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TomcatExpert Articles

2011-11-19T23:32:00.004-05:00

I recently wrote a series of two articles for the website TomcatExpert.com. The first of the two articles was published on 11/16. It is an introduction to tuning garbage collection in the JVM when running Tomcat, and discusses how to measure the performance of garbage collection.Here's a link. http://www.tomcatexpert.com/blog/2011/11/16/setting-measurement-garbage-collection-apache-tomcat**

Packt Publishing Summer Deal

2011-07-16T16:38:00.003-04:00

If anyone is interested, Packt is running a summer deal on some of their best selling titles. Looks like a couple good Python books in the mix.Here's a link http://www.packtpub.com/article/packts-best-selling-open-source-books-offer

Book Review - Python Testing Cookbook

2011-07-16T16:28:00.002-04:00

In an recent effort to improve my testing skills, I decided I would check out the Packt Publishing book, Python Testing Cookbook by Greg L. Turnquist. The book promises to give “simple and effective recipes for testing Python code”, starting with the most basic testing tool unittest and working into more complex tools like doctest, Nose and the BDD tool Lettuce. The book also touches on some

Upcoming Books

2011-06-23T17:30:00.002-04:00

I've just received access to two of Packt Publishing's upcoming Python books which I plan to check out shortly.Python Testing Cookbook by Greg L. Turnquist [click for sample chapter]Python 3 Web Development Beginner's Guide by Michel Anders [click for sample chapter]My goal is to post a review of the "Python Testing Cookbook" shortly, so stay tuned!

SpringOne2GX 2010 Session Videos

2011-03-18T08:52:00.003-04:00

A group of the sessions from SpringOne2GX 2010 can now be seen (video & slides) on InfoQ. Here is my attempt at a complete list.SpringOne 2GX Keynote: Spring 2010 TechnologyRod Johnson SpringOne 2GX KeynoteThe Private Cloud: Amazon, Google, ... and You!Spring & Java EE 6: Synergy or Competition?What's New in Spring-WS 2.0?Spring AMQPWhat's new in Spring Framework 3.1Extending Spring

A bried foray into HTML5

2011-02-01T18:35:00.003-05:00

Having heard some good things recently about HTML5 and it's current level of support amongst the various browsers, I decided to dig in and check things out.On a recommendation, my first stop was to check out Dive Into HTML5 [1] and HTML5 Rocks [2]. Both of these sites proved to be excellent ways to get acclimated to the new features of HTML5. Dive Into HTML5 is more of a introduction guide

Spring & Messaging Webinars

2010-12-20T10:54:00.002-05:00

There are a couple excellent webinars that I would like to highlight. All of these are available from springsource.com/webinars (click on the "developers" tab).Spring Dependency Injection StylesThe first is a discussion about the different ways that are available to configure dependency injection in a Spring Container. The webinar covers three approaches: the traditional XML approach,

More JavaFx Fun

2010-09-09T22:41:00.005-04:00

Here is another JavaFx demo that I've been building. It is a simple implementation of John Conway's "Game of Life". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_LifeThe demo is a simple simulator, just click on the boxes to turn them "on" or "off". When you are ready, click on the "start" button to begin the simulation. You can increase the speed at which the simulation runs by moving the

Free Spring / Groovy Training Videos

2010-09-02T15:57:00.002-04:00

Here are some links to a few nice Spring and Groovy training videos.SpringSource Free Training Videoshttp://www.springsource.com/training/freeonlineThere are currently three videos.Metaprogramming with Groovy by Jeff BrownOSGi and Modular Applications by Joris KuipersDeveloping Aspects with AOP by Jeff BrownGood stuff, check'em out!

Excellent Grails Posts

2010-08-19T16:56:00.004-04:00

Just wanted to quickly point out this excellent series of posts by Peter Ledbrook detailing some of the gotchas when working with Grails & GORM. Veteran or neophyte this is a good read for any Grails developer.http://blog.springsource.com/2010/06/23/gorm-gotchas-part-1/http://blog.springsource.com/2010/07/02/gorm-gotchas-part-2/http://blog.springsource.com/2010/07/28/gorm-gotchas-part-3/

Clonezilla & Windows

2010-06-01T14:22:00.003-04:00

I was trying to restore a Windows Clonezilla image today and encountered a weird error. Windows would boot, but it would not start. Instead the following error would be shown.autochk program not foundFortunately I was able to boot into Ubuntu and mount the partition, so I could verify that my data was safe.After searching on Google, I found some information on using a DOS tool to modify the

Visual Tail in JavaFx

2010-04-06T17:28:00.005-04:00

Having recently decided to try and learn something about JavaFX, I decided to port my Visual Tail application which was done using Griffon/Swing to run using JavaFX.Overall the process was pretty smooth, but here were some of the parts that caused me a bit of grief.Component LayoutInitially I had a hard time with laying out my components in JavaFX. I was used to Swing based layouts so I was

Griffon Applications

2009-04-10T18:09:00.005-04:00

DetailsFor those who don't know Griffon, is a new framework developed in the Groovy language for building Desktop applications. Griffon is a plug-in centric framework that comes with a central tool for building, developing, and packaging your applications. Developing desktop applications with Griffon is very similar to developing web applications with Grails. The framework is based on the

Python & MySQL

2009-01-25T14:20:00.002-05:00

I have been doing some work with Python & MySQL lately and had need to use the executemany feature. This is used to batch SQL commands like for an insert.The queries that I have were using named parameters for convenience, and I was passing a list of dictionaries to the executemany function. I expected this to work fine, as it does for other drivers (like sqlite3). However in version 1.2.2.

VirtualBox 2.1 Upgrade Windows Host

2009-01-13T11:11:00.003-05:00

I had a annoying problem while upgrading VirtualBox on my Windows Host. One of the major improvements of version 2.1 is that Host based networking has been made significantly easier. No longer is it necessary to have TAP devices and bridge them together. Now it just works, almost...The problem I had was that once VirtualBox was upgraded my configuration was no longer valid. My configuration

Python Simple Database Library

2009-01-05T18:34:00.002-05:00

I have just released the second version of pysimpledb. It is a simple wrapper to the standard Python DB-API 2.0 which aims to take the repetitive boiler plate code out of creating a good database access layer.The project is not a full ORM and is not meant to be. It is fashioned after projects like Apache's iBatis and Spring's JDBC templates, and is intended for use in cases where it is

Parallels 4.0 Upgrade - Windows XP Guest

2008-12-10T22:41:00.003-05:00

I recently upgraded to version 4.0 of Parallels for Mac. Everything went well, with the exception of one minor issue. While upgrading some of my Windows XP guests, the driver for the sound card was not found.In fariness to Parallels, I use a customized install of Windows XP which was created by using nLite. It allows for faster setup and smaller Parallels images. The catch is that it does

Ubuntu, Virtualbox, and Shorewall

2008-11-24T10:20:00.004-05:00

If you are running virtual servers using VirtualBox and you are using the host based networking, then this post may be helpful for you.I am running my development servers (Tomcat, Asterisk, Apache, etc...) using VirtualBox since it allows me to consolidate machines and run everything from one dual core box. Since I also try to practice good security (even at home) I have enabled UFW (

Tomcat Authentication Session Fixation Issues

2008-06-02T19:38:00.003-04:00

I recently worked on a project that was using Tomcat's authentication and realms to manage user access and authentication. Part of the project was to pass the client's internal security audit. It was noted during the audit that Tomcat's built-in authentication is susceptible to a basic session fixation attack. For details on session fixation, see this link.Here is a breakdown of what was

Quick Bash Pointer

2008-04-03T18:14:00.002-04:00

While writing a Bash script today, I came across an interesting situation.I had gathered some output into a variable and I wanted to email those results to myself.Typically you just use the mail command, specify a subject, and add a to address. Then just pipe in a file which will be used for the body text of the email.However, I didn't have results in a file. I had them in a variable in memory.

MailScanner Cron Jobs (Ubuntu 6.06.2 LTS w/ Mailscanner 4.68.8-1)

2008-04-01T12:15:00.004-04:00

I recently performed a MailScanner upgrade on a mail server that I maintain, and I noticed that afterwards I was receiving tons of messages from the MailScanner cron jobs that were running.The messages didn't indicate any problems, just that things were running smoothly. While this is great information, I really only need to know when there is a problem so I can correct it. Anything else will

Oracle JDBC PreparedStatement & setString Issue

2008-02-18T18:05:00.003-05:00

I've noticed some interesting behavior with the Oracle JDBC driver (version 10g, ojdbc14.jar).This interesting "feature" surrounds the behavior of the PreparedStatement. The easiest way to describe the issue is with an example.Table A has one column, b CHAR(3).Query, SELECT * FROM A WHERE b = ?My intended query was SELECT * FROM A WHERE b = ' ', but the Oracle JDBC driver actually was building

Ubuntu 7.10 Disable trackerd

2008-02-18T08:32:00.002-05:00

On my Ubuntu 7.10 desktop I have noticed that for long periods of time the CPU will be maxed out. When I investigate further trackerd is always the culprit.Since this seems to be a common issue, this is what I do to disable trackerd and reclaim wasted CPU cycles.1.) Right click on the 'Deskbar Applet'. Go to 'Preferences'.2.) Scroll down in the list till you see, 'Tracker Live Search' & '

Ubuntu 7.10 on Mac OS Lepord with Parallels

2007-12-23T14:26:00.001-05:00

This is how I got Ubuntu 7.10 installed on my MacBook Pro running Parallels build 5582.Start with the Ubuntu Alternate disc. NOT the Ubuntu Desktop or Server Disc!!Setup a new virtual machine and make sure you pick 512 M for the amount of RAM. (There seems to be an issue when allocating larger amounts of memory, which will cause the VM will freeze on boot.)Boot of the disc, and run through the

Asterisk "too may open files"

2007-10-09T15:19:00.000-04:00

Another quick Asterisk pointer.If you are running a large amount of traffic on your Asterisk box you are likely to come across this message."unable to create from pipe: too many open files"What this means is that Asterisk has exceeded the per-process limit on open files. You can get the per-process limit for you system by opening a shell and typing 'ulimit -n'. My system, Ubuntu 7.04 is set at

Python File Backup Script

2007-08-24T12:24:00.001-04:00

I wrote this backup script in Python to do backups on some of the servers I maintain.Features - simple & quick to configure & install - full & incremental backups - configurable backup directories - configurable full backup dates - backups in tar format, no special software for restores - email notification of problems - backup files to any valid path (nfs, smb, usb drive, etc...)

Asterisk Ubuntu Feisty Fix

2007-07-22T23:25:00.000-04:00

Starting Asterisk PBX: /usr/sbin/safe_asterisk: 108: Syntax error: Bad fd numberI ran into this issue while running Asterisk 1.2.22 on Ubuntu Feisty 7.04. It appears that the 'safe_asterisk' start-up script has an issue with it. In Ubuntu Feisty, the default shell (/bin/sh) is no longer bash, it is dash. The 'safe_asterisk' script needs to reference bash. So changing the first line from '#!/

FizzBuzz Problem

2007-03-09T20:55:00.000-05:00

This has been on digg recently and there was some talk about it recently at work.If you are interviewing someone and need a programming question to ask, this is a good one. Any competent programmer should be able to give you a solution. This puzzle is typically given to all levels of programming candidates (newbie to senior) during their interview. According to numerous people, only about 10%

CodeMash 2007 Follow Up

2007-01-19T21:19:00.001-05:00

Here's my wrap up on CodeMash 2007.First, let me just say, props to the individuals (organizers, event staff, and presenters) who took part in the event. Also thanks to the sponsors who paid the bulk of the money that made the event happen. I had a blast and learned a ton.In case you couldn't go, I was able to record the presentations that I went to. The quality isn't great, but you can hear

CodeMash

2007-01-08T11:25:00.000-05:00

CodeMash is on January 18-19, 2007 at the Kalahari resort in Sandusky, Ohio. I would encourage anyone who can, to attend the event. There will be a wealth of programming knowledge available on topics including SOA, Java, EJB3, .NET, Python, PHP, and Ruby on Rails, and many other things. In addition, the Kalahari resort is an incredibly fun place to stay.I'm planning to attend these sessions.

Ubuntu on Dell 1950

2006-08-27T16:09:00.000-04:00

When it comes to putting together a kick-ass Linux box, I usually prefer building my own box. It generally works out better, I get to pick the hardware so I know it's quality and I know that the support in Linux is very good.However, there are sometimes when building your own box isn't practical. I recently found myself in this situation, and I had to purchase some pre-built rack mountable

Gateway 7210gx

2006-07-30T20:54:00.000-04:00

If you have a Gateway 7210gx laptop, and you need to reinstall Windows on it here are some helpful pointers for you.Pointers1.) Download the drivers from Gateway's support website before you reformat. A fresh install of Windows will not have drivers for either network card. So if you don't do this first you will have to download them on another computer and burn a CD of them.2.) The Gateway

MythTV Pitfalls & Help: 2

2006-06-22T21:54:00.000-04:00

This is my second post on MythTV. The first post went through some of the very basics like MythTV can do and some basics about choosing hardware. If you have any questions about that stuff check out the first post or the MythTV docs.Step 1The first step to getting a MythTV box setup is picking and install your favorite Linux distribution. There is no "best distro", but some of the most popular

MythTV Pitfalls & Help

2006-06-18T22:23:00.000-04:00

If you've been thinking about getting a personal video recorder to improve your TV viewing experience, but are not sure where to begin, perhaps I can help you out. I have recently gone through the process and I think you can benefit from it.The first thing you should know is that you have options, depending on your technical expertise and requirements.Option OneWhen you think PVR, chances are

The Mythology of Internet Multimedia Statistics

2006-03-08T14:21:00.000-05:00

Just the other day I was reading articles on diggdot.us, a cool content aggregation website consolidating links from Digg, Del.icio.us, and Slashdot, and I found an article about a singer in the UK who is web casting

Why You Should Choose Linux!

2006-02-20T21:14:00.000-05:00

I've been using Linux for almost seven years. I've seen it progress along, coming from a hacker's best friend into a full fledged power house operating system that even your grandma can use. So why should you use Linux?In order to make a more compelling argument I've separated this guide into two main sections: reasons to use Linux on a server and reasons to use Linux on a desktop. Some over lap

First Blog

2006-02-16T11:39:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my first blog. It's pretty meaningless, but I just need to buy some time till I can write something more interesting.I think you should check back in a couple of day, there should be something better up by then.If you're wondering what my blog is going to be about, wonder no more. It's mostly going to be about technology and computers, but I may throw in other topics just to keep