Color Palette Site

Ran across this site Colourlovers while reading an article on Web development. While I didn't think much of the article, this site looks cool. It has a bunch of color palettes and designs any developer can use on a Web site.

iDisk on OS X Leopard

Just ran across something I though I should share. I have a .Mac account to store my address book and for the iDisk functionality. Since I switched to Leopard, it seems like my MacPro often takes a really long time to shutdown.

Well over the last couple of days, I have been adding some documents to my iDisk. I noticed when I had the iDisk window open, that the iDisk itself was syncing. What is this methinks? I like to have the syncing set to manual as one doesn't really need to sync the data all that often. Well by default, it looks like Leopard has everything set to auto sync. And from what I observed, the iDisk must try to sync like every 5 minutes. lol. Because every time I opened the folder, it was trying to sync.

So everything is now set to manual for syncs. We will see if this was causing the slow shutdowns.

Tip: Use Ctrl-Ctrl or Cmd-Cmd to start searching

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer

Whenever you want to search the web or your computer, you can bring up the Quick Search Box almost instantly. On Windows or Linux, just press the Ctrl key twice. On the Mac, press the Cmd () key twice. For more keyboard shortcuts, see the help center page for Windows, for Linux, or for the Mac.

Painless FreeBSD upgrade (6.2 to 6.3)

Just follow the steps below to upgrade to FreeBSD 6.3 (taken from the FreeBSD 6.3 release notes). Earlier in this blog I wrote about upgrading my Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop and my wiki server from FreeBSD 6.1 to 6.2. This was a painless process thanks to the fine folks at FreeBSD. Well, now that 6.3 is out, the upgrade to 6.3 was even easier.

FreeBSD Update

Starting with FreeBSD 6.3, the freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of i386 and amd64 systems systems running earlier FreeBSD releases, release candidates, and betas. Users upgrading to FreeBSD 6.3 from older releases (in particular, older than 6.3-RC1) will need to download an updated version of freebsd-update(8) that supports upgrading to a new release.

# fetch http://people.freebsd.org/~cperciva/freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz

Downloading and verifying the digital signature for the tarball (signed by the FreeBSD Security Officer's PGP key) is highly recommended.

# fetch http://people.freebsd.org/~cperciva/freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz.asc

# gpg --verify freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz.asc freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz

The new freebsd-update(8) can then be extracted and run as follows:

# tar -xf freebsd-update-upgrade.tgz

# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf -r 6.3-RELEASE upgrade

# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf install

The system must be rebooted with the newly installed kernel before continuing.

# shutdown -r now

Finally, freebsd-update.sh needs to be run one more time to install the new userland components, and the system needs to be rebooted one last time:

# sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf install

# shutdown -r now

For more information, see:

http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2007-11-10-freebsd-minor-version-upgrade.html

Overheard

"If it weren't for the fact that I was AWOL from the Army I would have told the warden my name."

I ride the Metra to Chicago for work each day and I don't generally eavesdrop on conversations, but I admit, I had to stop reading my book and listen in on this conversation. How could you not eavesdrop? This has to be the best opening sentence to a personal story I've ever heard!

Who cares about Fermilab?

Who cares about Fermilab? Well, more accurately, "Why should I care?" I'm asked this quite frequently by my Wall Street colleagues, knowing that I had worked at Fermilab (for most of the 1990s). "Why should I care if some scientist loses his job?", they ask. "Can't they just go back and teach at a university?" or "What does it mean to me if the Higgs boson is discovered?" These questions may best be answered by going back about three generations.

In the late 1890s the British scientist Joseph John "J J" Thomson conducted a series of tests on the then mysterious cathode rays (e.g. electrons). His apparatus consisted of two charged plates inside an evacuated glass tube, a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT). A generation after JJ Thomson, in the 1920s, the concepts of the CRT were applied to produce oscilloscopes. Twenty years later the Allied forces in World War II used CRTs, along w/ radar, to detect enemy airplanes. The television, medical imaging and computer industries, just a single generation later, would never have flourished without the ground breaking work of JJ Thomson. You would not be reading this article now without the efforts of the early pioneers in high energy physics (HEP).

Who cares about Fermilab? Perhaps the question should be "Why don't we care more?" Will the discovery of the Higgs boson have a direct and life changing effect on us now? Many doubt it will, but then again could anyone, in JJ Thomson's time, have predicted the life changing technologies that emerged just a few generations later?

Open Source Dreamweaver?

Here is an open source Dreamweaver type application I ran across this week: http://www.aptana.com/

Its designed to do HTML, Javascript, and AJAX development. Haven't tried this yet either, but it too looks quite promising.

Webex Alternative - Vyew

Interested in an inexpensive alternative to Webex for offering on line conferencing? Check out this site: http://vyew.com/content/

Haven't tried it yet, but it looks promising.

NetBeans 6.0 Saves Time

First a quick disclosure. I work full time for Sun Microsystems in Sun Learning doing writing, development, and instructional design work. So this may or may not influence my opinion of Netbeans, but it definitely needs to be out in the open.

I have been working a short project that will hopefully provide developer with a quick intro the Java Persistence API. My work at the start of a project like this consists mainly of me writing the solutions for the labs. Then I write the labs, then the content to support the labs. So right now, I'm doing a little EJB, a little JPA, a little JSP, and a little servlet coding. Been doing this all in NetBeans 6.0, and I gotta say, Netbeans 6.0 has saved me a ton of time.

I have always been a text editor guy myself. I feel most IDEs (not just for Java, for anything, HTML, Javascript, Perl, whatever) just get in the way and waste a lot of your time. And not only that, they tend to write poor code (just look at about any HTML gui editor). But NetBeans does some really handy things: good syntax checking, making sure you reference declared variables, checking return types to make sure they match with the receiving variable, nice code templates for common components. Little things, but really useful, cool stuff.

So if you are planning to do some J2EE coding, and you haven't given an IDE a try, take a look a NetBeans 6.0. You might like it.

What makes a good Programmer?

Found this article on referenced on Slashdot about what makes a good programmer. This is a great article. But the basic concepts in here are limited to programming. They could apply to any IT job or almost any job. You definitely want people who are passionate and willing to learn.

A couple things I would add.

#7 Fit

Will you get along with the person you are looking to hire? The person could be the best programmer in the world, but if they won't fit into your group, it won't work out.

#8 Exact Experience is Not Important

Some of the best programmers or writers I have run into/hired often didn't have a lot of experience or any experience in the technology area they were going to work in. But because of their passion and other attributes mentioned in the article, they picked up the new technology quickly and excelled.

In my last job hunt, I talked to a number of employers that wanted to know if I had worked with X technology. (Insert whatever you want to for X.) If I hadn't done exactly X, you could tell they lost interest very quickly. In fact, employers like this generally are not interested in you (fit, passion, ability to learn) at all. They just want a body that can do X. So if you flip this around, lack of passion from an employer may be an indicator to you that this is not a place you want to work.

Forget Eee PC check out the Everex Cloudbook

Thanks to Digg for the pointer to this story on the Everex Cloudbook laptop which is a 7 inch ultra portable just like the Eee. Coming soon to a Walmart near you January 20. They will also have a $399 regular 15.4 inch laptop running the gOS Linux.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention this CNet story on Shuttle offering a $199 Linux PC.

All our office apps are moving to the Web. As the first story points out, one wonders how long people will overpay for Vista PCs when they really only need one of these Linux solutions. A couple of years methinks, but it will happen.

Eee PC

If you haven't heard about the Eee PC from Asus, here is a good review from Yahoo News. I'm tempted to get one, but I would like to see it in person before buying one. Which might be hard to do.

At this point I really only use Windows to play games or if I have to use it for work. If I want to get thinks done, I much prefer OS/X or Linux. So I find this little guy very intriguing.

Tech News Really Lacking

Is it just me, or has the quality of mainstream tech new sites really begun to drop? Specifically, CNET, Yahoo News and big sites like that. Being very interested in the Internet and the Web, its seems like these sites are morphing into poor copies of Engadget. Maybe I'm just imagining it, but I think not.

If you have any good sites you think I should be reading, please offer some suggestions. My current favorites are TechCrunch and ajaxian. But I need more than that.

Online Content Editor

Check out this story from TechCrunch. A startup called TypeRoom is going to offer an online editor that allows you to edit any page on the net. An interesting idea. Interoperability seems to be one of the main things missing from Web 2.0 at the moment.

Featured Gadget: Twitter

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer

This blog periodically features a Google Desktop gadget and a quote from someone who uses it. If you'd like to recommend a gadget, send an email to desktop-gadgets AT google DOT com.

Omar Khan, who works on Google Desktop when he's not working on his PhD, says: "The Twitter gadget makes it easy for me to follow my friends and post updates while I'm working at my computer. No need to open the browser. I just click and go."

Daniel Beck, who started using the Twitter gadget when he was a summer intern here, says: "Twitter plus the Twitter gadget lets me keep track of a diverse set of information sources, like news, friends, family, presidential candidates, and writers, all from one spot on screen."

More information | Download gadget

Java the next Cobol?

Infoworld posted this story last week, Java is Becoming the New Cobol.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. With technologies like JRuby, which allow you to run Ruby code in a JVM, I think Java technology will be around for a long time. Whether Java the language will be the most popular I'm not sure. Languages are constantly evolving and falling in and out of favor. When I was in school, C was king, then came C++ to replace it, and then Java to replace that.

As scripting languages go, Ruby is the best one I have seen so far. And if you just look at what new tech books are coming out, it is definitely on the upswing. Probably not a bad idea to pick it up. :)

Market Data Center Efficiency

Having spent the last few years calculating, monitoring and measuring data center efficiency, my coworkers and I created our own unit of data center efficiency; the kengell.

kengell -- A data-center efficiency metric.

• Main Entry
  • kengell
• Pronunciation:
  • 'king-gull'
• Function:
  • technology term
• Keith Engell 1962- ; American computer scientist
  • a data-center measurement equal to one message processed per one unit of power
    • NOTE: one Joule = one watt-second or rather 1W = 1J/s

Example:

An application on a server processes 500,000 messages in one second. The server consumes 160 watts (160 Joules/sec). The application has a data-center rating of 3,125 kengells or 3.125 kilokengell (kK)

500,000 messags/sec / 160 J/sec = 3125 messages/Joule = 3125 kengells (or 3.125 kilokengell)

Quantities of kengell

SI prefixes (decimal)		IEC prefixes (binary)
1000^-8 = 10^-24	yoctokengell (yk)
1000^-7 = 10^-21	zeptokengell (zk)
1000^-6 = 10^-18	attokengell (ak)
1000^-5 = 10^-15	femtokengell (fk)
1000^-4 = 10^-12	picokengell (pk)
1000^-3 = 10^-9	nanokengell (nk)
1000^-2 = 10^-6	microkengell (�k)
1000^-1 = 10^-3	millikengell (mk)
1000^-2/3 = 10^-2	centikengell (ck)
1000^-1/3 = 10^-1	decikengell (dk)
1000^0 = 10^0	kengell (k)
1000^1 = 10^3	kilokengell (kK)	1024^1 = 2^10 = 1.024�10^3	kibikengell (KiK)
1000^2 = 10^6	megakengell (MK)	1024^2 = 2^20 � 1.049�10^6	mebikengell (MiK)
1000^3 = 10^9	gigakengell (GK)	1024^3 = 2^30 � 1.074�10^9	gibikengell (GiK)
1000^4 = 10^12	terakengell (TK)	1024^4 = 2^40 � 1.100�10^12	tebikengell (TiK)
1000^5 = 10^15	petakengell (PK)	1024^5 = 2^50 � 1.126�10^15	pebikengell (PiK)
1000^6 = 10^18	exakengell (EK)	1024^6 = 2^60 � 1.153�10^18	exbikengell (EiK)
1000^7 = 10^21	zettakengell (ZK)	1024^7 = 2^70 � 1.181�10^21	zebikengell (ZiK)
1000^8 = 10^24	yottakengell (YK)	1024^8 = 2^80 � 1.209�10^24	yobikengell (YiK)

Blue Sky Workshop Updated

If you get a chance, take a look at the new Blue Sky Workshop main site. I got frustrated with the Wiki I was using, so I redesigned the site using HTML, CSS, and a little Javascript. (I'll write more about that as I get the design where I want it.) But I think it looks MUCH better.

Tools like wikis and blog software are all basically content managment systems. They are tools designed to make it easier for you to write and publish content and not worry much about managing the content. If you have ever written a pure HTML site, you know what kind of pain in the rear end it is to manage things likes headers and footers, links, and change generally.

So why did I switch. There are several things that frustrate me about the wiki I was using, the old self written CMS I used before, and some of the previous blogging tools I used like Wordpress.

• Once, you get beyond the trivial, it becomes very difficult to customize the system. For example, you have to install a plugin to display code or an RSS feed. This leads to my second point.


• Often, you have to know way more about the backend of content management tool than you want to. When the next software update comes out for your tool, will that plugin get updated also? Will it work with the new version? Will I have to hack the PHP, Perl, Ruby, etc.. on the backend to make it work? This is not how I want to spend my time.


• Components are not independently pluggable. So if I want to plug in a 3rd party forum/discussion tool I can't. I have to use the commenting tool that is built into the system or install a plug in. All the tools are specific to that tools world and will not play with software from the outside.


• Content is not stored in a standardized fashion. Instead of storing the content in HTML, or better yet XHTML, the content is in some tool specific format. Thus making reuse difficult. Or the use of other tools to create the content with impossible

In the end I find myself coming back to, "why don't I just do this in XHTML?" But then there are all those headers, footer, and links to deal with. Yuck!

Well over the break, I came up with some simple Javascript techniques to templatize each of my web pages. So that problem is solved. Now I'm working on how can I break content into discrete units that are stand alone, but yet can relate to each other. And some tools to automate the creation of the Javascript code for templates, linking individual pages together, and meta data to describe what is contained in a content chunk.

We'll see where it goes.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Should have sent this out during the break, but between having company over and being sick most of this week, it just didn't happen.

Still living and working in the Denver area. I'm back with Sun Microsystems working in education again. An exciting time there as we are really beginning to look at new ways to deliver learning.

Still get to see a lot of my sister and her family. Mom and Dad made it up for the Christmas break and we all had a nice visit.

In the tech area, I finally splurged over the break and bought a 37" Widescreen LCD TV made by Vizio (price was under $800). Having never spent much time with one these sets, I'm really impressed at how good DVDs look on the new set. The 480i image coming from the DVD is great. Can't wait to try some real high def stuff.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!