I’m on a EJB3 mission March 15, 2008

The Hunt

I’ve gone on a mad hunt across the internet. It started a few weeks ago when I realized that my JEE knowledge needs to be improved. I mean, I know the concepts, I’ve got the basics, sheesh, I’ve even been on an EJB3 course! The problem the way I see it is that I haven’t studied and implemented something all the way through.I haven’t properly, practically built that many proper JEE apps. If any.

So with bow and arrow, or rather in this case, Google and keyboard, I went hunting. I quickly realized that it wasn’t as easy to find proper resources as I first anticipated. I should probably indicate that my quest was to find a tutorial (if that is what one would call it) that would take me all the way through. I mean everything. I wanted something that can lay down all the groundwork and then build on that solid foundation everything I would need to know.

Problem was that all the tutorials had some sort of problem. Some would indicate that I would need to know technology x and y, which I did, but then go on to assume I had knowledge of other technologies and concepts that I did not. Some “tutorials” would be very vendor or technology specific; for example, a tutorial on writing WebServices using Eclipse, Ant and whatever arbitrary tool (Ex Axis) doesn’t teach me what it is all about. It means that the arbitrary tools do a lot of work for me, work that I would like to understand before I use the tool. All of this takes away from a complete learning experience.

Looking at these problems from another angle would let me come to realize that maybe it all doesn’t really matter. Going to the beach by means of train or bus really doesn’t make any difference to my prospective day of sunshine, does it?

The Find

Well, I have a personality that borders on the over zealous side which I realize might somehow be detrimental to my health. Either way, I found a set of resources which I believe will get me where I want to be. I will list them here:

• Sang Shin’s Java Passion
  When I attended Sun Tech Days this year in Johannesburg this man’s passion was so strong right off the bat that it affected and excited everyone attending. I like his site since it takes you through groundwork before it gets to the main meal.

• Sun’s Java 5 EE TutorialThis is probably the starting point from Sun’s perspective. It’s based on Glassfish which is the reference framework from Sun. This book looks to be the Full Monty sitting at 1124 pages in total.

• Mastering Enterprise Java Beans 3.0, 4th Edition

  

• Online resources other than those listed above:
  http://www.java.net
  http://www.netbeans.org

Bootable Flashdisk mini-HOWTO September 20, 2007

It’s very clear to me after tinkering for 2 days (okay, it’s probably more like half a day effectively) that there’s no real simple solution to making a bootable USB flash drive (USB stick, flash disk, USB stick, or whatever else you prefer to call it.

Out there you will find lots and lots of information that lots and lots of people claim worked for them, but not all of it makes sense when you start to follow their magic recipes. I’ll be open minded today and just reason that it’s got to do with the fact the each computer differ very much from the next. Like a ‘rainbox-nation’. Bah!

It’s absolute balony to think that if you buy different parts they will actually work well together. That is not however, what I’m on about today…

Since this is a HOWTO, actually since this is a mini-HOWTO I guess I need to throw a few numbered bullets in the mix.

1. Make sure you have a PC.
2. Check that it (as in the PC pointed out in 1) is plugged in before you begin.

Ha! That is mini enough, isn’t it?! It doesn’t help though… ghrrr. You know, you shouldn’t bitch really. We live in this instant world where everything has to be quick; 2 minute noodles, 5 minute workouts, blah blah blah. Do you really think that all the instant bollocks have any value?! If so, then the two outlined points above should suffice for your needs.
Good night.

For the rest of you, read on.

NOTES

• This tutorial only works for computers that can boot up with the USB-HDD option. Some BIOSs have USB-FDD, USB-ZIP, USB-CDROM or whatever else. I’ve tried this recipe on them and it’s a no go.
• This HOWTO will get you to boot NTFS4DOS, which to me looks like Avira’s own DOS.

PRE-REQUISITES

• BIOS that can boot USB-HDD
• USB flash drive
• Half a brain
• Avira NTFS4DOS Personal (This means you will also need a floppy drive – download this zip which contains the result)
• HP Disk Storage Format Utility from Bay Wolf’s collection (or download it from my public box)

STEPS

1. Download the Avira NTFS4DOS result zip and extract it somewhere.
2. Run the HP Disk Storage Format tool.
   • Check that it has your USB flash drive as the device.
   • For the File System I used FAT
   • Select ‘Create a DOS startup disk’
   • Click the ‘…’ button after selecting ‘using DOS system files located at:’ and point it to the directory where you’ve extracted the zip to in 1.
3. Copy all the files from the directory in 1. to the flash drive. DO NOT overwrite any of the files if the copy asks! IT WILL PREVENT THE DRIVE FROM BOOTING!
4. Reboot your machine and enter the BIOS settings. Now go to wherever you change the boot order and select USB-HDD to be first.
5. Save settings and exit the BIOS.
6. You should now be booting off the flash drive.

Easy ne’! So now you would ask, WHAT THE BLEEP WOULD I NEED TO BOOT DOS FOR?!
Patience boet, we will explore one possibility tomorrow…

 Cheers

Dr Suess on Computers June 14, 2007

This is truly geeky in every way, but oh so amusing. Laugh at it, laugh at me, laugh at yourself, laugh at what this world has turned into!

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
and your data is corrupted ’cause the index doesn’t hash,
then your situation’s hopeless and your system’s gonna crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
that’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
and your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
’cause as sure as I’m a poet, the sucker’s gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy on the disk,
and the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risk,
then you have to flash your memory and you’ll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off the computer, and be sure to tell your mom.

–
This is all over the internet, so I’d give credit to the author if only I knew who he/she was…sorry!

Google App June 14, 2007

This morning Alex mentioned the Google App in their Diggnation podcast (Ep 61) and I thought I should take a look. You never know when you’re moonlighting on a random starry night what kind of tools might come in handy to spice up the already romantic atmosphere! Enough Geno! Leave the beautiful poetry for the girls…

Anyhow, at the part where you sign up (you know how it goes with these online internet thingies) I entered my phone number and added a + sign to indicate the international dial code. Actually, now that I mention that, what does the plus mean? It doesn’t matter, their website registration dude didn’t like it since he referred to me as null! Disgrace! His response looks like this:

Bear in mind that this podcast is from August 2006, so this platform has been out for a while. Somebody didn’t check their code! I just find it amusing. Maybe I should send this to Jeff…

Gmail bandwidth usage April 19, 2007

I am blown away with the amount of traffic being consumed when using Google’s mail in standard view!

Background

My flatmate and I recently sold our souls to the devil, in this case a local cellphone service provider, and acquired a 3G internet contract. Unfortunately, in South-Africa the amount of data a person can transfer is still being capped. Severely. Call it bureaucracy, monopoly, call it bloody greed if you ask me; it’s sickening. Either way we’re stuck in this situation, and our contract allows us a measly 2Gb per month which we have to share that between the two of us.

The awakening

In just two days I noticed on the ISP’s site that I already whacked 200Mb of what I have, 25% damnit! I very quickly realized that I need to keep a watchful eye on my usage, and I thought it would be interesting to see where goes what. The best thing would be to use software that I could setup to monitor all the packets sneaking around.

I went all over the net and installed so many ‘must-have’ applications it could drive a Sahara forrest monkey crazy.

And then…

Enter BWMeter

I found this awesome traffic/bandwidth meter called BWMeter. All the others I have tried are “so called” bandwidth monitors but they’re too simple, way too simple. Trust me, forget about the other crap out there and just get this.

BWMeter allows you to define ‘Filters’ which could be any kind of connection you want to monitor. Source, Destination, Protocol, Port, Schedule and General option which has settings like ‘Include upload’ / ‘Include download’ / ‘Include IP protocol overhead’. You can also set it to block all traffic or limit the speed on the filter.

Once you’ve setup a filter you can set graph windows, view hourly/weekly/montly/yearly stats on it. It allows these to be exported to a .csv file, ie your favorite spreadsheet. You can also monitor and follow the exact requests that flows through each filter, which means that you can see IP:Port requests and the size in bytes.

Alerts allows to define an action to be followed whenever certain criteria is met. For example, when the Download+Upload reaches 500Mb during the current month, play a sound, run a program, display a message, send an email and/or throttle or block all traffic that applies to the filter. Versatile.

Google Talk + Google Mail
Right, the moment of truth has arrived. I know Google mail uses mail.google.com. For GTalk I just do a quick ‘netstat -a’ in the command window. This reveals a connection to *.google.com:5222. I’ve setup two separate filters, one that monitors mail.google.com, and the other for *google.com:5222 (google talk). Google talk runs through a couple of KB, but it all depends on how much you talk. About an hour of reasonable talk cost me 130Kb. I can live with that.

Google Mail!! Eish, this is scarey. Logging into the standard view mode consumed 350Kb just to get to the point where everything is loaded. Another 100Kb to be fully logged out. And I didn’t even open any mail… rough stuff. Changing to basic HTML (use http://gmail.google.com/gmail/h/) showed a usage of around 50Kb consumed when fully logged in. That’s a huge difference.

Conclusion
This clearly indicates that our wonderful Web2.0 technologies do consume a lot more traffic than what we may realize. I did expect it to be more, but the difference is huge, around 5x more. Taking into consideration the current state of this country’s internet options and the attitude that our government has taken we clearly need to be smart about the way we use what we have. Use Lynx!

*Note
For those that think of getting technical on me, yes, I did clear the cache and restarted the browser for each test. Now smile and go pick your nose if you need to pick on someone…