while reading books to trey when he was three'ish i used to periodically inject his name into the story and add sentences at the end of a page ... to which trey quickly learned to shout out "turn the page" when he caught me "embellishing the story" as such. good times.

Now it is time for me to "turn the page," so to speak.

June 16th, 2006 is my last day at Sun. It has been a great ride. I have learned a ton during the last 14 years. I've met alot of interesting folks and have been provided with many avenues to explore and realize fun ideas. Thanks a thousand times over.

I will be taking a short break in the coming weeks as the Todd clan travels back to Colorado to introduce our daughter to the grand parents, aunts, uncles and cousins. For grins, I'm also going to see how long I can ride the shark . [that commercial cracks me up and I have been longing for a way to reference it]

Afer the break, I have the good fortune of being able to join up with a small group of folks who are pushing forward some big ideas. It should prove to be fun and elightening on many fronts, big and small.

I do hope my path crosses once again with many of the folks I've had the pleasure to work with and have learned from over years. I consider many of the folks I've worked with via open source projects, namely myjxta friends even though more often then not we never meet in the "real world." I hope to continue such collaborations moving forward time/priorities permitting. I'm eager to work through some interesting ideas I and a few folks have discussed of late.

The world is a small place. Feel free to hit me up at any of the following:

• blog
• linked in
• james dot w dot todd at gmail dot com

My best to you and yours!

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: computers powering down

i've seen more references of egoless programming appearing of late. this is a *really* cool trend and when embraced is extremely rewarding and enabling for both the individual(s) and the binding project(s).

firstly, it's great to see practical advice such as that expressed by egoless programming posted in such an objective and, well, painfully crystal clear manner. my quick interpretation is that egoless programming compliments extreme programming, specifically in the areas of collaborative code ownership and the like. then again, i like xp principals so much that i could be broken that way :)

the beauty of xp and the ilk i that they build on and strive towards simplicity trumping all, and doing so in a manner that is by design equitable by all installing a built in rewards system which begets continued collaboration, innovation, etc. in a word, good stuff!

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: bird songs

last week was a busy one, being a cummulation of alot of personal work, getting a chance to interact with folks in the *real* world (which is what i personally enjoy most) and taking in new'ness of many flavors. good times.

my week started w/ by testing out the JXTA Hands on Lab. the folks who orchestrate the java one hands on lab deserve huge amounts of credit as the job they do looks alot like herding cats, from my one-of-many perspective yet the collective information is bar none. this content is consistent, comprehensive, HANDS ON (best kind) and is presented for several events. so, sang, shridhar, shannon and tracy ... you folks ROCK and thanks for allowing me to take part in the festivities. this is the third annual jxta hol and is now available online. it is my hopes that this codebase will be treated like that of any other open source element, taking input from interested parties, and simply rolled back into the collective hol family.

with the jxta hol in hands i strolled over to NetBeans Day and caught the tail end of the opening talks and took in the ensuing demos and presentations. the event was as packed as last years but the rooms were divided up a bit differently, making it easier to move about. further, the speakers looked to have a nice amount of time to show their warez where as when i was there demo'ing the netbeans jxta collab provider last year we had roughly 5 minutes to get the dog and pony to dance. given i can talk at a pretty good clip when i'm amped about the topic at hand i didn't have a huge problem with the brevity of the allotted time. this year, i ran into many folks i've worked with at various times so it was good catching up with folks. the realtime development, deployment and instrumentation from within netbeans proper demo stood out in my mind as killer k3w1.

the annual jxta town hall was next in the queue. this year, the bulk of the time was spent having various folks present their jxta products, not projects but products. quite impressive. good times.

given i helped my brother move into his new house in pacifica he let me stay at his place this week versus taking a long train ride each day. that worked out really nicely and i found travelling on bart, first time for me, to be very efficient. i just wish bart came down the peninsula a bit further.

jxta was was well represented at java one this year which provided great context for onging discussions, new and old alike. bondolo's jxta security best practices is a must read. i worked the jxta pod in the pavillion for each of the 3 evenings. the first evening was a tad bit slow and i got a chance to chat with the swing lads who cooked up aerith. very impressive app and it is so refreshing to see folks making it easier for pixel challanged mortals like myself to gen smoking rich client applictions. props to swinglabs! i'm gonna slice some time to dress up some apps with thew new swing goodness.

wednesday and thursday jxta pod activity was largely non stop, chatting with folks new to jxta, others who are community members and whom i seldom get to meet in the real world, some folks who are actively using jxta in intersting ways and others just folks passing by, some of which have intersting projects of their own that we discussed how our collective worlds can be brought together. also had a cool chat with dale and his son who updated me on the type of hacking high schoolers are doing these days. lastly, i chatted a bit with my grid partner in crime, whom i have again worked with virtually for awhile but met in the real world for the first time. great stuff.

petr and i reviewed my last minute netbeans jxta collaboration provider slides for the nb jxta collab provider bof held late thursday evening. not being a huge fan of slideware, i biased the presentation towards the informat, interactive and demo rich side of things. given i attended the java one after dark party and had a couple of bloody marys dancing in my blood stream informality was on high order. the demo used 2 notebooks and a local lan using jxta configured in adhoc mode. we went over the slides in rougly 20 minutes followed up by a comprehensive demo. the netbeans collab folks did an amazing job with the collab provider api and made it really easy to slot in jxta as the networking provider happily shuttling about XMPP, SOAP and XML as generated and consumed by the participating netbeans instances. fun stuff. some general netbeans collab discussion surfaced centering around netbeans and jcreator collab. from my perspective, the jxta collab provider can readily sit in under each of these containers, and others in fact, allowing for agnostic networking across applications of any type. information regarding this work will be posted at collab.netbeans.org moving forward. thx again for co-presenting petr! i'm looking forward to working more with you and our collective communities moving in the future.

backing up a bit, the after dark party was fun. the mix spinning in the background was pretty amazing. the myth busters were cool to see. i stood in line to get an autograph for a bit but given there was no real line, more a mob, i moved on. a colleague ended up freely giving me his autographed picture. honestly, i didn't beg. thx gary! the ac/dshe tribute band was pretty good. i watched fatal1ty do his thing for awhile as well.

friday i hosted the jxta hands on lab which was packed, like all of the labs. again, huge props to the folks pulling the j1 hol together! the scenario is such that there are 100 work stations on the same subnet and 20 or so notebooks on a wireless net. the jxta hands on lab (7110) is constructed to progressively (read code reuse) walk through the following scenarios:

• configuration (api, declarative profile, abstract configurator)
• network connection
• find stuff (discovery)
• share stuff (publish)
• socket
• multciast socket
• authentication

you can pull down this lab and run it yourself, which you should do right now. go ahead ... i'll wait for ya. doo-bee-doo-bee-doo. the lab is set up with an included netbeans project file so you are ready to compile and run as is. bada bing bada boom. commandline ant is supported as well. the lab configuration is adhoc which was alot of fun for the discovery and multicast exercises. a few folks changed the default text which totally made my day. i barely touched the authentication lab due to timing but will add that an additional "easter egg" exercise is included that is commented out at this time builds on the afore mentioned socket exercise by adding authentication resulting in a secure socket connection. perhaps next year we'll get that one back in the mix. my hopes are to treat the jxta hol examples as open source and encourage others to contribute complimentary code fragments to help build it out. i want to again thank the folks who took time to sit in on the jxta hands on lab and the 15 or so folks that stayed after to deep dive a bit further. this single event made the entire event and the work leading up to it worth all the effort.

i got to sit in on a few bofs. the scripting bof was cool with one take away being that that scripting engines implemented on java evidently provides greater code portability then is otherwise possible. not that suprising after you think about it a bit. the jruby folks look to be rocking and given i've been playing around with ruby a bit of late so that was fun info to learn. i look forward to being able to blend java and scripting logic as warranted for the coming years as this should prove to be extremely enabling for integration type activities, i suspect. the freedom toaster bof was nice. jim took some snaps as well. i got a swag shirt and drooled over the ubuntu themed nexenta solaris 10 system. truly great job. with me being a huge ubuntu fan, bringing together open solaris and ubuntu goodness, noting that i'm generalizing a bit here, is a hugely good thing. i then sat in on the apple bof and was impressed with the ever shrinking time delta between osx jre releases in comparison with other platforms ... i believe it is measured on the order of weeks these days. very cool.

after talking with folks a bit more i'm more convinced then ever that the meerkat (http-over-jxta) code i've been hacking in the jxta comons project is of value, primarily on 2 fronts by easing listener implementations within an IoC 1 method "peerlet" container and to the caller by representing resources of many types and cardinality, be it one-to-one or many-to-many, as a traditional (and expected) uri backed with the respective jxta protocol handlers. i'm looking foward to pushing these ideas futher in the coming weeks given the codes usage of late and the common programming model that is fudamentally http(s)+ ... good times. the meerkat codebase is used in the afore mentioned nb/jxta collaboration provider and significantly eased that effort.

so, for those playing the home game, consider the following and join the party:

% cvs -d :pserver:guest@cvs.jxta.org:/cvs login
  ...
% cvs -d :pserver:guest@cvs.jxta.org:/cvs co commons/modules/ext
% cd commons/modules/ext
% vi readme.txt
% ant run.proto

with java one in the bag, so to speak, i visited friends around the city. while waiting in a posh lobby i ran into phil gordon of celebrity poker fame. when bumping into phil i was pretty much caught off guard and as such ended up being a total fan boy and unfortunately forgot his name and could only blurt out "texas hold'em" and the like. he was nice and we chatted a bit more, me retelling our families evening texas hold'em tradition starting with my 3 year old son's wanting to play "river card." these days, my 5 year old lad can hold his own with a deck of cards.

upon stopping back by my brother's place to pick up my car and head home i discoverred i got a flat and opted to miss my son's little league game saturday, which was a bummer, and instead hang a bit longer with my brother and his wife in pacifica. upon finally getting back home i learned that while i was away, autumn, our daughter, learned to crawl. amazing how time passes. i took an extended weekend off for memorial holiday at which time we all stated with my brother in pacifica and brought our bikes. there is nothing quite like riding biks along the pacific coastline. dave, my brother, taught trey, my son, chess which he took to immediately. we play a couple of games each day and his watching his learning uptake is amazing. i'm pretty sure he'll end up holding his own in chess, well, agaist me at least, by years end.

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: Radiohead/Amnesiac/Pryamid Song

the java one hands-on-labs just get's better and better every year. hats off to the crew that pulls it all together.

if you attend the JXTA HOL be sure to say hi. if not, no worries, you can access and run the lab exercises online. so, if you are playing the home game hol then fire up MyJXTA and say hi P2P style!

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: javaone buzz

hope

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: The Crystal Method/Legions Of Doom/True Grit

i haven't scribed for a spell ... i've been heads down for a bit. i'll work to change that shortly.

then, i read dear elena ... i am left speechless. sadness beyond measure. danieal is a goodreat man|father|soul. the world could use more souls like his.

our best to him and his, from james, tammy, trey and autumn.

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: Gen Loves Jezebel/Kiss Of Life/Evening Star

our best to you and yours!

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: sounds of my son playing LOTR on the imac

i happened upon the random 1 series on a&e a couple of weeks back and have really enjoyed each show that i have gotten a chance to watch. the principal is really simple ... take time, listen, be kind and good things will happen. in a word, insirational.

doing so isn't easy. john and andre work very hard to "mak things happen" ... and are genuine through and through.

i suspect the recipe can be further boiled down to one word ... sincerity.

i also suspect that, as random 1 suggests and to a degree proves, that a small amount of kindness invested goes a long way in the creating a "change state" such that kindness is perpetuated and, quite possibly, returned.

random 1 is about connecting people.

the systems and, more importantly, people i get to meet, learn from and "build with" are very motivating. it's the connections. from the one campaign, to the one laptop per child and james burke's knowledge web project ... life changing initiatives. it feels good. real good!

being part of building an ecosystem that enable sincere connections to occur, more readily then would otherwise be possible, and for those connections to grow into mutually beneficial relationships where ideas are freely exchanged and the future is shaped, at times in truly life changing ways, makes it all worth it, in the end.

with the one campaign and one laptop per child thousands of lifes are changed. random one, on the other hand, changes lives one life at a time and with few resources other then "connecting people."

looking back a bit, i'm not really sure why i titled this little blog'o mine "consistently random" other then to possibly remind myself to step back and consider different perspectives from time to time. now, given the fact i am a fan of random 1, i guess i now have another reason for being proud to be "consistently random."

strong enough to be nice!

wise enough to think twice!

mean enough to stay green!

call all bluffs!

random on people! random on!

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: Cold Play/A Rush Of Blood To The Head/Politik

this last two weeks were unique in that i got to meet, for the first time, 3 folks with whom i've *virtually* worked with via myjxta and associated projects. that was *so* fun. it is amazing that given a smidge of im/irc, via myjxta of course, you realy get to know people, quite well in fact.

first up, i got a chance to sit down and chat with mark petrovic a bit where we chatted about juxta in general and furthered some of our jxta configuration discussions of late. i still owe a bit of code to this regard, something i've been meaning to add to ext:config for awhile anyways. mark is a huge motivater for to those involved with myjxta and associated projects. he also has some fun ideas in the areas of collaboration. i'm really glad mark took a bit of time out of his busy schedule to stop by my little corner of the jxta-plex world.

next up, henry story was in town. i met henry via the bloged project but having done a bit of real-time language translation in the past turns out i've used his code long ago as he was the *bblfish* behind alta vista's language translation tools. henry's done a killer job w/ bloged and given we've talked about the possibilities of bringing our varied domain experiences together at some point in time it feels like the time is right to play through some of the ideas. should be a fun ride!

last up, bob way stopped by for a visit. bob's got a ton of ideas and even more domain knowledge in the areas of search, content distribution, copy right entitlements and the like. while bob was in town polo was online so we hooked up a little myjxta video chat.

i'm glad i got to meet and work with these folks in the borderless world that is opensource ... and in the very real world as well.

good times! better times coming! happy holidays all!

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: Sigue Sigue Sputnik/A Gothic Tribute To The Smashing Pumpkins/Bullet With Butterfly Wings

i've been meeting more gamers on myjxta of late, the most recent of which is joel. i've had a great time chatting w/ him going over what jxta provides to application developers.

jxta *is* the net!

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: The Streets/A Grand Don't Come Easy/Turn The Page

foaf describes stuff. jxta finds stuff. meerkat interacts with stuff.

the aggregate (largely) provides the baseline for a social net with relative ease. profound ease. goodgreat stuff.

some of the fundamentals of this idea is in place via the myjxta profile feature. the next couple of iterations should prove insightful, likely coupled with configuration and deployment descriptors.

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: Cake/Comfort Eagle/Short Skirt Long Jacket

per the mink'ster i gave the most excellent bloged another spin this morn. excellent job bblfish!

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: Page &  Plant/No Quarter/Since I've Been Loving You

the one laptop per student non-profit initiative is pretty amazing, as kevin noted earlier. the $100US laptop design is really compelling. the device looks to be relatively rugged, very approachable and multi-functional. what really intrigues me, though, is the built in assumption that the existence of environmental resources, even electricity, is not a given. wow. think about that for a second. if electricty is not assumed then it is fair to say that "systems administrators," as commonly defined, can not be assumed either. as such, the system, it's constituents and the network in aggregate, simply must operate at a higher order of mutual cooperation then is present for the vasy majority of like devices to date. thusly systems software like that of jxta thrive in such environment, by doing more with less, by discoverying, leveraging and rotating network accessible services when needed in true collaborative peer-to-peer fashion, and done securely.

i've had the good fortune to interact with some of the folks in the trenches for this project. largely by happen stance ... the best of interactions. i have a keen interest in this space largely because my sone (pictured above) is now in kindergarten (man how time flies) at the village school, a really great parent participation public school. that and i like the domain of small group (ie long tail) collaboration and the firm belief that systems software, ie the network, can be so much better then what it is today. as such, projects like myjxta are a natural fit.

back to the olpc initiative. while this is compelling and looks to be entirely viable with the right alignments of corporate and government sponshorship, etc. i wonder if any us schools are candidates for this program. more to the point, i want my son (and daughter) to have access to such a device and the backing "network of things." now, if one answer for us schools is to spend a bit more on commodity systems i think we missing the boat, entirely. schools that i've seen have ample access to h/w but limited time and ability to "manage" said systems. that, in a word, is the problem. why is it the managability of commodity systems is what it is today? it doesn't need to be this way, at all. it is time to think different.

the good news is, of the few folks i've met of late they "get it" and as such they are changing the world. now, please, let's change our local school systems in the process as well. my skin is in the game.

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: Depeche Mode/Remixes 81-04/I Feel Loved

i attended the most excellent svosug just before the break and was, to put it politely, totally blown away. i can't say it any better then what he said. amazing! zfs is a huge game changer. in a nutshell, zfs is a virtualized 128 bit file system that is endian agnostic that basically throws out the window 30 years of file system architecture assumptions. all this and yet it is wrapped in a human friendly set of utilities.

the svosug get together's are well worth attending. mad props to the folks running the show. me, i'm happy to be along for the ride. the zfs presentation is well worth a read, but getting to hear the story from the source, well, priceless. several of these folks, and the open solaris community in general hang out on freenode#opensolaris. stop by and introduce yourself.

stop the pain! stop the madness! systems and networking software stacks can be oh so much better then the status quo. with innovations like those found in open solaris i hold out hope for humanity.

life is good and getting better.

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: Depeche Mode/Remixes 81-04/Policy of Truth

and that was just the opening hands of those that played in the final round of world series of poker. wow. the kings trip'ed but down to the river the aces won out w/ a flush on the river. amazing round of poker. i love that game. it's rise in popluarity is astounding with the grand prize reaching $7.5 million. what stood out for me was that the final nine all appeared to be really classy folks. gracious loosers and such. can't hurt that each one of them is was at least an instant millionaire by simply pulling up a chair to the final table ... and, well, yeah ... beating out like 5.5k other folks in the running.

speaking of classy people ...

on the myjxta front, polo got full bidirectional ip cam support. it's good to have polo on the home team.

further, nano finished the first cut at the myjxta plugin api using polo's tic-tac-toe work as the reference use case. great work as this feature should ease and help accelerate future collaborative works.

time to start thinking about that poker plugin i've been mulling over for awhile now. hmmmmmmmm. that and bringing meerkat into the mainline to address half of the outstanding p1s will be a nice way to end the year.

it's cool to see dale here on bsc. one of the best projects i worked, one where i felt individually empowered, was a '97 gig in dale's group. good times. welcome aboard!

lastly, the roller folks have done a great job w/ the deployment on bsc. some nice features have been added as of late along w/ some nicely cleaned up admin screens. nicely done!

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

Java == platform independence
XML == application independence
JXTA == network independence

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: The Disturbed/The Sickeness/Shout 2000