Netbeaning again

Return of the lost child...

Been an Eclipse devotee for several years now. But have recently returned to NetBeans. I was using netbeans before eclipse, but changed as eclipse offered more and faster development. (And JBuilder, Kawa, jedit in ancient time before then...)

Been really impressed with NetBeans 6.1, it has really moved on from 4.x range I was using, and the 5.0 version I last checked out.

First impression was how well maven works within netbeans. In eclipse the m2eclipse plugin does somehow works, but is cumbersome, and always something is a pain. In netbeans, the mevenide just works. Plain and simple. It just works as it should do, with full module structure, easy usage, seem fully integrated with the rest of the ide. nice.

In general netbeans is a lot clearer and cleaner, eclipse interface is very messy and cumbersome.

So Ill be a Sun slave for awhile now, till the next new better thing arrive...

( looking through my blog, it is becomming more and more geeky. oh well. :) )

Firefox extensions

Arent Firefox extensions fabulous? No? Oh. you got a life...
Anyway for the rest of us, they are.

Here are my favourites, I dont always install all of them on every machine, but quite a selection every time.

• Fast dial:
  essential, such an eye candy. and usefull.


• del.icio.us bookmarks:
  new firefox 3 bookmarks, are nice, but i use several machines, several users, several profiles, sometimes not firefox, so syncing bookmarks is key.


• faviconizeTab:
  nice.


• Web developer:
  Must have for web developers. Suprisingly I use it much anymore, so Ive realised I just dont do much frontend coding anymore.


• Firebug:
  Like web developer, good css/ajax debugging tool.


• Foxyproxy:
  Not recommended for everyone, but nice work extension to automatically alter which proxy you use. (In case they monitor how much time you "research on the net".


• ie tab,
  if in windows, even less reason to ever click on e!


• quick java:
  quick buttons to enable/disable java


• NoScript
  essential security tool, a bit overzealus.


• pwdHash: handy.
  
• adblock plus:
  if some adds annoy you, or as i often encounter, slows your pc down to a grind if you tab open 5-10 news articles with lots of flash adds....


• remember the milk for gmail:
  handy


• twitterfox:
  nice not essential


• facebook:
  nice not essential


• CTRL+TAB:
  Nice idea, but lacks some configurability, so needs to mature a little.
  Tab scope:
  Nice, but not that usefull,
  Tab sidebar
  Very nice
  Ctrl Tab Preview
  If only it was updated to FF3


• google preview:
  just usefull, not essential.


• Split Browser:
  Handy viewing some side by side. A bit buggy last time I used it.


• firegpg:
  nice, if only people would care about encrypting emails...


• google toolbar:
  used to always install it, not bothered in the new firefox 3


• foxtrick:
  if you play hat trick, then foxtrick was essential, and is still usefull.


• 
  modify headers,
  if debugging web apps .


• 
  gmail notifier:
  if you dont have an external one.
  works with google apps.


• Elasticfox:
  Essential if you use amazon ec2 alot


• 
  S3 fox:
  Handy amazon S3 browser.


• google browser sync:
  Very handy, but discontinued for firefox 3.
  Syncing many things, but the element I used was passwords.
  very usefull as i use many machines, often reinstalling firefox,
  and dont want to remember every password.
  downside was privacy, but id rather trust google,
  than some 3rd party i dont know. (better the devil you know)

New Postfix howto!

I have finally updated my Postfix howto!
It is now based on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. And as before includes detailed, easy to follow instructions of building a mail server using Postfix, Courier, MySQL, amavisd, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, SASL, TLS and SquirrelMail.

It is not quite finished yet however, but I would recommend following it rather than the old one. But keep referencing the old one as it has a lot of detail. The new howto, edition 7, does at the moment only include the core packages, but enough to get a advanced and secure server up. For any extensions and further info it still referes to the old edition (5). But I will keep padding it out with old and new content.

New for this edition is the inclusion of Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud(EC2) as reference build of the server. I have also made public AMIs for people to launch and customize if they so choose.

Hope it is of use to people!

Cheers,
Ivar Abrahamsen

elastic experience

Been playing with Amazon's web services, EC2 and S3.

EC2, Elastic Computing Cloud, is really nice. In a nutshell, it allows you to create servers on the fly as and when you need it.

My initial impression before using it was that is would be very good for high load, performance intensive applications for larger corporations or research. And not for my use; low to none performance, tiny web sites and web apps, which are mostly used by just me.

The main reason was the cost of running one 24/7 is costly with amazon pricing, especially as it would be idle most of the time. At most I get 500 web site visitors a day, thats only 1 every few minutes.

But after playing around with EC2, I have realised it can also be very usefull for my meagre usage. Initially it looked a conveluted way of creating and accessing EC2 and S3. But the starter guide was actually quite easy to follow. And then the firefox extensions for both makes admin very easy.

I run a subversion server on my normal server for my code, websites, documents etc. But its does not need to be online 24/7. I can just bring up an EC2 AIM instance for a little while, or even for the daytime hours.

I also use my current server to run test apps, which only I use. They do not need to be up for very long. EC2 will be fine.

The main cost will be the 24/7 hosting of my static web sites. If I run one, I might as well run them all on the same instance. But I worked out the costs is on par the ISP is charging for my co-location server. However it's costs are shared with others, which I may not be able to do with EC2.

So now Im moving from one physical server doing everything(including crashing and being down for long periods), to several dynamic instances with at least one permanent. Will keep a look at costs to see how much more this way is costing.

Will have to write and create some routines to persist to S3 some of the data of the instances. This looked a pain initially, but I think it is just a period of adaption before it will be acceptable.

One thing Im not sure I can move to EC2 is my email server. But google apps is handling well some of my domains, I might just convince myself to move it all to it.


Ps. The one odd, funny thing, but to be aware of with EC2, is that after you have terminated your instances, try after awhile the ip again in a browser. I have gotten other people's instances whom have been handed the IP, but often their websites are in their initial install state. So Ive seen default admin pages for CSM apps(ie with default passwords as well) etc being exposed to anyone before the actual owner logs in and changes settings. Remember you can be in the opposite situation as well.

Grrrrrrr

My server keeps crashing. No idea why. And I cant physically get to it anymore. It feels really frustrating.... :(

It has been up faultlessly for more than two years so suppose ive been spoilt.

And the other people I share the server can neither get to the server easily, but at least they still work in the same country as the ISP. But it means days delay between reboots. And then some hours of searching for why it crashes before its gone again.

Things is, it worked faultlessly when we removed it from the isp and ran it for a few days at someones house. But in the ISP it dies within a day.

If it is hardware, my main suspect is always the powersupply. But I cant remember what the specs where......

No single default persistence unit defined

If you getting nowhere with this type of problem:

Using spring and jpa, and you get this error:

No single default persistence unit defined in {classpath*:META-INF/persistence.xml}

And you DO have a persistence.xml in your classpath.

Then the cause is simple.

You may have other persistence.xml files as well in your lib/jars.

Solution, add your persistenceUnitName to entityManager bean.


<bean id="entityManagerFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean">
<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
<property name="persistenceUnitName" value="blahblahYourName" />

which matches the one in your persistence.xml


<persistence-unit name="blahblahYourName">

</persistence-unit>


Beastie Boys

Over celebration

The Biggest Hypocrite In England

City populations

Must have been bored today.
Started looking at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Europe then got to....

Different ways of counting city population....:


Largest_urban_areas_of_the_European_Union: Manchester is 7th largest area with 3.8 mill people.

Largest_European_metropolitan_areas: Manchester is 11th with 4.2 mill people. However in the Manchester City itself is only 440,000 (but that does not include Salford, Oldham, Trafford, Sale, etc).

Larger_Urban_Zones_(LUZ)_in_the_European_Union: Manchester is 14th with 2.8 mill people. The scousers keep interfering in the others, but this is perhaps the proper size of Manchester.


Ps. Looking at it differently

www.top500.de/cities/ranks/page000.php: Oslo is Europe's fifth largest city!

JavaZone

Another JavaZone finished. Two full days of geektime, but fun. Stressfull, as there were too many simultaneous presentations. But it is well planned, with a lot of renowned presentors.

Best presentations was:

* Tijs Rademakers and Jos Dirksen showing how to use Mule in a easy to follow style.

* James Coplien debunking some agile myths.

* Matt Raible comparing web frameworks.



My hands have been itching for a chance to test some the new tech and methods. A vaccine jab at the doctor today killed all that though!

ClubZone, the evening entertainment, while looked good on paper and probably a lot of effort to plan, was a disaster. The problem was the Norway-Greece footy match. Fitting 2500 people (okay probably some were not into football ) into the only place that showed the match was never going to work. So my group all went home to catch the second half. No free beer for us.

Now how can I introduce Mule into our stack, without a special need for it....

facebookerized

Ok. so Ive joined facebook a few months ago, and it now seems most of the people I know are members. Suppose the media attention of how dangerous it is, attracts more...

Can be a bit adictive at the start, and really nice to see what happened to old friends. But novelity will probably go down after a while. However if my core friends are on by then it is a nice tool to stay in touch and plan stuff.

Will knee spoil summer?

Was looking forward to the summer...

Had started cycling to work after the winter and planning long bike trips, prepared the golf clubs for finally some real usage and both football with mates and work was moving from indoor astroturf to real grass, then I go and blow up my knee!

So now Im hobbling like a muppet, with a knee which the doc recon may be jumpers knee combined with inflamed joint fat pads. Nice. However I hope that is the only problem as it is treatable.

Its not only sport thats affected, but also weekend trips and every tasks are restricted, so its not fun for Chloe either. But that may be mostly due to my winging.

Its been a month since I injured it and the kne had started to get better. We travelled to Gothenburg at the weekend, and it was no problem.

But yesterday I stupidly decided to walk home from work. Walk was fine, and I was starting to get optimistic about playing footy soon again. Then as popped into a shop it "clicked" and I was in total agony again. Depressing.

Missing Old Trafford

Moved away from Manchester last summer, and have not been at Old Trafford at all this season. And Im starting to really miss it.



Having attended 100+ matches over the last 15 years, being at OT was a normal part of my life. Week in week out, with 60,000+ others, cheering on United, shouting abuse at scouse, city, cockney opposition and when we got good tickets, which was quite often, this was all within a few yards of the players.



Now watching on TV, is okay. But as the season is hotting up it feels so remote. Not going to loose my voice watching it on TV, last time I did that was after the CL final in 99.



Over here they use long weekends to go over for a game, spend loads of money on flights and hotels and get crap seats. While before Id get a pair of 5th row tickets for £26 each, have quick pint in the Quadrant before kick off, and afterwards be home in half an hour.

Oh well, suppose its not much else I do miss from Manchester, (perhaps Didsbury pubs), and I can use my weekends to get into skiing and sailing again....

Spring

Held recently a presentation on Spring at TietoEnator and NetCom. It was a brief introduction to the Spring Framework and the IOC, MVC, JDBC, Hibernate, Acegi modules.

It was the same presentation , but the first one dragged on for 1.5 hours. At which point the audience was getting quite bored. The second wizzed past in 30 minutes. This time the audience probably did not catch a lot of what I said.

It is definetly not easy. Both times the projectors played up and caused a lot of grief. The first presentation included way too many examples. The second not enough.

If curious, the presentation is here, and all the examples are here.