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

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

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

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

our second child was born last thursday, on the autumn equinox. while tammy and i have had a nice girls name picked out for literally years, the name just didn't seem to fit. being the first day of autumn and all, well, long story short, we chose the name "autumn marie todd." autumn is meaningful and somewhat unique and marie is my mother's and sister's middle name, that also goes along nicely with a first name of autumn.

i've posted some fresh-off-the-press pictures at our dot mac site.

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 a newborn

i opted to update my home systems this weekend, ubuntu for my x86 box and tiger for my mac. in preperation, i bought a new firewire disk for backs and the like. the backup process took the most time, overall, but is well worth the time spent.

having received my *free* shipit cd's the same day that i unfortunately obtained a couple of cds after attending linux world i was chock full of install disks.

on the mac side of the desk i picked up a fresh tiger cd and opted to add ilife '05 to the mix.

with the backups safely offlined i dug in w/ the upgrades opting to give them a go concurrently, at least to start out. the ubuntu install process was quite fresh and in fact the overall time to get a login for each system was identical, noting that the requisite linux system pimp'age was still needed.

i'm really impressed with the ubuntu install process. the few prompts that were present we're extremely intuitive short the disk partitioning. even that process was a joy in comparison to some distributions. both of my internal disks were picked up. a swap partition was not called out which struck me as odd having *once* suffered a ill configured system with too little swap. i opted to specify /swap and moved on.

going with ubuntu is a coming home distribution for me as my first home linux system was debian dressed with enlightenment ... mmmmmm, great eye candy for sure.

this go around, though, gnome decked with my choice of swag jewelrey filled 'da bill.

once i got back to my day-to-day with the system i tried to su root only to be kicked to the curb. after frantically trying to remember the install prompts specifying a root password ... think think think ... and realizing that no such prompt was offered i opted to sudo, ahhh, joy! sudo is on by default and you can't, by default, su root. now that is just the way it should be and i was quite happy to not have to vi /etc/sudoers as a post-install process. this is not unlike osx, from an end users perspective. that being that (at least) one user is specified as a systems administrator.

the default programs were quite fresh, which was nice. i opted to pull down a new firefox and thunderbird and was really impressed with the new extensions and themes since i have last installed these tools. the "smooth scroll" extension is gold.

i was really happy to find the synaptic package manager, a sweet apt-get front end. what a joy that tool is too use. i really missed a tool like that when migrating off of debian a couple of years back. after adding some extended repositories to apt i stumbled upon bum, boot-up manager. this is a must have for service management. i also got a chance to install ethereal via a managed process which for reasons unknown was a pain in the a$$ on my former system. using ethereal for my day-to-day will be nice when i finally get a chance to try out the nice "ethereal jxta protocol analyzer" swag my colleague bondolo has cooked up.

i fought a bit with alsa to get my system utter sounds. i'm still grappling with nvidia driver support with the bar being a smooth playing game of bzflag with my son. i suspect this won't be too difficult to get in oder once i dig in.

i familiarized myself a bit with the x.org system, swapping my cntrl-and-caps keys and going big with 1280x1024 resolution. easy enough and ample resources abound.

all in all i'm quite impressed. great/free, literally free cd(s) & shipping, distribution. very smooth process. comprehensive forums, wikis, etc. the ubuntu community should be proud!

osx/tiger is great. dashboard is something my wife is sure to like. the updated iPhoto is something we had a great time with during the evening viewing old photos with new querying capabilities ... finding some we are going to photoshop a bit and and hang them on the wall.

the only downside to this systems upgrade weekend was that during the installs i opted to clean the mac keyboard. i was happy to find that it cleans up nicely, in comparison to the typical pc keyboard. the trouble was that i rushed a bit during the process and failed to ring out the paper towel thoroughly and ended up shorting out a couple of keys, namely escape, up-arrow and 4. i gave it another day to dry out to no avail so i chalked this one up to lessons learned and pennied up for a new keyboard.

all in all my home systems are singing away nicely.

i ended up updating my work system early on in the week and pretty much liked the results as well being greeted with a smooth gnome theme. i hope to get a desktop solaris 10 system under my mits soon.

i scored a couple of new cds this weekend as well. the crystal method, community service ii cd so rocks! this is a must have cd.

rock 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: The Crystal Method/Community Service II/1979 (New Originals 1799 Remix)

today's is trey's 5th birthday. oh man, does time fly.

we had a fun bday party this weekend, inviting trey's friends and family. tonight is the family party. just the 3 1/2 of us.

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

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

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: trey/a very happy 5yr old

wow. that little one gig has surely blossomed. i'll be watching. i'm not surprised, not at all. sun rocks. i mean, literally rocks!

given that cell phones are the modern successor to cigarette lighters of old, a sea of individual beacons, shining in unison, i wonder, what next? what next? ponder. hmmmmmmmmm.

what if ... what if the phones pulsated in response to their environment, their surrounding, in response to one another. now, that would truly rock! but how? hmmmmmm ... <thinking-hat="winnie the pooh">think think think</thinking-hat> ... ahhhhahhhh, but of course. jxta is the unifying glue. the neon thread that binds the network fabric by bringing together disparate entities floating about in adhoq flotsam jetsam ether regions to spontaneously unite for a common cause, be it for art or for humanity. optimally for both.

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

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

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: New Order/Substance/Blue Monday

i just posted relatively comprensive james' javaone '05 gigs entry. hope meet new and old faces this year.

i was up at moscone today shoring up the jxta hand s-on-lab. those folks are so cool to work with and the hol content is getting better and better all the time. comprehensive yet very consistent. amazing considering all the vary topics and the number of authors involved. one thing is for certian ... these people CARE.

i'm quite happy w/ the end result ...

today should be alot of fun as we'll demo, for the first time, some of the kick a$$ work that has been keeping me really busy as of late at both netbeans day and the jxta town hall. killer!

during javaone i'll be hanging in the jxta, netbeams/jddac and orchestrated collaboration pods along w/ tipping a few w/ my bsc compadres :)

lastly, thx to the help of my brother michael my mom is now running the latest myjxta as she was stuck on an older build that didn't readily recognize jnlp mods. we did a video chat as well, which is was *really* looking forward to but alas it didn't render on her side of the connection. hmmmmmmm. we're close. we'll get it nailed.

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

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

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: Crystal Method/Keep Hope Alive/Now Is The Time

me luvs da free beer! be there.

MyJXTA :: use it - learn it - do it

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

Secure End-to-End Computing

in my ears: Coldplay/A Rush Of Blood To The Head/Clocks