Monday February 21, 2005

General

Another last entry! Okay, quick back track. I've decided to move my blog to JRoller for obvious reasons. See ya!

(2005-02-21 02:00:40.0) Permalink

Sunday February 20, 2005

General

Last entry from a Sun Java Developer My last day with access to Sun and blogs.sun.com will be on Tuesday 22nd February so this will probably be my last entry.

I've really enjoyed working for Sun and it upsets me having to leave. I suppose for now I won't be able to fulfill one of my ambitions of actually working in the JDK teams. Being at Sun allowed me to extend my Java and J2EE experience to over 8 years and bring my Unix experience to over 15 years. For the last year my team has all been remote, I am in the UK and they were nearly all in the Bay area. That made an interesting working day. Prior to my 3 years at Sun I was with Lutris Technologies Inc for 2 years working on and with both the Enhydra and Enhydra Enterprise. Before that my time (nearly 10 years) was spent with the Santa Cruz Operation Inc (SCOC not SCOX!) in numerous roles.

Whatever new opportunities I pursue I will still be in the Java zone as I just love working with Java. I don't suppose my next employer will be a Californian based technology company, given that all my jobs since graduating have it might even feel a little strange.

Thanks all to who stumbled across my blog. I was never in the top 10 of blogs.sun.com but I have been top of the "grahamm" Google search, that surprised and pleased me. I'm going to continue with "grahamm's blog" over at Blog Drive. I hope you visit my new blog, there is a contact form there if anyone wants to contact me. Also thanks to the rest of blogs.sun.com, it was great being part of this community.

Thanks again and goodbye,

Graham

(2005-02-20 04:25:00.0) Permalink Comments [2]

Friday January 21, 2005

General

Scaring doorstep cold callers This unexpected incident has given me no end of (evil) fun and I will employ it again purposefully.

Today I had a doorstep sales person cold call trying to sell uPCV double glazing. They started with the normal ramble of only giving a quote, no pressure, etc, etc; when we all know that's not true. At first I couldn't even get a word in. When I did I asked what company did they represent. Lets call the cold caller's company company_A.

I wanted to know because I had already had a cold caller two days earlier trying to sell uPVC double glazing and I assumed it was the follow up pressure call, just reminding me that the fabulous discounts and offers would end today (only for more next week :)). But it wasn't the same company, two days earlier it was company_B!

So before the sales person could continue I piped up "For your interest company_B called round a couple of days ago". The look on the salespersons face was, as in the Mastercard advert, priceless.

Initially it was clearly horror. Over about the next ten silent seconds it turned to resignation and possibly even rejection. The penny had dropped from a long way up and was still falling.

The sales person just backed off down the drive. It was then that I unintentionally added the final nail and said, "They went around all of the street." That was it I suppose, this sales avenue was more or less closed or at least profit less.

All this happened, as I said, unintentionally. It was until I closed the door and sat down to continue with my lunch that I thought about the looks the sales person had given me and what must have been going through their mind at the time. One thing I do know though is I might just suggest something similar the next time a cold caller interrupts me.

(2005-01-21 05:51:53.0) Permalink Comments [2]

Tuesday January 18, 2005

General

Days are slowly getting longer I can only assume the birds in my garden are going nuts because they can sense the slow lengthening of daylight time. They either chase each other; sing loudly and continously; or root around in the grass and shrubs. A marked change to a month ago when they appeared to feed and then fly off. I (sadly) find it all quite entertaining. I'll do anything to get out of garden chores...

(2005-01-18 01:20:18.0) Permalink

Monday January 17, 2005

General

Super Jumbo I was reading about the A380 super jumbo on Sunday. It is due to be officially unveiled tomorrow with test flights starting in March. I am already mesmerized when watching other large aircraft in flight (like the 747). I get to see them briefly take off when I drive to Guillemont Park and the office. The M25 motorway passes next to London Heathrow. The problem is I am suppose to be driving and not watching the metal birds.

The A380 doesn't enter service till sometime next year and then most likely in the Far East for the first year or so. I will have to wait a little before I see one in the metal.

(2005-01-17 06:03:23.0) Permalink

Sunday January 16, 2005

General

I've woken up in hell First rule of looking after children, make sure there are more adults in control than children. I've got my brother's children staying over. It's hell! Help me! Even my own children have turned into screaming trolls.

(2005-01-16 01:31:40.0) Permalink

Friday January 14, 2005

General

Firefox icon I've noticed something about the Firefox icon which bugs me everytime I see it now. I love the Mozilla products and the icons are great. But why can't the poor little fox have it's head pointing towards us. Seeing the back of it's head just doesn't look right to me. I know it's silly issue but does anyone else agree? Can we get the Firefox turned around?

(2005-01-14 02:47:01.0) Permalink Comments [4]

Monday January 10, 2005

General

Media camped out near the office It appears that this tribunal is happening a couple of doors down from the office. Couple of big vans with satellite dishes on top and people standing around in the rain with microphones. Lovely job. Makes a change to all the police dramas they film across the road at the courts (some real, some fictional) .

(2005-01-10 05:02:53.0) Permalink

Wednesday December 22, 2004

General

RTFM Okay so tonight as Jo (my wife) was out I thought I'd try out the Hauppage Nova-T TV tuner card I purchased last week. Two friends, David and Justin, and I ordered a Nova-T each to try out MythTv. Like Justin, I hadn't declared my new toy to the rest of the house. When the package arrived I intercepted my box and quickly pushed the other two onto David. I think I got away with it but unfortunately Justin was rumbled. This no doubt means his credit card statements will be scrutinised for the next year.

Back to the story, so I plugged the card into my nice cube PC which claims to have TV out and S-VHS. Well I couldn't get the video out to work. I dug out the manual for the motherboard only to find that I needed to change a small motherboard jumper located in the worst possible place. Eventually with tweezers and a small screwdriver I was able to change the jumper. Very fiddly.

Still no video out and I don't have a S-VHS lead so I couldn't try that. As a stop gap I decided to use my Trust VGA to video gizmo. Works great, the image is acceptable for short viewing periods. The downside is that all the cables are wired directly to the gizmo, S-VHS; video; power (which is a keyboard pass-thru); and of course a VGA pass-thru connector. It's like picking up a bowl of spaghetti.

Anyway thought I'd try it out under Windows first just to make sure that the card worked. Windows 2000 recognised the new card; the drivers loaded fine; the applications loaded fine; did I want to scan for channels?, of course.

First problem, channel 22 hung the scanner app. My Freeview box identifies 22 as the first MUX on the Crystal Palace transmitter. Then I remembered that David had already told me that "overlay" didn't work, so I set the software to "force" (I think) and tried again. Yee Haa! The tuner found channels. Here we go!

Second problem. After the scanning the app disappeared and all I got left with was an error dialog. Now each time I try to start the app all I get is the same error. Time to read the manual and check the specs again. Doh! The specs only ever mention Windows XP. But it let me install it on Windows 2000, eh?

Next I checked the web site. Yep that agrees, the 1.2 software is only for Windows XP. It also gives the impression that new hardware will only work with new software. So no Windows 2000 drivers, boo hoo.

Now I'm out of luck as I don't have XP and don't intend getting it either. Oh well, not really a problem as I'm going to use Linux eventually anyway so that I can run MythTV. So time to get installing I think...

(2004-12-22 14:54:43.0) Permalink

Tuesday December 21, 2004

General

Fellow bloggers Met fellow blogger Paul today without realising. As Paul has mentioned before, he supports the PTS and Sustaining folk in Sparc House at Guillemont Park Campus (GMP). Paul kindly said that if I needed anything I should just ask. That's good when the office and lab you are in are strange to you (thanks Paul!).

The Watford Sun office recently moved all of its lab equipement to GMP. Today my visit was to see if I could help set the systems up. Well in truth I wanted to see what my machines were doing. I've been without them for a while and needed to either get on with my work or switch to something else till the machines were usable again.

At the end of the day I actually really enjoyed putting machines on racks and hooking up the cables. I haven't tinkered in a lab for a long while. Also by doing something it felt a whole lot better than whining, something I had been doing most of last week.

(2004-12-21 16:18:02.0) Permalink

Friday December 10, 2004

General

Digital camera plague... I have nothing against digital cameras except one annoyance. I've recently attended my youngest's pre-school play. This is the fifth event in two weeks. Understandably every parent has got some form of camera (me included). Most appear to be digital or at least reasonably hi-tech.

The annoyance is the continual chorus of beeps and dings from the cameras as they are "fiddled" with. After a while I found this really distracting. One parent a couple of rows in front had a camera that beeped loudled on every button press, including the zoom button which he liked to use extensively. Beep beep beep.

I think its time for a new sign to sit alongside the "switch off mobile phones" sign seen in many public places, "switch off noisy cameras".

On a final note, I must start using the red eye feature. One shot of my youngest makes her looks as if she is a terminator. Very scary!

(2004-12-10 03:22:51.0) Permalink

Tuesday November 30, 2004

General

Simple things... for simple minds.

Mildly amusing for five minutes Build A Better Bush.

(2004-11-30 06:28:24.0) Permalink

Friday November 19, 2004

General

When will you people get it... the 4th paragraph and the discussion of "proprietary" is just plainly spreading mis-information. Too many times I've heard that the opposite to proprietary software is open free software. Not so.

The OS is there to enrich the (virtual) machine on which programs run on. This enrichment comes in many forms and levels of detail, one such being what you expect from a Unix or Unix like operating system. Now as long as your OS provides these services in a standard way you can normally achieve some form of source or binary compatibility. To the application how this standard service is achieved is practically irrelevant.

This all reminds me of just over ten years ago when SCO (SCOC from Santa Cruz, not SCOX Provo) was developing SCO OpenServer. OpenServer at time was just discounted by many customers because it wasn't SVR4 based (it was SVR3.2). When in reality SCO had been furiously adding many SVR4 interfaces and services to OpenServer. From an applications point of view the distinction was getting smaller with each week.

So going back to the original mis-information, yes Solaris is currently proprietary with respect to it's innards. However the application exposed Unix interfaces and services that applications use are not proprietary. It is these same interfaces and services that exist in Linux, Unixware, Openserver, HP-UX, AIX IRIX, Ultrix, and Tru64 (apologies if I missed someone out).

I think people forget that these interfaces and services are not proprietary, and that also doesn't make them instantly free and open. The comparison is just wrong. It is not a money thing, people are making money from selling open source software (and good luck to them!).

What people should be interested in is how well the "innards" of an OS implement the standard services and interfaces. The metrics of scalability, reliability and performance are the real differentiators. It is also these metrics that are harder to acheive than just putting your source code on the web for everyone to see.

As for Scott's comment on "interoperable only with the same brand" we don't need spell out who he is talking about.

(2004-11-19 02:32:28.0) Permalink Comments [1]

Thursday November 18, 2004

General

England's first snow of winter... well okay a light dusting.



The BBC make it all sound more glamorous. I had to photograph it because the kids won't believe me tomorrow morning. Well at least it made it as far south a North Herts and it is quite early (and quite rare) for the south east. I suspect this is all we will see this season.

Before anyone points out that this is nothing like real snow, I know, but here in the UK just the thought of snow sends people spinning in panic. I expect tomorrow the UK to be gridlocked with no roads or trains running.

(2004-11-18 16:20:14.0) Permalink

General

So which planet is HP on? If they think they are in this universe they are clearly mistaken.

I know I probably shouldn't be doing this, I should just get on with my work but I've just read Martin Finks web page and it distracted me sufficiently that I'm here in my blog.

Darn it, just found this Get the Real Story about Solaris on x86 as well. Some real interesting "Facts" in here people.

For instance, "Fact 1" with regards to binary compatibility did we (Sun) ever say SPARC and x86 were binary compatible? Okay so I followed the [4] reference that HP have supplied. This eventually led me back to a Sun website and FAQ item #26. For starters they've referenced an Itanium item not a SPARC/Opteron item. What they really want is FAQ #25. Which does clearly state that SPARC and x86 are not binary compatible. So where's the sensationalism HP? All they have done is peddle the same facts that we've already given out.

As for endianess, where is the news here? From what I understand HP have got a bigger problem with customer systems and endianess. [In case some readers have forgotten, HP bought Compaq, who bought Digital, so it's really HP Tru64]

"Fact 2", proprietary Solaris? Is it any more proprietary than Windows, HP-UX and Tru64? I couldn't find the links on the HP web site that said their OSes were any more open source than Solaris. We also sell Linux and so does HP, everything HP levels at Sun can quite easily be levelled back at HP. No high ground.

"Fact 3", yes why would you mix the management of the two systems. Did HP miss the consolidation pitch that Sun gives? It's not the only pitch we give, it's just one of the many choices we give our customers.

And so on and so on. I could continue but I tire you the reader and myself the writer.

Lastly though I would like to thank Martin for acknowledging the launch of Solaris 10.

ps: Is Linux HP's dirty little secret? I notice in HP's 4th quarter results both HP-UX and Alpha get a mention, but not Windows, x86, Itanium, Opteron or Linux. Obviously these were not interesting enough for HP to mention.

(2004-11-18 06:45:53.0) Permalink Comments [2]