SwingingThePendulum - GNOME Live! presentation from nat friedman... insightful... a more recent one by seth nickel here -> experimental culture...

manong's tv enabled tricyle!



pardon my poor clie's camera... that glowing white rectangle is the mini tv showing channel 7's evening news program... and since am nothing but an indigent-pda-toting consultant, all i could give manong was an extra 2 pesos (added to the usual 18 peso fare) and a compliment "galeng ng tricyle mo manong! merong tv on board! mamaya ipo-post ko ito sa aking blog. malay mo balang araw may maka discover po sainyo at mapanood kayo sa tv!"...

P.S. manong is available for an interview from monday to saturday... just look for him at the tricycle loading spot at the corner of Cyberzone at the back of SM North Edsa...

Common Dreams... fascinating views... hope we could come up with a local version of this...

Componentizing Spring and Hibernate Development - Confluence... will read this later...

the new JDO seems really neat too... will tackle that one little by little...

finally managed to have a bit of time to properly setup distcc on the degatto... now all the software packages compiling on this gentoo based machine is off-loaded to a freebsd based workstation... this makes the degatto fans a bit happy since the less load on the cpu means less heat... its probably doing its paean of thanks to distcc by now...

from sachachua: Digital Pinay 2005: A great leap _backward_ in promoting women in IT... wtf! PCS has caused quite a stir in the local IT community... major blunder!

stumbled upon this story Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?... what troubles me more is the reality that there are a lot of misinformed people (parents mind you) that needs a lot of enlightenment... i dont know if this article is a joke... but any level headed parent should think twice before even considering these things... anyway, it was filed under the "Internet Idiocy" category... you be the judge... ;)

should be in the amusement category if you ask me... :)

the joy's of parenthood... currently, this girl is the only homo sapien that can push the limits of my patience and max out the happiness meter in me...



all else considered... being a dad rocks!

another truly awesome webapp ->map.search.ch

wow! our very own Jan Alonzo is now the official maintainer of straw (stand alone rss aggregator app) according to Juri Pakaste's latest blog... nice to see a FIlipino getting recognition (and doing some action!) in the open-source arena....

my gulay! according to this fake pala yung last post ko... it wasn't related at al to the recent tsunami... but those creatures are real ones tho...

pictures of strange/scary looking sea creatures found by russian divers near? the tsunami sites... with all these mars explorations the earth's ocean still packs a lot of mystery to modern science...

speaking of nostalgia... i once wrote this pseudo poem at Elmo's old guestbook (kangkong series circa 98-99)...

ewan
(electric fan 1998)

ewan ko ewan mo,
pero pu!@#$!#$ ang galing mo...
mundong ibabaw,
kaligayahang malabnaw....

lol ang sabe nila,
he he he naman sa iba...
pero bakit nga ba,
kailangan pang tumawa...

wala akong masabe,
itanong mo man sa ale...
kase kahit liwanag ng buwan,
parang nde ko na rin masakyan...

saludo ako sayo tol,
ipagpatuloy parang ulol...
malupit man ang mundo,
patuloy pa rin tayong mga gago....

haha... the angst of youth... indirect results of coding in C/C++ and living amidst the virtual world of IRC's...

Peyups : Where Bright Minds Meet -> Mga Alaalang Sinusundo ng Eraserheads... no, am not from UP, tho i really wish to study there... i agree whenever i hear this band's music, auto-nostalgic mode kicks in... college days... *sigh* life goes by so fast...

Palm Infrare Wireless keyboard

Testing the borrowed palm infrared keyboard. Pretty awesome but takes a bit of getting used to. Needs more practice.

Hopefully this will inspire me to blog more often. ;-)

another blog via email test

test 1 2 3...

--
cheers!

nox

for the past three (3) days the bayantel dsl is awfully slow! feels slower than using dialup... their own Bandwidth Meter sites reports an average of 30 to 70 kbps... and this should be 256 or at least somewhere near that range... anyway a trouble ticket was filed and tech support promised they would come by tomorrow to check things out...

Avantgo Mini-review

Avantgo recently released a new version so last nite i decided to give it a spin. I had used avantgo in the past but find it rather slow specially if you configure it to use the memory stick as well as updating wirelessly also takes too much time since there's no option to select just the channels you would like to update. Anyway the new version has a revamped UI and added the option of selecting just the channels you want to update.

Ok, it seems the new version is a bit faster than the old one but still nowhere near the speed of good ol' plucker (still the best free mobile offline reader so far!). Also the option to selectively update your channel seems to work pretty well. One of the big difference of avantgo against plucker is its ability to render html tables exactly the way they appear on the original content. That means HBO's pda version is displayed in table format and do not become a flat list like they do in plucker.

Here's a list of channels that i subscribe to:

- CNN International
- Reuters (This is how mobile news should be presented. With pictures!)
- Inq7 (One major gripe with this channel is its rather lack of consistency. Not all the links point to a mobile version of the news. A good example is the Business section with links that point to the full page version on the main site. Gedemet! Kaya nga tinawag na mobile version eh!)
- Wired News (Full length technology related articles in )
- Quezon City Weather (Five day weather forecast courtesy of Yahoo mobile)
- Forbes
- Manila Bulletin (Kudo's to the webmasters of the mobile site. It truly contains all the news in mobile format)

All in all, it seems good enough for daily use again. Let's see...

a good friend whom i met circa 98 at then inquirer's #forum at irc.webmaster.com? is no back online! am a fan of this guys poetry and Humorous/sarcastic/sometimes f*** ladden articles and short stories... check this one out Too Young: The Perils of Raising a Child Wonder in the Age of Google and Rogue Asteroids...

Palm Wireless Keyboard Mini Review

Having a palm wireless keyboard seems to inspire me to write (more like literary nonsense). I do have to set the keyboard driver to turn off after 1 minute of inactivity as it drains the battery even if the keyboard is not in use. Its powered by two triple A batteries which according to the palm site could last for about three to six months depending on usage. The layout of the keys is something that you would feel right at home if your a touch typist. The model that I have lacks the dedicated number keys on the top. The placement of the arrow keys are a bit out of place and requires a bit of practice.

With an accessory like this, a pda could really act as a laptop replacement suitable for word processing and doing emails and taking down notes. If your pda is equipped with wireless connectivity to wifi or if bundled with a phone via IR or bluetooth it becomes a highly mobile communication tool. I could also take advantage of the keyboard during those emergency ssh sessions as it makes typing at the command line an experience very similar to using a regular computer keyboard.

All in all the keyboard brings a breath of fresh air to this almost a year old clie. I have read somewhere that this keyboard is also compatible with the nokia series 60 phones and various pocket pc pda's out there, so definitely a very good gadget investment.

cheers!

nox

email test

blogging via email test...

--
cheers!

nox

weird... where did all my post via email go?

ARCHOS PMA 400... sharp zaurus competitor... has wifi! rumors say the latest version on display from this years CES has built in tv tuner? man, you can watch videos and store lots of music with its 30gig hdisk... can be used as a PDA... and oh, its linux based!

mobile tech is definitely something to look forward in 2005!

hmmnn... mobile indie! independently mobile!

Finally, something than can put an end to the Java vs. C# debate!

its raining and its cold and dark outside...

cellular telcos loves to eat us,
as if we don't have any feelings...

lesson learned...

never discuss your ideas with them...
behind the pretty smiles and seemingly nodding faces...

hides the reliable xerox droids...

life is never meant to be fair...

i find this Sharp Zaurus SL-6000 really sexy... hopefully, prices will drop as these became outdated by newer devices...

The Rainmaker (1997): great movie! wasnt able to closely capture the excitement of the original novel... but entertaining nonetheless... seriously, all the lawyers should pray to God...

hehe... just noticed the weather applet says manila is smokin' :)



Happy New Year Everyone!

before and after tsunami Satellite images... hope the new year brings new hope to those affected by this disaster...

And of course to Google for unselfishly making Gmail free and by far revolutionizing the way we search the web... i thank thee!

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: AP - Asia: Tsunami death toll rises to 76,700... a stark contrast to a happy new year... may all their souls rest in peace... a prayer is needed for those who were able to survive the tsunami but are in dire need of food and medical supplies... *can* somebody DIVERT all those war funds to these people affected by the disaster...

a smile to remind us all that however bleak the future may seem, one can still find the courage to smile and realize that there is hope everytime the sun shines...


this is "Raquel" from the missionaries of charity where we held our christmas party. it's pretty amazing how events like these could change your outlook in life...

Merry Christmas Everybody!!!
Happy New Year Too!!!

Smoothjazz.Com - Where Smooth Meets Jazz... i must be getting old, as am really beginning to like jazz music... especially in the mornings and late nite happy coding sessions... i still dig kurt cobain's music and other distortion induced hymns during the afternoons... so i guess that means i still belong to the "too old to be a rockstar, too young to give up being a rockstar" category...

back to basics...


public synchronized int get() {
while (available == false) {
try {
// wait for Producer to put value
wait();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
}
}
available = false;
// notify Producer that value has been retrieved
notifyAll();
return contents;
}
public synchronized void put(int value) {
while (available == true) {
try {
// wait for Consumer to get value
wait();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
}
}
contents = value;
available = true;
// notify Consumer that value has been set
notifyAll();
}


hmmnn... some noticeable changes on the mrt north station today... the pinkish mmda fence extended for a good distance from the base of the stairs facing sm north... the ongoing renovation of these are should in theory ease the traffic on this side of town... lets wait and see... anyway since the i already walked for a good few meters and the all the bus on the way seems to really crammed with people, i plodded on and decide to just walk all the way to the tricycle area beside the cyberzone... the footbridge (as usual painted with pinkish delight, for some reason somebody thinks the world looks good in pink) is now passable and was tempted to take a picture of the area but decided to be on the safe side and just enjoy the scenery and nevermind taking a souvenir photo home with me... anyway it seems to be a good late late afternoon exercise... of course i had to pay 18 pesos for the tricycle fare instead of the usual 6 pesos if i rode via the bus, but all in all it feels good to do this once in a while... also, by doing this i get to stroll inside the mall and maybe finally decide what gift to get my lovely wife as the two kids had theirs already (its a tad easier find a gift a kid would like)... ahhh, Christmas with the whole family really is the jolliest time of the year...

Map24 slickest online map i have seen! smooth zooming rocks! this is an applet... would very much like to do something similar for the philippine map... namria's online services should have something like this... i always had a penchant for location based services/apps, the posibilities are endless...

Mathematics and Sex... some hilarious comments there from the slashdot crowd...

Copernic Desktop Search - The Search Engine for Your PC... its free... will try this out... beagle is still far away from becoming as polished as this...

cool blogs: bizdrivenlife.net by wilson ng and ten thousand things by jim paredes... totoy na totoy ang blog ko compared to this guys...

PalmSource to build Palm OS on Linux... hope this becomes a reality...

hmmnn... until now why doesn't INQ7.net add an RSS feed feature? would be great for both their breaking news and mobile section...

currently watching Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)... how are we going to sleep peacefully at night? btw, we have a ton of problems on our own country.. *sigh*... nevertheless, highly recommended documentary...

looking forward to watching that imelda film too...

from PAGASA... typhoon "yoyong" expected to hit bicol tomorrow... geez i worry about my relatives there... especially until now we still have no electricity in our area (according to the local electric coop, it would take 2 to 3 months to fully restore the service)... hopefully the damage this time would be minimal...

most generous comment i've had so far:

"Hi man!

Contact me at ____@___ and you'll get one for free!

I'm in good mood... new girlfriend... ;-)

Best regards,
Michael Bartl"

this is in response to a blog entry where i mentioned my dire need for the viplugin for eclipse. i have no idea that one day the author of the plugin would eventually be reading that entry.

and all i could reply was:

man,

you ROCK!

MANY THANKS!

Slashdot | An Update on Patrick Volkerding... hope he gets well soon... without slackware, i might not have the chance to learn unix thru linux... those slackware floppies that we would copy from the kind folks of ateneo de naga... since none is available yet in legaspi, and we need to prepare prior to infocom? or was it sequel? installing our schools connection... we were the first in legaspi ;-), just a few months behind ateneo de naga (they were the first in bicol, our school being second)... those were the days (line printer madness on continous paper, printing those early howto's... could still remember my brain hurting trying to digest that dreaded net howto)...

for what its worth, get well soon PAT!

wtf is causing a person to do this -> Man kills eight students in dormitory - (United Press International)... this is becoming more and more often... interesting enough the ad banner points to this (Going to iraq and need insurance?)... oh my gulay...

java applet config on ubuntu firefox. sun jdk...

in .bashrc or /etc/profile:

export JAVA_HOME="/opt/j2sdk1.4.2_06/"
export JDK_HOME="${JAVA_HOME}"
export PATH="${JAVA_HOME}/bin:${PATH}"

as root:

ln -sf /opt/j2sdk1.4.2_06/jre/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/libjavaplugin_oji.so

if you havent installed java on ubuntu yet... check this out... and this one too for eclipse... afterwards... rock!

added search functionality to this blog... that way i can easily search all this crap with a few keystrokes and a click of a button... nice!

it would be nicer still if blogger incorporates tomboy (wiki-wiki like) functionality to blogs... that way, all blogs become cutting edge auto-linking mayhem...

my gulay! here comes Google SMS...

playboy interviews the google guys... had a chance to read this article on a borrowed september copy of playboy... the "dont be evil" mantra... the way they managed growth (in a very short span of time)... billionaires, 4 billion dollars each as of their recent IPO... modern day geek heroes... with the recent move to enable pop access to gmail, and making the service FREE until now... they also recently acquired keyhole (location based services?!), and leaves us wondering what their next move will be...

since more than one person is complaining of the web based email (jwma webmail), this Usermin seems to be a better alternative...

sweeet chair o' mine...



on the right corner, the all around chair... able to withstand 3 years of regular usage... showing signs of wear and tear... but still usable nonetheless... but all good things must come to an end...

on left corner, the all new super improved, cheapest gas lift computer chair from pricemart... the box seem to imply "superb" quality... and the kind lady said "return within 30 days if found defective"... with that in mind, my wetpu (ass) and my aching back is looking forward to many years of comfort and companionship...

Skype simply rocks... been using it to talk with friends around the globe for the past few days, (courtesy of the new broadband line)... linux client works like a charm after tweaking some settings... you can voipelababad 24x7... it hardly makes a dent in bandwidth usage... AFAIK codec is proprietary... but cool nevertheless... and before i forget... skype rocks! skype rocks! skype rocks!

oh goodie! GMail POP now works on versamail on my clie... wickedly cool! what doesnt work is the smtp since the versamail version i used doesnt support secure smtp... i just set it to smtp.globetel.com.ph to enable sending mail via gprs...

hmmmnn... naughty -> Depenguinator... wonder if this can be a valid reason for terminating a colo service? better just wait till colo companies offer's freebsd 5.3 stable based boxes...

hmmmnnn... doing NAT on linux didnt change that much since a few years back... the *bsd way is definitely much, much easier... but then again, i think linux is way ahead on the desktop front... but still needs to learn a few tricks from *bsd when it comes to things like these... *bsd's are still a sysadmin's best friend...

now, if only the current crop of popular inexpensive colo's would start offering Freebsd 5.3 based servers... so far its still 4.x series on cihost, ev1 and the like.... and as of now 4.x is not that too happy with java's 1.4 or 5.x series...

broadband at last... bayantel's lowest plan, i applied for the 128 but just a few days ago got upgraded to 256 due to their ongoing promo! now santa if you can hear me, this would do for christmas -> linksys router/wap/switch combo... ;-)

attended the mobile e-commerce congress organized by PICS at the intercon... i still think the barrier to entry for most SME's is the difficulty of getting a short access code... and a common access code (same short access code number to be used across the major telcos) is ironically NOT common... never mind that the revenue share is 70/30 cause the brighter side of things (as one of the speaker highlighted) is if some content developers are thriving and profiting with that arrangement, imagine the opportunity if you could enable your app on other countries where the revenue share is slightly higher... no need for lengthy legislation process to regulate this revenue sharing scheme either, let the market dictate... btw, i still wish there would be a way for this telcos to easily provide a test environment to budding content providers, or a way to easily/quickly provide telco grade short access code to content developers... i dont know how, but somehow there must be a way...

the keynote speaker, a congressman also hinted on the need to set voip free... cited that we should follow the FCC... cool guy, unmindful of the sponsors written on the the background... VOIP seems to be the future... what would that be like, your email addy as your phone number? nations clothed with wifi, wifi phones galore! maybe at plans below 500 you get unlimited 256k bandwidth a month... you can use it for data and voice or what have you... heck maybe even good ol tv shows would entirely be streamed or pushed to tivo like devices... daydreaming again, back to reality...

of course, 50% of the time during the conference i have to listen to this obnoxious fellow, trying hard to put an accent to his english (why on earth does he need to do that! i heard him talking to his filipino companion and he can talk without the accent and its certainly more clearer and better for other ears to sustain) while obviously trying to impress his indian boss... aside from his f@#$%@! (fucking) loud annoying voice, this guy is obviously clueless on what he is talking about... the lady in front of me gave him a note, probably telling him shut up or leave... havent heard a word from him since...

oh well, was probably pissed off because i cant take a quick nap with his loud voice during the time the speaker was obviously just making peachy sales talk...

speaking of streams, this is probably the coolest livecd ever! yipee! for open source! it would be cool to do a j2me version of their applet client and see how good the performance is on multimedia phones with gprs...

a while back only the version compatible with eclipse 2.x series were still available for free... i was surprised when i checked the sourceforge version of thevi plugin was updated for eclipse 3.x series... not as full featured as the commercial version... but hey, basic navigation is supported as well as copy/paste/search and : which allows you to quickly go to a line number (very handy for debugging)... my hands seems to be dancing with joy of this new found goodness...

design patterns are a necessity (i hope i spelled that right) for anyone doing programming, for java i find this book indispensible java patterns... and its absulutely free!... based heavily on the GoF book... adding this to my december to read list...

my constant reminder at work...

We do what we can
We give what we have
Our doubt is our passion
And our passion is our task
The rest is the madness of art
- Henry James


at home... having two kids is not easy... and nowadays spending quality time with them is priority # 1... everyday am amazed of thier developments... my eldest, 3 years old could already control the mouse better than *other* grownups... she could play all those barney games on the net via barney online... she could type simple english words and her name using the keyboard... at the same time perfectly say "barney, anong petsa na???" when my dialup connection is having a bad hair day... the youngest a few months old can now follow you with his eyes, smile, and starts to blurt out baby sounds every now and then... am extremely curious how a child develops speech recognition, and at this stage am guessing his trying to experiment with what sounds he could make, later on will try to emulate the sounds that he hears...

elsewhere, a new video rental shop opened nearby our house and for the past few weekends i had been catching up on the movies that i have missed (watching a movie at a movie house is a luxury nowadays)... at 15 pesos per movie and 40 pesos for three movies its a steal... the quality is light years away from those "beeseedee" and "deebeedee" boys... watched "the last samurai" (japanese people are an epitome of efficiency and dedication, from the moment they wake up, they pusrue perfection on whatever endeavor strikes their fancy), "taking lives" (mildly hot jolie), "cold mountain" (jude youre a lucky dude!), "kill bill 1 and 2" (uberly cool hantaro sword) , "gothika" (suspense), "paycheck" (a sneak peak into teh future of consultants)... also had a chance to rent peque gallaga's greatest movie ;) "scorpio nights" (raw erotica delivered in artful cinematic sequences)... and last but not the least "mystic river" (sean pean made me cry, such performance! probably the best movie i have seen so far, made me hug my daughter at the end of the movie and hope and pray that never happens to her)...

that's it, and i still think the eraserheads were poetic... shake yer head!

Interview With God... scenes are stunning! not to mention the quotes that makes perfect sense...

so many things to write, so little time to write...


this tomboy thing is really sweet... i haven't got the time to write a conduit so that my notes automatically become mobile note compatible... the quick and dirty solution would be to just do xsl on the xml files that tomboy produces and transform it to plain wiki syntax that mobile notes understands...

with that said, am being too much dependent on the clie for quite some time now... rarely do i bring the degatto (yes its a brick, but i dont have the money to buy those lightweight centrino laptops you insensitve clod!) anymore... all the usual office stuff, emails and doc editing can be done by this pda... of course i still use a generic workstation for work related things but this pda allows me to carry handy references whenever i go... paired with an 8310, am available to recv email, log on to yahoo messenger and do the google thing whenever the needs arises, and no access point in sight... and yes ssh and vnc is still quite usable even when using a gprs connection... and as an added bonus, these softwares are freely available via freewarepalm.com... what i do spend on this thing are ebooks via ereader.com, which revived my passion for reading... and of course palm powered device is linux and freebsd friendly ;), syncs nicely with evolution... the memstick also allows me to carry one or two cd's worth of audio and the built in camera is very handy for life's never ending kodak moments... now if only santa would give me a wireless (IR) keyboard compatible with the clie tj37, i'd be extremely happy...

work related stuff brings me to SOAP programming to interface with a client's system... quite cool if i could also find the time to try apache axis to expose some of *Services classes to actual web services...

on the degatto side, hands down linux leads the bsd's in supporting a wide range hardware... for now the only thing that doesnt work on this thing is the built in card reader... as of thursday last week i finally figured out to make the built in winmodem work via the slmodem port... the trick is disabling the default serial init script which conflicts with the slmodem init script...

hmmmnnn... its 2am, time to drink coffee, whack the keyboard for another hour, and go to bed...

FreewarePalm: mobile note v0.6 - a free palm app to satisfy your note taking needs... now i have mono tomboy like app on the clie... a tomboy to mobile note converter via a gnome pilot conduit should be a nice project to hack on... wiki wiki never fails to send an erudite tingle on my knee....

hackergotchi howto...

a friend who just recently arrived from canada was kind enough to give me Crest SpinBrush pro... this is the first electric toothbrush that i owned and i must say this thing does wonders to your teeth... you will really have that just went from the dentist feeling... toothbrush tech at its finest... the only problem is where to find replacement heads here in the philippines...

here's another sweet app -> Tomboy... insanely usable for multi-tasking drones... an app like this should be standard on the palm or pocket pc's as it makes those random notes a bit useful...

this iaudio digital music player seems a good competitor to ipod... pretty sweet...

the past few months had been a futile battle with this telco refusing to acknowledge the fact that the postpaid sim was stolen and we are certainly not paying that rediculous bill... obviously they have a record of the history of this account and can see that it was clearly stolen due to the number of load transfers in a span of a few hours (also the fact that this account was in good standing for more than a year)... aside from the fact that it was reported and we immediately asked for a replacement sim and also furnished a letter detailing the incident, submitted an affidavit and spent a fair amount of time talking with their credit and collection officers... *sigh* to cut the story short in the end we were demanded to pay the whole amount and we have no choice but to comply since the number is the hotline for our clients (we did sent a letter indicating that we are paying under protest)...

but my point is, since the amount of phone calls (during the time the phone was stolen) was quite minimal and just a bit above the monthly plan, it was the transfer a load amount that was way pas the credit limit, isnt it clearly this telco's fault that they allowed the bill go past the credit limit? what the hell is this credit limit for???

second, the transfer a load feature doesnt have enough security to prevent unauthorized use of the service, in our case the thief was able to transfer load amounting to PHP10k quite easily because nothing prevented him from doing it... also the service is enabled by default, the subscriber did not request for it... the analogy would be like having a credit card company deliver a credit card extension with no security feature to your door and somebody finds it before you do, uses it, and you are demanded to pay for it...

and the sad thing is they just tell you that your request to clear that account is denied and you have to pay... they dont !#@$!@# give you the courtesy of even explaining to you the real reason why... and as if we do not have enough problems already, and that amount is way too high for mere mortals like us living in a place where the cost of living rises daily...

browsing ka edongs blog, i got curious and followed the link to Cell Phone Theft - INQ7.net... the stories are really depressing... manila is a dangerous place to live... and all i can do is *sigh*...

Nvu - The Complete Web Authoring System for Linux... really sweet app... open source goodness good enough for daily web development use...

my dear ninongs and ninangs its my birthday today! you can bring your gifts and kids later at 4pm today... *hehehe*

interesting... for some strange reason i was able to get the usb gsm modem to work via usbserial and pl2303 kernel module... strange i tried this setup february.. before the elections *grin* and it just didnt work and i have to reformat the machine to win2003... ok the next step is to check out if i can get the same behaviour on hte beastie box... also time to read those gsm at comand set again and see how well this modem performs... at least there's no need to order those serial models which requires a separate power adaptor...

Free Programming and Computer Science Books, cool reference site...

the new Tungsten T5 Handheld is a great disappointment... it simply sucks... users should choose the older T3 over this one... feature per feature and probably if the price of the T3 falls it would be stupid to buy this new tungsten device...

sadly sony has withdrawn from the pda market... imho, they really excel on handheld innovations... am pretty sure the sony engineers are laughing on this recent tungstend incarnation...

if palmone continues this trend, users probably woudl switch to pocket pc's in the long run...

hard work paying off... contract got extended... really nice feedback from the ceo himself... makes me want to work even harder...

along with comes the dreaded version 2 syndrome... its time to put more effort on quality... ok, team lets get to work...

life progressing... nothing constant... children growing... friends getting married... everybody seems a lot older than they used to be...

yesterday, i took some quality time with the youngest, smelling those soft folds of skin around his neck and gently kissing his cheek... i ponder on the future of my kids... exciting as it may seem, knowing what i know now, its gonna be one heck of a journey...

i only have a handful of photos during my childhood... but my two kids already has hundreds of them... if i could afford a digital video camera it may be hours of mpeg already... again i wonder, what technology would be available to them when they grow up? *sigh* life is full of questions...

been a while... a lot has happened lately...

turned 27 last last week (17th)... a milestone age perhaps... home cooked spaghetti and cake was rather delicious... the best tasting cake courtesy of my officemates... i got two adorable kids, an insanely cute baby boy and a little girl that never fails to test my patience, makes me laugh, all at the same time... a rather patient and equally beautiful wife makes life worth living as well...

got a new 2.5" hdisk... tried ubuntu (a rather up to date debian distro, will tinker with it some other day)... tried suse (rpm hell)... tried freebsd (acpi troubles remain, will wait for stable)... went back to gentoo (spent the entire weekend compiling)...

gnome 2.8 rocks! if your video card doesnt support DRI, you should turn off xcomposite extensions as gnome 2.8 has composite support enabled by default and will make your desktop rather sluggish.. garret's industrial firefox theme is really sweet... after pimping my desktop, i googled to finally put an end to firefox crashing everytime i load a flash enabled site... turns out you have to adjust your xorg to support at least 24bpp....

currently trying out bacula as the HITACHI_DK23EA-40 that comes with the degatto now has bad sectors... i noticed that since last week hdparm config was taking a lot longer than normal... dmesg reveals dma and driveseek error... running badblocks revealed that my /var is indeed has a number of bad sectors on it... luckily its still covered by the one year warranty... the downside is it would take two weeks till the replacement would come in... sigh...

finally got the *TIME* to finally configure the cvs... yipee!!! onwards to version 2! team, lets synchronize! yay!

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jessie my friend, if you are reading this... this Fluendo opensource streaming solution could replace your current windows setup for the next penafrancia festival...

synergy makes kvm's pretty useless and unpractical if both your machines have a lan connection... you gotta use it to appreciate how insanely useful this piece of software is... it basically allows you to use one keyboard and mouse on two or more machines... works on unix and windows or a combination of it... even the mouse wheel works... yipee!

work stuff... naming conventions... the stuffs related to persistence was previously named like this:

e.g.
com.thecompany.hb.customers

contains both the interface and the implementation classes... hbm xdoclet generated files follows the same format except that its prefix is hbm, like hbm.thecompany.hb.customers

much to my front end pal's dismay i changed all the package names to follow this convention:

e.g.
com.thecompany.customers

to contain just the pojo and the dao and service interfaces... and for the actual implementation:

e.g.
com.thecompany.customers.hb

at least my co-developers will only need to worry about the interfaces and let me worry with the implementation... which is newly migrated to hibernate for now... but will likely try a jdo implementation in the near future...

spring framework is really doing a great job of supporting structures like this... and i can try varied implementations without driving my co-developers insane... also our discussions would be centered on services and dao's in a much more abstract way... shielding them away from the implementation and likewise do things in parallel based on assumptions... this also allows me to junit test the implementation as much as i want... the previous ejb cmp/cmr implementation was such a pain to test...

on hibernate... using the postgres sequence with it was not clearly documented... or it took me a good deal of google time to find out...

for example you have a sequence and a table like this:

create sequence customer_id_seq;

and you have a table like so:

create table customers (
id integer DEFAULT nextval('customer_id_seq') NOT NULL,
name varchar(20),
address varchar(5),
constraint custumers_pk primary key (id)
);

the correct xdocletized pojo class would be:

/**
* @hibernate.class table="customers"
*
**/
public class Customer {
// primary key field
private java.lang.Long id;

// other fields
private java.lang.String name;
private java.lang.String address;

// eclipse's generate getters and setters...

// here is the correct xdoclet tag to be able to use the
// postgres sequence
/**
* @return Returns the id.
*
* @hibernate.id generator-class="sequence"
*
* @hibernate.generator-param name="sequence" value="customer_id_seq"
**/
public java.lang.Long getId() {
return id;
}

// other getters and setters here....
...
}

there... hope this could be of help to anyone who wants to get his sequences to work with hibernate and is using xdoclet to generate the mapping files...


change topic... firefox crashes evertime i visit a flash enabled site... reinstalling and upgrading doesnt help... cant pinpoint if the problem is gentoo, xorg or linux specific...

life goes by pretty fast... rojan is turning three and gabriel is almost a month old now... gabriel, is now my coding companion... he wakes up at around 2am, just in time to remind me i need to get a break away from the keyboard and cuddle him for a while... rojan is now getting really interested on books and would argue if your telling the story the wrong way... hehehe...

seriously need a good computer chair for the home office setup... good back support is a must... should allow me to lean back safely to support both gabriel and me... and to withstand being pushed around the room by an almost 3 year old kid..


last song syndrome: shake yer head by the eraserheads... brings back fond memories of those years when am young and naive... *sigh*... its nice to be born upside down...

Protecting yourself with FreeBSD... good article for securing freebsd...

Mozilla.org site design si so slick... me likes it very much!

novell's free linux technical resource kit came today... 3 dvd's full of novell+suse+ximian technology... hope i can find free time to try this out...

the weather is gloomy... i feel gloomy... my spirit dampened... the price of working in IT... everything is a blur... everything is volatile... nothing is contstant... i worry not for myself, come to think i never worry for myself nowadays... its always for my loved ones, my children specially...

rain, rain... go away... come again another day...

seriously reading effective java now... man, this book rocks! geez even my iterator drill is lame... as the book points out using while for iterators is a no-no, for loops is better and more efficient... at least my being stubborn of insisting separating those layers is paying off... i can do a lot of fine tuning and unit testing of the business logic without giving the front end dev a lot of headache...

its raining cats and dogs outside... time to drink some coffee...

also been hacking this hal+dbus based applet to use static ip addresses for a while. the current gnome cvs version doesnt allow for static ip's and Ad-Hoc wlan mode...



of course, since am a gnome coding newbie, the end result was the network applet having hard coded values... but it *somehow* works...

as a result of my frustration with firefox sage plugin and gnome straw (gentoo build doesnt compile cleanly) for rss feeds, i downloaded the planet aggregator python app to have a local version of mig's pinoytechscene... a few minutes of configuring planet and pixel pushing with gimp resulted to this (click on the link get a bigger picture):



i'll try to find the wackiest pictures of those people in the list and create hackergocthi versions of their heads soon ;)...

lately, this two little angels has been my finely tuned excuse for not blogging and not sending emails to my friends and relatives. the eldest seems to have adjusted to the fact the she is now a sister and the lil' boy is insanely increasing his cuteness factor each day ;)

distcc: a fast, free distributed C/C compiler... i should have configured this first before attempting to build openoffice-ximian... i had these working nicely on the fbsd servers... i wonder if it would be possible to use those distcc with gentoo... hmmn...

substring evilness... i wanted to produce serial numbers of uniform length for the index (5 characters)... this is my lame solution...

the inner loop:


int serialIndex = 100000 + index;
String serial = serialPrefix + String.valueOf(serialIndex).substring(1);


this produces padded serial numbesr e.g. 00001, 03450. certainly not optimal... but will do for now ;)

this obviously limits the number of entities to 99999... converting to hex would increase the limit a bit, but the printer guys argued its too much of a hassle to check the correct sequences since its still done manually... ok, so be it...

>> eRadioPortal.com : Welcome to the Digital Age <<.... the nu 107.5 stream rocks... kudos to the totem developers for making it possible to do this in unix... btw, realplayer 10 for linux is also out and totally loving it...

FreeBSD/i386 5.3-BETA1... hopefully 5.3 stable will come out soon... a lot has been done on the acpi front (hopefully this fixes the X issues i encountered)... acpi_asus has been added to the kernel...

am currently happy with gentoo for the degatto... but i still miss freebsd's way of configuring the kernel via a single text file and how trivial it is to test new kernels as opposed to linux make menuconfig or its make config... also freebsd's new ULE scheduler will certainly be able to provide a more repsonsive desktop/server environment... if this is indeed what will be tagged as teh stable branch, i'll set aside time to test this out...

XStream, looks slicker than xom... i wonder how this compares to betwixt... i've been looking for a POJO<->XML converter for sometime now...

woke up early, in the mood to do work... had a great weekend with the family as well as completely happy with the outcome of last saturdays meeting...

meanwhile...

dude, i cant afford your fee for now (even if i do eventually paypal wont let me)... but i direly need your viPlugin. please reconsider releasing an eclipse 3 compatible version for free... all i want is basic navigation and cut-copy-paste-delete functionality... throw in a few search and replace functions if your feeling kind ;)... *hikbi* i swear by my aching hands that i'll put a thank you note on all the files i create using your plugin...