19.7.08

Develop iPhone Web applications with Eclipse

Adam Houghton of SAS wrote an article on Create iPhone Web applications using Aptana's iPhone Development plug-in and the iUi framework in Eclipse

If you know java and own an iphone , you start developing applications urself ..link to the article here

I dont own an iphone ,i hope i will get one soon !!!

18.7.08

Team work

I found this image some where in in internet!!!

Formula1 live feeds

UK is the only country where you can watch formula1 race online , currently ITV is providing the free online feeds which can be viewed only in UK . Nobody else in the world can watch racing online , but there are some smart guys out there who provides defered feed for the same ( less than 20 seconds delay i believe )

Find some links here

http://www.soccer-live.pl/ITVF1/f1player.php

http://bilmosk.org/simulcastPlayer.swf

I think these feeds are illegal , and it using ITV stuff , but it is handly when u not at home or travelling , so we dont miss the action!!!!

Also keep an eye here for update information

Stoner dominates the opening day at US GP

Stonner is in excellent form and in the opening day of US gp he set a new circuit record !!!
I hope rossi will be back to form on laguna seca , and will lead the drivers standing...

Current standing here




Massa the reason I retired

taken from here

Nearly two years after announcing his retirement as a Formula One driver, Michael Schumacher has cited his former team-mate Felipe Massa as a primary reason for hanging up his racing helmet."I stopped because I didn't want my friend Felipe Massa to be unemployed," the Swiss newspaper Blick quotes the seven time world champion as saying."I would have had no problem going up against Kimi Raikkonen," Schumacher adds, refuting the common claim that he objected to having the Finn as his 2007 team-mate.

I believe kimi is one of the naturally quickest formula one drivers active in racing , may be schumi was expecting a number one position in ferrari as usual and he might not get it if kimi joined the team !!!!

Is massa a good driver , i dont think so , he is just a normal racing driver , who always wins on his favorite circuits most cases the the blunders made by his teams strategy at the expense of his team mate . Wtf he did in silverstone last race , he was lapping and spinning every corner in the circuit ...hehe

German GP predictions

Fans all over the world are looking forward to this sunday , we will get to know who will lead the drivers standing in Formula1 ...I hope its going to be fun !!!

If one of the four drivers in the drivers standing win the German GP , they will lead the drivers championship , so it is an important race for all . It looks mclaren had a good practice session on friday , but everybody expect ferrari will be back to track on saturday with charm .

As everybody aware we had unpredictable races in the last few weekends , i hope the german GP is going to be a normal race , though weather forecasts predict little shower on race day .

My bet goes to Determined Iceman ,(after a damn strategy blunder by ferrari at silverstone , terrific exhaust broke at france , and stupidity by lewis at Montreal ) he is going to win this race.

At eod , it is racing and anything can happen , there are many other factors which decides the winning , its just not the drivers skills or cars .

Geman GP is home race for many drivers including nick , nico , vettel, sutil and its a chance for them to be in a point scoring position on sunday in front of their fans . Nick had a great race last weekend , and looks he is the driver who finished all the races this year (?) . There is a great chance for him to be in podium if there is a chance for rain . In normal day bmw cant beat neither ferrari nor mclaren, but still we can count him in podium contender in his home race.

I am not counting lewis in podium contenders , i am sure he will push hard to the limit and may run wide or retire soon fighting in the top . He had many good races so far , he lead the friday practice , but still he is not in my list of podium finishers .

So my predictions ...Kimi , Massa , Nick ..lookng forward to the race on sunday !!!


if u wish to read further ..have a look at Keith's predictions here or you like to read more about the history of German GP , journeyer wrote an excellent article in f1fanatic great work journeyer and thanks keith for running such a informative blog !!!!

Architecture-Oriented or Feature-Oriented

John Ferguson in his blog explaining the key differences between Architecture oriented and Feature oriented design.

He is stating .....Architecture-Oriented teams are organised according to the system architecture of the application. For example, in a typical e-commerce application, you might have a web-tiers layer, a services layer and a database access layer. Using an Architecture-Oriented approach, you would have a team (or team-member, for very small projects) dedicated to each layer.

Feature-Oriented teams are organised by feature, or use case, or user story, or some other tangible and deliverable unit of functionality. For this iteration, Team A will take care of the Shopping Cart Checkout feature, whereas Team B will implement the full-text catalog search. Each team implements their feature from A to Z, so they usually have to touch all the layers of the application architecture.

very good article ..keep reading

Defenition of Rich Internet Applications

According to David herron RIA's are

Rich :refers to a GUI application with lots of bling and sizzle
Internet :refers to the network infrastructure on which the Web lives
Application :is a $2000 word for 'software' or 'program'

more here

Better than java Strings ???

Ahmadsoft has released ropes for Java

A rope is a high performance replacement for Strings. The datastructure, described in detail in "Ropes: an Alternative to Strings", provides asymptotically better performance than both String and StringBuffer for common string modifications like prepend, append, delete, and insert. Like Strings, ropes are immutable and therefore well-suited for use in multi-threaded programming.

More here

Forget about cameras or lights !!!

Taken from here

Radiohead just released a new video for its song "House of Cards" from the album "In Rainbows".No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.
Watch the making-of video to learn about how the video was made and the various technologies that were used to capture and render 3D data.

cool stuff !!

17.7.08

Unreferenced interface in RMI

Java doc says ' A remote object implementation should implement the Unreferenced interface to receive notification when there are no more clients that reference that remote object."

LoseThos

LoseThos: A free, open source, public domain, 64-bit IBM PC operating system.

link here

java performance

Java programmers often write the code to test the performance of the certain classes , normally we wrote code like this

long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
test1();
long end = System.currentTimeMillis();
long duration1 = end - start;

But there is a better way to do this . you can use ThreadMXBean.getCurrentThreadCpuTime()
function in jdk.

you can use

ThreadMXBean mx = ManagementFactory.getThreadMXBean();
long start = mx.getCurrentThreadCpuTime();
test1();
long end = mx.getCurrentThreadCpuTime();
long duration1 = end - start;

java documentation here




Java JVM non standard options

if you want to know the non standard options supported by your installed JVM , try the below command

java -X

output :
[kimster@bhdhcp076142 ~]$ java -X
-Xmixed mixed mode execution (default)
-Xint interpreted mode execution only
-Xbootclasspath:
set search path for bootstrap classes and resources
-Xbootclasspath/a:
append to end of bootstrap class path
-Xbootclasspath/p:
prepend in front of bootstrap class path
-Xnoclassgc disable class garbage collection
-Xincgc enable incremental garbage collection
-Xloggc: log GC status to a file with time stamps
-Xbatch disable background compilation
-Xms set initial Java heap size
-Xmx set maximum Java heap size
-Xss set java thread stack size
-Xprof output cpu profiling data
-Xfuture enable strictest checks, anticipating future default
-Xrs reduce use of OS signals by Java/VM (see documentation)
-Xcheck:jni perform additional checks for JNI functions
-Xshare:off do not attempt to use shared class data
-Xshare:auto use shared class data if possible (default)
-Xshare:on require using shared class data, otherwise fail.

The -X options are non-standard and subject to change without notice.

Why women aren't good programmers

"They freak out every time they miss a period. "

(seen on here )

16.7.08

Attack code for intel chips :)

Recently i read an article which states 'Kris Kaspersky plans to demonstrate how an attacker can target flaws in Intel's microprocessors to remotely attack a computer using JavaScript or TCP/IP packets, regardless of what operating system the computer is running.' see here

What does this mean ...these processors are buggy as hell..huh .yes it is . Theo de Raadt from open bsd mentioned in his post to openbsd dev group '
These processors are buggy as hell, and some of these bugs don't justcause development/debugging problems, but will *ASSUREDLY* beexploitable from userland code. "

If interested have a look at the Core Duo processor errata here ,
http://download.intel.com/design/processor/specupdt/31327914.pdf

simplified version here http://www.geek.com/images/geeknews/2006Jan/core_duo_errata__2006_01_21__full.gif


15.7.08

Eclipse : Adapters

Recently Wayne Beaton wrote an interesting article regarding usage of Adapters in Eclipse framework .

Summary of the article says "The adapter pattern is used extensively in Eclipse. The use of this pattern allows plug-ins to be loosely coupled, yet still be tightly integrated in the extremely dynamic Eclipse runtime environment. In this article, we show you how to use the adapter framework to make your own objects adaptable, and adapt other objects."

I read this and it is worth reading . Most of the eclipse programmers are familiar with adapter usage ( if not what they working on there:) ) , but still it is an interesting read .

Link to the article here ,,,

14.7.08

live like ......!!!

One interesting site i used to visit to learn things about things i dont know how to do ..its a place ..where lot of geeks open their mouth to talk about there knowledge ..if u are in a hacky mood to experiment things or you wanna learn more about the fundamentals ( ?) ..there is a place http://neworder.box.sk/ happy browsing !!!!

Debugging JNI crashes using Xcheck:jni

Recently i had a chance to debug a JNI crashing problem in windows .I was looking for some kinda utilities which help me to debug the issue . Then i found a utility
-Xcheck:jni supplied along with Java .

Java 5 trouble shooting guid says 'The -Xcheck:jni option is useful option when trying to
diagnose problems with applications that use the JavaNative Interface (JNI). This option can be be useful whenan application employs third-party libraries'

To use the -Xcheck:jni option just add it to the command line when
starting the application, for example:java -Xcheck:jni MyApplication

If you are using eclipse as IDE , you can try setting this in Debug / Run Dialog arguments section .I found this utility very useful , but it is a tedious job to analyse the crash logs this utiity generates

PS : Linux is great , whenever a crash occurs , it gives detailed logs like which method it crashed ..it rocks !!!!

Lapping in Formula1

Recently i read an article in F1 Pitlane ( i think keith from f1fanatic wrote the same ) about Antony Davidson and Massa. Davidson made an interesting comment about massa during the commentating of f1 race live at silverstone ..



davidson said ""He's always the first to stand up in a drivers' meeting and complain about what people like me are doing when we get lapped. That's what you get, mate. There's a bit of blue flag action for you. You're rubbish. You are useless at it."



hehe ..nice shot ..i belive massa deserve it .....



link to f1 pitlane article find here

13.7.08

Stoner wins Sachsenring GP

Stoner wins Sachsenring GP beating rossi in the action packed wet race , front runner Dani Pedrossa retired in an early accident , he was dominating the race with 8+ second advantage .A run of three victories in a row from pole position was continued by Casey Stoner in Sachsenring

Podium finishers are Stoner --Rossi -- Chris Vemulanen ,Now Rossi leading the championship. I want to see 'The Doctor' winning the world championship this year , we can expect great races in coming days ..it looks it is going to be a three way battle for the 2008 championship !!!!

In the early 250 cc class simoncelli wins the race , now he is in the leader board . In 125 cc , french man Mike Di meglio extends championship lead with victory in German GP.

It was great watching the race today , Lets wait for the US GP scheduled 20 Jul...

Getting the File URL for Installed Eclipse Bundle

Some times there is a requirement to get the folder or File URL for the installed bundles .

The below snippet can use for this purpose

public static URL getBundleFileURL(Bundle bundle) {
URL u = FileLocator.find(bundle, new Path("/"), null);
try {
return FileLocator.toFileURL(u);
} catch (IOException e) {
// Log error
}
return null;
}

Hope it helps!!!

Windows Registry editing in Java

Java don't have public API's for manipulating registry , but java provides some internal classes using that you can manipulate registry.

This is purely a hack ( use at your own risk and many cases not recommended :) ) and you need to use reflection . There is a class named WindowsPreferences in java.util.prefs package , you can use for this purpose .

This class is not documented ( why ? first of all class is package protected , and there is no public methods ) , use the source to know more abt the functions available

What is a Plugin ?

The Eclipse online help defines a plug-in as follows:
"Plug-ins are structured bundles of code and/or data that contribute function to the system. Function can be contributed in the form of code libraries (Java classes with public [application program interfaces] APIs), platform extensions, or even documentation. Plug-ins can define extension points, well-defined places where other plug-ins can add functionality."

What is OSGI ?

Most of the eclipse programmers must be familiar with OSGI ( if not are they eclipse programmers ?????) . OSGI stands for Open Services Gateway Initiative it promotes open specifications for the delivery of managed services to networked environments

These specifications define the OSGi Service Platform, which is a java based platform , that can be remotely managed.The core part of the specifications is a framework that defines an application life cycle management model, a service registry, an Execution environment and Modules. Based on this framework, a large number of OSGi Layers, APIs, and Services have been defined

Interestingly Eclipse uses OSGi as the basis for its plug-in system. Why eclipse using osgi instead of custom plugin system ???

developerworks saying "Early versions of Eclipse were also designed as a collection of plug-ins, and Eclipse included its own propriety plug-in system to manage the interaction. However, as the requirements of the Eclipse IDE grew, it became apparent that a more robust solution was required. Basic requirements of this new system included the ability to dynamically handle the addition of new plug-ins and stopping existing plug-ins."

The below mentioned article gives an overview OSGI ...worth reading!!!!!
http://gravity.sourceforge.net/servicebinder/osginutshell.html

Open source LDAP server released

An open-source LDAP directory server written in the Java language released recently in java.net . Its an open source project initiated by Sun and it looks interesting .URL is http://www.opends.org/

I worked with few proprietary LDAP servers and Open LDAP before , but this looks interesting to me as a java programmer , looks it is fully written in java , where as other LDAP servers heavily depend heavily on native code

I am going to try this out soon ....

World of linked lists !!!!

It looks most of the computer science students have a tough time figuring out how linked lists works and not aware of the various coding techniques for implementing linked lists . Linked lists are always a hot topic during the job interviews , still too . Recently i found an article which reviews basic linked list code techniques and then works through 18 linked list problems covering a wide range of difficulty . Its written by Nick Parlante . Here is the one location where u can download the pdf tutorial http://arantxa.ii.uam.es/~edi2/docs/LinkedListProblems.pdf if any problems downloading the same , drop me a comment , i can help getting it . its worth reading !!!!

Will 'The Doctor ' be back to game ??

It was not a great weekend for Valentino Rossi , till the qualifying of Sachsenring motogp race . Rossi will start from 3rd row today , after a 'misunderstanding' between Lorenzo in the last corner in qualifying .

Will Rossi beat dominating stoner , i believe Rossi can . I hope the error he had last race is his final mistake of the year !!! i want to see 'king of mugello' winning the german GP

Eclipse 3.4 ( Ganymede ) released

Eclipse folks made a new release for the tooling platform , code named 'Ganymede' . Chris recently wrote an interesting article on the same in developer works (http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-eclipse-ganymede/ ) . Worth reading !!!

Eclipse : Views and Editors ??

Eclipse has the concept of views and editors , most of the eclipse programmers think both are similar in many aspects , but it is interesting to see the differences . Eclipse FAQ has an interesting entry on the same , am reiterating the same here..

Here are the main ones.
  • There is generally only one instance of a given view per workbench page, but there can be several instances of the same type of editor.
  • Editors can appear in only one region of the page, whereas views can be moved to any part of the page and minimized as fast views.
  • Editors can be in a dirty state, meaning that their contents are unsaved and will be lost if the editor is closed without saving.
  • Views have a local toolbar, whereas editors contribute buttons to the global toolbar.
  • Editors can be associated with a file name or an extension, and this association can be changed by users
Hope it helps !!!

Should i say 'blogger.com' is bug free ??

I guess no ...there are bugs ..major bugs !!!

I created a blog of mine a while back , recently i noticed some thing . In the blog archive section , when you click on the links to blog posts , it is not going to the correct page , instead it is displaying a blank page ..what the heck!!!

Anyways i am try creating a new blog and moving all the posts to here. I hope it will work , else i guess i need to move to some other blogger site ..!!!

I did a lot of tweaking to customize the templates ....does it mean ..did i do some thing stupid which caused this ..who knows !!!!

anyways testing ..testing ..hope it works !!!  



PS : I tested in the new blog it is working , but i have some problem exporting the blog contents to new blog using the new blog export / import functionality provided by http://draft.blogger.com/  but looks no luck to me ( giving me some funny errors :) ) , any ways the number posts are less , so i can copy paste the same to new blog ..damn !!!