Raible Designs

Enthusiasm Fading

My enthusiasm for maintaining this blog is fading. Not because I don't like to blog and discover new things, but because I'm not discovering anything new. The root of my lack-of-discovery phase is because my day job has become incredibly boring. Not because of what I'm doing, but because I'm not doing anything. Sure, there's documentation and JavaDoc cleanup to do - but this stuff numbs the mind. There's no compiling. There's no joy in making something work. I'll be onto a new gig soon since next Friday is my last day. And I'll tell you what - I can't freakin' wait.

The deeper root of the problem is my obsession with productivity. Even though I'm getting paid to "mothball" the project, I feel inadequate for not learning anything new. I need to be productive to enjoy my day at work. Isn't that sad?!

If I'm good, I'll convince myself to be unproductive and to take a week or two off before starting the next cool project. From August 15th - September 1st, that's my goal. Who knows if my future employer/client will go for it, but it sure would be nice.

Tomcat Updates

Tomcat 5.0.6 Alpha is now available for testing. [Download, Change Log]. The same setup steps seem to apply for this release as with the 5.0.4 and 5.0.5.

In other news, I struggled with Tomcat 4.1.27's webapp reload bug for much of the evening last night. I'd say it's not a big deal in a production environment (where you don't reload webapps much), but it's a real pain in the ass for development. I'll be reverting back to 4.1.24.

One year ago

I missed it by a couple of days. As of Friday, I have been blogging for one year. Happy birthday to the blogging version of this site.

Weekend Update

Julie and Abbie are in San Diego this weekend, visiting Julie's sister (Holly). The new house is great - being so close to everything. Life is good - the new laptop scheduled for delivery (overnight) on Tuesday. Too bad about Mike, I had a heavy heart reading his post - hope everything works out.

[ANNOUNCE] Tomcat 4.1.27 Stable Released

The Tomcat Team announces the immediate availability of Apache Tomcat 4.1.27 Stable. Among other bugfixes and improvements, Tomcat 4.1.27 includes security fixes for:

- Improper recycling of SSL client certificates with Coyote JK 2
- Improper handling of invalid content lengths in requests, causing HTTP processors to be left in an invalid state in Coyote HTTP/1.1, causing a DoS condition
- URI normalization bug in Coyote
- Improper handling of certain URLs in Coyote JK 2, causing a DoS condition

Downloads: http://jakarta.apache.org/site/binindex.cgi

I upgraded this site this morning (from 4.1.24) - everything seems to be humming along just fine.

RE: A couple of quick Eclipse tips

From James Strachan:

* there are various XML editing plugins available (X-men, xmlbuddy). Though for simple stuff, just enable the Ant plugin for all XML documents. The Ant plugin has a simple colour coded XML editor.

To enable it, open the Preferences window (Window -> Preferences) then go to Workbench -> File Associations. Then for *.xml add the Ant plugin association.

Nice! I've been wondering about that. Very cool - thanks James.

New Load Testing Tool for Roller

After reading Hani's comments about Freeroller's abysmal performance (which I agree does suck), I sent the following e-mail to Novosoft:

Any chance you'd like to donate a copy of your software to the Roller 
Weblogger open-source project (http://rollerweblogger.org).  We could
really use a stress-test tool like yours.  We're using it at my day 
job and it works great.

Their software is a load and stress testing tool that a co-worker discovered and it works awesome. At my day job, we know that if 17 users click on the same button at the precise same time, then Hibernate (or maybe it's Oracle) will throw a deadlocking error. We doubt that we'll ever get 17 concurrent users, so it's not an issue for us, but it's nice to know.

Anyway, their software is $250, which is a little steep for any open source project. However, I was delighted to find that they obliged my e-mail and sent me a license this morning!

Dear Matt, 

Thank you for your feedback and your warm words regarding our product!
We have decided to grant you registration key for our product WAPT 2.0. 

Sweet! Now I just have to find time to create these tests, or maybe one of the other Roller Developers has time?

Today is the last day for the old-style VW Beetle

Boy do I love these cars, especially the real old ones (50s and 60s):

Some Bugs are hard to kill. After a brief reprieve, the Volkswagen Beetle, the original version, faces extinction today. Volkswagen's plant in Mexico -- the only one in the world that still makes the old-style Beetle -- finishes one last gussied-up retro edition of the plucky, curvacious little car, ending the model's 70-year run. [CNN/Money]

I'd love to get my hands on one of these new/old bugs, but I don't think they're legal (due to emissions standards) in the US. For any Colorado bug fans out there - the Fineline Bug-In is coming to Bandimere Speedway on August 10th. Julie, Abbie and I are going - should be a great time. I almost buy one every year I go - this year I might actually do it. I'd especially like something like this '58 Vert'. I still plan on restoring an old Bug or Bus in the near future.

Hibernate In Action - First Chapter available for review at TSS

If you use Hibernate, or want to learn more about it, this is probably a good read. If you just had lunch, you might want to get a cup of coffee or tea (preferably caffeinated), ORM can be a pretty dry topic. Maybe I just need one since I just got back from lunch (and the closing on our Morrison house). My contract is ending soon (this has been confirmed) and I have nothing to do but cleaning up Javadocs - which is even drier than ORM.

TheServerSide is pleased to announce that it will be hosting a public review process for 'Hibernate In Action' (Manning), by Christian Bauer and Gavin King. The first chapter, 'Understanding object/relational persistence', introduces object/relational mapping (ORM) and compares it to other persistence mechanisms, such as self-made persistence layers and object databases.

Download and Review the first chapter: Understanding object/relational persistence.

RE: Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 released

You know it's going to be a good day when one of your primary pieces of software has a new release:

Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 has been released. People who have been staying away because of the auto-complete crash bug, or have been annoyed like I was (but still stuck to Firebird for it's redeeming qualities) will be pleased to know that bug has been eliminated.

Sweet! I hated the auto-complete crash bug, and it bit me many times. I tried a nightly build yesterday and the browser didn't work at all - it crashed whenever I tried to do anything. I'm expecting great things from this build - can't wait for 0.7.