JamesBranam's Blog

AWS Experience Part 12: Frustration

Hi all,

As you already know, I've been messing around with virtual machine images on Amazon Web Services. It's been a lo of fun, but sometimes it has been very, very frustrating.

• The whole region thing is perplexing at best. When I launch an AMI in the US-East region, I usually can't access it.
• It's easy to access Fedora images, but OpenSolaris is a differen story. I can't get an OpenSolaris image to show up in my browser. Hmmmmm.
• After putting in hours of work, the image suddenly cannot be accessed. Ouch!

Cheers!

Posted at 08:22PM Aug 03, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  | 

Countdown to 500

Hi all,

I've been employed at Sun Microsystems since November 1, 2005. I've been blogging since December of the same year. Geertjan (of Geertjan's Blog) got me started, and he also kept me going until it became automatic. A lot of my colleagues have started blogs, and very few of them blog actively. It's easy to start, but it's hard to maintain if your heart isn't in it. I've grown to love blogging so much that I started three other blogs. And all of the blog entries can be seen at James' BlogCentral.

The reason for today's entry is to mark an important blogging milestone: ten more blog entries to the magical number of 500 (before this one). I'll be marking each entry with the number of entries remaining to 500 (and a small explanation).

Thanks to everyone who has been reading this blog. You've managed to make my blog one of the 50 most read Sun blogs.

Cheers!

Posted at 06:57PM Aug 02, 2009 by branajam in Personal  | 

NB Community Docs: Important Announcement Next Week

Hi all,

The NetBeans Community Docs program has been in existence since March of 2007. In two years and five months, 325 documentation item have been contributed. We've seen three Contribution Coordinators: Amit Saha, Varun Nischal, and currently Kristian Rink. It has been quite the ride.

Next week I'll be making an important announcement on this blog, so be sure to keep an eye out. No need to worry. I'm certain that this announcement will have no impact on the success of the program.

Tune in next week.

Cheers!

-James

Posted at 09:00AM Jul 31, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  | 

Cool News

Hi all,

Some cool news for me this week. A couple days ago, my younger daughter informed me that she had been accepted at a writers camp. She was selected among many applicants. My daughter has been very active in writing and has even had things published. Wow.

Last night, my older daughter informed me that she is engaged to be married. She'll be marrying her long-time boyfriend next year. Boy, do I feel old now.

Just wanted to share the news.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 06:32PM Jul 30, 2009 by branajam in Personal  | 

Facebook Politics

Hi all,

It's time once again to sound off. A friend of mine has been using his Facebook status reports to spread his political views, which sometimes border on the insane. He's a republican, obviously, and he has really been going off about Obama's attempt to create a health care system in which everyone is covered. My friend obviously has insurance (otherwise he'd be singing a different tune), and people who are adequately insured don't want to make coverage available to everyone. They prefer the status quo, in which insurance companies decide types of medication and length of hospital stays. He's against "universal health care" or "socialized medicine" or whatever you want to call it, citing incorrect portrayals of other countries' health care follies. This is all nonsense, of course. People (including me) who live in these countries know that the health care is fine, financially manageable, and truly universal. I've lived which such coverage for more than twenty years, and I am more than satisfied. Doctors decide how long a patient stays in a hospital. The result: fewer deaths and complications. Infants are covered automatically after birth, not after a a couple of days as in most cases in the U.S. Why a couple of days you ask? So that any defects may be discovered and coverage denied. (This happened to a friend of mine.) There are no health care related bankruptcies in Europe; no people's financial well-being destroyed by an illness or accident.

Chew on that, my friend.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 06:04PM Jul 29, 2009 by branajam in Personal  | 

NetBeans IDE 6.7.1 with JavaFX

Hi all,

It's official: NetBeans IDE 6.7.1 is out and available for download. Here is the official press release:

The NetBeans Team is pleased to announce the release of NetBeans IDE 6.7.1, which supports the latest JavaFX SDK.

Download NetBeans 6.7.1

(A JavaFX-only download bundle is also available.)

NetBeans IDE 6.7.1 is an update to NetBeans IDE 6.7 and includes the following changes:

• Support for JavaFX 1.2
• Upgrade of GlassFish v3 Prelude to include fixes from build #28f
• Integration of important bug fixes based on user feedback, especially in the Java Editor and project scanning areas

NetBeans IDE 6.7.1 is available in English, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese. In addition, the NetBeans Platform has been fully localized into the following languages: Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish and Galician. Translations for Java SE modules and other community languages are still ongoing. Get the current status of localizations here, and also consider volunteering to help translate!

Tell us about your experience using the NetBeans IDE. Share your thoughts on our mailing lists and forums. If you blog about NetBeans add your blog to Planet NetBeans. Follow NetBeans on Twitter for updates about NetBeans news and development.

NetBeans IDE Connects Developers!

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 01:35PM Jul 28, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  | 

Sun and Facebook

Hi all,

Every once in a while, while I'm Facebook, I see a notification from Sun Microsystems pop up on my wall. In these uncertain times, it's good to see this, and i can't help but wonder how long I'll be seeing it.

I suppose that this could still happen long after the "event" that is to come. Talk about haunting from one's past.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 06:49PM Jul 27, 2009 by branajam in Sun  | 

And Another

Hi all,

This is the other book to be published on August 8. It's the red version of WC English. Here is information from the previous blog entry:

On August 8, another of my new books will be published. It's called WC English. The book will be published on paper resembling toilet paper. The illustrations for the books were done by Petr Urban, a famous Czech illustrator. Actually two books will be published with this title, a red one and a green one.

You can see the red one above.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 09:00AM Jul 26, 2009 by branajam in Personal  | 

And Yet Another

Hi all,

On August 8, another of my new books will be published. It's called WC English. The book will be published on paper resembling toilet paper. The illustrations for the books were done by Petr Urban, a famous Czech illustrator. Actually two books will be published with this title, a red one and a green one. You can see the green one above.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 09:00AM Jul 25, 2009 by branajam in Personal  | 

Another New Book

Hi all,

I have another book coming out on August 7. It's called Angličtina 5 minut denně (English 5 minutes per day). It's basically in a calendar format, providing the student with one quick lesson a day. It could be in the form of grammar exercises, translation, or even a joke or puzzle.

I hope it sells well.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 09:00AM Jul 24, 2009 by branajam in Personal  | 

My New Book

Hi all,

As you already know, I'm a writer. I write books for learning English and German, and so far I've manage to have more than twenty books published in seven countries. Although the royalties are that much, they do help pay the bills.

Angličtina nejen do auta (English not only for the car) came out a couple of weeks ago. IT' a bit different from other books I've written. The book itself is in the form of a booklet, accompanied by a CD with English vocabulary and phrases. The idea is that the student will look at the vocabulary in the morning, and then listen to the CD on the way to work or wherever.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 12:15PM Jul 23, 2009 by branajam in Personal  | 

Helping Make NetBeans Better

Hi all,

The NetBeans IDE is a product that is community driver. The community plays a huge part in its development, improvement, success. Users file issue, submit plugins and docs, and perform other crucial tasks. The IDE benefits from all of your efforts.

There is another way that you can contribute to the success of NetBeans: you can register the IDE.

Registering gives us an idea of who uses the IDE, what it is being used for, and how many users are out there. Based on this information, we can make important changes to the IDE, tailoring it to users' needs.

Registering is easy and takes just a couple of minutes.

You have the power to make the IDE even better. So, use it!

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 03:29PM Jul 21, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  |  Comments[1]

Rained Out

Hi all,

I've been spending the weekend at our country house in East Bohemia. On Friday, the temperature soared to 34 degrees Celsius, but today we've been stuck at around 15 degrees. That's quite a drop. Also, it has rained since about noon, with very violent thunderstorms moving thorough the area. We've been stuck in the house all day.

I hope that tomorrow is nicer.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 07:37PM Jul 18, 2009 by branajam in Personal  | 

The News

Hi all,

I'm not supposed to blog or talk about.

So read the official press release.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 03:24PM Jul 17, 2009 by branajam in Personal  | 

Exporting Blog

Hi all,

Due to uncertainty as to what the future holds, I've decided to back up my blog to another location. I'll still be blogging here, but I'll be copying each new blog entry to the new location.

You can find it at http://blog.jambra.net/bc/.

See you there!

--James

Posted at 02:33PM Jul 13, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  | 

AWS Experience Part 11: AWS EC2 Toolkit

Hi all,

Although the AWS Management Console is an adequate tool for most tasks you may need to perform in the cloud, at some point you will need to use the commnd line to perform certain tasks. Also, for those users who are used to using the command line with other applications may find it easier and faster to use AWS EC2 AMI tools while working with their AMI.

The AWS EC2 Toolkit makes it easy to perform a number of tasks. Here are a few commonly used commands:

• ec2-describe-region. Use this command to view available regions.
• export EC2_URL=https://<service_endpoint>. This command changes a region.
  Note: Windows users: set EC2_URL=https://<service_endpoint>
• ec2-describe-images -o self -o amazon | grep machine . Use this command to find a suitable AMI.
• ec2-add-keypair gsg-keypair. Use this command to add a key pair.
• ec2-run-instances ami-235fba4a -k gsg-keypair. This command launches an AMI.
• ec2-describe-instances i-ae0bf0c7. Use this to display the launch status of an instance.
• ec2-authorize default -p 22. This commands authorizes access to an instance.
• ssh -i id_your-keypair root@ec1-23-456-789.compute-1.amazonaws.com. Use this to access an instance.
• # ec2-bundle-vol -d /mnt -k /mnt/pk-HKZ3YTJCMXYI9JHUAHSY5CLO.pem -c /mnt/cert-HKZ3YTJCMXYI9JHUAHSY5CLO.pem -u AIDADWWJSKSKSKD -r i386 -p sampleimage. This command bundles an instance. Note:This command must be executed from the AMI instance.
• ec2-upload-bundle -b <your-s3-bucket> -m /mnt/sampleimage.manifest.xml -a <aws-access-key-id> -s <aws-secret-access-key> Use this command to upload your custom AMI to your AWS S3 bucket.
• ec2-register <your-s3-bucket>/sampleimage.manifest.xml. This command registers the new AMI with AWS.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 12:45PM Jul 09, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  | 

Happy Jan Hus Day

Hi all,

Oh, the joy of living in the Czech Republic: another public holiday. Today is Jan Hus (John Huss) Day. He was burned at the stake for heresy on July 6, 1415. Today is celebrated as one of the most famous Czechs. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

Jan Hus (alternative spellings John Hus, Jan Huss, John Huss) (c. 1372 Husinec, Bohemia – 6 July 1415 Konstanz) was a Czech Catholic priest, philosopher, reformer, and master at Charles University in Prague. He is famous for being burned at the stake for what the Roman Catholic Church viewed as his heretical views on ecclesiology. Hus was a key contributor to the Protestant movement whose teachings had a strong influence on the states of Europe, most immediately in the approval for the existence of a reformist Bohemian Church, and, more than a century later, on Martin Luther himself.

Impressive, eh?

This holiday follows another holiday on July 5: Saints Cyril and Methodius Day. What this means is that normally we would have two days off, but since yesterday was a Sunday.... Oh well. It could have been worse. The holidays could have fallen on Saturday and Sunday.

Cheers! And happy Jan Hus Day!

--James

Posted at 11:03AM Jul 06, 2009 by branajam in Personal  |  Comments[1]

Blogging from the Country

Hi all,

Today I'm sitting in my wife's family's country house in Eastern Bohemia. I just had internet installed and it's good to remain connected over the weekend. Now I'll be able to come here more often.

Some random ramblings in this first blog entry for FY10:

• Yesterday was Independence Day in the U.S. I have often wondered why so few people call the day "Independence Day." I usually hear them call it "Fourth of July." I almost never hear "Happy Independence Day, but I hear "Happy Fourth of July" all the time. Weird, eh? A former teacher colleague of mine had an interesting theory: Americans tend to go for more technical vocabulary than the British, That's why you'll find the following differences between American and British English:
  • ACCELERATOR instead of GAS
  • BABY CARRIAGE instead of PRAM
  • ELEVATOR instead of LIFT
  I don't know if his theory is correct, but it is certainly interesting.
• I have never experienced so many thunderstorms in Europe as this year. It seems that every afternoon, they pop up from nowhere. It reminds me of Indiana. Midwestern thunderstorms are the fiercest I've encountered.
• NetBeans 6.7 is out. 6.8 is in the works. Now we get to play the waiting game to see what happen.
• Lots of celebrities have passed this year. The latest is Steve McNair, an American football star. He was murdered in his condo in Nashvile.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 11:34AM Jul 05, 2009 by branajam in Personal  | 

NetBeans 6.7 Available

Hi all,

You've probably heard the big news: NetBeans 6.7 is live. Here is the official press release:

NetBeans.org is proud to announce the availability of NetBeans IDE 6.7!

The focus of NetBeans IDE 6.7 is connectivity—helping developers to connect to the latest technologies and to each other. New features include integration with Project Kenai, a collaborative environment for developers to host their open-source projects; native Maven support, and Hudson integration.

Building on the success of previous releases, NetBeans IDE 6.7 offers enhancements for Java, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, Groovy and C/C++, and more. Additional highlights include a self-diagnostic Profiler, and support for SVG Rich Components, remote debugging in Ruby, and the latest version of GlassFish. The release also provides plug-in support for Zembly, a single registry and repository for popular Web APIs.

Providing superior support for multiple languages and innovative team support through Project Kenai, the NetBeans IDE 6.7 is the ideal tool for developers to stay connected to their teams and to the latest technologies!

NetBeans IDE 6.7 is available in English, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese and Simplified Chinese. There are several community-contributed localization efforts underway to support additional languages. Join the efforts today.

More information about NetBeans IDE 6.7:

• NetBeans IDE 6.7 Features
• NetBeans IDE 6.7 Tutorials and Documentation
• Videos of NetBeans IDE 6.7 in Action

NetBeans IDE Connects Developers!

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 12:49PM Jun 30, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  |  Comments[2]

AWS Experience Part 10: Configuring GlassFish in the Cloud

Hi all,

I'm still working on my cloud computing course. Now I'm more into GlassFish, and how to configure it on a virtual server. I'm not finished, but here's what I have so far:

1. The first step in this process is to create a domain. Let's name the domain domain1. Type the following commands in the command line:
   cd /opt/gf21/glassfish
chmod -R +x lib/ant/bin
lib/ant/bin/ant -f setup.xml
   
2. Back up the original domain1 configuration by typing
   cp /opt/gf21/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/domain.xml /opt/gf21/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/domain.xml.org.
3. To put GlassFish tools in the path, type echo export PATH=$PATH:/opt/gf21/glassfish/bin >>~/.profile.
4. Type exit to return to the root user.
5. Start the server by typing /opt/gf21/glassfish/bin/asadmin start-domain domain1.
6. Log in as the user gf21 by typing su - gf21.
7. To tweak GlassFish configuration for use with an AWS EC2 c1.small instance, type
asadmin create-jvm-options -- "-Xmx1024m"
cat /opt/gf21/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/domain.xml | grep Xmx
asadmin delete-jvm-options -- -Xmx512m
cat /opt/gf21/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/domain.xml | grep Xmx
8. Exit gf21 and type the following to determine if GlassFish is running:
   ps -ef |grep gf21
svcs glassfish/domain1
svcs -l glassfish/domain1 | grep logfile


Cheers!

Posted at 10:53AM Jun 29, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  | 

Interesting Czech Holiday

Hi all,

Glancing at today's calendar page, I learned that today is "Victims of the Communist Regime Memorial Day." Wow. I'm glad that the Czech government set aside a day for these people, who were for the most part real heroes. They were imprisoned and even executed for their beliefs, or rather for their refusal to accept Communist domination in their country. Most of the charges were trumped up, and were used by the communist to get rid of possible threats (think intellectuals, educators, scientists, etc.).

Recently there was a documentary on such victims on Czech television. They'd found lost footage of the trials (which were a circus). I hope that a lot of young Czechs were able to watch the series and see what heroism really is (think Milada Horakova, who was executed).

A lot of young people in the country today were born after the revolution or are too young to remember it. More should be done to teach them what life under communism was like. Then they might appreciate the life they have a little more.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 08:46AM Jun 27, 2009 by branajam in Personal  |  Comments[1]

Installing Packages on OpenSolaris

Hi all,

I've been working more on my cloud computing course. I'm working on a module for creating a custom OpenSolaris AMI. In a couple of the steps, the user installs software on his virtual machine. It was so easy to do.

JDK 6.

pkg install SUNWj6dev

MySQL.

pkg install SUNWmysql

Apache Ant.

pkg install SUNWant

GlassFish. This is a little tricker:

1. Download GlassFish:

   wget  http://java.net/download/javaee5/v2.1_branch/promoted/SunOS_X86/glassfish-installer-v2.1-b60e-sunos_x86.jar

2. Install GlassFish:

   java -Xmx256m -jar glassfish-installer-v2.1-b60e-sunos_x86.jar

3. Click "A: or "a" to accept the license.

I wish everything were this easy.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 05:56PM Jun 23, 2009 by branajam in Sun  | 

200th Blog Entry for FY2009

Hi all,

Today marks a special milestone for my blog: the 200th entry for FY 2009 (July 1, 2008 - JUne 30, 2009). It's the most I've blogged in a year, and I have to say that I've had a great time doing it. Here is a quick breakdown of my blog activity:

• FY 2006 (Dec-Jun): 27
• FY 2007: 87
• FY 2008: 183
• FY 2009: 200 and counting

The total to date is 470 blog entries (and this doesn't include blog entries made on the NetBeans Community Docs blog). I should reach an even bigger milestone in the first half of August: 500 total blog entries.

Then we'll see what happens. (You'll know what I'm talking about if you've been reading the news.)

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 09:00AM Jun 20, 2009 by branajam in Sun  | 

Check Out NetBeans RC3

Hi all,

Just a quick reminder, be sure to check out NetBeans RC3. Here is the official press release:

NetBeans IDE 6.7 Release Candidate 3 is now available for download.

Download NetBeans 6.7 Release Candidate 3

The focus of NetBeans 6.7 is connectivity--helping developers to connect to each other and to the latest technologies. New features for 6.7 include integration with Project Kenai, a collaborative environment for developers to host their open-source projects; native Maven support; and GlassFish and Hudson integrations. This release also offers enhancements for Java, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, Groovy and C/C++, and more. Providing superior support for multiple languages and innovative team support through Project Kenai, the NetBeans IDE 6.7 is the ideal tool for developers to connect to their teams and to the latest technologies!

Learn More about NetBeans 6.7 RC3

Tutorials & Videos

The final release of NetBeans IDE 6.7 is planned for late June. Download RC3 today and give us your feedback about your experience using the release. Join discussions about the NetBeans IDE on our mailing lists and forums. If you blog about using NetBeans add your blog to a Planet NetBeans. Follow NetBeans on Twitter for updates about NetBeans news and development.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 09:00AM Jun 19, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  |  Comments[2]

Back from Vacation

Hi all,

I'm finally back at work after a two-week vacation. Lots of email to go through. I took my mother to airport a couple of hours ago, and while I was waiting for her to check in, I thought about her trip from Cincinnati to Prague a couple of weeks ago. It's an interesting story.

She was supposed to leave Cincinnati airport on July 7, and change to her Prague-bound flight in Atlanta. However, she was told that the Cincinnati flight was already delayed 2 and half hours, and that she would miss her flight to Prague. She was offered a flight changing in Paris, but being the inexperienced and monoglot flier that she is, decided to forgo the French connection in favor of taking the Same Cincinnati-Atlanta-Prague flights the following day.

My mother got assistance through Atlanta, but she was deeply concerned about finding her way out of Prague airport. I called her in Atlanta to offer some encouragement, and by chance I was glancing at my Facebook page. An American friend of mine who lives in Prague had just typed a status message, something like: "I'm sitting at the gate, waiting for my flight back to Prague. I had to act fast. I was able to reach him via Facebook, and he offered to make sure my mother got through Prague airport OK.

And he did. He and his fiancee walked with her right up to where I was standing. Thanks, Travis!

If my mother had boarded her original flight, this would have never happened.

Cheers!

--James

P.S. It's good to be back.

Posted at 10:57AM Jun 18, 2009 by branajam in Personal  |