a use case you did not plan to address. I need to run Opensolaris in a VirtualBox VM on Windows XP host, and I need to share files fr,,,F$^%k it. Why do

Stateless internet is dead

2009-02-07T00:03:00.000-08:00

Obsessing over absent-minded person would be strange. Admiring person with either short- or long-term memory loss would be difficult. Emerging artificial intelligence, however, is encouraged to be "forgetful" for the purpose of being resilient in the face of feeble networked silicone fabric it is destined to dwell in.Well-balanced systems combine caches of all levels. It's unfathomable to me that

Off-heap cache: ehcache vs Derby DB

2008-06-11T23:44:00.000-07:00

I had my test like so: - 1M properties where - key varied between 30 and 70 characters, with average of 50 - value varied from 100 to 300 characters with average of 200 - size of file on disk 240MBI chose to go through JMeter and its HTTP samplers, I wrote a simple JSP, so the overhead of both JMeter and Tomcat are sizable (run on same machine) and completely obfuscate meaningful values. 60

Making quality prints (panorama for my cubicle)

2007-10-20T17:30:00.000-07:00

I had a bunch of photographs from my 2006 trip that I wanted a panorama made of. Finally found some time. I used one of less sophisticate tools available, one that came with my Canon camera. Then I had trouble trying to find software that would let me print this big photograph over a sequence of pages that I would be able to glue together.Solution was pretty counterintuitive. I used Nero Digital

Determining optimal JDK memory config, faster

2007-08-29T10:22:00.001-07:00

If you are like me, stuck with Java 5 for one reason or the other, you may be having difficulty determining how much heap to allocate to a process, and whether the ratio of young generation space should be different from default. A shortcut can be taken if your primary goal is maximum throughput. We know about HotSpot ergonomics, but with Java 5 it takes too long for it to work its magic. HotSpot

An OS in my pocket

2007-06-03T20:50:00.001-07:00

I was entertaining this idea for a while: to carry an OS of choice in my pocket, on a bootable Flash drive. Yesterday I decided to treat me to this geeky pleasure of unwrapping new hardware (8GB PNY Attache USB 2.0), downloading an ISO (Ubuntu 6.4 Live CD), and burning it onto a CD. The guide at http://www.pendrivelinux.com/, found it easy to follow and it "just worked" in the end. Open Office

My HP pavilion ze4315 is dying

2007-04-20T20:59:00.000-07:00

That's the same one that killed one hard drive already... this just sucks. I was expecting for the thing to serve more than 4 years. The symptoms I have, think I tracked it down to that small board that sits below power button and row of "One-touch" buttons. It's really a flimsy piece of equipment, and either there's a crack in the board, or the bunch of wires does not connect reliably. So the

So, you want to work in a startup

2006-09-21T20:51:00.000-07:00

...but you currently work in a corporation. A big one. And you value the people you got to work with for the last couple of years. But you want to work in a startup :)Make your place a startup.It's no harder than starting one's own business, I think. All it takes is making your first PowerPoint presentation. You despised Word and its offspring until this moment... Wait a few years, and you might

Recovering after vacation

2006-09-12T21:27:00.000-07:00

It has become extremely difficult to put anything in here after nice long vacation. Kind of hints at the significance of, doesn't it?So what's techie now? Netbeans profiler, my first successful encounter with it today. Works as advertised, but... as any other profiler on this planet, it also LIES. No silver bullet, huh? Basically, launched it with no problems (been using Netbeans 6 with

Recovering from HDD crash

2006-07-09T03:20:00.000-07:00

Few days ago hard drive in the HP notebook used by our kid had died. I heard its last cries, but I did not understand what it meant. I decided to perform the usual maintenance, went upstairs and turned the PC on. Strange rattling noises followed, but PC still booted, and I was able to perform the usual set of tasks: cleaning up temp files, checking for virii and spyware, defragmenting space.

Exceptions during serialization, Hibernate

2006-07-03T23:36:00.000-07:00

And so it came to pass: I, too, encountered adversity of enhanced bytecode :) It was puzzling to get a finger on it, as the only exception I've seen was a java.io.EOFException that would be thrown in the client. So, the stream of data was suddenly interrupted by the server. But server would give no explanation why... So until I attached debugger to server process and tried to inspect the values

Microsoft, пидарасы

2006-06-28T00:50:00.000-07:00

Can find no other word to describe this. In short, installing Vista screwed up my Windows XP installation. In detail, imagine reinstalling Windows XP 3 times (not counting attempts to repair strtup by means of both setup CD for XP and setup DVD for Vista...) and reinstalling Vista once in a span of one evening. Win XP was occupying first partition of first IDE hard drive. When Vista installed

More of Vista: Java integration, JOGL, resource utlization

2006-06-20T22:39:00.000-07:00

Java integration needs some work: when Java Settings application is launched (this one is AWT-based, innit?), Vista disables some of its eye-candy.My fears are dispelled: OpenGL is very much supported on Vista (at least by NVidia) as is demonstrated here by running JOGL demo application that uses, among other things, programmable shaders. More curiously, 3D applications like this Java-to-OpenGL

Vista, continued (transparency, protection, Java)

2006-06-20T22:32:00.000-07:00

Transparent window borders are extremely prettyThis one was designed to drive you mad: overprotective is seemingly synonymous to secure as far as Microsoft is concerned. Every non-trivial action results in this warning banner... infuriating.While Java Runtime is being installed, NVidia drivers download. Big question for me was whether OpenGL is really banished from Windows as some people were

Installing MS Vista on Sun Java Workstation V

2006-06-18T19:33:00.000-07:00

One hour later, installation reboots.Pretty, mesmerizing intermission.Widely appraised pretty themes

Installing MS Vista on Sun Java Workstation IV

2006-06-18T19:26:00.000-07:00

Next day, at 1:20 p.m., installation begins. No option to upgrade a 32-bit version of Windows XP is offered.This is where I'd like Vista to reside: in the same partition with Win XP 32. After all, Windows 95 coexisted with Windows 3.11Bad assumption :) Windows Vista (Beta) prefers to decimate the older cousin (am I using the word appropriately?)Well, crap, I have to cut another 20GB slice of the

Installing MS Vista on Sun Java Workstation III (Upgrading Win XP x64)

2006-06-18T19:08:00.000-07:00

In upgrade mode, installation will try to download updates. That should be helpful to many users, given device driver readiness. Looks like I've exhausted the easy options... On to prepare the drive to be repartiotioned.

Installing MS Vista on Sun Java Workstation II (Upgrading Win XP x64)

2006-06-18T18:56:00.000-07:00

Windows Vista hardware comatibility tool display, as seen on Win XP Pro x64Trying to have Vista use Win XP Pro x64's drivers (which BTW do not work in Win XP either)Nope, refuses to workHoping for a miracle, launch upgrade anyway

Installing MS Vista on Sun Java Workstation I

2006-06-18T18:38:00.000-07:00

Since the original hard dive has been already all consumed by the 4 OSes I have installed, I thought adding an extra HD would solve this problem. A trip to Fry's Electronincs buys me 200GB SATA for $69.90. Fine, had the drive installed (using slides I cut out of an old DVD box, as slides for drives are not available for purchase separately from storage itself. Nice one there, Sun.)So far so good.

Is log4j causing a liveness issue?

2006-06-07T09:52:00.000-07:00

Wow, this big word, "liveness"... A couple of weeks ago I had, again, forgotten what it means (and hope to forget again in a month, maybe). We're seeing this situation, when with increased number of requests, server's CPU usage can not exceed 1/4th of available resource (meaning, only 1 CPU out of available 4 gets pegged). Many man-days were spent trying to find the culprit. Today I just woke up

Solaris Update Manager: I'm officially screwed

2006-05-20T10:08:00.000-07:00

Before, it was only the NVidia driver that got ticked off by new XOrg version. But among other things that I downloaded there was an update for GNome itself. Today this thing stopped working. Crap... how am I supposed to fix it? Just try rebooting several times and pray it mends? Digging through messageboards in search of a solution does no longer sound like fun way to spend weekend.Update:

Java stack size weirdness, JMeter in pain

2006-05-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

Now that my workstation is armed with 3GBs of RAM, I wanted to re-run the load test with greater number of threads allocated. This, of course, requires proportionately greater heap size, so there... I understand 64-bit JVM's stack size is quite large, thus I allowed Glassfish to use up to 2 GBs of RAM for the heap, and I instructed it to create up to 2500 threads in pool, having number of

Opteron system memory scaling (Stream results)

2006-05-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday went to Fry's and bought a pair of DDR 3200 ECC Registered sticks of RAM 1024 MB each. 1 GB I had before in my Opteron rig felt very yesterday :) So, now I have # GB, but I was wondering about performance effects of having 2 vs 4 memory slots populated. Some documentation (on Crucial's website) made me feel for a moment that having 4 sticks has the effect of memory speeds dropping to

Word of caution to those updating Solaris

2006-05-05T18:58:00.000-07:00

Since Sun Update Manager was released, I decided to join other civilized people who, either on Windows or Linux, can scroll through a list of fixes, make selection, download, have it all installed automatically and having one's system in better shape than before after a reboot (not like those neoanderthals who download patches via FTP and install them using command-line tools). It almost worked.

Further along with Spring

2006-04-25T21:49:00.000-07:00

Probably, it should not surprise anyone (it surprised me, but then I'm novice), the fact that Spring almost anticipates what I would want of it next. No, not really. Well, for the most part it does, but one thing more I wanted was: when several threads make a call to transactional service, and the transaction isolation is set to be readonly, I was expecting that Spring will reuse same DB

// import java.util.Iterator;

2006-04-20T15:03:00.000-07:00

Generics, here I come! Strange, for how long I've been a (silent) opponent of Java 5 new features. This came to pass, as I'm converting a huge body of code to use Generics. Find that experience strangely satisfying. Oh, yeah, I remember now why I've been in opposition: I was afraid that tool vendors will not keep up with this syntax change, and/or that our favourite IDEs will be slower due to

The Inquirer.net sellout?

2006-04-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

I could be paranoid, or I could be right. For a few weeks after theinquirer.net was acquired by VNU network, I was wondering when will the new owner start milking this well-respected online publication. I could be that it started recently. A bunch of articles, distinctively subtitled as "First Inqpressions" (witnessed by reviews of wireless router, big budget game, and appliance for small

Refactoring (so hard to let go)

2006-04-17T21:30:00.000-07:00

Did you happen to come across a utility method that returns Collection, but which can return null as well? What do you do then, if this method is being used in half a hundred of places across entire code base? What do you do if in some places people have actually started relying on this method returning null in those cases when it does? Naturally, as you work through the uses of this method, you

Project Darkstar (Sun Gaming Server)

2006-04-15T20:23:00.000-07:00

This piece of technology must become a good learning experience for many aspiring game developers. But, honestly, what's up with their promised performance of each "slice"? They say, it is going to support 200 to 500 players. I wonder if that's a workable scale... Sun wants some service providers to load up racks of servers and to rent them out, but is it possible to make any money after all cost

Google Calendar: why did it take so long?

2006-04-14T07:52:00.000-07:00

It could not have been technical issues that had this project delayed for so long... How long exactly, I'm not even sure. Year and a half ago, when I actively interviewed for a new job, I had a contact with Google's GMail hiring person and in that conversation I was trying to sell my experience in building an online calendaring application (can be checked out by anybody willing to, web

Recap of recent weeks (Spring framework).

2006-04-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

Let's see... When I was laying down with severe stomach flu last week I had a bunch of ideas of what to write about here... Where did it all go?Had first encounter with Spring. Amazing technology, really. I started looking for some container that will have contextual support for persistent operations, basically. Mostly because I got sick of seeing code passing, from one method into another, some

J2ME is quite WORA

2006-03-18T08:56:00.000-08:00

From a prototype working in WTK to device in no time! Well, of course attention has to be paid... and conscious decisions to use (or, rather, not use) certain API levels. Overall, enjoyable experience I could recommend to anyone. After all, all software to get from one's idea to an app deployable to device is FREE. Netbeans 5 with Mobility Pack was all I needed to develop, and Motorola MidWay +

Got my spare time assigned.... (J2ME)

2006-03-17T16:14:00.000-08:00

So, I allowed myself to be dragged (kicking and screaming? no, not really) into a small but hopefully useful project. It will take a couple of weeks, I hope, to make mobile version of "Word Matching Game" available to users of site of my good friend.Initially, I sketched out a full-blown app, with the following online features: - account registration - lesson selection - statistics management(

Final words on IONE NAS

2006-02-18T12:35:00.000-08:00

Pulled the HDD out of the cage, plugged it in into Linux box, ran "fdisk". For your pleasure:Disk /dev/hdd: 40.0 GB, 40027029504 bytes255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4866 cylindersUnits = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System/dev/hdd1 1 4866 39086113+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)Hope that helps. Please note that this

Moto v400 unlocked for J2ME development

2006-02-14T13:15:00.000-08:00

Now, since I moved to non-GSM carrier, I wonder whether I should put my prior phone up for sale... It's in a good condition, I can throw in a USB cable and I could collect a document describing which software should be used to access the filesystem on that phone. But why bother? Even the fact that I unlocked my phone to allow uploading Java (J2ME) Midlets via same cable woluld not, IMO, be a

Changed wireless carrier

2006-02-13T22:25:00.000-08:00

And so my contract with Cingular has ended. I had high hopes how I will get new cool free phones, just the way one would find on Amazon, LetsTalk or Wirefly... Silly me! Calling customer support and pointing them to those resources and stating clearly that I intend to go to thgeir competitor did not make a difference. What does it mean?Look, the math is quite straightforward. I wanted them to

Update on IONE NAS

2006-01-29T10:21:00.000-08:00

OMG, I'm such a dimwit! Having typed in three paragraphs of text I just managed to press "Discard" button and have to do it all over again! (Or is it Picasa that has censored my post because of coincidental proximity of words "Picasa" and "sucks"?)Few people have asked whether this device supports NTFS. The answer is, I don't think so. Embedded version of Linux that runs this device (I think?) is

Some resolutions

2006-01-28T09:05:00.000-08:00

Do NOT - try to find best deal on storage until fall - consider pulling 2x512 sticks of memory out of my Java Workstation and replacing those with 2x1024Do DO - continue looking for resources on self-taught patent application filing - figure out what the heck "Asynchronous Request Processing" is and how to make it work in Glassfish/Grizzly

People who type too much

2006-01-24T20:56:00.000-08:00

It is not in human's nature to admit one's own flaws. Same with me. Being a slow typer I came to actually appreciate the fact that I have more time to think on a programming problem, or an email. And that I have to express my ideas in a terse form, is a virtue in my eyes. In fact, just recently I was working on changing a bit of twisted and complicated code.This code deals with localization. Like

Epidemiologists' error

2006-01-11T18:39:00.000-08:00

I'm not entirely sure of this, but at least one collegue has told me that the flu shot I got missed the strain that's widespread this year... Either that or I'm having a radically nasty cold. Had to stay home one day, hope the worst is behind me. Couldn't do much beyond replying to emails. But I managed to revive my old machine (Slot-A Athlon 700) to make it a load client. With two notebooks and

Intel agony

2006-01-02T22:35:00.000-08:00

I may be drunk but I'm not out of my mind. Two Photos from Intel Corporation's Construction of Their Booth. How does one qualify tils?! What is the lowest point?! Should we salivate and ...bate over a bunch of pixels? Wow. Wow. I'm speachless. Way to go! Disclaimer: writer of this is a (modest, really, 500 shares since Nov. 2004) investor in AMD. And I intend to hold on to it for another year.

Death by a cookie

2006-01-01T15:36:00.000-08:00

The sky is falling! Not for everybody, but for a big segment of Internet business, for sure. As the story reported here among other places develops, people will come to realize how much their privacy is invaded by those tiny one-pixel tracking images used by web analytics service providers to collect information about users' behavior on the Internet.What is the problem here? Well, it appears that

Multiple concurrent connections

2005-11-28T16:58:00.000-08:00

Grizzly must be dealing better with those, and it is. The test script for this particular run was generating a 200 kB page in several chunks, pausing a little in between to reach total of 30 seconds. Up to 200 concurrent open connections were observed on the server, with Grizzly loading the CPU to 13-14% vs Tomcat taking 15-16%. Difference is not that great, but I hope to exaggerate it by

Tomcat vs Grizzly, first run

2005-11-20T21:02:00.000-08:00

Oopsy-daisy! Same workload (GET static XHTML file 60 kB) produced same throughput figures (ran 25 minutes, 64-bit JDK 1.5_04 on Solaris 10), but it took Tomcat less CPU to start up and do the work, than Glassfish to start up alone. That is probably meaningless, but it also took Tomcat under 30 seconds of CPU time to process same workload that took Glassfish 58. I must have misconfigured something

Life is messy, but so should not be one's blog

2005-11-06T11:49:00.000-08:00

I should break my blog into several thematical blogs. The way AdSence works, it's plain silly to mix notes on politics, technology and life in general. It simply does not make for a meaningful read to whoever could wind up on my blog...

Intelligent design needs to be taught in school

2005-10-29T15:11:00.000-07:00

I'm serious. Just mentioning it as a foreword to a course on evolution is not enough. I think this teaching, if it makes into the curriculum, will serve an extremely important purpose.I firmly believe that one of things a person must develop is an acute sense of bullshit. This is the sense that makes you roll your eyes on quaterly company meetings. This sense helps you side with NPR correspondent

IONE EN-35N: good features, terrible marketing

2005-10-22T16:11:00.000-07:00

I've been on a lookout for a NAS for home use for some while now. There are fancy devices on the market that offer up to 4 hard drives capacity with the ability to utilize those in various RAID configurations. Such things are pricey for what I was looking to do: have shared storage in my home network that would not require turning any of the computers to acces shared images, music or documents.

Compression in Tomcat works well

2005-09-25T19:54:00.000-07:00

...but my hopes to slow down my server by forcing it to compress the content were shattered again. My old rusty Athlon 1600+ based notebook is just tooo weak to generate enough load. So, from now on I have to tweak the load. BTW, compression impact: on a 50k html file, bandwidth savings are approximately 4-fold, and so are extra expenses in terms of CPU utilization. To enable compression JMeter

JMeter, Another lesson (cookie manager)

2005-09-25T00:48:00.000-07:00

So, I haven't given up on load-testing Tomcat on my hardware (w1100z). It just moves quite slowly. If a small detour is allowed here... a-ah, what the heck! Installed Windows XP Pro 64 bit edition, with 64 bit JRE to match. Win keeps on loosing keyboard and mouse. My current workaround is to boot machine with mouse and keyboard unplugged, and only plug when login screen is seen. Another thing I

Apology: did not get the irony

2005-09-20T12:51:00.000-07:00

Yep, must admit i misunderstood the situation that I'd described before. Those posters were simply expressing their dissapointment with authors who had them lose some of their precious time, albeit expressed that in an unusual and intriguing way. Another example that made me change my mind: an article about Intel's breakthrough in containing current leakage. Someone by nickname "harbi" posted

First results: puzzling

2005-09-12T18:16:00.001-07:00

Guess my JSP is built extremely unfairly as far as our production servers are concerned. I'll just put it right here, for future reference.<%@ page import="java.io.IOException, java.text.NumberFormat, java.text.DecimalFormat" contentType="text/html;charset=UTF-8" language="java" %> <

Load testing Tomcat with JMeter, Part I

2005-09-11T21:39:00.000-07:00

A collegue of mine (likely annoyed by my bragging about my w1100z) challenged me to compare performance of my Opteron workstation to dual-Xeon *ell servers our company uses in production. Problem is, in many scenarios I simply fail to generate significant load to saturate CPU. Like this one: I try to see how many concurrent sockets can Tomcat tolerate under 64-bit JVM on Solaris 10. And what I

Is InfoSys the most ruthless consultancy?

2005-09-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

Noticed a pattern, and not a very pleasing one. Whenever a bunch InfoSys employees post an article somewhere on the web (could be in JavaPro, JavaWorld, TheServerSide, or, most recently, JavaLobby), regardless how crappy it would be, there will be a meaningless post or two in the discussion that follows, praising the genius of the authors. Fortunately, this scam is pretty much a see-through, as

OpenGL: Solaris over Linux (JOGL)

2005-08-21T20:17:00.000-07:00

Upgraded NVIDIA drivers today. Fedora Core 3 (x86_64) saw healthy increase of framerate in Procedural Texture Physics demo. It stands now at between 51 and 54 FPS. However, (boy, am I glad the driver is past Beta!) Solaris 10 has it running at over 58, even though driver revision is couple of months behind as compared to Linux. What does this mean? How can Solaris have better OpenGL performance?

Obligatory reading for comp tech inclined

2005-08-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

Yep, there's some seriously good stuff in there. A pity Mike Magee has no such rubric... That series could be of great use to technically handicapped managerial staff, too.

Linksys Wireless-B Music System

2005-08-03T20:59:00.000-07:00

Sorry guys, this is too raw for anybody.Idea is great: most people have a fair number of music media files on their home networks. Many also have a wireless network for Intermet connection sharing. Why not utilize all of that to stream music to any room where WiFi signal reaches? Of course, I was quite excited about this device as I brought it home from Fry's Electronics. As I was at work, my

Unix: masochistic types' nirvana

2005-06-25T22:32:00.000-07:00

Should print this in bold sans serif size 40: "Downloading source packages is a crime against humanity". Don't I have anything better to do than to try to figure a combination of command-line switches that would compile that friggin' file?

Happy camper (my W1100z Sun Java Workstation)

2005-06-12T12:07:00.000-07:00

So, folks, are you getting 64-bit treatment yet? C'mon, Opteron is almost 2 years old... I'm so glad I got this workstation at the price I did. Because the promotional auction Sun's been holding on eBay is over. And I'm now an owner of a piece of equipment that is worth ~$2100 from Sun (the one with Opteron 150). Rummaging through parts, found part #370-6795 that will make it possible to install

Patience IS virtue

2005-05-05T21:45:00.000-07:00

While reading the "Destiny Doll" by Clifford Simak (in Russian translation), started thinking about how hard it is to teach children to love reading. In good books, nothing really happens at once. One has to have patience to accumulate enough of the world an author creates to get gripped by their creation... Reward is, however, worth all that and then some. I'm re-reading this novel. Last 've

Few things to do first with your new powerful PC

2005-04-29T21:59:00.000-07:00

Yeah, install an OS :) Try another. Is it XP Pro 32 that blindly wipes any other partition on your hard drive? Or was it me who fat-fingered something on this Sun-compatible keyboard wrong? Anyway, I'm out of Win XP 64 and out of Solaris X right now. So what do I do with Win XP Pro 32? Uhmm... How about Need for Speed Underground 2? I remember it sucked big time on my 2-year old Athlon powered

It's not my B-day, it's not New Years... why did I get this present?

2005-04-26T08:13:00.000-07:00

It's here, and it's beautiful. My Java Workstation with Opteron 150 has been delivered yesterday! I love this thing. It's quiet, but powerful, just what I always aspired (is that the word I wanted?) to. And it's got freebies I did not expect to get: it's got both Serial ATA and SCSI 320 interfaces! You will never find the info on this at the Sun Micro website, since the only drive installed is

Important lesson

2005-04-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

Boy, am I glad I'm not the one reponsible for this atrocious architecture I'm dealing with! It's nice to extract this important lesson, never distribute application components alongside data flow. Now the question is, will I be able to fix it? Seems worth trying.

Shocker: SUV drivers are patriotic, after all...

2005-04-08T08:32:00.000-07:00

Who would have thought? All those drivers of SUVs, light and not-so-light trucks (it's kind of funny to see trucks in the parking lot of likes of Cisco Systems) are serving their country well on more than one count. One, obvious, they're predominantly buying US-made vehicles. Two, they usually tax-deduct the expenses. Three, they're helping to drive oil demand (and, consequently, price) up, up

Keep-Alive is an enemy of efficient wireless protocols

2005-03-10T22:25:00.000-08:00

A thought in continuation of the theme on communication of wireless client with a server. Keep-Alive connection setting forces the server to buffer all of the response before sending it to client, since it has to determine the Content-Length. It is still possible to override Keep-Alive setting requested by the client (or, similarly, lack of "Connection: close" for HTTP 1.1 clients). Tried that

Bush is not a religious fanatic

2005-03-08T22:29:00.000-08:00

Would a religious fanatic assign Chertoff, a man whose last name stands, if translated from Russian, for "Devil's" ("Devil-son", "McDevil"), or whatever, to be the head of Homeland Security... So, no, George "Doo-da-dutey" Bush is not as committed to christian values.

Since when short-sightedness has become the norm for governments?

2005-02-27T09:44:00.000-08:00

Republican senator John McCain sems to require every other nation to be no smarter than US when it comes to energy policies. He declines to allow Iran to develop nuclear power programs based on that "They're sitting on a sea of oil, as we know." Well, haven't you guys heard the wake-up call, oil is running out. At this point I'd like my home country to actually start conserving oil through

Wireless programmers ignore networking issues

2005-02-24T21:59:00.000-08:00

Reviewed design and protocol of data exchange between a mobile device and a server recently. It was no surprise that the same old, naiive approach to programming networked transactions is implemented. Client will compose a long string (really long string) consisting of URL and another one, under the covers, the body of HTTP request, with headers and stuff. When done, it will begin transmitting it

Wireless carriers' days are close to being over

2005-02-14T08:38:00.000-08:00

Skype has introduced a version of their VOIP software for wireless handhelds with Windows CE. Virtual operators are on the march! First, MMS, now this. I say, farewell, you greedy Baby Bells (well, some of them). I can see myself two years from now using unlimited, unmeterd GPRS access and not using any minutes off my minimalistic wireless plan.

VHS to DVD/SVCD - given up for the time being

2005-02-03T09:30:00.000-08:00

Brought the hardware back. Still it takes too much effort to produce a decent quality video. I'll wait till it's push-button simple AND the result is close to professional quality DVD... For now, I could use my DV camera to do the conversion, but it seems that I'm not going to want to spend that much time trying.

Converting VHS tapes to digital videos

2005-01-15T18:54:00.000-08:00

Finally, foung some good use to the money my friends presented me with over a month ago, for my B-day. Got myself a box with Instant DVD 2.0 from ADS Tech. (The other time, I tried to get HDTV aerial braodcasts, so I spent that money, plus some of my own, on Samsung HDTV tuner and a "Dgital" TV antenna. Nah, too early for this, too few channels, and, what? I have to adjust antenna as I switch the

Why should I take your call?

2005-01-13T15:55:00.000-08:00

Recently, I stoppped taking calls if the caller ID shows "Unknown" or "Private party". Now, really, why would anyone soliciting your services (I'm talking about recruters, primarily) would want to conceal their phone number? Especially when they don't mind leaving a message with a phone number! You really want me to try to write your phone number on a scrap of paper and then dial it instead of

Time to get a good job!

2004-10-31T21:33:00.000-08:00

It can not be explained by seasonality. From now and till late Jan or late Feb there has to be NO increase in hiring. Yet, it appears that hiring managers are in a hiring frenzy! From my recent experience, two intersting observations. Consulting and hiring companies are being kicked out of business. Companies are well equipped to do the hiring themselves. Only specialists with over 10 years

Bravo, QCOM!

2004-10-27T22:28:00.000-07:00

In the best traditions of five-year plan reports and 10 days prior to Great October Socialist Revolution anniversary, QCOM reported in time for CTIA that third-party developers have been paid $200 millions. Does not impress much the fact that the poster-boy this time around is... no, not ringtone company again!!! Commanding about 5% of this sum ($1 mil a month). As far as applications are

Web Services apologets are sick

2004-10-23T22:34:00.000-07:00

Not to embark on [anything being close to] bileblog (one of most popular and entertaining blogs over there), but the fact that most XML documents harnessing Web Services, in, e.g. Apache Axis (wsdd, wsdl) do not vaidate looks f#$^ed up. These people seem to attain masochistic pleasure in using half of page of text to express something as simple as "class org.apache.axis.test.Echo as a handler is

Converted another person to use tabbed browsing

2004-09-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

Walking by the cubicle of a collegue, noticed he's using Mozilla Firefox. I congratulated him, but expressed surprise he's still got too many buttons on the taskbar. Guy's excitement has been totally genuine when he learned how to browse all he wants from a single window, but in different tabs. I left from work happier than usually. But now, what are poor web developers to do? See, for people

Frustrations of development for mobile devices

2004-09-15T21:45:00.000-07:00

Having major issue with the situation BREW put us into. Not being BREW developer myself, I thought, OK, I'll help my company a bit and develop either WAP or HTML helper application, so that we could roll it out to our customers really quick (instead of putting it through Qualcomm's and carrier's certifications which usually amounts in around 1 to 1.5 months). So, I asked around, which phone

Update on Opteron workstations

2004-09-15T08:26:00.000-07:00

You know what, it did not even take long to research to find just a guy who tries to nicely profit from this Sun Micro workstation handoff. Here's the guy. Bought W1100z in July, selling it now. It looks too easy: Sun Micro auctiones these Java workstations using 1-day listings, resellers simply extend it to 7-day, thus nearing the listing price as a result, profiting close to (maybe even

Dangers of eBay

2004-09-15T07:36:00.000-07:00

I may have said "temptations", too. Being an addict of new shiny things, I frequently go to ebay.com/sun. They have some sweet machines over there, like dual-Opteron workstation with nVidia Quadro professional graphics. And you know what? These have been auctioned off at prices around $1500-$1800! Darn! No wonder I registered an eBay account to just be able to participate in this... After all,

Americans and foreign names (Kurnikova, Sharapova)

2004-07-08T19:35:00.000-07:00

Well, they're at it again. Had I not known how to pronounce a foreign name, I would have asked. Not those journos. (Wait: maybe they did ask, but they've asked the same moron who told them Ann Kurnikova's last name is pronounced as koo-r-nee-'ko-va, when it's 'koo-r-ni-ko-va). Now, Wimbledon champ Sharapova is sher-ra-'po-va. Listen, arsehats, it's sha-'ra-po-va!!!

What about Hawaii...

2004-06-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

...that's so special? Why did everyone in our company wink to me, occasionaly call me "lucky bastard" or just dreamigly sigh, knowing I'm going to Maui in a couple of weeks? I guess I had to get there to really learn. Know what? There isn't much. It's been good, but not because of the natural wonders. Here's why it's been good: - we got a nice condo on top floor in Kamaole Sands, it's been