JamesBranam's Blog

JavaOne 2009: Are You Attending?

Hi all,

JavaOne 2009. Are you attending?

It's a great place to be.

Lots of great sessions.

Lots to learn. Lots to see.

Swag.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 09:00AM May 31, 2009 by branajam in Sun  | 

JavaOne Equals Empty Offices

Hi all,

It's that time of year again. JavaOne is about to begin, and lots of Sun employees from around the globe are off to San Francisco to attend. I've never seen anything like this year. Our office in Prague is turning into a ghost town. A lot of my writer colleagues went this year. I hope they have a great time. Maybe next year I'll go to JavaOne too.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 09:00AM May 30, 2009 by branajam in Sun  | 

6.7 RC Around the Corner?

Hi all,

it's getting close. NetBeans IDE 6.7 Release Candidate (RC) is just around the corner, so be looking for it.

We writers have been busy updating documentation for the 6.7 release, which is this summer, but now we're focusing on the RC. It's always a big thing to move from a Beta to an RC. The IDE starts to come together. Fun, fun, fun!

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 09:00AM May 29, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  |  Comments[2]

Eggs Are Flying

Hi all,

These are interesting days in the Czech Republic. A few weeks ago, the Czech Social Democrats were able to pull off a no-confidence vote in the lower house of the Czech Parliament. The result: an interim government was chosen, and the Czechs, who are in the middle of the EU rotating presidency, became the laughing stock of Europe (at least as politics is concerned).

However, nothing could have prepared us for what was to come. The opposition leader, Jiri Paroubek, an odd little fellow, not unlike a bridge troll, found himself the target of airborne eggs. At first it was a single egg in a city in the north of the country, now egg-throwers show up wherever he is.

I love it!

I could never stand the guy. He was an embarrassment to the country when he was in charge. People from both major parties are laughing at him now, and I think this will cost him the election in the autumn. I wish him all the best in his new career. You know the lemons - lemonade adage. Well, I suppose the same could apply to Jiri, who should be able to make an awful lot of omelets.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 12:42PM May 28, 2009 by branajam in Personal  | 

AWS Experience Part 5: Saving Money with EBS Snapshots

Hi all,

After playing around with Amazon Web Services for a couple of weeks now, and after racking up considerable charges to my account, I decided to look into ways of avoiding these charges. Using a snapshot is good way to do this.

A typical scenario is to launch an AMI, attach an EBS volume, and off you go. You store your data to the EBS volume. However, when you terminate your AMI, you lose your data. Here is a way around this:

1. Create a snapshot of your volume before you delete it.
2. Terminate your AMI and delete your EBS volume.
3. Go to the EBS Snapshots panel of the AWS Management Console. Right-click the snapshot and choose Create Volume from Snapshot.
4. Then attach the new EBS volume to you new AMI, with data intact!

See you tomorrow.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 08:26PM May 26, 2009 by branajam in Sun  | 

End of an Era

Hi all,

I found out yesterday than Roman (of Roumen's Blog fame) is leaving Sun Microsystems after five years. I wish him all the best in his new job.

Roman was loved by the NetBeans Community. He traveled around the world, spreading the world about NetBeans. He provided me with a fantastic example of how one should interact with the community.

Roman has also helped me out on a number of occasions, providing me with valuable information I need to complete a task. I learned a lot from him.

So, a new era begins at Sun: a Roumenless era.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 09:00AM May 22, 2009 by branajam in Sun  |  Comments[2]

James on the Thames

Hi all,

I just got back from Amazon Web Services training. Most of it was good, but there were some parts that could have been done better (especially the part about creating your custom AMI).

London was great. I took a nice walk along the Thames on Tuesday evening after the course. I saw a lot of nice things and took lots of nice photographs. Now I'm trying to talk my wife into going to London on vacation.

I'll keep you posted.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 05:20PM May 21, 2009 by branajam in Personal  |  Comments[1]

AWS Part 4: Blogging from the Road

Hi al,

I'm in London, England for an Amazon Web Services camp. It's a one day program that I'm really looking forward to. I starts in about an hour.

I was surprised by the number of things I had to do or download in preparation for the camp. Here is a list:

1. Sign up for Amazon EC2/S3, SQS and SimpleDB.
2. Install ElasticFox which makes it easier to work with Amazon EC2 images.
3. Install S3Fox which makes it easier to work with Amazon S3.
4. Download and install a trial edition of SDB Explorer.
5. Install and configure the Amazon EC2 command line tools
6. Download unzip the following archives:
   1. http://aws-bootcamp.s3.amazonaws.com/eclipse_installation.zip.
   2. This is just an installation of EasyEclipse Server Java with a few extra libraries.
   3. http://www.easyeclipse.org/site/distributions/server-java.html

I'll let you know how it goes.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 08:00AM May 19, 2009 by branajam in Sun  | 

AWS Experience Part 3: Trying Another Instance

Hi all,

Hmmmm...

I switched on my machine this morning thinking a new day will bring new results. Nope. Same old results. As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, I created a server instance using Fedora with LAMP, complete with MySQL. Hmmm.. Sound good? Well, it comes with MySQL 4.1. Normally an update would be a straightforward process. Since Fedora 8 doesn't come with an

apt-get

command, I chose to go the

yum

route. I tried

 yum update mysql-server

. No dice. problems. I spent another 30 minutes or so, trying to correct the problem, but to no avail. So I decided to create a whole new server instance with Fedora 8 and no MySQL. I manually installed MySQL on the machine, by doing the following:

• I download the MySQL sever, cient, and headers and libraries from the MySQL.com.

  wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/MySQL-server-community-5.1.34-0.rhel3.i386.rpm/from/http://mysql.linux.cz/
  wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/MySQL-client-community-5.1.34-0.rhel3.i386.rpm/from/http://mysql.linux.cz/
  wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/MySQL-devel-community-5.1.34-0.rhel3.i386.rpm/from/http://mysql.linux.cz/

• I installed MySQL using rpm. For example:

  rpm -i http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/MySQL-devel-community-5.1.34-0.rhel3.i386.rpm/from/http://mysql.linux.cz/
  I set the root password: 
  /usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'mypw'
  

MySQL worked perfectly. I created a database and messed around with it for a few minutes. No problems.

Now there were other issues to take care of. I needed to install a JDK and ant. And while I was at it, I went ahead and downloaded GlassFish. Just getting ready.

I made sure I set my JAVA_HOME again, and made sure it was on the path. I also set my ANT_HOME and made sure it was on the path. I'll worry about getting Glassfish functioning soon.

Major Obstacles

This has been one huge learning experience for me. I've encountered a lot of obstacles, and here is a short list:

• Creating an AWS account in itself is not so easy. You have to know some basic things before you even go there. For example: EBS, EC2, ES, etc, and why you would need them.
• I got the impression that AWS tries to push you toward their SimpleDB. There is little support for MySQL. There is one tutorial that causes more problems than anything else.
• Instructions in tutorials are written for the Linux user...for the Debian Linux user. Albeit, there are a lot of similarities among brands of Linux, but there are just enough differences to screw things up. This is an especially frustrating point in that AWS offers you types of servers for starting up: Fedora and Windows. But the instructions are for Debian. Hmmm. Go figure. Doesn't make much sense to me. As an AWS beginner I'm pushed toward Fedora, and end up pulling out my hair while googling for Fedora equivalents of Debian commands.
• There is a little drop down list in the upper left-hand corner of the AWS Management Console. Even though I registered with my European address, used a European credit card, I was denied access to the US-East region. Not that I wanted access to that region, but this is the default setting. So, after several failed attempts at launching a server instance, I figured it out. I had to manually change it to the EU-West setting.
• AWS documentation is not very good. Granted, it's only my opinion, but I write documentation for a living and I know bad documentation when I see it. It leaves you guessing too much. Why don't they just remove all the content from the documentation and replace each instance of document with one line: Google it yourself!
• Nobody likes old versions of software (except for Windows XP maybe), so why feature MySQL 4.1 on one of your AMIs, when MySQL 5 has been out for a while now.
• The only way to get access to other AMIs is in the Community AMIs tab. I haven't played around with this yet, but I did try to find an Open Solaris AMI. Open Solaris is listed as a choice in the drop down menu, but there are no AMIs listed. I don't blame AWS for this though, since it falls under Community. I hope this changes with time.

That's it for today.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 03:58PM May 14, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  |  Comments[2]

AWS Experience Part 2: Accessing the Cloud

Hi all,

Today I'll be write more about my experiences with Amazon Web Services. Before I continue, I'd like to provide some background information.

I signed up for Amazon Web Services. I used the Fedora LAMP AMI to create a server instance. The main reason for choosing this AMI was its inclusion of MySQL and Apache, a nice little package indeed. I ran into a few problems at first. Because I am based in Europe, I am allowed to use only the EU-West region, and the default in the US-East region. The drop down list is rather small, and i took a couple of unsuccessful instances to figure out that this was the problem. When I say "unsuccessful instances," I mean that the nothing appeared in the browser when I copied the public DNS to the browser's address bar. I attached an EBS volume to the server instance and it was OK.

Now for more on the command line.

I spent a lot of time messing around with the commands in the EC2 toolkit, which is provided by AWS. I was able to change the region by entering

export EC2_URL=http://eu-west-1.ec2.amazonaws.com

As a matter of fact, I had to do this to get the URL to work.

Other things worth noting:

To see which instances are running, do a

ec2-describe-instances

To run an instance:

ec2-run-instances ami-amiid -k kepairname

Then came the issue of accessing the cloud. AWS documentation is very lacking, so after a bit of googling, this is how I did it:

ssh -i ~/.ssh/my-key.pem root@host-name

The host name is the same as the public DNS.

I did it. I was in the cloud. Then I was able to create a MySQL database.

I'll write more tomorrow.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 09:52AM May 13, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  | 

AWS Experience Part 1: Setting up the Tools

Hi all,

I've just been reassigned (partially) to make sense of using a MySQL database server in the cloud, namely in Amazon Web Services. I'll be blogging about my experiences. Today is part 1.

After creating the account, I got to work. I signed up for EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud 2), Simple Storage, and EBS (storage that allows for persistence). I played around with starting an instance, terminating it, etc. Then I got started with the command line tools. This is what I did.

• I made sure that my JAVA_HOME was set correctly in my mac: I typed

  export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home/

  in the terminal. Then I typed

  $JAVA_HOME/bin/java -version

  to confirm that the JAVA_HOME was indeed set correctly.
• Then I made created a .ec2 directory in my home directory. I then added my private key and X.509 certificate to this directory. I also made sure to point to these locations

  export EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=~/.ec2/pk-123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP.pem
  export EC2_CERT=~/.ec2/cert-(98765F43dFMPONUBYGSFATAJAAJJU5SG.pem

• Then I made sure I was pointing to my EC2_HOME:

  export EC2_HOME=/Users/jb/ec2-api-tools-1.3-34128/

I was in business. In the terminal, I went to my ec2/bin folder and tried out a few commands. They didn't work. However, when I added

./

before each command, they did work. I was able to contact AWS. Wow.

I'll write more tomorrow.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 02:40PM May 12, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  |  Comments[1]

Web and Facebook Peeves

Hi all,

Once again I feel the need to vent. And this happens to be the place I vent, so here goes...

• I hate it when people send me huge email attachments. The other day I received two emails from my brother, each with several photos attached. Attachments totaled more than 7 MB for one email. I have a fast Internet connection, so I was able to receive them in a matter of seconds. However, he sent the email to several of my relative, a few of whom do not have fast connections. This could tie up their email server for a very long time. And maybe their provider might even decline to deliver the email. Everybody should know better by now. It's OK to send photographs and such, but scale them down a bit. Lots of free programs do this for you. Web etiquette goes a long way.
• Why do people create Facebook accounts for their pets or babies? I have nothing at all against Facebook; I think it's a good thing. But I don't want to adf you dog as a friend and hear that he is too lazy to bark at the mailman, etc. This is not funny. And it's not original. And if your child wants to have a Facebook account, that's fine too. However, it's not interesting to read status updates for that child that were written by the parent.
• If you want to add me as a friend, know who I am first. If I don't know you personally, or work in the same company, please don't ask me to add you. I won't. I realize that it's cool to have thousands of friends. However, I value quality over quantity.
• When making status updates, please keep it clean. You don't know who will be reading your posts. If you want to be vulgar, then I'll remove you as a friend. It's my choice.
• Stop sending me invitations for various things. I always decline them. You apparently haven't figured this out yet, because you keep sending them. I like Facebook for contact with people and to see what they are doing. I don't want to find out which celebrity most resembles me.
• I could think of few more, and maybe I will. I'll do a part 2 of this if I do.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 02:00PM May 06, 2009 by branajam in Personal  | 

Download NetBeans 6.7 Beta Today!

Hi all,

Have you downloaded NetBeans 6.7 Beta yet? Here is the press release:

The NetBeans team is pleased to announce the availability of NetBeans IDE 6.7 Beta.

• Download NetBeans IDE 6.7 Beta
• Learn More about 6.7 Beta

NetBeans 6.7 Beta introduces an exciting feature—integration with Project Kenai, a collaborative environment where developers can host their open-source projects. With NetBeans and Kenai, a team of developers can create projects, edit, debug, build, and commit code, and have discussions all through one easy-to-use interface. Building on the success of NetBeans 6.5, this release also includes native Maven support, GlassFish and Hudson integrations, improved support for Java, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, Groovy and C/C++, and more. NetBeans IDE 6.7 Beta is the ideal tool to keep developers connected to each other and to the latest technologies!

Release Highlights include:

• Connected Developer (Kenai)
  • Create Kenai-hosted projects from within the NetBeans IDE
  • Locate and open sources for Kenai-hosted projects in the IDE
  • Full integration with Bugzilla
• Maven
  • Support for Web Services creation and consumption and J2EE
  • POM Editor and Navigator enhancements
• PHP
  • Code coverage and Selenium support
  • PHPUnit output improvements
• C/C++
  • Support of popular Qt library and tools
• Groovy and Grails
  • Out-of-the-box support for Grails 1.1
• Profiler
  • Enhanced Self Diagnosis ("Profile Me Now!")
• Java ME / Mobility
  Full support for SVG Rich Components in the Visual Mobile Designer

Read the complete list of NetBeans IDE 6.7 Beta Features & Enhancements.

The final release of NetBeans IDE 6.7 is planned for June 2009. Download Beta today and give us your feedback about your experience using the release. You can also join discussions about the NetBeans IDE on our mailing lists and forums. If you blog about using NetBeans add your blog to Planet NetBeans. Follow NetBeans on Twitter for updates about NetBeans news and development.

Posted at 09:00AM May 02, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  | 

Communist Propaganda

Hi all,

One of my hobbies is collecting old Communist propaganda from the former Czechoslovakia. As most of you know by now, I worked in Air Force intelligence during the Cold War. My job was to listen to Czech and Slovak pilots, tank drivers, artillery crews, etc. It was a really exciting job, believe me.

If you were to enter our writers' office here at Sun, you'd see pictures like the one above. Here is the translation:

"No American agent will pass through our village."

Let's see, how many villages have I pass though? lol.

If you want to see more pics, just got to http://metrotango.org.

Cheers!

Posted at 09:00AM May 01, 2009 by branajam in Personal  |